Hi there!

You are now committed to looking into what you will need for portable pastures. Pat yourself on the back! You are on your way to implementing your adaptive grazing plan. 

You can purchase the equipment needed for adaptive grazing for less than $500. You can have adaptive grazing spaces around your farm and get your horses out on a paddock within a week.

Here is the list: 

1. Polywire/Poly Tape - $50-$100

2. Step in posts ($152/50 posts)

3. Energizer (solar or Energizer+battery) ($250)

4. Shade (optional)- FREE (TREES)!

1. Poly Wire/Poly Tape: You first need to decide if you want to use, Polytape or Polywire. These products are equally effective, but the polytape will take up more room on your reel than polywire. Some horse owners feel their horses can see the polytape better than polywire, so they naturally want to use something more visible. In our experience, if you move the horses during the day when they can see the new space, it doesn’t matter either way. We feel the poly wire is easier to roll up and put into the stakes than poly tape. It also doesn’t sag much since it isn’t as heavy as the tape strands. 

2. Step-in posts are essential to your adaptive grazing plan. We are currently using plastic step in posts. The downside to these posts is that they break with excessive force during significantly colder weather. We now use a rubber mallet to pound them in because it has become very dry in our region over the summer. The “step in” option wasn’t effective, and the mallet has been a game changer. When you are pulling them out, they may feel stuck. If you gently kick the bottom of the post to loosen the stake, it will pull up easily. If you carefully put them in and pull them up, they will last many seasons. 

3. Fence Chargers: Thank goodness for technology and the many options on the market for electrifying portable fencing. We have used many options, and they all tend to work well. We may prefer one option over the other depending on equipment cost to animal ratio or portability of equipment. 

• Solar Chargers: Solar chargers work great when you are moving animals daily. This solar charger will work great for you if you have a lot of sunshine, as we do here in South Carolina. They are light, durable, and generally dependable throughout the year. Our favorite solar charger is the Gallagher series solar charger. It has withstood many moves, and the parts have not broken on the device. It offers a consistent charge and continues to work after over two years of constant use. Another option is to use an energizer plus a marine deep-cycle battery. You will need two batteries so that one can be charged and ready at all times. We like the Speedright 1000 plus a 12 V battery for our horse paddocks. This way, the weather will rarely be an issue affecting fence performance.

4. Shade- Depending on where you are and your land, you may or may not have available shade. We are in South Carolina, where it gets sweltering during the summer months. Horses can and do often go without shade, but we know that given a preference, they would always prefer to have shade available. We have constructed a shade mobile out of an old hay wagon. It now has adjustable “wings” that expand during implementation and fold up during moves. A great option with adaptive grazing is that you can easily incorporate shade into your daily pasture plan if you have trees near your grazing areas. A couple of ideas include:

• Make a set of trees or barn your central point to your pasture rotation. You can rotate circularly if a bunch of trees is in the middle, or you can make a path back to the shade, as I did here in this video.

• Use a mobile shade device- If you are handy and willing to test out your engineering skills, building a shade mobile will unleash all sorts of possibilities on your farm. With shade options, your animals will be more comfortable and peaceful, grazing on your pastures. A shade device can be as simple as a big frame with a tarp covering. Be creative, and it will blow you may blow yourself away!

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