Animal Guides
Chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, quail, rabbits, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle and bees: getting started, housing, feeding, care and health.
Raising Chickens →How-To Guides
Step-by-step guides for every animal, the garden, orchard, pasture and compost: getting started, housing, feeding, daily care, breeding, health and harvest.
Garden and Land Guides
The vegetable garden, orchard, pasture and compost — with the key numbers and links to the trackers that keep your records.
Growing a Garden →Managing Pasture
Good pasture is the cheapest feed on the homestead. Moving animals often and letting grass rest grows more grass, healthier animals and better soil.
- Graze down to
- no lower than 3–4 in
- Rest
- 21–45 days (longer in hot or dry weather)
- Rule of thumb
- take half, leave half
1Rotational grazing
- Divide pasture into paddocks with temporary electric fence and move animals every few days.
- Move them when grass is grazed to 3–4 in; overgrazing kills the best grasses.
- Let each paddock rest until it regrows — longer in summer heat and drought.
- Plan water you can reach from every paddock.
2Building the soil
- Test the soil and lime if needed; legumes like clover need good pH.
- Frost-seed clover in late winter, when freezing and thawing works the seed in.
- Spread manure evenly by moving animals, or drag the paddocks.
3Weeds and parasites
- Clip or mow weeds before they seed.
- Rotate species (for example cattle after sheep) — each eats the other’s parasites.
- Keep sheep and goats off a paddock for 60+ days in warm weather to break the worm cycle.
- Know the poisonous plants for each animal and remove them.
Put it to work
These free tools keep the records for you once you’ve made an account:
These are rules of thumb from university extension guidance. Breed, climate and your state’s rules change the details — your county extension office is the best place to ask, and you can find it on the selling rules page by ZIP code.