How we move beef cattle on pasture every day

Bryce and I decided to go grass-fed when we took over the family farm and to raise our beef in a way that promotes the health and wellness of people, animals, and the planet.You see, it's not just about being "grass-fed" that makes our beef more delicious and nutritious.

It's about the way we move them. This rotational grazing method (seen in the video below) guarantees the cattle will always have lush, nutrient dense pasture to graze, which results in the incredible, clean, healthy, and exceptional quality products you have come to know and love.

Take a look below as Anastasia joins Ellie and Avery in the field to see just how we make this movement happen every day, twice a day.

As you see, this controlled management and movement of our cattle herd helps to ensure that we protect our pastures and help build up healthy nutrient dense soils, which in turn produce, healthy, nutrient dense meats.

Let us know if you have questions below. Thanks!

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How we move our cattle every day Video transcript

(Anastasia) Hi everybody, it's a beautiful morning at Riemer Family Farm. We are out here with our grass-fed beef herd. We rotationally graze our animals so that we can help the environment build the soil, and provide habitat.

You can hear and see some birds flying around while we're out here. There's bugs - there's abundant life - frogs and all sorts of critters.

So Avery and Elli are gonna walk us through how they move the cattle every day, so you get to see it from the comfort of your home.

So here we are ready to move the cattle - I shouldn't say we, Elli and Avery are. And Avery is counting out his steps to know how big the paddock is going to be before they put the post in. 

So here, Avery counted out where the line needs to go and they're moving forward with the mule and sending out the electric wire. It's just a single wire that keeps the cattle in and we’re using these step-in posts to keep it taut and straight.

Walking along here, the pasture looks really nice - see there's a nice blend of grasses and clover. Lots of nutrition, lots of diversity that makes for a healthy happy cattle.

Avery likes to fish on the weekends so this is his perfect job - every time he reels it in more, he thinks he's got the next biggest catch, right Avery?

(Avery) Yep.

(Anastasia) Just like fishing?

(Avery) Just like fishing.

(Anastasia) In a sea of green. So there's another wire here that kind of splits the field in half. So you can see this is where they grazed the other day, and this is where they're coming into.

So now this paddock that they were in, they won't be in here for another month or so. That gives it all that time to regrow, for the soil to kind of break down some of the trampling that they did. And the other thing that you want to see here is there is no great big manure piles - right here's a little cow pie but it's already starting to break down. And that's an important part the way that we farm because one of the big arguments against eating beef is that it produces methane, right? There's too much manure. But when you put an appropriate number of animals on the land and let them spread their own manure - I mean look at this - you see anything? No, it's clean. The land is able to handle it - no pollution. So “it's not the cow it's the how” is the argument and you're seeing the evidence right here.

There we go (to Avery) now you got your steps in. 

So Avery, how long will they be in this next paddock?

(Avery) Just for half a day. We move them out at 4 o’clock, so not that long. We move them twice a day.

(Anastasia) Okay that helps make sure they're getting enough to eat and not overgrazing, right?

(Avery) Yep. It properly distributes their manure and their grazing.

(Anastasia) Perfect, that's how we do it! It's like walking in a forest out here, you can't hardly see them, the grass is so tall.

Thanks for watching, Avery and Ellie did a great job. Let me know if you have any questions you can just send a message or comment on the post. You can email us at riemerfamilyfarm1927@gmail.com for more information, or leave a comment below.

*Update, we more recently have transitioned to moving the cattle just once a day, midday, and give them larger paddocks. This still achieves the same goals as the twice a day movement, but is a little more time efficient.