 Hi, I'm Kim Mullenix, a beef cattle extension specialist at Auburn University, and today I wanted to share some success stories of using temporary electric fencing on producer farms in Alabama as well as share some experiences regarding our use of temporary electric fencing on our research station farms. First I wanted to go over some examples of using temporary electric fencing at our research center operations around the state. The first of those is the EV Smith beef unit. This is located in central Alabama and we have a cow herd there that's about 200 head. And so every winter we typically plant winter annuals but they also feed hay and supplement during the early part of the winter as well. So this year we started a demonstration project with our station managers there looking at bale grazing or essentially where the bales of hay are set out in the pasture and a group of animals is given access to a bale at a time using temporary electric fence to separate each bale in the field. So what this does is obviously this past winter it was very wet conditions as you can see in the photo. Historically this particular pasture area is very muddy because it is located very close to a river area and it accumulates water and it tends to get muddy with the entry of the tractor in and out of the pasture putting out hay in the winter. So instead we decided to try this bale grazing approach where all of the bales were set out prior to the start of the feeding season and this group of about 20 heifers was then sequentially moved from bale to bale as they went through a single bale at a time. So what this did is it saved from a labor standpoint of having to go in daily to feed that group of animals but also it really decreased the amount of mud in the area because we were able to not have as much traffic going in and out of the pasture. If we look at a closer look of how did we use temporary electric fencing to separate that area off basically we just ran that polywire off of the permanent fence and gave the animals access to one single hay bale at a time and we were able to do this by just moving that tape across the field periodically over the season. One thing we also looked at as part of this demonstration is how did the overall quality of these bales change during the period that we were bale grazing them and we were started out with a fairly low quality warm season forage product that we were feeding at the time but from the time that we did this demonstration which was from roughly December through February there was only about a one percentage point decrease in terms of digestible energy of that forage as well as crude protein value of the forage. Our next example is at the Wiregrass Research and Extension Center which is located in Hedlin, Alabama in the southeastern corner of the state. At this station we do a lot of work with grazing cool season annual forages and this is really part of a cover cropping system that we have there at the center so this particular station is located in the heart of a strong row crop agricultural area and whenever those row crops are not being grown in the winter months they plant cool season annuals in these areas and we graze those for research projects. So this year we started a cover crop grazing trial looking at what is the appropriate length of time that we should graze cattle on cover crops and what impact does grazing have on overall cover crop biomass production as well as overall row crop production subsequent seasons and so in the photo here this is just an image of what that project looked like this winter but you can see that this row crop field that we planted in cool season annuals has now been split into several smaller paddocks for our study primarily using temporary electric fence. We typically have a contract with a local producer to bring in stocker cattle to graze these forages as part of our cover crop test and whenever we do that we essentially have to bring those animals in and train them to get used to using the temporary electric fence system. Most of them have never been exposed to that before and so essentially we would frame up a pin made out of temporary electric fencing material that looks a lot like this and feed those animals in that pin area for a period of time get them used to being around the electric wire and around people by that feeding period and then turn them out onto our research project where we have the temporary electric fence separating each of the individual paddocks so we do have a bit of an acclimation phase for those cattle who have never been around temporary electric fencing before but once they acclimate it's a great system and it allows us a lot of flexibility to be able to section off these larger fields into smaller bites for our research purposes. We've also used temporary electric fencing at this station to forward graze stockpiled forages this photo is a picture of a stockpiled Bermuda grass trial that we've conducted at the station and you can see the temporary electric fence going across the paddock area and we just move that fence forward to be able to provide about two to three days worth of grazing for those grazing animals. By this approach we're able to still give those animals access to water. There is no back fence here so the animals simply just have to walk back to that water and then continue to move forward as they're allocated new sections of forage. So what this does is it really improves our overall forage utilization of these stockpiled forages because we're decreasing, trampling, and decreasing how selective we can let our animals be as compared to if they just had free choice access to this whole pasture of standing forage. In the last year we've started a demonstration program in collaboration with NRCS where we purchase what we call several grazing kits or basically a starter kit that has the items that you would need to try temporary electric fencing on your farm on a small scale basis. And so we put together just a basic kit that has several different components mainly including posts, polywire, a geared reel, the solar charger, a fault finder as well as a ground rod. With the idea being that we wanted to give these kits to some producers that have not used temporary electric fencing in the past and then be able to go out to those producers' farms to show them how to use the kit appropriately and then collect some information about their experiences with using the kit over time. So we started that program in fall of 2018 and we are tracking through this spring of 2019 collecting some information back from those producers. But I wanted to just give you a couple of examples of some success stories as part of that program. The first is we have a producer in Walker County where we looked at doing an on-farm demo. He has 36 cows, they were around 1,100 pounds each, and he used his temporary electric fencing kit to be able to forward graze an area that was planted in annual ryegrass. So this is a photo of that annual ryegrass field. It was about 13 acres in size. And we actually did a program with that producer where we invited other producers to his farm and we estimated how many days of grazing would we be able to get out of this 13 acre field whenever we are using temporary fencing to section off the forage for the animals versus if we were just to turn them out and let them have continuous access to the pasture. So on that particular day of the program, which was around mid-March, we estimated that there was 17 days of grazing by using this fence to allocate them small sections of the pasture at a time versus if they had continuous access under continuous stocking, which would have provided about 11 days of grazing at the time. So again, this was just on that particular day we were able to get that estimate, but we know that this forage was really actively growing because March is the time period we would expect that annual ryegrass to take off and really start to be productive. And because of that, he would have certainly been able to get more grazing days out of that particular area. But it goes to illustrate again that the temporary electric fencing kit was able to help him improve his forage utilization in that field and therefore get more grazing days per year out of it. Also, we asked him about his experiences in terms of how long did it take him to move the fence to be able to provide a new section of grazing for his animals. And he indicated that it actually saved him time relative to if he had been feeding hay. So it took him about 30 minutes to put out the temporary fence and move it to a new location in the pasture to provide a new section of grazing versus what he said would be typically about 45 minutes if he had to bring a roll of hay out to those cows in that field to feed them on a daily basis during the winter. Another on farm demonstration in Talapusa County, this one was a little bit larger acreage. The fence was used on a 40 acre piece of property, and there were 36 cow calf pairs grazing that area. So this particular demonstration site, the producer was using the kit to graze stockpiled tall fescue. So much like the photo I showed you of the stockpiled Bermuda grass where we had the fence where we were forward grazing that. This is the strategy that this producer was using on stockpiled fescue. And by doing that, he was able to get about 55 days of grazing on his stockpiled tall fescue compared to more like 30 to 35 great days of grazing if he had given them continuous access to the area. Some other comments that this producer noted was that it added flexibility to his system. He could alter the number of grazing days being allocated to the cattle. So maybe one day he would give them a three days worth of allocation, but he could also use the fence to give them five days worth if he was not able to get back to them as frequently as he wanted to. So it gives us some flexibility then to be able to allocate them the needs based on our labor needs as well. Just a few more examples of some other on-farm success stories. This is a producer farm located in northern Alabama. And this was a picture that he sent me in November of 2018 of an annual ryegrass field that had been planted in September on a prepared seedbed. And you can see that, number one, there's a lot of growth of that annual ryegrass that occurred by planting that on a timely basis, which allowed him to have early winter grazing. But then number two, he was also looking at ways that he could really extend the use of this annual ryegrass. And so he had started by trying to forward graze that annual ryegrass. But then later he used his temporary fence as really an access point to allow cattle to go in and limit graze that field. So by limit grazing, he essentially gave them access to the field for a few hours each day, would turn them onto the pasture and then turn them off later in the day to just give them kind of a short period of access to that high quality forage. So by doing both of those practices, he was able to better extend the use of this annual ryegrass during that early winter period when he typically was facing a forage gap. Some challenges and comments that we've seen from producers as part of this program is just really, if they've never done it before, it's trying to learn how to use the kit efficiently and getting used to moving that system. What is the most efficient way to do that? And that's going to really depend on farm to farm and the field conditions at hand. So just that learning curve, I think, is kind of the first step in moving forward with temporary electric fencing on the farm. Also, like Kent mentioned in the earlier part of the webinar, under dry conditions, it makes it a bit harder to move those posts and kind of decreases the flexibility associated with this system. And then really the third piece of information we got back is that from our kits that we distributed that only had one reel and one wire, producers were interested in maybe having another reel and another wire, again, to have something to increase the flexibility of how they set up that system in the field. So although that is a challenge, I think it's also a testimony of how that system was working for these producers and they wanted to try to have more additions to those kits to provide greater flexibility. So with that, if you would like additional information on this topic related to temporary electric fencing, we would encourage you to visit our website, which is alabamabeefsystems.com, for additional information on how temporary fencing can be used on your farm.