In the course of researching for my future homestead, I have come across many articles praising intensive rotational grazing. Everyone seems to say that on the same amount of land you can raise considerably more animals while increasing pasture yields and reducing parasite load. It makes sense that the resting pastures will grow back faster, but what I can't wrap my mind around is the parasite benefits.
If you have a single pasture which will support all of the goats, the manure and parasites would be distributed over a larger area than if you had the same amount of goats in 1/6 of the area. Wouldn't this over concentrated pasture lead to increased exposure to parasites? Does rotational grazing only work if you're willing to commit more acreage than what would be expected for a single open pasture?
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Here is an example, although not the only way to do it. If you split your pasture up into six areas and you move the goats once a week, they will not be depositing eggs onto a piece of pasture for five weeks, meaning that the eggs they poop out will hatch, and the larvae will probably all die so that the goats will not be reinfected when they come back to that pasture.
If they are on the same pasture all the time, they will be eating grass that has live larvae on it, which means they will be constantly reinfecting themselves from the eggs that were pooped out by themselves and other goats.
If it rains a lot larvae can live longer than if it is dry. And the longer you can keep the goats off of a particular piece of land, the better. The longer there are no goats on a piece of land, the more likely that the larvae have all died. This is why ten paddocks is better than six and so on. With ten paddocks, you could keep them off a piece of land for nine weeks.