A paddock layout is one of those rural-property decisions that quietly shapes every other decision you make for the next decade. Get it roughly right and the daily work of moving stock, watering them, and shifting hay is twenty minutes faster every morning. Get it wrong and you spend the rest of the property's life walking the long way around your own bad choices.
The good news: paddock layout is mostly common sense applied carefully, not an engineering problem. This guide walks through the questions to answer in order, the constraints that bind them, and how to use PLOT to sketch options cheaply before you commit to a fence line.
Start with carrying capacity, not paddock shapes
Before you draw anything, get clear on what the paddocks are for. The two numbers that determine everything else are how many head of stock you intend to run and what kind of rotation you want.
Carrying capacity varies wildly by climate, soil, and species. A useful starting heuristic: 1 dry-sheep-equivalent (DSE) per acre of improved pasture in temperate-Australia conditions, 1 cow-calf pair per 5 to 10 acres in central Queensland or the Canadian prairie, 1 cow-calf per 25+ acres in semi-arid country. Multiply ruthlessly by what you actually see on your neighbours' properties. they've already discovered the local realities you're about to.
Once you know stock numbers, decide your rotation philosophy: set-stocked (one large paddock per mob, low management), rotational (3 to 10 paddocks per mob, weekly moves), or intensive rotational / cell grazing (20+ small paddocks per mob, daily or twice-daily moves). Each pushes the layout in a different direction. Cell grazing wants long thin cells with the water source at one end; set-stocking wants minimum fencing and shade access.
Draw your property boundary first
Open the editor at /app/projects/edit and type your address into the search hero. Once the satellite imagery has loaded over your property, use the polygon tool to trace the boundary. Don't worry about precision yet. the corners and the road frontage are what matter. The polygon's live area readout will confirm what the title says you bought, and any meaningful discrepancy is worth investigating (mis-surveyed in the 1950s is depressingly common).
With the boundary down, look at the property as a whole shape rather than a collection of memories. Where are the natural divisions? Ridgelines, dry creek lines, existing tracks, fenced shelter belts? These are free internal boundaries. using them saves wire and respects how the land already drains.
Place water first
Stock will walk to water. The single biggest improvement to most paddock layouts is making sure no animal has to walk more than 400 metres to a trough. the magic number above which grazing pressure concentrates around the water source and degrades it.
If you have one bore or one dam, paddock subdivisions should radiate from it like spokes so every paddock has a corner on the water. If you have multiple sources, you can build a more parallel grid and pipe water through. Mark the existing water sources on your PLOT layer first; then sketch where new troughs would go to keep that 400m constraint honest.
Brand-voice opinion. Reticulated water with poly pipe and gravity-fed troughs is one of the highest-ROI capital improvements a rural property can make. It pays back in pasture utilisation, lower fence-line damage, and quieter mornings.
Lay the rotational sequence
Now design the paddocks. Use PLOT's line tool to draw proposed fence lines, then close them with the polygon tool. The live area readout makes it trivial to keep paddock sizes roughly equal. important if you're rotating because you want a similar number of grazing days in each cell.
A reasonable rule of thumb for cell grazing: target one paddock per day of rotation. So 30 paddocks for a 30-day rest cycle, 60 for 60-day. For weekly rotation, target 6 to 8 paddocks per mob. For set-stocking, 3 to 5 large paddocks per mob is usually enough to let one paddock spell while the others run.
Try several versions. The Pro tier's multiple-concept-plans feature is built for exactly this. save 'rotation A: long-and-thin', 'rotation B: pinwheel', 'rotation C: parallel grid' as separate concepts on the same property, then open them side-by-side and compare.
Gates and laneways
Once paddocks are sketched, plan the movement. Every paddock needs at least two gates. one for moving stock in, one for moving them out without backtracking. Position gates at corners adjacent to laneways rather than mid-fence; corner gates are easier to muster to.
A central laneway down the spine of the property is the single best layout feature for a rotational system. Stock walk down the lane, into the next cell, gate closed behind them. PLOT's line tool with the 'fence. internal' type gives you the right default colour to distinguish laneway fences from boundary fences at a glance.
Shelter, shade, and the things stock notice
Animals don't care about your fence-line aesthetics; they care whether they have shade in summer, shelter from the prevailing wind in winter, and a soft place to lie down. Mark existing tree clumps with the tree-line tool so you can see whether each paddock has shade access. Plan shelter belts on the side the wind hits hardest. If a paddock has neither shade nor shelter and you're not planning to add some, reconsider whether that paddock should exist or whether the fence line should be shifted to include the next clump of trees.
Septic, dam, and infrastructure that bends paddocks
Some infrastructure has rules that override paddock convenience. The septic absorption trench has setback distances from wells and dwellings that aren't negotiable (see our guide on septic setbacks).
Dams want to be where water naturally collects. Power easements limit what you can fence over the top of. Existing access easements that benefit neighbours have to be respected. Mark these on a dedicated 'constraints' layer in PLOT so you can see what's locked-in before you draw paddocks that violate them.
Sketch, sleep, revise
The whole point of doing this in PLOT rather than with a chainsaw and a roll of wire is iteration cost. A paddock plan in PLOT can be deleted and redrawn in 30 seconds. A paddock fence in the ground costs you a weekend and $1500 to redo. Sketch a layout. Walk away. Come back the next day and look at it fresh. Show it to whoever else lives on the property; show it to your fencing contractor. Revise. Save the version. Sketch the alternative.
Once you're confident in a layout, export to GeoJSON or KML for the fencing contractor (their CAD or GIS workflow will accept either). Your saved project is there for you to come back to as the property changes.
Where to start in PLOT
Open the editor with your address. Trace your boundary. Mark water sources and constraint zones. Sketch your first paddock layout. Save. Come back tomorrow and try another. The Free tier covers all of this.