Jakob knew exactly where to set the peeled rods, in the canals, in the troughs of water, at the one place where the flocks were certain to gather (Genesis 30:38). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps the engineering detail: he placed them over against the flock that they might conceive when they came to drink.
A shepherd who has tended animals for years learns their rhythms. The watering time is the mating time. The trough is not only a place of thirst but a place of generation. Jakob did not invent any of this; he worked with the rhythms already written into the sheep.
What he added was the striped rod, a visual cue standing in the very line of sight of a drinking ewe. Whether the mechanism was natural or miraculous, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan treats it as both: the craft of a careful shepherd and the blessing of a covenant God working through ordinary biology.
The Maggid teaches: holy work does not require exotic places. The trough will do. A man who knows the rhythm of the flock he tends can set his intention right in the path of their daily thirst.