The 4 Principles of Grazing Management

 

 

 

No matter where you live, and no matter what condition your land is in, the basics of grazing management always come down to these four essential principles.  Follow them, and you can dramatically improve the health and productivity of your pasture.  All of the principles are interlinked, and each of them involve various practical skills that you'll have to develop through experience, trial and error, and from talking to other grazers.  There are some great links below to other workshops that will give you the practical how-to steps of setting up a grazing plan and getting started with fencing and water systems.  For now, please take a few minutes to wrap your head around the basic principles that every successful grazing system is built on! 

 

 

 

Giving pasture adequate rest is crucial.  Learning how to guage the right amount of rest time can be tricky though, because it's not as simple as just giving each paddock a set number of days before grazing it again.  The rest time between grazing will vary depending on a lot of factors that change throughout the season, as well as from one season to the next.  The best way to tell if the grass has had adequate rest is by walking out and checking the plants' stage of growth.  Is the grass just starting to regrow?  Is it over mature and already seeding out?  When the grass has had plenty of leafy growth and starting to form reproductive heads, then you know it's ready to be grazed again.
 

Here are a few of the variables that determine how long the rest period will need to be before a paddock is ready to be grazed again.
 

 

 

The principle of over-grazing sounds simple, but it's easy to get "over-grazing" mixed up with "severe grazing".  Over grazing simply means that the grass has been grazed, and then re-grazed AGAIN before the plants have fully recovered from the first grazing.  This can happen in two ways.  1) Animals are left in a paddock too long and they begin to re-graze some of the same plants a second time before being moved off that paddock.  And 2) Animals are brought back to a paddock too soon and plants are grazed before they've fully recovered from the last time the paddock was grazed.
 

As long as grass is given a long enough rest period, it can be grazed severely without being considered "over-grazed".

 

 

If your animals have been grazing in a paddock long enough for that grass to start to re-grow and you see new growth being eaten, you are over-grazing that paddock and need to get the animals moved to the next paddock.

 

 

Stocking Density and Stocking Rate are closely related terms but they're not the same thing.  Stocking Rate is the number of livestock grazing the whole pasture.  So if you have a quarter section of 160 acres, with 320 head of cattle, that means the stocking rate is 2 head per acre.  Stocking Density is the number of animals grazing a single paddock at one time.  So if your herd of 320 cattle are confined to a paddock that is 10 acres in size, that works out to 32 head per acre.  If the next paddock is only 3.2 acres in size, that would be a stocking density of 100 head per acre.

 

 

Here are some specific things to monitor that will tell you a lot about the health of your pasture:
 

 

 

1. Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development has produced a helpful Range Health Assessment tool that walks you through several questions and scores the health of your pasture.

 

 

2. Beef Cattle Research Council has some great information about rangeland health assessment, how to improve and maintain the health of riparian areas, and some resources around establishing or rejuvenating stands of forage crops.