As Cherokee County faces an Extreme Drought (D3) classification, local farmers are feeling the pressure of dwindling forage and water resources. To protect your operation's long-term sustainability, making proactive management decisions is essential. NC State Extension specialists have outlined critical strategies in pasture management, herd reduction, and emergency relief programs to help you navigate this challenging season.
1. Pasture and Grazing Management: Save the Stand
The most damaging action a producer can take during a dry spell is overgrazing pastures, which permanently hurts plant health. Implementing tight, flexible pasture rules will protect your soil and ensure quick recovery when rains return:
- The Stop-Grazing Height: Rotate your cattle off pastures and into a designated "sacrifice area" as soon as forage is eaten down to a 3-to-4 inch height.
- Feed Hay in Sacrifice Areas: Feeding hay in a confined sacrifice lot protects the rest of your pastures from being overgrazed. Keep in mind that a poor first cutting means hay supplies will be tight, so mapping out a winter feed budget early is vital.
- Maintain High Residuals: If you are fast-grazing boot-stage tillers, leave at least 6 inches of residual forage. Grazing lower than this reduces rooting depth and strips away crucial soil cover, exposing the ground to moisture loss.
- Utilize Summer Annuals and Stockpiling: Consider planting summer annuals on thin or weedy pastures to boost warm-weather production. For long-term resilience, adaptive rotational stocking and summer stockpiling help keep soils cool and retain water; these areas can be strip-grazed using portable fencing starting in mid-July or later.
- Watch for Nitrate Toxicity: If you applied nitrogen fertilizer prior to the dry weather, be highly cautious after the first rain. Forages can rapidly accumulate dangerous, toxic levels of nitrates following a rainfall event.
Source : ncsu.edu