Flourishing Fields
Healthy animals need flourishing fields. Turns out, it’s mutual.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue examining what our fields need. One of those is the animals themselves.
Last article we dug into how understanding our soils helps us manage them more effectively. This week, we’ll look above ground and explore how animals can support vibrant pastures—if they are appropriately managed to create a positive impact. Fortunately, we have a template from nature that can help guide our pasture-management decisions: American bison.
For millennia, bison were an integral part of the Great Plains. As many as 60 million of this keystone species lived in symbiosis with grasslands and fields as far East as modern-day New Jersey. They traveled in very large herds that moved continuously. In 1871, Major Richard Dodge recorded, “From the top of Pawnee Rock I could see from six to ten miles in almost every direction. The whole space was covered with buffaloes, looking at a distance like one compact mass…not permitting the ground to be seen.” Such herds would graze most of the plants in their wake. The grasses actually co-evolved with these grazings, ultimately thriving with short, intense bursts of impact and fertilization by giant grazers—followed by long periods of recovery.
This type of intense, short-duration, heavy-impact livestock rotation can also help us grow great forage. The uniform grazing and depositions of manure and urine and the trampling of standing organic matter coupled with all-important rest and recovery that follows for the plants helps to create and maintain our farm grasslands. Uniform grazing also reduces bare, overgrazed locations and encourages livestock to graze most of the plants in a paddock. This ensures that both the grasses preferred and those deemed undesirable by the livestock are equally affected. While we aren’t overseeing millions of bison, we can manage our livestock to achieve this same positive impact.
To mimic the bison migrating across the grasslands, let’s start by creating that effect of a herd of animals in relative closeness to one another, how Major Dodge saw them packed together. We refer to this as high stocking density, a lot of animal weight in a relatively small area. Regardless of the number, size or species of our animals, we can achieve that same high stocking density by adjusting the sizes of the paddocks.
To effectively adjust paddock sizes, we need to know three things: how long they’ll be grazing that area, nutritional needs of our group of grazing animals, and the amount of forage available. Unlike the bison who migrated across the landscape, we control how long our livestock are in a given spot. While moving livestock multiple times a day would be ideal, that’s unrealistic for most of us. We should move our animals out of a paddock and onto fresh pasture at least every three days. This timing is important for two reasons. In wetter climates, grasses may begin to re-grow by the third day. Livestock, attracted to the tender new growth, would re-graze the new growth, depleting its already stressed reserves and ultimately harming the plant. A second reason: if animals remain in one paddock for too long, they end up wasting, or under-utilizing, the available forage.
Determining the nutritional needs of our animals, expressed by pounds of dry matter, is calculated by multiplying the total weights of our animals by their estimated daily nutritional needs according to class, or stage of life.
Finally, assess the available dry matter pounds of forage in the paddock. We can estimate this with
a grazing stick.
Click here for instructions on How to Use a Grazing Stick.
While giving our livestock the right amount of pasture encourages uniform grazing, there’s even more we can do. Setting up square paddocks, rather than rectangular-shaped, encourages animals to distribute more evenly, grazing the paddock more uniformly. Square paddocks also help minimize bare spots, especially preventing trails that occur more easily on wet soils. Cattle are keenly aware of the locations of shelter, shade, minerals and water. Keeping these separated encourages more even animal distribution and grazing. And because livestock frequently visit these locations, especially watering sites, be sure to move them often. It’s important to make moving waterers as easy as possible when laying out infrastructure and paddocks. Portable water tanks with hdpe piping and quick connects, water carts with mounted tanks, even short length of hoses to change location by 50’ in multiple directions all can greatly help distribute the impact of animals on our fields.
When we mimic bison herds by keeping animals densely packed, moving them frequently, and managing systems to prevent overgrazing and encouraging uniform grazing and impact, we support the pastures that nourish the animals in turn. It takes planning and effort, but it’s a win-win.
Next time we’ll explore giving plants their needed rest and recovery by migrating our animals around our fields. Rotational grazing is the most important management strategy we can implement to create and maintain our flourishing fields. Please reach out with feedback or questions. We’re here to help!
Read the previous article on Understanding Your Soils here:
Craig Haney
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