Grazing Management
An important part of the regenerative ranching process is grazing management. The use of livestock grazing is an essential element of the ecological process to improve soil health and plant diversity.
What makes regenerative ranchers different from other ranchers is how their livestock are grazed. Regenerative grazing management is first and foremost a change in mindset from traditional grazing practices. The main differences between regenerative and traditional grazing management are adaptive and flexible practices, active monitoring and managing for positive changes to improve soil health and forage productivity.
These ranchers aren’t using any one system or class of livestock, but rather adapting their management of grazing fundamentals: timing, frequency, intensity, duration and rest.
Why is Adaptive Grazing Important for Soil Health?
Research, practical application and common sense tell us the same thing: livestock are a necessity for healthy soils and ecosystems. The Great Plains evolved under the presence of animals and grazing pressure.
Soil and plant health is improved by proper adaptive grazing of one or more animal species, which recycles nutrients, reduces plant selectivity and increases plant diversity. As with any management practice, grazing is a tool that requires intentional application.
Understanding Adaptive Grazing Practices
Adaptive grazing is more than just traditional rotational grazing. Often, regenerative ranchers move their cattle once or more each day. However, there is no set schedule. The key attribute of adaptive grazing is actively managing rest and recovery periods based on season and soil moisture conditions.
Regenerative ranchers make grazing management decisions for each pasture or paddock based on:
- Frequency (how often a particular pasture/paddock is grazed and rested)
- Timing (when/what time of year a pasture/paddock is grazed and rested)
- Duration (how long a pasture/paddock is grazed and rested)
- Intensity (how much grass per how many livestock (or pounds of livestock) is grazed at a time)
Adaptive grazing encourages ranchers to get creative. They may try a different size or shape paddock, or they may add or remove types of livestock. Their livestock rotations may also change. By mixing things up, nature can help build resilience into our agricultural systems.
Transitioning to Adaptive Grazing Management
When considering transitioning from traditional, season-long grazing to a more adaptive, regenerative system, start small and keenly observe livestock and paddocks over time.
Take stock of your land, livestock and infrastructure
Draw or print an aerial map of your property and list water sources, fencing, pasture sizes and stock inventory.
Test the soil
Get a snapshot of your land’s health and set a benchmark using the Haney soil health test. This will give you a clear view of the current state of your organic matter levels and your soil’s biological and chemical health.
Evaluate your carrying capacity
Don’t rely on historic capacities or habit, instead evaluate the current forage availability and the needs of your cow herd. Consider calculating profitability per acre rather than per-animal to understand the impact land management has on your bottom line.
Start small
Using your map, look for an area where you can temporarily split up one pasture into smaller sections. Or consider combining a couple of grazing herds together to give one pasture a rest for part of the season.
Measure progress
Observe, monitor and record small upward trends. Look for signs of improvement in soil health, animal health, forage production, carrying capacity and profitability over time.
Have a Plan to Improve Grazing Management
A grazing management plan serves as a roadmap for improving ranch productivity and helps producers efficiently allocate forage across their land. Grazing plans help producers anticipate and prepare for risks, take advantage of market opportunities, coordinate grazing with family schedules and ranch operations and make efficient use of every acre of the ranch.
Most ranchers carry a good grazing plan in their heads, executing with a combination of intuition built on experience, an understanding of regional trends and an adaptivity to circumstances. But when ranchers need to solve a significant problem or are ready to take aim at a new ideal, like regenerative or adaptive grazing, it’s time put a proactive grazing plan on paper.
Practical Tips for Applying a Grazing Management Plan
Ranchers who worry about buying an unsustainable amount of hay, spending too much money on external inputs, or seeing an invasive species reducing your forage production, it’s time to write and implement a grazing goal and plan.
- Draw or print a detailed map of pastures including the name, acreage and other details.
- On a spreadsheet, record your pasture names or numbers in a column, including the essential information. Use rows across the top to record days to be grazed.
- On a separate document, write down all of your current livestock enterprises, including herd sizes, animal weights and animal unit calculations.
- Make a note of important dates and events throughout the year that will impact livestock movement.
- Consider and write out your specific decision points for both risk management and opportunity-taking.
- Example 1: If rainfall is below normal, measure forage and de-stock.
- Example 2: If goat prices exceed $3.50 per pound sell culls immediately.
The Impact of Stocking Rate on Grazing
There are two conditions ranchers want to avoid: overstocking and overgrazing.
- Being overstocked is the condition of carrying more livestock than the land resource can sustain either short-term or long-term.
- Overgrazing pertains to the plants being grazed. It is the repeated grazing of a plant before it has fully recovered from a previous grazing event.
In regenerative grazing, the objective is to be stocked appropriately for the weather events and conditions of the land resource and to graze the pastures appropriately, allowing them periods to rest. Aligning your stocking rate with your pasture’s carrying capacity allows for more uniform utilization of all the plants, minimizes repeated grazing of plants during a grazing event and allows full recovery of more-preferred plants.
Managing Grazing Land with Fire
Prescribed burns, grazing and rest are integral processes for maintaining the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community in the Southern Great Plains and throughout the U.S. Removing fire from the landscape reduces nutrient and energy cycling. More importantly, it allows woody species to encroach and recruit, eventually creating a woodland. Fire in this region is a core ecological process often overlooked and more often completely removed.
Incorporating prescribed burns into your grazing management can improve forage quality, forage quantity and brush management. Studies have indicated that forage quality is increased and year-end forage quantity is not reduced following prescribed burns.
Often, prescribed burns are conducted in the winter or early spring. But it can be beneficial to wildlife to have burned areas at different times of the year to increase plant diversity, which is imperative for good wildlife habitat. Diversity in burn season also improves community dynamics, one of the ecosystem processes that is important for ecological health and resilience.
Beware of Fixed Mindsets in Grazing Management
Some ranchers resist the idea of adaptive grazing because they believe it will be too time consuming. They focus on the new-to-them work of daily cattle moves and fence building, but often forget the work that’s eliminated by adaptive grazing.
For ranchers who combine herds in an adaptive system reduces time and wear and tear of traveling to multiple locations to check on cattle health, water levels and fences. Ranchers who can greatly reduce or eliminate their need to bale feed save time (and money) in their tractor.
With some experience, building a fence and moving cattle in an adaptive grazing model is not the same as how ranchers shifted herds from pasture to pasture (or at all) in conventional grazing management systems. Cattle are eager to move through the opening to greener pastures each day.
Grazing Management and Wildlife Habitat
Well managed grazing programs can have a beneficial impact on wildlife habitat on ranches. Attracting deer, quail and turkeys could be for personal recreation or a hunting enterprise to help diversify a rancher’s business. Livestock and wildlife can both thrive when ranchers keep a few things in mind.
Ranchers managing for dual goals of livestock production and wildlife habitat should focus on mimicking nature to the benefit of both groups of animals. Start with promoting diversity and structure in the plant community.
Native plant communities tend to support greater wildlife diversity and abundance because the various species evolved together. Healthy, native rangeland provides critical needs for wildlife, such as food and cover for concealment, nesting and protection from weather. Deer and quail require some woody cover to survive and multiply — often, about 20-40% is sufficient
Livestock stocking rates are arguably the second most important issue to consider in welcoming more wildlife on your land. Your ranch produces a finite amount of forage each year, and production is dynamic between and within years, as influenced by weather. Therefore, stocking rate should be dynamic and is an important consideration when managing for wildlife and cattle.
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