Grazing for resiliency can set up long-term

Your farm’s resiliency—or how well it responds to adversity—is critical to its long-term success. In the constant pursuit of increased production, however, resilience is often overlooked and undervalued. When it comes to grazing livestock, resilience depends on your forage system’s ability to resist overgrazing and maintain soil health.

Designing a resilient forage livestock grazing system is an important and multi-faceted subject. There are three areas of focus: ensuring proper soil fertility, optimizing forage selection for specific operational needs, and managing grazing operations appropriately.

Ensuring proper soil fertility has economic benefits. It is important to consider soil testing. Without regular soil sampling, you’re only guessing at the soil pH, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels. Usually, my guess is wrong. Sampling every two to three years at a depth of 3 to 4 inches is a good management practice. MFA’s Nutri-Track program can help keep pastures and hay ground on the most effective sampling schedule.

Individual operations will have differing needs for soil management. Livestock pasture systems remove comparatively small amounts of nutrients from the soil as manure returns many nutrients to the ground. In contrast, harvesting and selling hay removes large quantities of nutrients from the soil. Importantly, harvesting forage typically removes more potassium than phosphorus, which is worth remembering as you consider fertilization needs.

For grazed pastures, consider using managed paddock rotation to help livestock spread manure across the entire field. Otherwise, the watering and shade areas will likely be over-fertilized. Legumes fix nitrogen and either increase yields or reduce the applied N allocation. I have heard that a high legume proportion can eliminate the need to apply nitrogen, but I have also seen responses to N application in faba beans or alfalfa stands, particularly in sandy soils—which may not be a Missouri issue. Consult with a MFA agronomist as to what would be most propitious.

Optimizing forage selection for specific operational needs is also important. Working with what the operation has is more successful than trying to copy what a different operation with different resources is doing. There will be better performance if the forages are matched to the environment, such as red clover in wet places and alfalfa for well-drained, intensively managed soils.

To optimize forage production, consider what factors are limiting plant growth. Different forage species have different needs, and all plants have many needs. You cannot optimize every aspect of forage production at once, so the best factor to work on and correct now is the one that is most limiting the current plant production. Think of it like competing in a decathalon or studying for the ACT test. Your biggest bang for the buck is to work on your weakest area. That is where the biggest relative gains can be made.

Also consider that management tactics can favor a particular species and help you select for the forage you most want. Say you have a mix of tall fescue, bermudagrass and orchardgrass and want a strong summer growth of bermuda. To achieve that goal, graze the stand hard, which would discourage the orchardgrass and fescue and promote bermudagrass growth. However, if the objective is more cool-season grass growth, graze more lightly, leaving residual to shade the bermudagrass and encourage the tall fescue and orchardgrass. Similarly, the timing of nitrogen application to favor a particular species is an extremely useful and effective tool in promoting specific growth.

A resilient grazing system is one that can adapt to changes. It is important to match livestock’s genetic potential with the production environment. Animals with appropriate frame size, selection for fertility and longevity and grazing multiple species increase the ability of the system to adapt.

Beef operations are vulnerable to many varying factors that are out of your control, but creating a more resilient grazing system can help put producers in much stronger position to withstand the challenges that will inevitably arise in the future.    

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