More Than Just Growing Grass
Coming from a row crop agriculture background I always assumed that pasture management and livestock farming was pretty simple. After all, don’t you just need to grow the grass and then put the cows in the paddock and you are good to go?
Only two days on a commercial cattle operation has proven me very wrong. There are many factors that go into managing livestock and pasture health, particularly if you are aiming to do so in a holistic and regenerative way. I still have a lot to learn but here are a couple of learnings that have stuck out to me from the start.
It’s not just grass: A healthy pasture has a lot more than just one species of grass. There are multiple species that make up the sward (name for the upper layer of soil, especially when covered in grass). It’s not like your front yard where you have one uniform type of grass planted. It is a combination of different species that make up a healthy pasture and ultimately healthy and happy livestock.
You have to plan where the cows roam: When you are managing pasture in a regenerative way you can’t just stick the mob (what you call a group of livestock that you rotate together) in the field and expect them to graze the field evenly. It is important to rotate the cattle so that different parts of the paddock get rest and recovery at different times. Without managing the rotation, there will likely be issues with erosion, a loss of grass cover and a decline in overall soil health.
Soil is still the key to success: It is obvious to me that healthy soil grows healthy plants, but I had never thought about the fact that healthy soil grows healthy cows. As I have learned more about pasture management and holistic grazing methods it has become evident that it all still boils down to soil health.
I am excited to continue to learn more about pasture management and a type of agriculture that I previously overly simplified. Coming from the U.S. that has created a grain-fed beef system, the balance and art of holistic grazing and pasture management is a rare find. I look forward to digging into how these systems have become so different. I’m interested in researching if there are ways to use regenerative grazing to help restore some of the land that has been depleted of healthy soil by overcropping or ineffectively managed livestock.