Why I Love Grazing

In the first installment of our new series, Where’s the Grass?, we share why grazing is good for you, your checkbook, your farm, your animals, and the world!

For the past several years, I have authored the “What’s Your Beef” column and will now only occasionally write an installment on that topic. Pasture and grazing management can be applied to all classes of livestock, such as dairy cattle, beef cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and even to swine and poultry. This is the first installment of a new series that I will be writing for each issue of the Small Farms Quarterly.

Some of the authors animals reclaiming a pasture on a neighbor’s property.
Rich Taber / CCE Chenango

Why do I love grazing? Let me count the ways! I have a passion for grazing and seeing good pastures in use. It is good, it is right, it is economical, it is ecologically right, and it is the right thing to do! However, travelling around the countryside I see many examples of poor grazing management. Basically, it is common to see animals let loose on historically misused and overgrazed pastures. Such pastures are little more than exercise lots for the animals, and the animals are shortchanged from a nutritional perspective. The key to feeding any class of livestock is to make sure that they get the proper dry matter level intake. Normally this is roughly about 3 pounds of forage dry matter for every 100 pounds of body weight. In order to get this 3 pounds dmi, you must have good growing pasture paddocks that have been properly rotated and have a decent amount of forage for the animals to graze upon.

I will give a historical view of what happened to grazing in America over the past few decades. Prior to and soon after the World War II era, cattle were let out of their barns in the springtime to graze on the lush grass that grows in the months of May and June. This resulted in the historical “spring flush”, and the markets were glutted with milk, but only for that short period of time. The grass growth slowed down considerably in the months of July and August, and milk production would drop. After World War II however, the era of cheap fuel, fertilizers, and grain production ensued. Farmers found that they could produce a more even supply of milk with these inexpensive components. Milk production levelled out throughout the year, and consequently grazing as a practice dwindled drastically. So the contribution that grazing made in the dairy industry was minimal for several decades.

Several years later, after languishing as a practice, knowledge about grazing from overseas countries made its way to North America. As the energy crisis ensued, and the age of scarcity began, countries such as New Zealand, Australia, England and Ireland had very well-developed grazing practices. This contributed immensely to the agricultural productivity of those countries. At this point I will digress into the reasons that I love grazing and encourage it as a practice among livestock growers.

Cattle graze on a high hilltop on the author’s farm, on a beautiful autumn day. Rich Taber / CCE Chenango

First, grazing can provide nutrients to almost all classes of livestock. Dairy cows, beef cattle, sheep, goats, and horses can all benefit from grazing for a good portion of the year. Grazing can be a very economical source of nutrients; very little machinery is required and the animals do their own harvesting. By letting the animals do the harvesting, there’s that much less fossil fuel expended in creating machine harvested forages. In our harsh northern climate, we can pretty much only graze from sometime in May till around November 1. So we need farm machinery to harvest forages for the Nov. 1 till May time period, but there’s that much less expenditure of fuel, depreciation, and labor accumulated during the six grazing months. There are not any issues with spreading manure, either, as the animals do that for us, saving labor, fuel, and machinery depreciation on that endeavor.

Grazing is a very ecologically oriented approach to adding to the earth’s sustainability. Using much less fuel, fertilizer, labor and machinery contributes to the positive side of the ecological ledger. A considerably lower amount of carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, lessening the negative effects of too much co2.

There can be considerable savings in labor while managing a grazing system. Dairy cows, as a rule, are moved every 12 hours or at least once every 24 hours. All other classes of livestock can be moved into a fresh paddock of grass every 4-6 days, without much labor.

Animals are healthier when they can be outside for a good portion of the year. If you were an animal, wouldn’t you rather be out in the warm sun grazing and frolicking around rather than in a dark, musty barn?

Fencing take a lot of infrastructure; here the author’s wife Wendy operates a hydraulic powered post pounder to install new fence posts. Rich Taber / CCE Chenango

Grazing does take a good bit of management input, however, for it to be successful. You can’t just let animals out into an overgrown pasture and then expect them to thrive on all of that “free” grass for six months of the year.

Grass is not free! You need infrastructure, including fences, laneways, and watering systems. It can be somewhat expensive to get set up initially, but a good system can last for many years. You also need to be testing your soils every 3 years or so, and you may need to add lime and fertilizer inputs at some point to maintain your production.

In theory, improved rotational grazing can be distilled down to a few essential rules: short periods of occupation, and long rest periods before the next occupancy. However, the devil as they say is in the details. In future installments of this series, I will be going over some of those many details. Stand by!