Grazing management is complex ...
Young sheep in an intensive rotational grazing system
‘Grazing management’ - as I used to say to my undergraduate students - is perhaps the most complex issue that science has attempted to understand on this planet! I kid you not.
This is because it involves not only the decisions a farmer might make about moving his/her livestock, but also the impact of the feed supply on the animal, of the animal on the feed supply, of the animal and the pasture on the soil and all of its physical, chemical and biological properties, of the soil on the feed supply, of internal parasites on the animals, as well as the effects of climate and economics!
Into this arena, we have seen step a number of what I call ‘Pied Pipers’ (see definition below) who have claimed over many decades to know the simple truth about this issue and, for a fee (sometimes aided by tax payer funded government subsidies), they will instruct you to adopt their solutions.
As HL Mencken is claimed to have said: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”. And grazing management is one such complex problem that every grazier grapples with.
Cover page of handout on holistic resource management and time control grazing for Pasture Agronomy students in 1996 by Assoc Prof Jim Scott - download here.
For those interested in some thoughts I put together about this matter for my Pasture Agronomy students over 20 years ago, check it out. It is called: “Why I don’t believe everything they told me about Holistic Resource Management nor Time Control Grazing” (a paper prepared for discussion with Agronomy 321 students in 1996) by Assoc. Prof. Jim Scott, Agronomy and Soil Science, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351.
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Definition of ‘Pied Piper’: “a leader whom people willingly follow, often, specif., one who leads others into danger or trouble by means of elaborate, false promises”
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A tangent to the above …
Many years of trying to explain ‘grazing management’ to students, often unsuccessfully, reinforced the complexity of this topic to me.
When a farmer-led research group formed in our region in 1997, I jumped at the chance to become involved and that began my 10 year immersion in an exciting whole farmlet systems investigation. This group of farmers, researchers and extension agents decided to conduct a thorough investigation of issues of importance to farmers. It was called the Cicerone Project. One of the main objectives was to investigate the facts about ‘intensive rotational grazing’ along with different levels of inputs of pasture and fertilizer in a complex whole farmlet experiment which was conducted at a ‘credible’ scale (50 ha per farmlet).
I believe it is the most comprehensively published complex farming systems trial in the world - so there is a lot of reading there in 24 peer-reviewed papers - compiled through the amazing efforts of 48 collaborators, including four postgraduates. Unfortunately, it will be hard for you to find a single sentence telling you the answer to your grazing management questions. However, if you read one or more of these papers from this carefully researched trial - all of which are available free from the Cicerone publications web page - you will get to understand why it is hard to come up with robust rules that apply across many different farms and regions.
If you prefer the short, 1-page version, you can find it here, in a nutshell. Enjoy!
Graziers inspecting newly sown pasture in a good season