A B C's Of Grazing

A) Have plenty of dense high quality-pastures! Cows will perform much better on a dense 8-inch tall pasture then 15-inch tall course pastures. If you can see bare ground between the grass and clover, you are not getting maximum milk per acre.

B) Maintain pasture quality! Graze it when it’s young from 8 inches down to 3 inches. Young grass is 85% digestible, old grass is only 50% digestible.

C) Do not overgraze. If the cows have it down to 3 inches, move on to fresh pasture, put them on a sacrifice lot, or put them in a barn and feed them. This is very important if you want high yields and long stand life, as well as productive cows. A good rule to follow is “Take half – Leave Half.” Overgrazed pastures will be very slow in growing back. Unlike alfalfa and clover, grass stores its food reserves in the bottom 3 inches of the stem.

D) Question: What about the grass around the manure patties?

#1. Put the horses in after the cows are out, but not for long or they will graze it too short. They will eat some of the grass the cows won’t.

#2. Clip your pastures on a regular basis. This way new grass can grow which the cows will eat better. Clipping also keeps down weeds and unpalatable seed-heads, and greatly improves the appearance of the farm.

#3.Make hay or balage off each paddock once or more per year(cut it young). When the grass grows back, the cows eat it almost like a new seedling.

E) Fertilize four or more times a year, but only a little at a time. Grass uses a LOT of nutrients, especially Nitrogen.

F) Keep cows off paddocks until you have 8 inches of re-growth. In spring time under good conditions this may be 12 to 16 days. In summer it may take well over 3 weeks. Livestock should only be in a paddock for three days. After about 3 days, the grass starts to grow back and they start eating that tender re-growth. That is really hard on grass. Keep records of when the cows were in which paddock and for how long. Also record if milk production when up or down.

G) Feed you cows accordingly. Cut back or eliminate protein and top-dress, as well as grain. It may be necessary to feed hay or corn silage to keep fiber levels adequate. Corn silage works great because it’s high in non-structural carbohydrates (NSC), which is important in working off the excess protein in that rich pasture. NSC is a form of sugar, which is energy.

Suggested grazing ration. Plenty of high quality pasture (ryegrass-white clover is best), 16 lbs corn silage (6 lbs on dry matter basis), a little dry hay or balage, and 8-14 lbs of fine ground shelled corn, with salt, minerals and molasses.

H) Hybrid Farming: You can graze approximately ½ acre or more per cow and still grow your own crops. It works, and we see great potential for this to help save the family farm. A couple notes of caution: #1. It takes a lot of management. Pastures need to be managed as well as field crops. #2. The young farmer just getting started has less investment if he does all the grazing and hay instead of buying corn-growing equipment. In this case he should invest that money in more cows and buy his corn, which may be more economical anyway. The farm should have a fence around the outside and the pastures, hay fields, and corn should be in a crop rotation. Plowing down pasture and planting corn produces bumper corn crops.