Regenerating Land With Grazing Livestock

Grazing livestock are the most powerful tool we have available to regenerate land. The way grazing animals are moved across the landscape influences soil health, pasture species diversity, plant growth and production. Different species graze differently and livestock have different nutritional requirements throughout the year. Planned grazing is an approach that allows you to build soil health optimise pasture health and production while accounting for these changing needs of livestock.

This post is a presentation summary of a recent workshop held by the Lower Blackwood LCDC in which presenter and Holistic Grazing expert Dr Judi Earl describes the range of approaches to grazing management and the impact of the different strategies on pasture dynamics, growth and production.

Topics covered include:

• The range of grazing management strategies explained
• Managing animals in tune with seasonal growth cycles
• The effect of the number of paddocks on rest and recovery of plants
• Matching stocking rate to carrying capacity – feed budgeting
• Methods to measure available feed and pasture growth
• The importance of residual herbage mass and pasture utilisation