We’ve been banging on about rotational grazing for as long as we have opened the doors of the Kandanga Farm Store but it’s worthwhile to refine this blanket idea – of moving animals through landscapes rather than giving them constant access to all areas all the time (set stocking).

Moving animals through landscape mirrors what happens in natural grassland ecosystems – think plains of Africa. In our contrived environments we manage our animals’ access to plants with fencing and time.

The obvious reason to rotationally graze is to prevent overgrazing which is often attributed to having too many animals in a paddock. But overgrazing has more to do with the time animals are present, rather than how many animals there are. Overgrazing happens

  • When plants are exposed to the animals for too many days, so animals are able to re-graze the plants that are trying to regrow;
  • When animals move away but return too soon and graze the plants again while the plants are still using stored energy to reform leaf; or,
  • Immediately following dormancy when plants are growing new leaf from stored energy

Overgrazing exhausts plants over time as they cannot harness enough solar energy to grow and survive. The net result is decreasing numbers of palatable plants in paddocks and increasing numbers of unpalatable plants (weeds) as nature throws up her only resources to maintain ground cover and keep soil biology alive.

Unfortunately, just pushing animals into new paddocks, without adapting timing to the growth of the plants in the paddock, may still result in long-term fertility decline and degradation of landscapes.

So rather than asking yourself ‘how long will I get out of this paddock’, instead ask ‘how long will this paddock need to recover before it can be grazed again’ and plan your paddock moves backwards from there. Of course, it’s not as simple as that! Recovery time is not a static number of days – recovery happens much faster in the growing season (right now in this region) which means animals can and should be moved more quickly than in the middle of winter. Holistic planned grazing is all about the planning, but even more importantly it’s about monitoring and adapting to seasonal conditions.

For more google ‘Savory Institute’ which has a wealth of resources on holistic planned grazing.

 

First published in Mary Valley Local – an article by Amber Scott