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One of the challenges when managing pastures is uneven utilization as Livestock often prefer to graze in the same area day after day, season after season. This repeated over-use of key grazing areas leads to deterioration of these areas, while other areas within the pasture may hardly be grazed at all. Uneven livestock distribution can be detrimental to the health and productivity of pasture.
The rangeland management specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, Trevor Lennox prepared this list of the top five potential options to improve livestock distribution on pasture:
- Water infrastructure:
Water is by far the most important distribution tool used on livestock operations. Developing new water sources in underutilized areas will help draw livestock into those areas to graze.
- Fencing:
A cross-fence can help considerably in improving livestock distribution. Ideally fences should be used to separate forage types, such as separating tame (seeded) grassland from native grassland, and sometimes it may be desirable to fence riparian areas separately from upland pastures.
- Location of Supplements:
Salt, mineral, and protein supplements are useful tools that can aid in distributing livestock by encouraging them to move into areas that they don’t normally use much. These supplements should be placed away from water sources to encourage cattle away from their preferred areas.
- Herding:
Herding is another method that can be used to improve distribution and facilitate uniform utilization throughout the pasture. The downfall of this tool is that it is labour intensive, but when combined with other tools such as strategic placement of supplementation (i.e. salt, mineral or protein supplement) it can be more effective than herding alone.
- Changing Livestock Class:
In general, cow-calf pairs tend to be the most difficult livestock class to distribute as they tend to spend a large portion of their time near riparian areas loafing and foraging. Yearlings and non-lactating cows however, often distribute themselves more widely throughout a pasture. A manager at a large community pasture recently described it this way: “Cows start grazing from the water sources and work outwards, while yearlings tend to start at the perimeter fence and work inwards”. Could grazing a different class of animal (ie. yearlings) potentially help improve the distribution on your pastureland?
For more information, call the Agriculture Knowledge Centre at 1-866-457-2377.
