Animal impact while farming grass

Year round grazing on pasture presents some interesting situations for us grass farmers.  In this past post from July 2015 we demonstrated the results of planned animal impact on a wetland site heavily used through the non-growing season.  Below we show what we had to deal with this past spring when Mother Nature gave us a wet spell.  Here we show the results we see in our pasture now.

Background information for sites shown below:

1. We know April – early May can be wet, we planned to be here!
2. This site had about a year of rest since the last graze.
3. This site needed some animal impact!

The red arrows identify the same objects in the photos from different dates.

• After moving them into this patch we obviously had a significant rain event.
• Before moving into the next patch, we achieved significant animal impact.
• Cattle are happily grazing on fresh/clean pasture.

What this site looks like now.  You can barely see the nearest rock!

• Our future plan for this site is to avoid the next wet season.
• Will graze this fall or winter and feed some hay on the site most likely.
• We will utilize the cattle to lay the large grass stems on the ground.

Below are two more photos of a site nearby.  More severe impact as a result of the prolonged wet period we experienced this spring.

• Almost looks like a tilled field!
  • “Cow Tilled”
  • Site absorbed a significant amount of kinetic energy.
    • Hooves and Raindrop energy impact.
• Remember, this site had heavy sod from brome and native grasses.

Energy into the site released a significant amount of energy through grass growth over the past four and a half months!

• The reason for the selfie?
  • I am six feet tall, some big bluestem seed heads are over my head!
• This tall rank (lignified) grass will not make good cow food.
  • We will use cows to pick out what they want and;
  • Stomp the grass stems to the ground
    • This is how we add CARBON to the soil.
    • Grass stems stomped on the soil feeds our soil livestock (microbes).
    • We should grow even more grass here next year.

What a wonderful cycle.  Are you worried about too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?  This is how we use cattle to cycle carbon from the atmosphere into grass.  Some carbon is quickly returned to the air, but a significant amount of carbon is transferred into the soil.  Once in the soil we have a great chance of getting the carbon into a stable form (humus).  The more carbon we can extract from the air and put into our soil the more grass we can grow to extract even more carbon!

The best part about this cycle is that cows produce calves while they are doing this work.  Every once and awhile we take a grown calf (steer or heifer) to the butcher.  This gives you the opportunity to participate in the healing of our environment.  Just eat some grassfed beef and support our work and other grass farmers like us.