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Watch That Grazing Rotation

As we move into winter, it is important to avoid the temptation of letting our pasture rotations get too short.

By Department of Primary Industries - 20th June 2006 - Back to News

It is critical to get the rotation length out sooner rather than later, because once it is too fast it is very difficult to slow it back down.

The key to keeping our rotations on track is to take notice of the leaf appearance rate of the dominant species in the pasture, which in Gippsland is generally perennial ryegrass.

During the middle of winter it is important to remember that it can take anywhere from 20 days to 30 days for one ryegrass leaf to appear, and the ideal time to graze perennial ryegrass is at three leaf stage.

So you might be thinking that if the leaf appearance rate is 30 days per leaf, you would need to have a rotation of 90 days to get the ideal grazing point of three leaves.

Before you pronounce that it can’t be done, it is important to keep in mind that three leaves rarely need more than 45 to 60 days to regrow. This is because only one of them requires 30 days, while growing in the depth of winter, and the other two will appear quicker, growing either before or after the very coldest period.

There are two ways to lengthen a grazing rotation. The first is to simply suffer the lower total feed intake of the cow and reduced milk production for the longer term benefit of the better pasture growth, once the longer rotation is established.

The second and preferred option is to maintain the cows total feed intake by feeding more supplements while lengthening the rotation.

Although using supplementary feed increases costs, milk production will be maintained at a higher level both during lengthening the rotation and when the longer rotation is established.

It also ensures that the pasture is not grazed below 5 cm, thus maintaining pasture production and persistence.

If you suffer from waterlogging on your farm, it is very important to remove cows from these paddocks after 3 to 4 hours of grazing and move them to a drier stand off area.

About 80% of the feed in the paddock will be eaten, the rotation length will be maintained, and the longer grass will help reduce the amount of pugging damage.

Trying to avoid pugging damage by allocating a larger area to spread the cows out does not reduce damage. It simply makes it less concentrated and less visible and speeds up the rotation thus reducing feed available in the next rotation.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com