How do you solve overgrazing?

Answer 1

Overgrazing is solved by managing your pastures (or even re-Fencing it, if it comes to that) so that you prevent livestock from coming back from taking a second bite, or from re-grazing a pasture or paddock before it has enough time to recover. The best suggestion that can be made to prevent overgrazing is to break up one big pasture into many smaller paddocks in such a way that you can graze that one pasture (and those many paddocks) without having your livestock going back to graze those paddocks that were previously grazed. Paddocks need to be big enough to accommodate your herd, but small enough that they will be "forced" to eat everything in site during a predefined time period, such as a 24-hour period or a 2-day period.

DO NOT let your animals graze the grass to the earth. You MUST leave a good amount of litter behind, not just piles of dung. It is totally fine to leave a lot of grass as "waste" when you move the cows, such as from 50% to 70% left over (were livestock have been let to graze 50% to 30% of the grass, respectively). Don't get into the bad habit of thinking that if you have a lot of grass you can let your animals graze until there's nothing left, because that in itself is what overgrazing is all about!! If you leave litter behind, this helps add organic matter to the soil and adds to the nutrient value of the soil.

It is also suggested to better educate yourself about managed grazing practices like that suggested above (which is described as Managed Intensive Grazing or MIG, or rotational grazing), as there are many websites available at your disposal to read and learn from about rotational grazing/MIG.