Is grazing cattle sensible

Answer 1

Yes, definitely. Grazing cattle is very sensible because it requires much less fuel and machinery time to harvest the forage and deposit manure on the land than it would to harvest the forage and then spread the manure on the pasture.

Cattle are very useful for consuming forage in areas where it's impractical to use machinery for getting the job done. These range from native rangelands to crop fields with crop down that are too soft to be able to get large machinery in to get the crop off. Cattle also deposit manure on the lands that need it, and they'll literally transport seeds (legumes especially, and even undesirable weed seeds) from one pasture to another.

As large grazing herbivores, cattle, especially if managed properly, provide the necessary hoof action, and defoliation that plants need to grow and be productive. Proper grazing practices promote good soil health, biodiversity, increase in organic matter, etc. But proper grazing practices mean knowing timing of how long to graze and how long to let the plants to rest before next grazing. It also means knowing how much grass you have in your pasture in terms of pounds of forage per acre, in order to understand the stocking rate (as in animal unit days or months per acre) of your pasture.

You can't have sensible grazing practices in order to make grazing cattle sensible.