How much pasture needed for 1 cow?

Answer 1

A ranch typically holds anywhere between 100 and 500,000 cattle (or more). Depending on what size ranch you are talking about, since a ranch can be any size from 50 acres to 100,000 acres, more or less, I would guess than an average number for all ranches in North America is 1,000 head of cattle. But like I said, all ranches are different in size, and all ranches have different numbers of cattle.

Answer 2

It depends on the stocking rate for the area. The type of soil and moisture levels determine how much and how healthy the grass is in an area. For instance in the south east you could run one cow on one acre for a year. Typically on irrigated pasture it takes 5 to 7 acres to run one cow. In the bad lands of eastern Montana it takes 25 acres to run one cow for a year. So pastures are bigger the drier the region is. I have one pasture that is 25 sections or 16,000 acres. So the answer is it depends on the forage available and how big the owner decides to make the pasture.

Now perhaps you mean this: The average herd size in the US is right around 12 head. This is because so many places only own one or two cows. They pull the average down from the bigger places that run 500 or 2,500 cows on their ranch.

Answer 3

It depends on what size this "typical" pasture is. (There is no such thing as a "typical pasture"!!) It also depends on the size of the cows, plus the forage biomass in that pasture. Finally, it depends on how long those cows are in that pasture for. So, essentially, it depends on the stocking rate for that area plus cow size.

No cow today is 1000 pounds, to what the base average is for determining cow size. In reality, most cows today are somewhere around 1300 to 1600 pounds. The bigger the cow, the less of them you can put on pasture, no matter the pasture size.

Forage quantity is so variable across the landscape, from one location to another. Basically, and typically, the less grass you have, the less animals you can graze. Also, the less grass you have, the shorter the time you should have them on there. If you have them longer than what they should be (to take half and leave half) you could risk overgrazing. Also, the less precipitation you get, the less grass you will have, and the less cows you can run on that land. The opposite is also true.

I like to compare two pastures. Both pastures are of the same size (160 acres or one quarter section), hold the same size of cows (1400 pounds), and are on that land for the same amount of time (4 months). What's going to be different is the forage quantity in terms of pounds per acre which directly influences stocking rate. The stocking rate value that I get from that forage quantity then will influence the number of cows that can be grazed on that piece of land. So let's begin:

Pasture 1: 1500 lb/acre of forage

Pasture 2: 3500 lb/acre of forage

Pasture 1 stocking rate (at 50% utilization rate): 0.975 AUM/acre

Pasture 2 stocking rate (at 50% utilization rate): 2.1875 AUM/acre

(I calculated local stocking rate using the formula:

Stocking Rate = (Forage Quantity [lb/acre] * Utilization Rate [%]) / 800 lb/month forage consumed

where one 1000 lb cow consumes 800 pounds of forage in one month.)

Herd size for pasture 1: 28 cows

Herd size for pasture 2: 63 cows

Where the formulas used to get the above are:

1) Number of Animals for a Pasture (AU) = (Pasture size [acres] * Local Stocking Rate [AUM/acre]) ÷ Time Spent to Graze [months]; and

2) Adjusted Animal Units (AUE) = Animal Units (as calculated in 1)) ÷ (Average size of livestock animals [lb] / 1000)

As you can see, this is why it's absolutely crucial to know just how much forage is growing in your pastures so that you have an accurate estimate to how many cows can be run on a pasture, no matter the size or how long those cows are going to be on that pasture.

Answer 4

Grasses and legumes, predominantly.

Answer 5

Grass