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Grazing and Range/Pasture Management
Also known as pastoralism, grazing livestock have been around for millennia, ever since domestic animals--cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, horses--have been successfully domesticated. Grazing involves the consumption of forages and range or pasture management is a tool used to control grazing activities of livestock, primarily in effort to improve the quality of the land.
578 Questions
How are horses behavior when they are grazing?
The behavior a horse displays when grazing will vary slightly according to whether it is alone or in a herd. When alone a horse will be more watchful, often taking a bite and lifting it's head to chew and watch for predators, possibly spooking at 'nothing' more often and moving on to new areas more quickly. When in a group one horse will keep full watch while the others graze and periodically check for danger, they will be a bit less spooky and stay in one place for a longer period of time than a horse that is alone.
Why it is important in food safe to treat and cover cuts boils skin infections and grazes?
Why is it important to cover cuts, boils, skin infections and grazes?
To prevent contamination of products, equipment, or surfaces which may result in an outbreak of food poisoning
To protect cuts from infection (cover cuts with a blue waterproof plaster (metal detectable if required)
Why are cows so inefficient at converting grass into beef?
Grass, which is eaten by the cow, is used as an energy source for building and repairing body tissues like muscles, metabolizable energy, reproduction, etc. Thus grass doesn't go directly into meat production of the cow, which is why it seems like the cow is "so inefficient" at converting grass into meat. Grass is also a coarser plant material and is not a concentrated ration, which compounds the reason for grass being "inefficient" at being converted into meat. Typically 20% of what the cow consumes of grass and roughage is used as energy. The other 80% is released as "waste" back to the soil for plants to reuse and get their fertilizer from.
Quite frankly, if you want something more efficient than the cow, the man-made combine-harvester is the most efficient machine at harvesting grasses. It utilizes 90% of the grass harvested "converting" it into grain. But by no means will you get meat from it.
How do you feed calves with horses in pasture?
If you must feed them together make sure you provide the calves with a trough or feeder that the horses cannot get their feet or mouths into. This is for safety reasons as a horse could get it's leg trapped in a feeder and break it or ingest cattle feed which is unsuitable for horses in most cases. Horses may chase the calves off of hay or grain so you must keep an eye on them at all times when feeding them together, if a calf does not give way a horse may attack or even kill it. You could bring either the horses or the calve inside during feeding time or even build a 'feed pen' for the calves where they can go to eat and the horses cannot bother them.
What is a name for a pasture in England?
i dont kniw what it is and i thoght i could count on this stinking web site but i couldnt
Is it against the law to graze in a supermarket?
Grazing, or sampling food in the produce or bulk food departments is prohibited by most health departments, and it is stealing, since you are eating food you are not paying for. If you want to eat some food in the store, most stores don't have a problem with it, as long as you pay for the food at the cash register by bringing up the opened package.
What is the cattle grazing area with no fences?
This is called Rangeland, however even rangeland can be fenced. Ultimately, just because a certain area has fences doesn't mean it's a pasture or field: it can still be considered rangeland even if it has fences on it.
It's all about the roots: 60 to 80% of the biomass (i.e., the roots) of a grass-plant is underground. Healthy root systems of grasses grows out and down in such a way that it firmly anchors it to the ground. Grass roots are fibrous, not tapered, so that it makes it much more difficult for the grazing animal to pull the grass out by its roots. Grasses have evolved over billions of years so that they are highly resistant to being pulled out by the roots when being eaten by grazers like bison, cattle, elk, sheep and goats. The root system of grasses grow as the pasture is being grazed properly, simply by letting cattle graze a certain pasture or paddock for a certain amount of time before being moved on to another paddock or pasture to allow the grasses to rejuvenate growth both above and below ground before being grazed again.
What will kill grass is when it's being grazed too close to the earth, or an animal comes back and takes a bite from the grass that has just started putting new leaves out all the time. When this occurs, the root system dies, becomes more shallower and less robust because more energy is being put into growing new leaves than growing new roots. This is called overgrazing.
However it's not all about overgrazing that will destroy a pasture. When a pasture is reseeded or re-sprigged and needs to establish itself enough to take on grazing pressures from livestock, it cannot have any animals grazing it during that time of establishment, nor should it be mowed or hayed. If an owner or grazing manager grazes their cattle when the grass has just started growing or just been recently sprigged, then the cattle WILL destroy the pasture. This is all because the root systems have not been given time enough to establish themselves enough to resist any sort of grazing pressure. If the owner prevents any livestock from being on the pasture nor does any haying or mowing while the new grasses are growing and establishing their new root systems for at least a year, then the possibilities of having a pasture destroyed by the grazing actions of the livestock will not be a problem.
Thus it's all down to the responsibility of the owner to make sure they graze their cattle at the right time to ensure healthy, vibrant and vigorous grasses.
What is the difference between a meadow and a pasture?
A pasture is where the horses graze. A paddock is an enclosed yard where they are exercised.
A jersey cow produces quite a lot of milk, much more than a beef cow does. Beef cows only produce around 10 to 20 lbs of milk per day, whereas a Jersey is capable of producing 40 to 50 lbs of milk per day. With double the milk production, she can nurse 3 to 4 calves at a time, probably even more if her lactation is kept up enough that four calves will suckle on her all at once, then another group of calves nose in to take the rest.
Of course this also depends on the quality of the pasture. If the pasture is producing lush, thick grass, then she will have no problem producing enough milk for a half a dozen calves. However, if pasture is sparse, she may only have enough to nurse a couple.
How does making hay or silage affect the soil fertility and pasture regrowth in a paddock?
Any sort of anthropological activity that involves removal of vegetation so that no organic matter can go back into the soil is going to decrease soil fertility. This does not count with livestock grazing. Unless the field is fertilized regularly (like once or twice a year), plant growth will decrease to the point of desertification. Of course this will only occur over several years and not when the second or third cutting needs to be taken off.
Fertilization of hay or silage fields can be done in four different ways: spreading manure (solid or liquid) from corrals or lagoons, spreading boughten pelleted or liquid fertilizer that is in higher forms of concentration than manure, or grazing cattle on the fields (crop-residue grazing on silage fields and/or bale grazing in winter on hay fields). The latter has shown, scientifically, to be more sustainable and efficient than the first two methods which involve running machinery and using diesel fuel and, for the second method, buying the fertilizer.
Plant regrowth will always be slow for the first week before it begins to grow exponentially to the point where it may need cutting again. This would not be so with annuals that are being cut for silage, since once the plants are removed, little growth will occur to replace those plants. The plants that do come up after a field has been taken off for silage are slow to regrow in comparison to those perennials that are used for hay. Most annuals do not come back after the first cutting.
How is grazing land the cause of deforestation?
Grazing land or grassland is actually the result of deforestation, not the cause. The cause of deforestation is fire and defoliation.
Deforestation is actually nothing new to the natural world, as elephants are well known to push down trees and clear areas--unintentionally, of course, as they bring down the trees so they can eat the foliage better--within or of forested land, and this is essentially converted to grassland or meadows for other grazers.
The grasslands of North America have largely been helped by the First Nations some thousands of years ago with their use of fire to clear woody plants and encourage more land to be available for the millions upon millions of natural grazing animals that populated the landscape long before the first white settlers made a move to "tame the land." This so that they had more opportunity to hunt, but also as a means to wage war on rival tribes.
Can horses be in a pasture with walnut trees?
No, walnuts are bad for horses and can kill them if the horses eat them.
What does two horses grazing in a draw mean?
The phrase "two horses grazing in a draw" typically refers to a scene where two horses are peacefully eating grass in a small, shallow valley or ravine. The term "draw" is often used in Western and rural settings to describe a small, natural depression in the land. This imagery might evoke a sense of tranquility, rural life, and natural beauty.
