Designing the Technical Management of a Pasture

Beef cattle farming Farming Dairy cattle farming

Designing the technical management of a pasture allows to:

Plan practices in advance: in grazing, it is about feeding the animals but also preparing the vegetation for later and responding to the role of the plot in the grazing calendar.
Avoid mowing and limit loads: adapted grazing management can prevent the appearance of refusals (herbaceous or woody) not consumed by the animals.
Monitor the effect of practices on the evolution of forage resources: adjustment choices must be based on observations related to herd performance and the impact of practices on vegetation.
Prepare for subsequent uses: practices build food availability throughout the seasons (growth restart, relative palatability of vegetation, residual standing biomass, etc.).
Enter or exit at the right time: identify the entry and exit criteria of a paddock to have levers to implement practices daily.
Extend grazing periods: farmers manage the spring abundance of grass, but also the periods of stop or reduced grass growth (late spring, summer, late autumn, etc.).

Herd feeding on pasture must be reasoned according to annual cycles and the evolution of semi-natural vegetation. No simple "recipe" exists to control these plant dynamics while simultaneously feeding the herd. Too often farmers endure vegetation more than they manage it and resort to mechanization to catch up on what animals could not do. Usual technical references encourage exploiting vegetation during growth, but neglect the interest of certain practices to extend grazing periods.

Yet some farmers conceive grazing as a means of acting on the environment, to build forage resources today and tomorrow. Plot management finds a balance between forage removal by animals and vegetation renewal.

Technical principles to act on biological processes

The plot exploitation mode

To reason practices, the plot exploitation mode allows representing the succession of practices throughout the seasons. It allows to schedule and monitor practices in relation to herd needs, the annual plant cycle, and inter-annual vegetation changes.

Resources are not determined solely by the type of plot vegetation or by the season of use. They are also built and renewed through the farmer's practices, which rely both on vegetation from previous use and prepare vegetation for the next use. They evolve over the years under the cumulative effects of all use periods.

Preserve the resistance capacity of the meadow

Early and repeated uses of grass penalize the plants' energy reserves, prevent seed setting and reduce the resistance and healing capacity of meadows.
Waiting for the flowering stage to exploit a plot is not enough to ensure seed setting. It is necessary to allow plants time to mature seeds.
Not systematically repeating the same practices every year helps maintain a seed stock in the soil.
Spring harrowing, grazing by heavy animals under low load conditions, early harvesting can penalize the survival of young spontaneous seedlings.

Delay the resource later in spring

Depress the grass: enter the paddock on poorly developed grass for complete consumption of young leaves, which delays their growth and promotes tillering (ear formation is maintained).
Top the grass: enter the paddock on more developed grass for complete consumption of grasses whose ears are formed inside the sheaths, which prevents ear formation and extends the vegetative period (ear formation is cut).
Favor paddock exit with complete consumption of the earliest grasses for repeated use. Spread organic matter in late autumn, compost or old manure. Avoid mineral nitrogen.
Make a regulation mowing to provoke late spring regrowth.
Graze in rapid rotation in autumn with complete grass consumption to penalize autumn reserve formation.

Favor early and productive grasses

Favor this objective on plots where the soil is spontaneously fertile.
Come several times in spring to penalize "slow" grasses.
Apply slurry or nitrogen fertilizer to allow "fast" grasses to grow early.

Feed the animals

Adapt grazing management to align physiological needs, group behavior, and harvested resources.
Raise replacement stock on the farm, develop useful feeding habits on the farm.
Reason any forage distribution to promote synergies with grazed resources (fiber-nitrogen complementarity, etc.).
Design grazing paddocks as a living place for herds (shelter, stubble zone, water). Electric fencing and paddock changes offer novelty to the herd and stimulate appetite… but beware of giving animals bad habits.
If food availability is low, enlarge paddocks or offer complementary vegetation (e.g., cool underwood + dry grass in meadow).

Improve residual standing biomass and floristic diversity

Plan a first use not too early to maintain a mix of early and late plants, which contributes to exploitation flexibility.
Ensure a sufficient grazing return time (minimum 5 to 7 weeks) to allow reserve formation of "slow" species that mature more slowly and become senescent later in spring.
Spread organic matter in late autumn. Prefer composted or old manure. Do not use mineral nitrogen which penalizes legumes.

Graze selectively, leaving refusals, to restart growth of only part of the plants and to offer a green/strawy mix for the next period, of good nutritional value.

Maintain plant productivity

If the practice does not allow good reserve formation, plants dwarf: they produce less and eventually die if the practice is maintained for several years. Spontaneous renewal of the meadow by seeding becomes difficult. The meadow degrades with appearance of bare soil and associated species (thistles, chickweed, dandelions, quackgrass, etc.).

Favor a sufficient grazing return time to allow reserve formation (3 to 5 weeks in spring for a meadow dominated by fast grasses, up to 7-8 weeks for slow grasses).
Limit grazing duration (around one week) and manage with a back fence to avoid regrazing regrowth.

To limit refusals

Graze with a high instantaneous stocking rate (more animals or less area) to limit refusals (less sorting) and avoid staying too long on paddocks (no exhaustion of sectors or preferred plants).
Extend grazing duration if the balance between large and small bites remains acceptable.
Have the paddock cleaned by a group able to consume refusals.
Adapt the grazing season so that the palatability of species to consume is higher than that of other species.

To control woody plant abundance

Woody plant reproduction is mostly sexual (fruits): young plants from seeds have poorly developed roots (no reserves) and are therefore very sensitive to grazing. It also occurs vegetatively after cutting or burning: plants from rhizomes, stolons or roots remain connected to a powerful root system (large reserves) and are therefore less sensitive to grazing.
Grazing woody foliage is not necessary to block their reproduction. Target seedlings.
Practice complete grass grazing without mowing or burning to consume young woody seedlings, without activating vegetative reproduction. Complete grass consumption is necessary only once a year, in any season, as woody seedlings take several years to build root reserves. If selective grazing is practiced by a group, plan a cleaning grazing at another season.

To renew accessible foliage

Coppice trees and shrubs that escape by height.
Graze woody plants in summer or autumn (outside growth period).

To reduce woody plants

Grazing woody plants during their growth period strongly impacts reserve formation and causes higher mortality (more sensitive to drought, cold or diseases). Outside growth periods, grazing does not impact reserves or mortality.
Create openings in thickets, improve attractiveness of scrubby areas (paddock shape, water, salt, etc.).
Cutting (brush clearing, chainsaw or mulcher) and fire rarely cause woody plant mortality. They increase plant defenses (thorns, toxins) and activate vegetative reproduction… quickly becoming overwhelming!

To control social herbaceous plants

Graze early at vegetation start when targeted plants are growing.
If needed to reduce them, do complete grazing at each growth period of these species to limit litter accumulation and impact reserve formation.
No harrowing.

Schedule plot management

Illustration of two practices on the same meadow using the plot exploitation mode tool (Source: Institut de l'livestock farming). The consequences for valorisation of plots and flora evolution differ.

Repeated grazing in late autumn: penalizes plant reserve formation and delays spring growth, which allows later grazing in late spring. Good residual standing biomass covers high needs. This exploitation mode values mature vegetation in residual standing biomass. Complete grass consumption must be done in the off-season. Late flora is favored (brome, carex, legumes).

Repeated grazing in spring: restarts growth. High instantaneous stocking rate limits refusals. Complete autumn grazing causes early spring restart. Rotational grazing is not too fast and presence time at each use is limited to preserve plant reserves.
This exploitation mode strongly impacts flora, selecting early and productive grasses (fast-growing but with low residual standing biomass).

Conditions for success

Land and animal group structuring, pastoral facilities, and work organization are decisive for successful management throughout the year.
Link reflection on practices to implement on a plot with annual grazing and mowing organization.
Bring flexibility in the grazing chain, including in plot exploitation modes periods of use without strong vegetation management stakes. This allows strict management on other plots with stricter entry or exit criteria.
Track practices in a notebook or table and note observations.
Recognize dynamic interactions between practices, vegetation, and herds. Break down silos between livestock, agronomy, and ecology expertise.

Autres fiches Pâtur’Ajuste

Sources

SCOPELA, with the contribution of farmers. Technical sheet from the Pâtur’Ajuste network: Designing technical management. November 2015. Available at: https://www.paturajuste.fr/parlons-technique/ressource/ressources-generiques/concevoir-la-conduite-technique