The Rural Voice, 2006-04, Page 21able to get enough to meet its daily
requirements on short pasture.
"In rotational grazing, try to put
cattle in at 10 inches and take them
out at six inches," Gerrish advised.
"If you can see their nostrils when
they're eating you should take them
out" (Sheep should be put in at five
or six inches and taken out at two.)
"Stocking rates affect just about
everything," Gerrish said. Stocking
rate is the number of animals or the
animal live weight assigned to a
grazing unit on a seasonal basis.
Using the animal live weight
equivalent allows comparison of
stocking rates of cattle and sheep.
Stocking rates affect the quality of
your solar panel, can affect species
composition of the pasture, even
affect soil compaction.
In a good pasture, for instance,
cattle will walk three to five miles a
day to get their nutritional needs. In
poorer quality pasture they may have
to walk 15-18 miles a day. That's
more hooves hitting the ground each
day, creating more compaction.
"You can't affect that many things
(with stocking rates) and not affect
profitability," Gerrish said.
Carrying capacity of a pasture is
the stpcking rate that provides
a target level of performance
while maintaining the integrity of the
resource base, Gerrish said. "You can
push land one year and suffer the
next year," he warned.
People set performance goals of
pounds gained per acre or weaning
weight per acre, but "the bottom line
I want is economic return." Utilizing
the most forage that can be produced
and making it easiest for animals to
get big bites with walking the least
distance, will produce the best return.
A healthy, productive pasture
requires water and soil nutrients to
take advantage of the sun's energy. If
you think of each acre as a 43,560
square feet of solar collector, it is
also 43,560 square feet of water
collector. The question is how to get
that water to be absorbed into the
soils.
When it comes to rainwater, good
pasture begets good pasture. Gerrish
showed research results from tests
using irrigation water to simulate a
three-inch rainfall in 90 minutes on
land with a 10 per cent slope.
The good pasture, with 95 per cent
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