Give It a Rest Already

Kevin Brown. Ag Resource Specialist, BCCD
I have probably written about this before, but I just see too much of it going on right now to not write about it again.  As I drive around the county and try to pay attention to what is going on out there on the landscape, I notice that there are a TON of people that have cattle that have them out there grazing their lands already.  Most, from what I can tell, have almost their entire pasture opened up to them.  If you don’t really understand pasture and hay growth, this may make sense to you.  It is growing slowly at this point, and there is so little of it, that you need to give them as much room to roam as you can for them to find enough to eat.  While that may seem to be common sense, it is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing.

Grass stores all of its energy reserves in the bottom 3” of the plant.  ANYTIME that you remove ANY of that 3”, you have severely stunted that plant.  That holds true for pasture, cutting it with a haybine, and even cutting your lawn.  Now, lots of people don’t like mowing their lawn, so if you want to shave that one down for that reason, go ahead.  However, if you are trying to grow animals on it, the more yield you get/acre, the more profitable you will be.  If you abuse your pastures to this point, you may be lucky to get even 1-2 ton/acre/year out of it.  If you actually treat it correctly, you could easily get 4 ton, and maybe 5 if you really manage it well.  Imagine if you could farm half the acres, you do now or buy half as much hay (or maybe none) just by managing grass the way it should be managed.  There is so much profitability there, just by changing the way you manage it, it isn’t even funny. 

What grass needs- REST!!!  It also needs you to leave the bottom 3” alone.  Leave it there for future regrowth.  For early spring, shut the animals into a small area, or better yet in the barn, until the grass has reached at least 6” of growth, at a minimum.  Then turn them out but rotate them as fast as you need to in order leave to lower 3” alone.  Just try one field to prove it to yourself.  I know a guy that actually went to turning them into the pasture when it is like waist high, or taller, and getting them back out of there when there is still a lot of forage there (knee high or a little less).  In order to do that, we need to get rid of all preconceived notions about how to grow grass.  However, he did, and he is getting WAY more yield than he ever has before.  It has to do with soil health, and feeding the soil microbes, and having the leftover hay still there to provide nutrients (N) to the regrowth, etc.  Again, you won’t believe it until you try it.  It really does work.

There is an old saying that “there are a lot of cows being milked in Bradford County so that people can play with their equipment”.  That is their true passion (equipment).  I think the same is true, now, with beef producers. We love “working the land” so we buy animals so that we have the excuse to have machinery, but we sure are abusing the pastures that we have because of it.
 
The Bradford County Conservation District is committed to helping people manage resources wisely.  You can visit the Bradford County Conservation District at 200 Lake Rd in Wysox across from the Wysox Fire Hall. Contact us at (570) 485-3144 or visit our web page at www.bccdpa.com.