Raven Herron

  Hello from Western Maryland!

Recently, in the research project headed by Dr. Grev and Mr. Semler surrounding annual and perennial forages, it was time to move the livestock in their field and allow the summer annuals to grow. We moved the animals to a plot with lush pasture and had to divide this plot into three sections to manage how fast and efficiently the cows were able to move through the field. 

This is an image of me setting up temporary fencing at WMREC for the animals to easily rotationally graze!

The importance of dividing fields up like this, called rotational grazing, was stressed recently at the Equine Grazing School where the best management practices were repeatedly outlined and described. To keep healthy pastures, the forages need to rest and rejuvenate to the proper length to graze and should not be grazed lower than 4 inches, even more, if the forages are warm-season grasses. 

This is a picture of my new grazing stick and my hand for size comparison to when warm-season grasses should typically start and stop being grazed in height. It is a lot taller than you think!

The main complication of planning the rotational grazing divisions is access to water. The shapes that had to be made were two triangles and a diagonal rectangle strip. This took planning and critical thinking to come up with a solution so that every field can easily have access to water. After the shapes were drawn out nicely on Google Maps, we were able to go in and set up the temporary fencing after assuring water could be reached. If we were to go with the original plan and divide the pasture into four squares, we would have realized too late that two of the fields would have no water access. This is just a reminder to plan out all of your needs and wants when designing a plot of land, especially for rotational grazing!