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Join Our Free Trial Now! Monitoring the grazing readiness of your pastures prior to turnout is important. If grazing starts at the proper developmental stage, the plants will be more tolerant of grazing stress and will maintain the higher vigor needed to continue forage production during the grazing season and following years. The ecological and economic impacts of grazing native rangeland prior to grazing readiness may lead to years of recovery if livestock are allowed to overgraze.
Monitoring the developmental stage of key grass species is the most reliable method of determining grazing readiness. However, using the GDD approach to determine grazing readiness can minimize the guesswork of when grazing can begin on any pasture. Because the spring season and grazing readiness vary from year to year, the GDD approach will help you determine the best date to begin grazing. Frank, A. Berdahl and R. Morphological development and water use in clonal lines of four forage grasses.
Crop Sci. Relationship among grazing management, growing degree-days, and morphological development for native grasses on the northern Great Plains. Range Manage. Effect of soil water and nitrogen on morphological development of crested and western wheatgrass. Range Mange. This publication was authored by Kevin K. Frank, plant physiologist, Agricultural Research Service, U. Department of Agriculture, Mandan, N. Publications Accessibility.
One of the most important grazing management decisions land managers make is selecting a start date for grazing tam pasture and native range. Monitoring grazing readiness ensures that grazing starts at the proper time, when plants are tolerant of grazing.
This publication provides guidelines for selecting the appropriate start date based on plant development and growing degree days. Plant development can vary greatly between locations. Plant Development Understanding the difference between plant development and plant growth is important for determining grazing readiness.
Development Stage Scales The developmental stage scale most commonly used in North Dakota is the Haun plant development stage scale. Crested wheatgrass at the three-leaf stage. NDSU photo Smooth bromegrass at the three-leaf stage. The reason for this disappearance is that the plants are using the soil nutrients faster than they are being replaced by manure and organic matter decomposition.
The field or pasture that you were so proud of initially becomes an eyesore in a few years full of annual forbs that in this case would be called weeds. Fertilizer comes to the rescue. If you can maintain the level of soil nutrients, and maintain the amount of moisture available to the plants, you can sustain that extra growth that you received in your first year of production.
The first step in maintaining this production level is to take a soil sample. You do this by taking small amounts of soil from varying depths of 2 to 12 inches in depth and having them analyzed by a soils lab. When you send in the soil sample, you should include information about how much forage production you normally expect from these soils.
The lab will then make recommendations about how much fertilizer you need. Now this may be old hat to some of you, but how valuable is this fertilizer to your livestock? If you added pounds of fertilizer per acre, that would be 32 pounds of nitrogen per acre. You should expect around pounds per acre of increased forage production. How valuable is pounds of increased forage production? Well, if you are running pound calves on it, and we assume they are going to eat about 14 pounds of dry matter forage per day, you could run an extra calf for 68 days for each acre you allocate to it.
After reproduction, forage plants generally go into a period of dormancy that enables them to endure periods of low soil moisture or freezing temperatures. Forage plants are capable of breaking summer dormancy to initiate vegetative growth in the fall if moisture and temperature conditions are suitable. Forage species vary in the timing and ability to break dormancy in the fall and spring. There are a number of differences between forage grass and legume species.
Grasses have fibrous root systems where as legumes are, for the most part, tap-rooted. The tap root of legumes not only absorbs water and nutrients from the soil, but also stores carbohydrates and proteins needed during re-growth after defoliation and for winter survival.
Symbiotic rhizobia bacteria infect root hairs of legumes and make nitrogen available to the plants through nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen fixation is a high-energy demand process and the rhizobia get the energy from carbohydrates produced by the plants. Nitrogen fixation is higher for vigorous plants than plants under stress.
Defoliation causes nitrogen fixation to stop temporarily, and frequent defoliation can result in sloughing of root nodules that contain the rhizobium. Carbohydrate storage in legumes is greatest at or shortly after bloom.
Frequent grazing reduces the ability of legumes to re-grow and survive winter. Defoliation during mid-October increases the chance of winter injury compared to mid-September defoliation. Similar to grasses, perennial legumes have root crowns that contain buds for new growth. Grazing tolerant legumes have many crown buds on low-set, broad crowns. Also similar to grasses, the apexes of the vegetative shoots are at the tip of the stem and the ends of stem branches.
However, the terminal bud is at or near the top of the plant and nearly always removed by grazing.
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