Rotational grazing
Managed rotational grazing is a key component of a regenerative agriculture system, as it functions as a constant feedback loop.
[2][14] Animals are especially susceptible to bloat if they are moved to new pasture sources when they are particularly hungry and especially on young, fresh and wet legumes.
It is therefore important to ensure that the herd is eating enough at the end of a rotation when forage will be more scarce, limiting the potential for animals to gorge themselves when turned out onto new paddocks.
The risk of bloat can be mitigated by careful management of rotations, seeding the non-bloating European legume species Lotus corniculatus in pasturelands, reducing the amount of legumes/increasing grasses, providing sufficient supplemental feeding and extra fodder when turning out on new paddocks, reducing the size of the paddock when livestock is first turned out, and daily rations of the anti-foaming agent poloxalene mixed well into the fodder.
Once the undesired species in a pasture system are identified, an integrated approach of management can be implemented to control weed populations.
These methods should be implemented when weed flower buds are closed or just starting to open to prevent seed production.
Frequently, weeds in pasture systems are patchy and therefore spot treatment of herbicides may be used as a least cost method of chemical control.
The nutrient content in these manure sources should be adequate to meet plant requirements, making commercial fertilization unnecessary.
However, rotational grazing systems effectively reduce the amount of nutrients that move off-farm which have the potential to cause environmental degradation.
[13] Although milk yields are often lower in rotational systems, net farm income per cow is often greater as compared to confinement operations.
This is due to the additional costs associated with herd health and purchased feeds are greatly reduced in management intensive rotational grazing systems.
The main costs associated with transitioning rotational grazing are purchasing fencing, fencers, and water supply materials.
[2] Rotational grazing results in time savings because the majority of work which might otherwise require human labor is transmitted to the herd.
The performance of rangeland grazing strategies are similarly constrained by several ecological variables establishing that differences among them are dependent on the effectiveness of those management models.
Depending on the management model, plant production has been shown to be equal or greater in continuous compared to rotational grazing in 87% of the experiments.
[22] In the United States, incentives for managed rotational grazing operations are found throughout the Farm Bill, an omnibus package of federal legislation passed roughly once every five years.
[26] In contrast, CSP is intended to provide "whole-farm" financial and technical assistance to farmers who combine basic conservation activities with more substantial interventions.
