Plants need green growth in order to store energy in their roots for seasonal fluctuations in weather and water availability. Allowing animals to overgraze and strip grasses harms this storage capacity, making plants less resilient to drought and weather stress.
Many in the agriculture community are returning to nature-inspired practices in how we plant, raise livestock, and harvest. One of the greatest return-on-investment changes you could make for the health and prosperity of your land is rotational grazing. You may have heard it called by many names (intensive grazing, controlled grazing, wild grazing, etc.) because there are many ways to implement it; but no matter what type of rotational grazing you try, your pasture, animals, and budget will reap the rewards.
Rotational grazing more closely mimics nature, as grazers would have a chance to continuously move as they eat. Throughout history, massive grazing herds have maintained healthy grasslands and many ranchers and homesteaders are embracing the opportunity to return to these natural practices.
Benefits of Rotational Grazing
Imagine letting a combine continuously run over your fields without letting anything grow and recover in between passes. By subdividing your pasture into smaller segments, animals can intensively graze 1 section for a short period of time before being moved to the next section. This gives pasture sections a time of rest and regrowth that they would not get under conventional grazing.
Benefits for Forage
Put simply, rotational grazing can bring degraded and overused pastures back to life.
Improve forage growth and yield:
- Pasture grasses and legumes need periods of rest for healthy regrowth. Overgrazing strips away too much of the plant and does not leave enough plant material for rebuilding energy, protein, and carbohydrate stores.
- Rotational grazing evens out growth. Animals are creatures of habit and will hit up the same areas over and over again if left in 1 pasture too long, creating bare patches, weedy areas, and over mature grasses.
Less forage waste:
- Conventional grazing only uses 30-50% of available forage (University of Kentucky), the rest gets trampled, soiled, or over-matures and loses its nutritional value.
- Shortening grazing periods down to 1 day in each section can increase forage use up to 75% (University of Kentucky)
Grow higher quality forage:
- Large waste piles often create areas where excreted nutrients and ammonia are so high that the pasture never recovers. Rotational grazing more evenly distributes manure and nutrients over your pasture for more fertile growth.
- Shortened grazing periods followed by rest helps pastures grow more nutrient dense forage.
Increase drought and stress resistance:
- Plants need green growth in order to store energy in their roots for seasonal fluctuations in weather and water availability. Allowing animals to overgraze and strip grasses harms this storage capacity, making plants less resilient to drought and weather stress.
Benefits for Livestock
Eating only the most nutritious part of the plant will have a noticeable effect on the health and production of your animals.
Increase productivity:
- Forage quality is much greater in the top 6 inches of medium length growth. For example, crude protein levels can be twice as high in the top 6 inches of alfalfa than the bottom 6 inches (University of Kentucky).
- Farms that have switched to rotational grazing have experienced greater weight gains and milk production because their animals are getting more nutrients.
Reduce supplemental feeding:
- Animals eating more nutritious forage will have fewer gaps in their diet and need less supplemental feeding.
- Carbohydrate content varies greatly throughout a pasture. Managed grazing balances their intake between structural and non-structural carbohydrates, helping protect their rumen from acidosis.
Reduce fescue toxicity:
- Strategic grazing keeps fescue grasses in the younger, more vegetative stage and reduces the number of seed heads in your pasture. Fewer seed heads means fewer compounds that cause fescue toxicity or “summer slump.” Click to learn more about preventing fescue toxicity in your herd.
Healthier environment:
- Managing pasture growth means fewer mature seed heads producing eye irritants that cause pink eye.
- More even manure distribution helps your herd stay a step ahead of the pests that lay eggs in waste piles. Frequently rotating can also interrupt the life cycles of some livestock parasites.
Rotational Grazing Tips to Get Started
Every herd and piece of land are different, so here are some basic tips to help you try your hand at rotational grazing.
Type of Fencing
Your current exterior fencing can remain in place to protect from predators. The simplest way to subdivide a larger pasture is to use portable electric fencing or netting that can be easily adjusted as you are figuring out the size of your sub-pastures. Openings will need to be created when it is time to move your animals from 1 pasture to the next.
Adjusting Lot Size
Some ranchers use formulas to determine stocking rate (# of animals), grazing time, and lot size. However there are a lot of other factors that are not as easily measurable like: growing season, lifestage of your animals, weather, etc. Here are a couple basic rules of thumb to help you:
- Each paddock must have access to water, minerals, shelters and additional feeders. These fixtures should be placed in a sacrificial paddock where pasture maintenance will not be a concern.
- Water should always be within 800 feet of your animals. Multiple sources of water are possible for larger pastures.
- Paddocks need around 20-30 days of rest during rapid growth season and 40 or more days during slow growth season.
- Animals in a high-performance life stage will need to be moved more often.
Once you subdivide your pastures, you will likely need to make adjustments:
- If you see your animals revisit already grazed areas then it is time to move, increase pasture size, or decrease stocking rate.
- If your animals are leaving too much growth (more than 6 inches) behind when it's time to move, decrease pasture size or increase stocking rate.
- Keep an eye on resting pastures to make sure you are keeping track of which pasture is fresh and ready for grazing.
Multi-species rotational grazing
Farms and homesteads with poultry can mimic nature, where birds follow after ruminant grazers as the “clean up crew”.
- First ruminants: Allow ruminant grazers first crack at fresh pastures.
- Move ruminants and wait 2 days.
- Let poultry move into pasture to eat fly larvae and other pests. As they scratch and peck, they can also spread manure to fertilize and aerate land.
- Don’t let poultry stay for more than 2 days because they can start to damage pasture by digging up grass and creating dust baths.
Nature Inspired Ranching with Redmond
Redmond’s unique mineral profile is the perfect resource for ranching the way nature intended. Our pasture amendments and livestock supplements have helped nourish healthy farms since the 1950s. Redmond Mineralyte wakes up the life in your soil so your pasture has what it needs to support your herd. We are also proud to offer a wide range of mineral mixes for cattle and all classes of livestock.
Give Redmond a call today at 
to see how we can help you get back to what you love about raising animals!