28 Our Advertisers Appreciate Your Business Better Farming | March 2024 Drought remedies An over-grazed field attempting growth in the springtime. Karin Lindquist photo dormancy in the spring, their root and crown reserves are being drained just to grow their first leaf and start the second. When those young plants are eaten, they’re set back at a point when their reserves are already depleted. “Plus, they’ve started photosynthesizing, putting their energy into growing new shoots and new roots. The eaten young plant must find some way to restore those lost shoots with the remaining leaf material left behind and regrow new roots,” Lindquist says. It’s generally safe to graze when grass plants reach three fully developed leaves on the stem, says Iwanchysko. “You have to really get down on your hands and knees and assess the actual grass plants,” she says. This stage, however, is very short, and the window can easily be missed, notes Lindquist. “Move animals so they graze the pasture as lightly as possible – optimum is taking only one bite per plant – so they can move on to the next pasture before the grasses get too far ahead of them,” she says. Overgrazing Not only will grazing too soon severely set a pasture back, but it will also allow animals to overgraze. “Overgrazing is a function of time, where returning too soon hampers a plant’s ability to regrow enough leaves and maintain enough root biomass to store more energy, exchange nutrients with soil microbes, and reach water beyond just the first few inches at the surface,” Lindquist says. Overgrazing also “eats the roots,” she adds, where each time a grass’s leaves are eaten before it has time to replenish them, more roots die off. “Therefore, when starting grazing too soon affects new spring plants by removing the first third or half by reducing their photosynthesizing ability, allowing animals to return before they can recover with what leaf material they have left further reduces that capability,” Lindquist says. Those plants must be left to recover much longer than previously thought and it means that a pasture, depending on both soil moisture and the amount of precipitation received, may not be ready to graze until late spring or early summer, she says. Alternatively, it will have to be left until fall or for stockpile grazing. Lastiwka also cautions against having too many cattle competing for available grass. “If the number of animals and your need for grazing days is not in balance with forage yield, plant biological needs in recovery time after grazing cannot be met,” he says. “Overgrazing will occur and plant health declines. Best production plants are lost and invaders replace them. Future pasture productivity is declining.” To get time for plant recovery when drought conditions stymie growth, Lastiwka recommends grouping your herds, and, for a short period, allowing them to graze a pasture more uniformly and severely before moving them. “Don’t come back to that pasture until the plants have recovered. We graze that once a year. We move those cattle to a new piece every one to three days and backfence so they can’t go back.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc0MDI3