Grow lush, dense grass by grazing holistically

Can you wrap your head around this one?

When grass is growing fast, move them fast.
When grass is growing slowly move them slowly.

If you follow this counter-intuitive principle, you will get a longer growing season and grow more grass. Why is that?

By moving livestock quickly from paddock to paddock when grass is growing fast, and moving them slowly when grass is growing slowly, you prune plants at an optimum time in their life cycle, stimulating growth.

In May-June, when grass is growing fast, don’t worry about grazing all the grass before moving on. Trampling grass into the soil feeds soil life, which ultimately benefits the grass. The fast recovery time of May-June dictates short grazing periods, which enables you to get around to all your paddocks to graze off the tops before they reach senescence.

In this way, when grass growth slows down in July-August, you will have good plant recovery, and tall grass, which enables you to slow down and lengthen your grazing periods to accommodate the longer recovery time that is now required to prevent overgrazing of plants. In this way, grazing is in sync with the natural life cycle of the grass plant. So, plants grow over a longer period of time and the growing season is extended.

Here is an actual example from Dharma Lea, a farm in New York. After three years of holistic management, the Van Amburghs experienced a 120% increase in the number of grazing days per year, from 76 days to 167 days per year. Read the full story here.

This story does not impress farmers in these green and pleasant isles, where it is normal for grass to grow 180 days or more per year. Many say, “They must have been managing poorly. Anybody could make that kind of improvement!”

Not so fast. They live in a place where 76 days of grazing is normal.

Paul Van Amburgh explained, “In 2015, we had a five-week dry spell (no rain at all), and in 2016 the same thing happened in May/June. It hurt a lot of farms around us that didn’t have a grazing plan in place. We had a field day in July 2016, and finally got rain the day before the event, and we still had 45 days of grazing ahead of us. Ninety farmers came to that field day because they were already out of pasture and they wanted to know what was going on and how we had managed so well.”

Can you imagine running out of pasture in July? Well, it happened all over southern England last summer.