A good pasture is the foundation of any profitable livestock operation. It provides the forages needed not only to sustain but also to allow the livestock to grow. Having enough forages for all of the animals is essential to keep your feed costs down to a manageable level. However, keeping a pasture at this level can be complicated.
Despite your best efforts, a good pasture can end up going bad on you. We have all seen it before: certain invasive species somehow make it into your pasture and overrun everything. They then choke out the forages your animals need, meaning you will either need to supplement or reduce your numbers. Another thing that can happen is that you start seeing bare spots showing up more and more.
Needless to say, people are not too happy when facing scenarios like this. In fact, people tend to dread it when they think they will need to renovate their pasture. They believe it will require tremendous labor and an equal amount of money to get it back to form. What if I told you there were some ways to do this without breaking the bank? Before shelling out a lot of money to fix your pasture, here are some things to consider.
Why does a pasture lose quality?
In order to pick the right thing to do to fix your pasture, we should first go over what can cause it. There are many reasons a pasture can become less productive. One such reason is whether it receives too much (not here lately) or needs more water. Another possible cause is not using suitable forage species. Poor grazing or mowing management is another probable cause of poor pasture.
Overgrazing is one way that can cause a pasture to become less productive. This potential is especially true when you have high-stress conditions such as drought, as we tend to experience from time to time. When the animals graze too much of the forage, they cannot grow back as quickly as needed, so production suffers. If it is bad enough, you will see an influx of invasive weed species coming in and taking over. It would be best if you always waited till the forages have grown to 8-10″ before letting the animals graze and then take them off when they reach 4-6″ in height.
Weed control
Staying on the subject of weeds, improper weed control is another issue that can affect quality. This issue can be as simple as misidentifying the type you want to control. Another problem could be applying the herbicide at the wrong time, which is just a waste of money. If you are unsure, it is always good to have someone more knowledgeable, such as your local extension agent, take a look and identify the weed.
Now that we have gone over a couple of the causes, let’s look at what you can do. This scenario is the part that most people do not like because they think it will require too much. Renovating a pasture does not always mean that you have to reseed. In fact, that should be considered the last step in the process.
Start from the ground up
The first step in improving any pasture is first to fix the soil. While forages are the foundation of an operation, the soil is the literal foundation of forage production. If the soil is not correct, then no amount of seeding or even fertilizing, for that matter, will improve anything. Soil is a natural body composed of mineral and organic solids, gases, liquids, and living organisms. According to Chris Teutsch, a forage extension specialist with the University of Kentucky, healthy pasture soil should have about a ton of bacteria, a ton of actinomycetes, 3 tons of fungi, and over 600 lbs of earthworms per acre.
The thing to remember is that plant production cannot be greater than what is allowed by the most limiting of essential plant growth factors. In order to find what you need to do, you will need to perform a soil test. The results of this test will tell you where your soil currently stands and what steps you need to take to improve it. Also, since conditions are constantly changing, you will need to do a soil test every three years.
Do not forget the pH
An improper soil pH is a major limiting factor in forage production. Having it in the wrong range will reduce nutrient availability and nitrogen fixation by legumes. It is recommended to have a soil pH of 5.8-6 for pure grass stands, 6-6.4 for grass-clover stands, and 6.5-6.8 for grass-alfalfa stands. If needed, your test results will tell you how much lime will be required to get it to these ranges.
Liming pastures will not only neutralize soil acidity but will also supply calcium and magnesium. To fertilize, you will need to apply lime months in advance. This reason is because it will take a little bit of time for it to absorb into the soil thoroughly. Otherwise, you could be putting fertilizer out that will not be utilized, and with today’s prices, that can be expensive.
Consider using legumes
If you want the best pasture possible, biodiversity might be the best option. Having a variety is important because what one species lacks, another could make up for. Using legumes could also benefit because of the nitrogen they return to the soil.
Now, it might be tempting to overload a pasture with legumes because of this, but there are better ideas than that. Legumes should comprise 20-30% of the total forages in the pasture. This ratio is one of those cases where too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
When it comes to legumes, there are many options to go with, either warm-season or cool-season. Among the most well-known is alfalfa, which requires good drainage and Boron supplements to grow well. Frost seeding red or white clover is another option, and they generally result in the most tremendous success. If your pasture is lacking in fertility, then annual lespedeza might be the better option.
Be patient
The thing to remember here is that using legumes will only start supplying enough nitrogen after some time. Most of the transfer that will occur happens when the animal defecates through manure or urine. It also occurs when the legume and roots die and decompose. Having a solid nitrogen cycle in a pasture will take several years to develop and maintain.
Good pasture management goes a long way
As I mentioned above, how you manage your pasture will significantly affect its productivity. Allowing enough growth to occur before grazing will keep the forage healthy and growing. It is the same with the distribution of grazing.
Animals like cattle stay pretty close to areas like water sources. What happens is that they will heavily graze the areas close to those while not touching others. The goal is to get them to go to those other areas to utilize all of the places in your pasture. A well-managed pasture system will cycle 80-90% of the nutrients back to the pasture in dung and urine. If you are interested, I will review how to do this in a previous post, “Better grazing with supplements”.
Even using hay correctly could affect how much is in your soil. Removing hay from a field and not feeding it in the same spot can be dangerous because it can rapidly reduce potassium levels. Many of your common hay varieties will remove nearly 60 lbs of potassium. Knowing this can be helpful if you buy hay from somewhere else and bring it to your place. When going by today’s fertilizer prices, every ton of hay will have about $78 worth of nutrients.
