1. Introduction to Grazing & Range Management

2. What is Grazing?
Grazing is the process whereby animals consume plants to acquire energy and nutrients to be used for growth and maintenance.
It is an ecological process in that the energy captured and stored by primary producers is consumed by primary consumers.

3. What Grazing is:
Grazing is also an agricultural process in that the grazers themselves and their byproducts are often used by humans as either foodstuff or items of comfort.
Thus, grazing is a form of animal agriculture and the primary form of rangeland agriculture.

4. What is Grazing Management?
Grazing management is the process whereby grazing and browsing animals are manipulated so as to accomplish a desired result.
“Desired results” may range from single goals:
Production of livestock products or picturesque aesthetics
Or multi-use goals:
Acceptable levels of livestock production coupled with maintaining quality wildlife habitat and ample recreational space.

5. Goal of Grazing Management
Regardless of short- or intermediate-term goals, the ultimate “desired result” is the sustained use of the rangeland resource.
The challenge to the grazier is, as Aldo Leopold stated, “is to live on a piece of land without spoiling it”.
Purpose of these classes is to help grazing managers to achieve this through a better understanding of the interrelationship of the plants, animals, and soil complex.

6. Grazing Management
Because grazing management is as much art as it is science.
It should be based on both the knowledge of science and the wisdom of practical experience.
Effective grazing management requires a comprehensive plan to secure the best practicable us of forage resources.
Such a plan must provide for the daily, seasonal, and annual grazing capacity needs of the livestock and/or big game.

7. Grazing Management
Grazing management must also seek to match the quantity and quality of grazing animal unit months (AUMs) produced on the ranch or grazing land unit with the AUM needs of the grazing animals associated with it.

8. Why is Grazing Important?
Range is the largest land resource, encompassing about 50% of the land area of the earth.

9. The challenges….. Rangelands are diverse Grasslands Deserts
Shrublands Savannas
Woodlands
Open Forests
Tundra
Wetlands

10. The Challenge… Many forces that threaten rangeland integrity!
Unsustainable grazing practices
Damaging fire regimes
Invasive plant species
Global climate change
Human development

11. Rangeland Management is:
The use and stewardship of rangeland
resources to meet goals and desires of
humans.
Planning examines different alternatives
to see which is the “best “ future world.

12. What is “Best” It depends on your point of view. Preservationists
Conservationists
Utilitarianisms
Pragmatists
Etc. etc.

13. What is “Best”
Preservationists - Emphasize protecting large areas of land from
mining, timber, grazing and development so they can be enjoyed by
present and future generations. Founders of the preservation
movement were John Muir and Aldo Leopold.
Conservationists - View land as a resource to be used now to
enhance economic growth. But, land must be protected from
degradation by efficient management, based on scientific principles,
for sustained yield and multiple use. Early conservationists were T.R.
Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Wesley Powell.
Utilitarianists - View land as a substrate for saleable products.
Management is based on land manipulation and exogenous inputs
(e.g., fertilizer or herbicides) are usually required to keep production
at an optimum level.

14. Why do we need science? Managers must integrate scientific
knowledge with idea, hunches, traditions,
etc., to make wise decisions.
To understand the physical, biological,
and social processes that affect
rangelands.
To discover principles up which to base
the wise use of rangelands.
Others?

15. Rangeland Management What kinds of decisions do we make?
Political – laws and policies
Economic – buy, sell,
Direct actions

16. What is the role of Education?
Convey what is known to society
Stop non-objective views
Lead to wise land use discussion and
support for actions.

17. Rangeland Management is:
The use and stewardship of rangeland
resources to meet goals and desires of
humans.
What do people want from rangelands?

18. Rangelands Resources Wildlife Habitat Forage Livestock Production
Open Space
Water
Native Plants
Recreation

19. Rangeland Management is:
The use and stewardship of rangeland
resources to meet goals and desires of
humans.
What tools do we have for Range
Management?

20. Rangeland Management – 6 Basic
Concepts
Rangelands are renewable resources; they can
produce on a sustained yield basis if properly
managed.
Rangelands are managed by extensive and
ecological principles, not intensive and agronomic
principles.
Rangelands produce a variety of products (e.g.,
forage, recreation, water) therefore principles of
multiple use are important in range management

21. Principles of Rangeland
Management
Rangeland must be managed to maintain soil and
water quality and health.
Rangelands change through succession and
disturbance. All we can really do as managers is
apply, control, or respond to disturbance based on
our knowledge of succession.
The only constant on rangeland is “change.”
Conditions change from place to place (spatially) and
time to time (temporally). We need to understand and
accept change.
Many important public concerns on rangeland happen
across multiple ownerships (i.e., fire, water quality, weeds,
open space).

22. Importance of Grazing
Livestock products provide the major economic return from most rangeland and pastures.
Compared with harvested feeds – whether forages or grains – grazing provides a relatively inexpensive and energy-efficient feed source for livestock production.
Reason to coincide the animal’s production cycle with range and pasture forage resources.

23. Importance of Grazing
Beef cattle, sheep and goats are raised primarily as a means of marketing forages, especially those forages that have limited alternative markets.
Grazing of standing forage on range and pasture is the counterpart of machine processing of harvested forage crops.
The grazing animal is the harvester and converter of forages into a useable product by humans. The analogy to grain production is the grazing animal is the combine and miller.

24. Benefits of Grazing to Plants
Removes older tissue that is less efficient photosynthetically than young tissue.
Increases light intensity to lower younger tissue.
Increases stomatal resistance promoting water conservation.

25. Benefits of Grazing to Plants
Recycles nutrients available in urine and dung.
Speeds senescent forage breakdown by trampling.

26. Benefits of Grazing to Society
Low fossil fuel expenditure per KG of livestock weight gain.
The utilization of otherwise mostly idle nonproductive land.
Production of animal protein necessary for meeting nutritional needs of people.

27. Benefits of Grazing to Society
Increase rural income.
Release of feed grains for human consumption.
Soil productivity, as well as water and air quality, is better maintained under the permanent vegetative cover of well-managed grazing lands than virtually any other land-use system.

28. Principles of Grazing Management
Grazing management is principally involved in managing and manipulating the grazing animal-forage plant-soil complex to obtain specified objectives.
This is accomplished by blending ecological, economic, and animal management principles, i.e., rangeland and ranch management.

29. Principles of Grazing Management
Common to the management of all grazing lands must be forage plant considerations:
Plant growth requirements
Plant vigor and reproduction
Defoliation and other animal impacts
Seasonality and fluctuations in forage production

30. Principles of Grazing Management
Equally high in priority are animal considerations:
Animal performance
Animal behavior
Nutrient intake levels
Forage quality relative to animal needs
Forage palatability/animal preference

31. Principles of Grazing Management
Ecological principles:
Energy flow
Nutrient cycling
Primary and secondary succession
Plant-herbivore relationships
Plant competition
Abiotic factors
Climate, topography (aspect and slope), soil (chemistry and texture)

32. Principles of Grazing Management
Ecological challenges:
Necessity to balance solar energy capture and harvest efficiencies to maximize productivity on a sustained basis.
Primary productivity is inherently low because rangeland environments seldom provide an optimum plant growth environment.
Temporal and spatial variation in climatic conditions.
Selective grazing.

33. Principles of Grazing Management
The fundamental principle of grazing management is to control the frequency and severity of defoliation of individual plants.
The principle factor controlling such is grazing pressure which is defined as the ratio of forage demand to forage available for any specified forage at any instant.

34. Principles of Grazing Management
Management tactics to alter grazing pressure (control forage demand) are:
Stocking rate
Season of use
Livestock distribution
Kind/class of grazing animals
Grazing system or method

35. Principles of Grazing Management
Stocking Rate:
Number of animals/unit of land/over time
Forage demand increases or decreases in direct response to increasing or decreasing animal numbers and length of time animals are present
Goal – to provide adequate forage for each animal
Leave adequate leaf area to ensure regrowth
Frequency of defoliation
Intensity of defoliation

36. Principles of Grazing Management
Season of Use:
Variation if forage availability over time
Environmental conditions
Soil moisture, temperature, day length
Stage of plant growth
Vegetative or reproductive
Growing season rest
Allow time for growth or regrowth
Facilitated with use of a grazing system

37. Principles of Grazing Management
Livestock Distribution:
Even utilization of the forage resource
Hindered by differences in forage production due to spatial differences in plant species composition and/or plant densities and/or growing conditions.
Cross fencing
Strategic placement of salt, mineral, and watering facilities

38. Principles of Grazing Management
Kind/class of Grazing Animal:
Grazers or browsers
Mature or young stock
Preference for various plant species and/or plant parts vary widely as a function of above
Affects forage demand and thus grazing pressure on any given stand of forage
Topography influences animal use patterns and landscape utilization patterns vary depending upon kind and/or class of animal

39. Principles of Grazing Management
Grazing management tactics designed to assist in balancing forage supply and forage demand center around controlling grazing pressure by altering the kinds and numbers of grazing animals over both time and space.

40. Principles of Grazing Management
The essence of grazing management and the long-term success or failure of any and all grazing management strategies hinges upon management’s ability to control the frequency and severity of defoliation of individual plants over time and space in such a manner so as to meet desired goals.