Managing pasture is both an art and a science. And we certainly don’t have it all figured out. But when the pasture is pretty much your entire food source for 90% of the year, having “good grass” is an all-consuming part of the farm life. Animals don’t eat grass that gets too old. And if they do, it doesn’t have the same nutritional value that it has when it’s younger. When it’s young, the grass is focused growing leaves, which makes it tasty and full of good vitamins, nutrients, and sugars for the animals. When the grass gets older, it’s focused on growing seeds and reproducing. The stem sections get dry, bitter, and less valuable for the livestock.
Grazing and mowing properly keep the grass short (“short” and “tall” being relative, depending on species) and in the leaf-growing stage longer to maintain it’s feed value.
But sometimes we don’t mow toward the end of the season…and here’s why.
#1…It Encourages Plant Diversity in Your Pastures
Unlike a residential yard, a healthy pasture should be a mix of grasses, forbes, and legumes. It’s like the difference between a bowl of salad and a bowl of chopped iceberg lettuce. One is rich. tasty, and hits multiple nutritional categories. One, well, doesn’t. But each different species in the pasture has different growing characteristics and needs. It can be tough to manage acres of field for multiple plant species. Letting the grass “grow wild” sometimes can encourage the uncommon or more sensitive species that will fall behind their less needy neighbors to keep producing.
And you never know when you might have a patch of wild rasberries pop up that you want to keep. (Containing them can be a little challenging!) Learning to recognize these pasture species changes over time is one of the great reasons why we always make sure to have regular pasture walks.
#2…It Encourages Beneficial Wildlife and Insects in Your Pastures
Tall and diverse pastures can provide food and shelter for an array of wildlife that will be beneficial to your farm. Ground birds like turkey and quail will nest in undisturbed pastures. Songbirds will eat seeds from mature grass. Small mammals like voles, mice, rabbits, and groundhogs will find food and shelter in taller grass–and the predator species like owls, foxes, snakes, and even coyotes will eat them instead of your chickens!
You’ll also see an increase in insect life and those wonderful pollinators like bees, butterflies, hummingbirds. Plus spiders, ladybugs, and dragonflies–which eat bad bugs and are great for your garden!
Depending on the size of your fields, you can plan your growth periods around key habitat periods. It doesn’t have to be the entire field. We tend to let certain sections in the back fields along our woodline grow taller in both spring and fall because they are prime turkey nesting sites–and we have plenty of grass in other places for the livestock. The birds are pretty safe inside the electric fence and don’t need a lot of room. We leave a small strip about 20 foot wide by the length of the field unmowed, and never fail to have 2-3 clutches each year. Once they move out of the nest and into the woods nearby, we mow again. The University of Arkansas Exention services has a nice publication on Managing Pasures and Haylands for Wildlife.
#3…It ReSeeds Your Pastures–For FREE
Turns out, if you let the grass go to seed, it will reproduce itself.
For free.
Without the farmer having to do anything.
Crazy, right? {smile}
Reseeding fields on a large scale can be expensive on a small farm or homestead. You can let Nature take care of herself just by letting the grass go through it’s normal cycle from start to finish. We usually do this toward the end of the season when we’re getting ready to switch to hay feeding anyway.
There are some drawbacks to this reseeding method. Weeds will also reseed themselves. You have 2 choices there. Either let them go with the grass and deal with the problem in the spring. (Not a great option if you’re trying to control the problem.) Or you can go out there and deal with the weeds individually, by hand, as they grow. That’s normally how we combat weeds–either with a backpack sprayer or a hoe. Honestly, this is an issue in every season in some form or another.
Oregon State University’s Small Farms page has a lot of great pasture and grazing management articles.
#4…It Saves Time and Money
The idea behind rotational grazing is that the animals do the “mowing”–dropping fertilizer along the way. It reduces the need for mechanical inputs like tractor fuel and mowing equipment. It also saves costs by reducing chemicals and additives like nitrogen. Cutting or grazing at the right time of year can also reduce weeds without using herbicides.
However; our experience has been that we don’t have enough animals to keep up with the grass growth in certain seasons.We have to suppliment the livestock pressure with tractor mowing through most of the warm season. So any time we’re NOT mowingwe’re back to saving fuel, wear and tear on the equipment, and time.Whether that’s because growth slows down and the animals can keep with it, or because we’re taking a seasonal mowing break for reasons #1, 2, and 3, it saves resources.
#5…It Is Beautiful
As farmers and homesteaders, we spend most of our time here. And we like it that way. When we have busy seasons (like fall sports season) we get grouchy and burned out. We like walking on our paths (and running, jumping, chasing, hiding, and playing), hunting leaves and berries and frogs in our own woods, and enjoying the sunrise and sunset across our own fields. We find the simple things across the landscape beautiful.
Letting the pastures grow up and go to seed can completely (and dramatically!) change the normal daily landscape. And it can be beautiful to see. You can get bored on the short brown and yellows of winter pretty quickly. And you can start to take the rolling green of spring and summer for granted.But then you get the tall, waving, silver and pink and gray of late autumn in the fields…It can be lovely!
Pasture management and rotational grazing is a complex system that depends on a lot of local variables. For an easy introduction and overview of pasture systems as a whole, I highly recommend Small-Scale Livestock Farmingby Carol Ekarius and Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin. Once you’re in it, and trying to really make soils and grass improvements, I recommend Quality Pasture by Allan Nation.
But remember, whatever happens, be sure to take a few minutes to enjoy it! In general the land is pretty forgiving. If you mow it, it’ll come back next year. If you don’t mow it, it will come back next year. At least some of it! {smile}
