Planting a cover crop will protect the soil from any more degradation caused by wind and water, and prevent invasive weeds from getting out of hand. Cover crops include buckwheat, clover, and rye. If you’re worried that you’ve overgrazed your pasture, you can help restore the soil and vegetation by using green manure (also known as cover crops). 25 to 30 days is normally enough time to let pastures rest after they have been grazed. Remember that pastures will need longer to recover during times of drought. It’s important to cycle your stock through different grazing areas, giving pastures enough time to recover before opening them for grazing again. If you have more stock than can continually graze where they are, you’ll need to rotate them into different pastures. If you overgraze land that is leased to you, it could lead to the termination of the contract and even legal problems if the soil has been damaged in the long term. Not only will growing become more difficult in the future, but it can cause desertification of your land. Overgrazing also causes soil degradation, which is very difficult to reverse. This encourages invasive and non-native plants and grasses to take over, leaving you with lower-quality forage. Overgrazing is a common mistake that homesteaders make, and it leads to reduced biodiversity in your pasture. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other! Why Bother Calculating How Many Cows Per Acre? In the long run, this could cost you just as much money in feed bills as the money lost by having fewer cows. You could also reduce the grazing season of your cows, keeping them on dry feed for more months of the year. They also accelerate the breakdown of cow manure to nourish the soil and they eat a lot of the parasites that could bother your cows. They scratch around in the soil, helping prepare it for new growth. You can, however, maximize the use of each acre by rotating different animals.įor example, you can let chickens run the field after the cows have been taken out. If you want to maintain the quality of your soil, you can’t run too many cows per acre. This means that I would need 4.2 acres per cow on my farm. So, using this example, you would calculate that: (1.4 AU x 6 months) / Stocking Rate of 2 = 4.2 acres). If you are experiencing a drought in your region, the stocking rate will not be as good.įor the example, we can say you have a stocking rate of 2.0 AU per acre. The Stocking Rate will also change from year to year depending on climate conditions. For example, in West Texas, you’d need a minimum of 6 times more native pasture per AU than in East Texas. The Stocking Rate varies from state to state, and even farm to farm. Let’s say you want to graze your cow for 6 months a year. If you are keeping them on dry feed in a barn for some months of the year, you don’t need to include these months. The Length of Grazing Season is how long you want to graze the cows for in a year. Let’s take the less intimidating 1400-pound cow for our example! Length of Grazing Season So, a 1400-pound cow would be 1.4 AU and a 3,500-pound cow would be 3.5 AU. Animal UnitĪ 1000-pound cow is one Animal Unit (AU). Required Pasture Size = (Number Of Animal Units x Length Of Grazing Season)/ Stocking Rate.ĭon’t worry if this sounds complicated, we’ll work through it together. There is a simple calculation to help you work out how much land you need for your cows. The number of cows you can keep without damaging the soil varies from state to state, so you’ll need to do a calculation based on your number of animal units, length of grazing season, and stocking rate. If you’re going to be raising cattle, you’ll need to know how many cows per acre you can keep in your state.
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