In addition to the manure deposits, cattle urinate eight to eleven times a day. Both manure and urine are superb fertilizer for pastures. Although the cattle won’t graze those areas right away, they will after the deposits decompose.
Because cattle need to spend so much time resting and ruminating, they’ll graze for only about eight hours a day. (When it’s hot, they do much of their grazing at night.) The higher the quality of the pasture or hay, the easier it is for cattle to get enough to eat in those eight hours and to gain weight and bear healthy calves. Young, lush pasture is their favorite food, high in muscle-building and milk-making protein. If it’s too young and too lush, however, pasture can cause problems. Cattle digestive systems are set up for lots of fiber, which young pasture and legumes, such as clover and alfalfa, lack. Too much of this type of feed can pack the rumen so tightly that digestive gases can’t escape, and the cow begins to bloat. If the bloat isn’t treated quickly, it will put such pressure on the cow’s lungs that she won’t be able to breathe, and she’ll die. For this reason, you should never put cattle on wet or frosted legume pastures and should always provide some dry hay in the spring when pastures are just greening up. Bloat is a fairly common killer of cattle, although it’s more common among dairy cattle than beef, due to the much richer diets fed to dairy cattle—which brings up an important point: when talking to others about and asking for advice on feeding, be sure to mention that you have beef cattle because their dietary needs are very different from those of dairy cattle.
Older pasture and hay composed of mixed grass and legumes are lower in protein but higher in carbohydrates. This keeps cattle’s digestive systems in better order, helps fatten the cattle, and keeps them warm in the winter. It is also healthier for pregnant and nursing cows. Mother cows can get too fat on rich pasture, which is hard on their feet and legs and may contribute to difficult calving.
For the small-scale beef producer, feeding doesn’t have to be complicated. There are three basic components: pasture, hay, and grain. One important rule to remember is that whenever you change your cattle’s diet—whether moving the cow herd from hay to pasture each spring or moving steers on to a finishing ration—do it slowly. The naturally occurring bacteria in their digestive systems, which transform food into nutrients, need time to gear up for a new ration.
Pasture
Your pasture is the centerpiece of your beef operation. It normally makes up the bulk of a herd’s diet, and cattle that feed on good pasture are healthy and happy. Providing good pasture also means not having to provide as much hay, and the less time and effort you invest in hay, the more likely it is that you will end up in the black at the end of the year. Call your extension agent to find out how many acres of pasture it takes to support a steer or cow in your area, which can be anywhere from one and a half in the humid Southeast to forty in a semidesert area in the West. You can then estimate how many head of cattle you can theoretically sustain on your land. Keep in mind, though, that this is just an estimate. The actual number will vary considerably, depending on the fertility of your soil, whether it’s a dry or wet year, and whether you have uplands, lowlands, or something in between. Keep your capacity on the conservative side, at least until you have a few years of experience under your belt. It’s cheaper and less hassle to be long on feed and short on cattle than the other way around.
Dividing your pasture into paddocks lets your cows graze one area at a time while the other areas rest and regrow.
Pasture Quality
Once you have a rough idea of how many cattle your land may be able to support, take a walk in your pasture. The most critical ingredient in the recipe for developing and maintaining a high-quality pasture is, as the old saying goes, “the footsteps of the owner.” What’s growing there? Grasses and legumes that cattle thrive on, or weeds? A weed, in this context, is not necessarily a bad plant; it’s just something that cattle won’t eat. Quack grass, for example, may be a weed in the yard but is good eating for cattle. After you’ve evaluated your pasture, you may want to adjust your carrying capacity accordingly.
On a side note, when patrolling your pasture, look for old bits of wire, stray nails, and other metal garbage and get rid of it before the cattle arrive. They will eat this stuff, which could perforate their stomachs and make them ill. This is called “hardware disease,” and it’s far better to prevent it than treat it.
So, how do you go about improving pasture quality? To help you figure out what to plant, get your soil tested. Some extension services offer soil testing, or you can check with your seed dealer for contact information of soil-testing labs in your area. The test results will indicate what soil amendments you need, and you can proceed accordingly. Be sure to specify that you’re testing for pasture because soil amendments and fertilizer recommendations are calculated differently for row crops.
You ideally want your pasture to consist mainly of palatable grasses with a healthy component of legumes. Achieving this happy state may take a few years of managed grazing, mowing, and fertilization. You may want to add plant species by overseeding—that is, scattering seed in an established pasture. Much of the fertilization and all of the grazing will come from your cattle. Your job is to manage the cattle so that they do a good job of fertilizing and grazing.
The grasses and clovers that cattle like to eat grow differently from trees, shrubs, and some weeds. If you understand this difference, you’ll understand why mowing and grazing are the keys to good pastures. Grasses and clovers have a “growing point” at or near the ground. When a cow bites off a blade of grass or a clover stem, the plant quickly regrows from this growing point. Trees, shrubs, and weeds, however, grow from the tips of their branches and leaves. That’s why, when you prune a shrub, it stays pruned for months. By contrast, you have to mow the lawn every week—the cutting actually stimulates it to grow faster by removing the older leaves that are getting in the way of the growing point at the base of the plant. Grazing has the same effect, so grazing, when correctly managed, results in lush pastures.
Unmanaged grazing, however, can devastate a pasture. This is because when a mower or a cow shears off the leafy part of the plant, it temporarily depletes the food supply to the roots, and some of those roots die. Dead roots put a lot of organic matter into the soil, which is great for holding water and keeping the soil moist, but a great many live, healthy roots are necessary for a thick, lush pasture. You want a balance between dead roots and live roots. If you cut your grass every day or let your cows graze the same plants every day, you kill too much of the root, and the grass will become stunted or even die. If the process goes on too long, the soil loses much of its plant cover and becomes vulnerable to wind and water erosion.
Weeds are especially abundant when the cattle feed in the same pasture for an entire growing season. Because the cows keep the grass and clover so short, the weeds have no real competition for sun or water and thus can grow with little restraint. In the spring, when all of the plants in an extensive pasture get off to an even start and are growing like gangbusters, this type of pasture looks great. By late summer, when the rain has slacked off, the spring growth spurt is over, and the cattle have kept their favorite plants short, a lot of these pastures are full of big weeds, tiny grass plants, and skinny cattle.
By contrast, grass that isn’t grazed while it’s still fairly young and tender gets stiff from hard-to-digest cellulose as it matures. The tall grass blades shade the growing point near the soil, and growth slows or stops. Some older plants in a pasture are OK to supply some fiber. However, the older the plant is, the slower it grows, and the less palatable it is to cows. Keep in mind, too, that a certain amount of old growth left over the winter can protect roots and growing points from freeze-thaw cycles that heave the soil and break roots. Too much, though, and the ground will be shaded and slow to warm in the spring, and new growth will have a tough time struggling through the old stuff to reach sunlight.
In summary, a thick pasture full of grasses and legumes that cattle like and lacking the weeds they dislike—with grass that isn’t too old or too short—is ideal for the health and growth of cattle. This type of pasture provides the added advantages of growing longer into dry spells,