Pasture Management

Why?

It is mid winter. The cold is getting old, and cabin fever is here. Dreams of a white Christmas have passed and have been replaced by long hours by the fire perusing the seed catalogs planning and re-planning the spring garden. In the barn, you have been handling hay since October, and continually find hay chaff on the floor beside your chair at work. It's time to feed our fantasies of spring by thinking about the pasture.

Pastures provide our alpacas with space for exercise, exposure to the sun for vitamin D production, grass for grazing and nourishment, sometimes access to water, and toilet space where there is less pressure to clean than there is in the barn. In addition, there are few things prettier than a herd of alpacas wandering around a broad grassy expanse.

After a long winter of handling hay and grain and carrying buckets of water, it is tempting to just let the alpacas loose in the pasture contained by a fence and take the summer comparatively at ease.

For a livestock farmer, pasture grass can be considered a crop. The livestock is the farmer's means of harvesting that crop. Pasture grass, like any growing plant, will thrive with good management and suffer when neglected. A pasture well maintained will provide the alpacas with superior nutrition. A small, well-managed pasture may easily support far more than the estimated 5 to 10 alpacas per acre we all quote to our buyers.

A neglected pasture will progressively favor the growth of unpalatable weeds over grass. The neglected pasture will suffer from erosion and poor water quality in neighboring ponds and streams.

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

The first step to a well-managed pasture is to sketch it. Pace out the distances and estimate acreage. Draw in natural landmarks such as ponds, streams, wet areas, changes in slope or visible differences in vegetation types, drainage, and soil types.

The second step is to look at your fence as it relates to the waterways. Although it is nice to give our animals free choice to sip water from the natural waterways, there may be long-term penalties. Alpacas may spend a lot of time in the water during hot weather resulting in felting or rotting of the fleece. Water quality may suffer if the poop pile is inadvertently too close to the water, leading to contaminated run-off fouling the water. Consider fencing out the ponds and streams. A thirty-foot buffer of vegetation between the fence and the water should be adequate to prevent contaminated run-off from reaching the water.

IS THERE FURTHER ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE?

Yes. Take a trip to your local Soil and Water Conservation Office. This is a branch of your State Department of Environmental Protection. There are typically regional offices, often one for each county. In Maine, contact janus.state.me.us/dep/air/comsus/swcdlink.htm They provide wonderful services, often at no cost. Pick up a map of your farm. The map will precisely describe the distribution of different soil types on your farm. The described soil types will take into account the physical and chemical structure of the soil, the slope, the drainage characteristics, and the usual depth of the water table. The other resource you will find at the SWCD is a soil engineer. Get from the engineer a key to the soil types on your farm. I came home with a 5-page printout entitled "Land Capability and Yields per Acre of Crops and Pasture." It will provide you with more than you ever needed to know about your soil and an estimate of the number of animals supportable by that piece of soil under optimum management conditions.

Take your soil engineer home. I had a great afternoon with mine, walking the pasture and problem solving my drainage, access, erosion, and irrigation problems. The service was free, and he pointed me toward a lot of other programs to obtain financial assistance for projects that will protect the water, prevent erosion, and provide for any number of other private farm projects considered to be in the public interest.

Visit the office of the local state university Extension Service. Although regions may be divided differently, like the SWCD, Extension Service offices are regional, usually specific to a county, and administered on a statewide basis. Many of their services and resources are also free. I also entertained our extension agent for an afternoon on our farm and learned a lot. They will have data on grasses, pastures, poisonous plants, and other useful resources.

SHOULD I TEST MY SOIL?

Yes, you will want to test your soil. I use the Maine Soil Testing Service at the University of Maine. Instructions, requisitions, and sample containers are available at my extension service office. My report gave me requirements in pounds per acre of each major nutrient based on my preference of chemical or natural fertilizers and the crop I intended to grow. The report also recommended a specific fertilization schedule. My extension agent helped me to calculate the amount and blend of available fertilizers to meet the recommendations.

If you need to plant grass, your soil engineer or extension agent can guide you to the varieties that are suited to your climate and soil type. It makes little sense to be overly selective or specific about the grass type you plant. A blend of suitable types is probably the best. Within a few years, your pasture will self select the grasses that do best under management system. And grass seed gets around easily enough that the grasses in your mature pasture may little resemble the grasses you planted.

WHAT ABOUT ROTATIONAL GRAZING?

Finally, consider rotational grazing. Grass has the best nutritional value when it is between 2 and 7 inches high. Your animals are going to prefer eating the tender new sprouts rather than the tall mature grass that is going to seed. This explains why my alpacas ignore what looks to me to be lush green banquet areas of my pasture and instead graze on what appears to be barren dirt. They prefer the new growth. Eventually, by eating the new shoots as soon as they appear, the plant can never adequately feed and support its root structure and will die. In a large pasture, they will ignore some areas and continually pick other areas clean. Those areas they graze clean will eventually grow only weeds that they don't like.

An effective rotational grazing system will isolate the animals to portion of the pasture just large enough to eat down to about 2 inches in about 4 days. Then move them into another section of similar size. Allow each section of the pasture to recover to at least 7 inches before grazing again. It takes about 4 weeks for each section to re-grow grass. It takes about 7 sections to provide continual grazing. Because each area is small, they will have to eat everything to get enough to eat, they will not neglect big sections of the pasture. Because you move them out before they get down to bare ground, the grass will recover and stay healthy.

In comparison to the cool, wet spring and fall when grass grows fast, in the dry hot summer days when grass grows slowly it might take twice as much time to re-grow the grass and therefore twice as much pasture to feed the herd. Half the pasture will be unnecessary during prime grass growing seasons. If you don't hay the unused portion of the pasture, mowing it 4 weeks before it is needed will provide a higher nutrient value once you release your animals on to it.

QUESTIONS?

E.mail cindy@mtbrookfarm.com