Pasture Management

Improve your pasture, improve productivity!

Pastures are critical to many types of farms. Farmers have been known to turn unprofitable farms into commercial successes by simply improving pasture. Whether dealing with small or large properties, pasture management is an important part of many types of farming enterprises. This course is designed to be useful to those already managing existing pastures and those who wish to establish successful new pastures.

Lesson Structure

There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction to Pastures
   • Pasture Improvement
   • Choosing a Pasture Mix
   • Seed Coating
   • Variety Selection
   • Sustainability
   • Definitions
2. The Pasture Plant
   • Grasses
   • The grass plant
   • Growth and development
   • Phases of development
   • Annual and perennial grasses
   • Carbohydrate sinks
   • The physiology of grasses
   • The structure of grasses
   • Growth habits
   • Legumes
3. Pasture Varieties
   • Introduction to common pasture grasses
   • Identifying grasses
   • Legumes
   • The Importance of Legumes in Pasture
   • Nitrogen Fixation in Legumes
   • The Rhizobium bacteria
   • Common legumes
   • Grasses to Grow with Clovers
4. Site Considerations
   • Managing pastures
   • Choosing the Correct Site for a Pasture
   • Choosing the correct seed mix
   • Seed quality
5. Establishing New Pastures
   • Preparation of the land for pasture
   • Prepared seedbed
   • Sowing
   • Germination
   • Direct drilling
   • Weed control
   • Seeders
   • Grazing new pastures
6. Managing Existing Pastures
   • Native Grasses versus Pasture
   • Carrying Capacity of Native Grasses
   • Stocking Rate of Native Grass Areas
   • The Establishment of the Native Grasslands
   • The developing grasslands
   • How grasslands deteriorate
   • Factors promoting succession or retrogression
   • Limiting factors and terminal plant communities
   • Allogenic Factors
   • Autogenic Factors
   • Rests To Promote Rapid Growth
   • Rests to change the composition of the community
   • Rests designed to eliminate or control bush encroachment
   • Rests to accumulate grazing material
   • Rests to provide out of season fodder
   • Physiological aspects
7. Managing Stock on Pasture
   • Factors affecting food intake by animals
   • Animal factors
   • Feed factors
   • Grazing factors
   • Grazing behaviour
   • Complementary Grazing
   • Rank Order of Dominance
   • Selective Grazing
   • Ruminant Time
   • Herd group behaviour
   • Grazing Time
   • Pasture management principles - rest, grazing period, stocking, carrying capacity
   • Equal Utilisation or the Removal of the Top Hamper, paddock size, number in herd etc
   • Grassland management principles - Split - season Systems, Continuous Light Stocking, One Herd, Four Paddock System, Intensive systems
   • Horse pastures
   • Food trees and shrubs
8. Pasture Management Work Tasks
   • Fertilizer
   • Pest and weed control
   • Biological control
   • Advantages of Biological Methods
   • Disadvantages of Biological Methods
   • Irrigation
   • Fallowing
   • Cultivation
   • Pasture renovation
   • Managing pasture after drought
   • Managing pasture after fire

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Determine criteria for selecting appropriate varieties of plants for a pasture.
• Identify characteristics of a pasture plant which are relevant to both making an identification, and to considering its value as a pasture species.
• Evaluate the potential of given sites for pasture development programs.
• Explain the procedures used in managing the establishment of pasture.
• Explain the techniques used in managing pasture which is already been established.
• Assess the commercial and nutritional value of pasture species in the context of farm.
• Develop an appropriate work program for the management of a pasture by a farmer.

What You Will Do

• Prepare a catalogued resource collection of items including pamphlets, brochures and contact addresses for information relevant to pasture varieties.
  • Identify different species of plants growing in an established pasture in your locality, by labelling a pressed specimen of each.
• Assess climatic and edaphic data for a specific pasture site.
• Compare the appropriateness of different soil cultivation techniques for pasture establishment on a specified site in your locality.
• Establish production targets for a specified pasture, explaining how those targets are determined.
• Select suitable machinery for pasture management including establishment and harvest, explaining the selection.
• Write a plan for the establishment of new pasture on a specified site, which lists all important tasks in chronological order.
• Determine sustainable stocking rates of a specified type of animal for different pastures.
• Analyse the food value of different pastures.
• Compare the grazing behaviour of different farm animals.
• Determine grazing capacity of a specified paddock.
• Specify the crop and all other variables.
• Evaluate the production performance of two different specified pastures.
• Identify different weeds that are significant problems in pasture.
• Quantify materials and supply requirements for pasture management.
• Develop management plan for pasture in a specified situation, including a program of tasks to be carried out over a 12 month period.

Improve Your Pasture Management Skills

Every livestock farmer is first and foremost a pasture farmer. A good farmer recognises the different grass types and understands how to get the best out of them. They will be able to distinguish between desirable and undesirable plants and will know the grazing habits of his stock.

Understanding and managing pasture is highly complex. There are many parts to it, with each of these constantly changing. For example, there are many varieties of plants used for grazing in any one area. Each plant has its own rhythm and will react differently to environmental conditions and treatment.

Livestock species graze in a variety of ways. Sheep graze close but cannot handle long grass, goats browse on bushes, while cattle eat long grass and are not as fussy as sheep.

Natural pasture is also constantly changing and developing according to the environment and the number and types of animals which graze it. These changes can be good or bad. They are not always noticeable as they can take place very slowly. There is no doubt that man and animals have the ability to make rapid and bad changes to our native pastures.

A further problem is that farmers rarely have one sort of pasture. Most farms will have some natural pasture and some improved pastures. The natural pasture is often a mix of grasses with some grasses suiting one type of animal and others that suit a different type of stock. The improved pastures on a farm are specially planted to provide grazing at various times of the year and so need quite different management.

By understanding all the different parts that affect grassland, a farmer can begin to effectively manage their most important resource - livestock grazing.

Choosing a Pasture

Pastures are all different. They differ in terms of both the mix of plants which they are composed of, and in the way those plants grow (i.e., general plant health and vigour). For effective grazing, the pasture needs to match its use. That is, the number and type of animals being grazed should be appropriate to the pasture type and characteristics.

Seed Coating

A new development available to farmers is coated seed. Grass seeds face many hazards before and during germination. They are light and can be blown away. They need precise amounts of moisture and nutrients to germinate and grow. If the seed is a legume, it requires a specific type of Rhizobium bacteria to enable it to fix nitrogen. (Note: Fixing nitrogen is a term used to describe a process by which bacteria living on the roots of these legumes, extract nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form which is able to be used by plants).

A coating around the seed affords a great deal of protection at no extra cost. The coat protects the seed from stresses like acid or infertile soil, sun, wind and low moisture. Rodents and birds avoid coated seed. The coat can include a pesticide if necessary.

Coated seed flows easily making sowing by machine smoother. Even the light, woolly seeds like "Digit Grass" are more evenly distributed when coated. The coating makes all the seeds the same weight and size for precision drilling.

Why Study this Course?

This course strengthens your knowledge and ability to effectively choose the most appropriate plant species for a pasture, to meet property and environmental needs, and optimise the regimes of the animals being grazed. As you move through this course, your understanding of pasture ecosystems will grow, and you will become increasingly aware of what might be done to improve pasture, and hence improve the health, wellbeing and productivity of animals grazing on it.

Following the completion of this course, you will have strengthened your capacity to work in a wide range of agricultural jobs, including:

• Farm Manager
• Farm Hand
• Agricultural Consultant
• Farm Supplies Manager/ Pasture Seed Company Officer
• Agricultural Researcher, Writer, Broadcaster
• Agriculture Teacher
• Produce or Land Agent

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