Ranchers Sing The Praises Of Mob Grazing of Cattle
Mob grazing, or short-duration, high-intensity grazing, improves pasture while increasing stocking rate, its practitioners say.Multiple daily moves, watching the degree of utilization and focusing on animal performance are the keys to a successful mob-grazing program.
February 28, 2012
Gary Wofford, Kevin Fulton, Chad Peterson, Greg Judy and Mark Brownlee are “mob” men – mob grazing, that is. The term refers to short-duration, high-intensity grazing of many cattle on a small area of pasture, moved several times a day to new forage.
To understand mob grazing, imagine how millions of bison moved for centuries without fences.
“They grazed in huge herds, spending short periods in certain areas and moving on – after fouling the feed with manure/urine or chased by predators,” says Gary Wofford, who ranches in arid southeast Colorado. “They might not return for months or a year, allowing grass to utilize the fertilizer provided by their manure/urine, and to fully recover.”
Holistic management educator Ian Mitchell-Innes defines mob grazing as moving animals around a pasture at high density to emulate that predator-prey relationship in which animals graze in tight groups and keep moving to protect the herd.
“As a result, only the plant tops were eaten, but that’s where all the energy is. The rest of the plant was trodden onto the ground, where it served as litter, providing soil nutrients and protecting the soil from sun and erosion,” he explains.
Kevin Fulton, who ranches in central Nebraska, rotationally grazed his cattle for 40 years before initiating intensive grazing nine years ago. He began by moving cattle daily, then multiple daily moves. He learned that when you rest pastures longer – dividing them into smaller paddocks and taking more time to get back to each small piece – forage production improves.
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“The more paddocks, the more significant the positive changes will be,” he says.
Chad Peterson, north central Nebraska, was an early adopter. Drought forced him to begin on a small, trial-and-error basis in 2001. “In my experimentation, I kept making paddocks smaller in order to extend recovery time for the plants. This produced fantastic results so I kept doing it.”
In 2002, he met grazing guru Allan Savory. After reading Savory’s how-to book, Peterson realized that what he’d been doing was called ultra-high stock density. In 2007, his ranch was part of a University of Nebraska grazing tour in which Savory was a presenter. During the tour, someone coined the term “mob grazing,” Peterson says, and the name stuck.
Stocking Density
Doug Peterson, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) state grassland conservationist in Missouri, says stocking density is determined by the animal pounds per acre. For instance, 100, 1,000-lb. cows would be 100,000 lbs. “So, on a half-acre, 100 cows would be 200,000 lbs., while 100 cows on 10 acres would be 10,000 lbs.,” he says.
Jim Gerrish, grazing consultant and owner of American Grazinglands Services in May, ID, says some proponents of mob grazing say stock density must be at least 100,000 lbs./acre.
“I’ve been doing that for years with once-daily moves, but I’m not mob grazing. Others say it must be at least 500,000 lbs./acre to accomplish your goal. It is multiple moves per day and the high-stock density that differentiate mob grazing from other management intensive grazing (MIG) forms,” he says.
“The higher the density, with shorter grazing periods, the more uniform the urine/manure distribution will be. You’re fertilizing the entire piece – dumping more nitrogen back on that pasture. For instance, 100,000 lbs. of animals typically leave 50-55 lbs. of readily available nitrogen on the ground as urine. The higher the stock density, the more uniformly nitrogen is distributed,” Gerrish says.
Animal performance
Mitchell-Innes is a stockman who learned these principles by trial and error in South Africa 14 years ago. He later became a holistic management educator and now preaches the principles worldwide.
He says people must monitor the cattle to know if they’re doing it correctly. “Otherwise, you’ll go broke,” he says.
The NRCS’s Doug Peterson says large groups of cows confined in small areas become incredibly aggressive grazers.
“You must make sure they have enough forage and only eat the part of the plant that meets their nutritional needs. Dry cows can probably eat 60-70% of the plant, but perhaps only the top 30% of the plant meets the needs of lactating cows or young stockers,” he explains.
Multiple daily moves, watching the degree of utilization and focusing on animal performance are the keys.
“Many people attempt to get a high degree of plant utilization (70-80%) in an hour or two. But if they’re not giving animals enough total feed during the day, individual performance goes down.”
Dry pregnant cows that are winter-grazing on low-quality stockpiled forage can eat 70-80% of forage and still have good animal performance – maintaining body condition while stretching feed over more days. This is different than mob grazing in summer with pairs or stockers where you need to optimize animal performance, however.
“Your focus should be on keeping daily intake high,” Gerrish explains. If you don’t move them soon enough, they eat a lot at first, then intake tapers off too much before the next move. Layout and design of paddocks and portable fence becomes important for saving time when moving often, he adds.
“If you bunch cattle tightly, don’t limit their plant selection,” says Doug Judy, a Missouri operator. “I’m taking the top third of the plant, then moving cows – regardless of what the pasture looks like. My interns are trained to look at the cattle, watching their left side as they come through the gate – to see whether they left them in the pasture too long. If you keep shortchanging them on gut fill, cows lose weight,” Judy says.
Increased Stocking Rate
As pastures become more productive, most ranchers increase stocking rate. Fulton says the size of the increase depends on the land and its condition. He’s increased his stocking rate another 80%, but others have gone as high as 400%, he says.
“Most folks who want to run 50% more cattle, might go out and rent 50% more land, but you be able to increase numbers that much just by changing management. And a stocking increase is mostly profit because there’s no increase in overhead,” Fulton says.
It just requires a little more labor. You can increase stocking rate during your grazing period, or use the additional forage to extend animal unit days. Some producers extend grazing by one to five months.
“We’ve gone to year-round grazing, which many people say you can’t do in central Nebraska,” Fulton says. “There are times that we feed a little hay, but we stockpile grass and graze through winter most years (see In Search Of 300 Day Grazing).”
Chad Peterson claims he has sufficient forage to outlast a yearlong drought. His ranch originally ran 300-400 cows, but he’s doubled that; plus, he brings in 700 stockers for six months. He grazes year-round but buys hay for blizzard emergencies.
Wofford bought his 10-section ranch in 2006. It had been grazed continuously, and the NRCS-recommended stocking rate was 125 pairs, he says.
“I kept 120-150 pairs until I got fencing and water sources partially developed for mob grazing in 2008. The past two years, I’ve been running a 500-pair equivalent, and the grass has improved phenomenally. NRCS is thrilled; I’m thrilled.”
He says he accomplished the increase and evolved to year-round grazing by putting a water source in each section and installing permanent electric fencing to divide it into smaller pastures.
“This allows flexibility to graze for grass health as well as animal performance. My neighbors’ grass is 2 in. tall. By allowing my grass to fully recover, I have native grasses more than 1 ft. tall. This alone creates more forage. Plus, my grass also has deeper root systems. In our current drought, I had green grass growing all summer,” Wofford says.
Species diversification
Mob grazing leads to plant diversity, beneficial for nutritional needs of cattle and health of the land.
“The more diverse the plants, the more resilient the pasture,” says Doug Peterson. “Cool and warm-season grasses and broadleaf plants in the mix help it withstand drought.” He says some mob graziers have counted up to 100 different species in their pastures.
Chad Peterson says he finds new plants every year. Getting away from the monocultures and tame pastures some stockmen once deemed satisfactory greatly multiplies productivity.
“Long rest periods are the key. I use a longer recovery period than some people – a year or more – and continue to get more plant species. My pastures also need longer rest because I’m in a more brittle environment with less rainfall,” he says.
“In many types of rotational systems, plants are always grazed in vegetative (growing) stage, never allowed to become mature. Those systems never have the diversity we’re seeing with mob grazing. With MIG systems, for instance, you’re trying to keep one plant (grass) at optimum vegetative stage,” he adds.
Certain plants are always grazed severely while others are hardly touched. “Even if you leave cows there only a short time, they eat their favorites. You must extend recovery period to accommodate those plants or they’ll die out.”
“With a long recovery period, there’s always something palatable and nutritious. In September, it’s sunflowers in our pastures. In this region, you see sunflowers along road ditches but never in pastures,” says Chad Peterson, because they never had a chance to mature.
“My meadows are full of sunflowers in the fall, and it’s the first thing cattle eat. Sunflowers are high in sugar then, because they’re a late-flowering forb. We have a lot of headed-out forage and people think I’ve wasted it,” he says. But there’s no such thing as waste in this system. Mature plants also provide a canopy for other plants to grow up into, protecting them from heat and drying out, he adds.
“If you don’t have enough diversity, and graze too often, you’re managing for cool-season grasses and it’s like a lawn. In spring, when it’s rapidly growing, you can keep mowing it. But by July-August, without water it stops growing and turns brown.
“Mob grazing’s big plus is plant diversity; different plants do well in different conditions – always providing something nutritious for cattle,” Chad Peterson says.
Soil Health
Doug Peterson was a soil scientist with NRCS and had several things happen in his own operation (400 cows) that led him to see what animal impact and trampling could do.