Short Duration Grazing

Background

There is a need to demonstrate that the effect of High Density, Short term Grazing on farmer profitability as well as veld composition.

It has been claimed that Holistic Management (HM) and specifically, Holistic Planned Grazing (HPG, hereafter holistic grazing), can reduce desertification and reverse climate change by using livestock as a tool. At the same time, high animal densities and stocking rates associated with holistic grazing are claimed to result in improved plant and animal production but with little evidence or suggested mechanisms for these changes. The project addressed these gaps in knowledge via a three-year trial and corral studies, fence-line contrasts of existing and long-term practitioners of holistic grazing in the grassland biome, and remote sensing over sub-Saharan Africa.

Useful applications of holistic grazing based on our data are:

Holistic grazing may be useful as a tool for specific purposes such reduction of heterogeneity of plant standing biomass; alternatively, managers who wish to enhance vegetation heterogeneity and possibly initiate the formation of grazing lawns might consider adopting season-long grazing which, in combination with fire, commonly used in FCG, may enhance biodiversity;
Degraded rangeland may be restored to higher levels of basal cover and forage palatability by matching the soil resource status to the appropriate grazing management approach, i.e. managers adopting more intensive rotational grazing might try maximizing grazing frequency on nutrient-rich soils, and grazing recovery on nutrient-poor soils;
Holistic grazing may be used to reduce tick loads;
High-density grazing practices do not increase plant or animal production and due to increased infrastructure and labour costs are thus less profitable than conventional season-long grazing or the four-camp approach;
Corrals at animal densities over 400 LSU ha-1 may be a useful disturbance regime for restoration
of bare ground and increasing phosphorus concentrations for cropping but only on already disturbed ground.