Assessing systems and approaches to grazing management

Assessing approaches to grazing management follows the completion of business planning and the identification of specific natural resource management (NRM) goals. After this is done changes in operations at the farm and paddock level that will assist in achieving the goals can be determined. 

The most commonly used grazing strategies in Australian pastoral systems include:  

• set stocking  
• seasonal tracking  
• set utilisation  
• rotational grazing and spelling  
• opportunistic grazing 
• tactical grazing.  

The MLA-funded project, Investigating intensive grazing systems in Northern Australia, compared the grazing management systems of nine cattle businesses to determine what impact they had on livestock, land and feed. The grazing management systems compared were cell grazing, rotational grazing and continuous grazing.  

The project found: 

• The underlying driver of successful grazing management is the ability to manage stocking rates to match the feed resource available, regardless of the system that management is framed within. 
• Even the continuous grazing system involved periods of pasture spelling and changes to herd numbers based on season because all participants had an interest in maintaining land health. 
• The findings supported the principle that indicates that stocking rate management, and not grazing system, is the major driver of pasture and animal productivity and natural resource health. 
• The more intense systems had higher infrastructure investments (e.g. fences and water). If the landholder is a skilled pasture manager, it is unlikely the intense system infrastructure costs will pay off in terms of improved pasture or livestock productivity. 

Though a cattle-focused report, the findings related to grazing management are relevant to pastoral sheep enterprises.