Diversifying a Monoculture: How Management Intensive Grazing is Transforming Our Pastures

When we first moved to this property most of the pastures were almost 100% fescue. The previous owners had been spraying it multiple times a year to keep weeds from taking over as a result of being a cattle pasture for at least 25 years, so fescue was pretty much the only thing surviving.

Fescue can be a fine thing to have growing in your pastures, but it is not the most desirable, most animals prefer to eat other things.

Our goats will eat it like crazy in the early spring when there is nothing else growing, and they are tired of hay, but after that they will hardly touch it.

Besides the animals not wanting it, the other problem with a fescue monoculture (apart from the fact that monocultures are just totally unnatural) is that it is a clump forming grass, so with nothing else growing, to fill the gaps, there was a lot of bare soil in the pastures, which is never good for the land.

What most people would think is "there is only fescue in the pasture, so I will need to till the whole thing and replant if I want other things to grow here".

Well, we haven't planted a thing, and we now have clover, vetch, yarrow, hop trefoil, switch grass (a grass the goats absolutely love) and plantain coming up all over!

The picture with just grass is what some of the pastures used to be like, the one with the flowers is what they are turning into.

The two sides of our driveway have undergone the most significant change; there is very little fescue left, and clover and other good pasture plants are everywhere!

Where did all those plants come from? Well, some seeds can remain viable for hundreds of years in the soil, only sprouting when conditions are right.

So, it is very likely that your pastures, even if they are completely overgrazed and growing nothing good in them right now, have thousands of good seeds waiting to come up!

It is generally not necessary to till and replant pastures, the most important thing is to fix the grazing practices, because if your grazing practices aren’t good, even if you replant a pasture, it will revert back to the way it was.

The most important principle of good grazing is not regrazing a pasture too soon. It needs to have sufficient regrowing time to remain healthy. In general, you should let pastures regrow to a height of 8-12 inches before re-grazing.

Our guinea pigs are pasture rotated too!

Pastures can start to regrow very quickly, so livestock should never be in a pasture for longer than about three days at a time.

This is because the pasture could start to regrow and be re-grazed by the animals while it is still short, which is very damaging to the pasture.