Dividing the pastureland into relatively small paddocks and grazing each piece for only a short period of time allows each pasture a rest between grazing.
An art form as much of a science, rotational grazing increases the value of grass as a food for grazing animals.
Rotational grazing, unlike feedlots, requires the farmer to be engaged with the land and with the animals.
Overgrazing will ruin not only the economics of the farm land but the health and growth of the animal.
Why grass-Fed Is Best
More Nutritious A major benefit of raising animals on pasture is that their products are healthier for you. For example, compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,”
Unnatural Diets Animals raised in factory farms are given diets designed to boost their productivity and lower costs. The main ingredients are genetically modified grain and soy that are kept at artificially low prices by government subsidies. To further cut costs, the feed may also contain “by-product feedstuff” such as municipal garbage, stale pastry, chicken feathers, and candy. Until 1997, U.S. cattle were also being fed meat that had been trimmed from other cattle, in effect turning herbivores into omnivores. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause of BSE or “mad cow disease.”
Grass Farming Benefits the Environment
When properly managed, raising animals on pasture instead of factory farms is a net benefit to the environment. To begin with, a diet of grazed grass requires much less fossil fuel than a feedlot diet of dried corn and soy. On pasture, grazing animals do their own fertilizing and harvesting. The ground is covered with greens all year round, so it does an excellent job of harvesting solar energy and holding on to top soil and moisture. As you will read in the bulletins below, grazed pasture removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more effectively than any land use, including forestland and ungrazed prairie, helping to slow global warming.
Long-Lived Cows Reduce Global Warming
Bessy has a short lifespan when she is raised in a confinement dairy, which is the way most cows are raised today. She provides a very high volume of milk, partly due to hormone injections and a high-grain diet, but she lasts for only 2-3 years. Then infertility, disease, physical problems, or inflammation end her milking career, and she is sold at auction for hamburger.
Cows raised on grass are healthier and more fertile, making them good milk producers for up to twelve years. These long-lived and more contented cows may reduce greenhouse gas production (methane) between 10 and 11 percent according to a British Study.
Garnsworthy, P.C., The environmental impact of fertility in dairy cows: a modeling approach to predict methane and ammonia emissions, Animal Feed Science & Technology, 2004. 112: 211-223.
Grazing animals make a visible contribution to soil fertility
In a conventional feedlot operation, large amounts of manure are deposited in a relatively small space that is devoid of living plants. Because there is an over-abundance of manure and nothing to fertilize, the manure becomes a "waste management problem" rather than a natural resource. Feedlot operators spend millions of dollars a year trying to curb the offensive odors, groundwater contamination, and surface runoff.
In sharp contrast, when animals are finished on pasture, their manure is deposited naturally over a large area of grassland, allowing the nutrients to be put to immediate use.
The above information was compiled by and used with written permission from www.eatwild.com.