Strategic grazing management using low-stress herding and night penning for animal impact

2016/7/1| Montana: Powell Co.

Strategic grazing management using low-stress herding and night penning for animal impact

An article in the Stockmanship Journal
By Matt Barnes

Map of the treatment pasture, where co-mingled steers were herded during the day and penned at night using temporary electric fence; and relative use at the end of the grazing period by ocular estimate (low, moderate, high, and very high). Note that by the end of the growing season, utilization would be much lower. Also showing water points, use cages (exclosures), and transects (P1-7, C6-7).

In this project, Whit Hibbard and I—a rancher and a conservationist—applied low-stress approaches to herding and night-penning cattle at relatively high stocking density (SD) within a rangeland pasture in a larger grazing rotation. We increased herd instinct, and we used SD to increase animal impact in a target area, with benefits for rangeland forage production. We used leading-edge methods to intensify grazing management within an existing rotation, increasing herd instinct and effective SD with low-stress herding and night-penning. We also showed that the high SDs of the night pens (comparable to SDs in very intensive rotational grazing) could make grazing use more even. The night pens also documented an example of using herd effect to increase animal impact, and positive results of that impact on rangeland forage production.

Read the full paper on ResearchGate.

Author’s note: I wrote this paper as field and research coordinator at People and Carnivores. Coauthor Whit Hibbard was ranch manager at the Dog Creek unit of Sieben Live Stock Company in northwestern Montana.

The article was published in a themed issue of the Stockmanship Journal on stockmanship and range management. Hibbard and I also co-wrote the lead article on Stockmanship and range management, which is also available on ResearchGate.