You have heard me talk a lot about Management Intensive Grazing--or MIG, as we call it. MIG is a method of animal husbandry that primarily applies to care and feeding of ruminant (animals with multiple stomachs that chew cud) animals. When practicing MIG, the burden of care and animal needs falls directly on the Rancher. It is a very steep learning curve, and without careful attention to detail, your animals' nutrition can go downhill fast!
The benefits are almost endless. In MIG, we use only a small section of our available resources (grass) for a very short period of time, usually 24 hours. The above picture shows us using portable electric fence to accomplish this. If you look closely in the foreground of the picture, you can see the grazed pasture from the previous day and further down the field, the green new growth the Cattle will be moving into. They will spend 24 hours in this new section before we remove the fence closest to the foreground, pace off a new rotation, and build another fence in the new growth. The cattle will not re-graze this pasture again until the plants have regrown (we check the height every four days during this time of year). MIG puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the soil, but only very rapidly. As you can imagine, leaving cattle on any section of land continuously could easily spell disaster - they will overgraze the plants and compact the soil too much; but with MIG, this high-foot-pounds of pressure disturbs the soil, adds oxygen, and brings native seeds to the surface.
Since plants have only one mission in life--to go to seed as fast as possible--and cattle have only one mission in life--to eat grass--the whole system will balance perfectly, if the cattle can graze and progress at exactly the right pace . The problem with continuous grazing is this: the Cows win at their mission, and the plants loose-- they never get a chance to recover properly. That is where MIG comes into play. MIG allows the plants proper recovery time--enough time to try to put on bulk and make seeds. If orchestrated properly, the growth cycle can be intermittently interrupted by the grazing of the cattle, thus "resetting" the grass back to near-zero, and encouraging its natural survival instinct to grow again and thus feeding the cattle over and over again.
All this, as you might imagine, is very management intensive. We need to know the proper nutritional requirement of the cattle and the growth rate of the grass--both of which vary seasonally. This must be calculated, balanced and planned--very precisely and with great care. I personally dedicate between 1 and 3 hours daily to MIG on our ranch.
It's a ton of work. But when we are done, we get great cattle, healthy land and a productive environment. In my opinion, it's the only way to manage cattle properly.
Since plants have only one mission in life--to go to seed as fast as possible--and cattle have only one mission in life--to eat grass--the whole system will balance perfectly, if the cattle can graze and progress at exactly the right pace . The problem with continuous grazing is this: the Cows win at their mission, and the plants loose-- they never get a chance to recover properly. That is where MIG comes into play. MIG allows the plants proper recovery time--enough time to try to put on bulk and make seeds. If orchestrated properly, the growth cycle can be intermittently interrupted by the grazing of the cattle, thus "resetting" the grass back to near-zero, and encouraging its natural survival instinct to grow again and thus feeding the cattle over and over again.
All this, as you might imagine, is very management intensive. We need to know the proper nutritional requirement of the cattle and the growth rate of the grass--both of which vary seasonally. This must be calculated, balanced and planned--very precisely and with great care. I personally dedicate between 1 and 3 hours daily to MIG on our ranch.
It's a ton of work. But when we are done, we get great cattle, healthy land and a productive environment. In my opinion, it's the only way to manage cattle properly.
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