![]() Walker (of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station). Mosely (of Montana State University) and J.W. Glidewell (of the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Oklahoma), J.C. I recently came across a 2001 paper in Proceedings, Western Section, American Society of Animal Science by B.C. Ryan Mahoney of Emigh Livestock, for example, reports that he can increase the stocking rate on his pastures by grazing sheep and cattle - without over-utilizing the pastures.īut what about animal performance? Obviously, the point of any commercial grazing operation is to put pounds on livestock or to produce offspring. The ranchers in the Delta, however, are finding that this ratio doesn't necessarily hold. Typically, a rangeland manager (like me) would suggest that one cow equals five sheep in terms of stocking rate in other words, for every five sheep a rancher adds to a pasture, he or she would have to remove one cow. For the most part, however, livestock producers in the foothills practice multi-species grazing on a very small scale.Ī number of larger ranching operations in the Sacramento Delta have been grazing sheep and cattle together on a large scale with promising results. Some producers have observed that grazing small ruminants with cattle can provide predator protection benefits as well. Each species is impacted by different internal parasites grazing more than one species in a pasture can disrupt the life cycles of these parasites. Each of these livestock species has different forage preferences and grazing behaviors. Multi-species grazing - grazing cattle, sheep, goats, or even poultry or pigs in the same pastures - is often cited in the popular small farm press as a beneficial practice. ![]()
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