EDMONTON – Healthy soil is key to good grazing, says an American range specialist.
“The trick is in the soil. If you can make the soils healthy, that is where the magic happens,” Wayne Burleson said during the Western Canadian Grazing Conference in Edmonton.
“The main point of this whole talk is we have to listen and give back to the land,” Burleson told 400 producers and agriculture industry staff as he shared his top 10 secrets to growing grass.
He said healthy grass requires a combination of rest and periods of disturbance. For example, grass had almost disappeared in a U.S. historic site that had been fenced off for almost 100 years, while grass thrived on the other side of the fence.
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“It’s quite unnatural to preserve something for five or 10 years with absolutely no disturbance,” he said.
“Through eons of times something always happened out there. The plants have evolved with that kind of disturbance. When you take it away from them … those plants will start to shrivel and die with no disturbance.”
Through his years of grazing management, Burleson has also developed the theory that it’s not so much how much forage is taken, but the amount of time that animals are allowed to graze.
“We want to bite things once and then be gone, wait for that plant to totally recover and then come back.”
Burleson also believes that it takes grass to grow grass. The litter that’s left behind during grazing creates compost that improves soil’s health, especially if hoof action punches the litter into the ground.
“You need to leave the land covered at all times, but the hoof action takes that old litter and old dead plant parts and shoves it down into the soil surface,” he said.
“It’s like a gardener doing his compost. If he just threw his compost on the top, it wouldn’t be as effective. The hoof is doing sort of a rototilling of the organic matter and the material that will become organic matter.”
It’s also important to think holistically. Producers need to assess the entire situation before making decisions.
Burleson encouraged producers to look at the financial, social and environmental implications of their decisions.
Continually monitoring grass and soil is important to prevent problems.
“Bad things happen to those a napping,” said Burleson.
If there is a problem, producers should fix it but also dig deeper to see what caused the problem.
He also encouraged producers to document changes in their land. He told them to take photographs to monitor long-term vegetation changes.
