Most of us love the taste of vegetables fresh from the garden. Well, it turns out beef cattle sort of feel the same way. They prefer to dine on certain grasses in pastures; the lushest green growth that is fresh and tastes great to them. They will tend to consume the most palatable parts of the pasture first. When we limit their grazing to small areas, they will eat more of the less appealing forages available to them and thus maximizing our pasture’s potential.
Many of you know this system is often referred to as rotational grazing in which cattle are moved throughout the grazing season, allowing the grass to rest when the animals are not actively grazing. The longer and harder we graze pastures, the harder it can be for them to recover from the stress of that high grazing pressure.
