2025 Adaptive Grazing Tips, Tricks, & Hacks

The 2025 grazing season is fast approaching, and it is time to prepare ourselves for a successful season. There are a number of key factors we need to consider. Let’s get started.

Strategic Rules of Disruption:

Incorporate strategic Rules of Disruption into the grazing strategy. Key disruptions play a significant role in your ongoing progress. https://understandingag.com/the-6-3-4tm-explained/

• One disruption that can be incorporated either several times a week, or even daily, is the High-Density/Low0-Density Paddock (HD/LD). At the appropriate stock density (minimum 500,000 lbs./ac to1M lbs./ac) this HD paddock should only take about 30 minutes to achieve the desired impact. It is dependent on several factors:
  • Highly reliant on observation and should not be simply a timed event.
  • The HD strips should be provided a long recovery and rest prior to being grazed again.
  • Employs the concept of creating biological hotspots and the Biological Ripple Effect.
  • This is best done when you have plenty of plant biomass and height, and the grasses are at boot stage or beyond. You will achieve the highest degree of trample effect and create the most effective biological hotspot. DO NOT implement this disruption when grasses are highly vegetative.
• Whenever you introduce a disruption, make certain to be highly observant and to observe how the disruption is impacting the soil, the plants, and the livestock.  
• It is crucial that you understand how to estimate forage DM availability per acre so you can build appropriately sized paddocks.  
• Combining disruptions can be instrumental in making ongoing progress. As an example, you can use HD/LD while also changing the shape of the paddock (long and narrow vs square) and providing a significantly longer rest period.
• Do not repeat the same disruptions in the same place year after year. Alter disruptions for optimal progress.
• For more details, click here.

Stockpile Grazing:

• The most effective way to control early spring grazing is to build a winter stockpile the fall prior.
• Stockpiled grass allows for an extended active grazing season each year and saves significantly on winter feeding, labor, fuel, depreciation, maintenance, and opportunity costs. It also preserves your pastures from tractor traffic during wet winter conditions.
• For most areas in the temperate regions of the U.S., you will need to start stockpiling forages for winter stockpile grazing by August. This takes prior planning in your spring and summer grazing rotations. If you enter August with short pastures, you will be hard-pressed to build sufficient stockpile.
• Reserve at least one stockpiled pasture to serve as the first pasture to be grazed when you hit the spring flush.
• For more details, click here.

Consider Bale Grazing:

• Bale grazing can be a very powerful and effective way to create highly productive biological hotspots.
• Bale grazing is generally considered as something to do in the winter, but effective bale grazing can be implemented any time of the year. Summer bale grazing can be highly effective since the impact happens when we still have significant growing season remaining. This can allow for new plant species responding from seedbank stimulation to germinate and establish a sold root system before winter hits.
• Bale grazing can be accomplished either through grazing of intact bales or through rolling out the hay.
  • Intact Bale Grazing
    • Cattle will eat about 50- 60% of the hay and the remainder will become trampled to supply new carbon (C) and organic matter (SOM) to the soil.
    • Hay bales are nutrient rich and have more than $100 worth of nutrients per ton. So, the 40-50% trampled is not wasted hay, but the cheapest nutrients, C, and SOM you can supply.
    • Place bales about 30 feet apart in a checkerboard fashion and allow cattle access as needed each day to meet their forage DM needs. Figure about 50% consumption of each bale. So, if bales weigh 1000 lbs, you have 500 lbs. of available forage DM. A 1200 lb. cow needs 36 lbs. per day of DM. So, 500 lbs. of hay would provide for about 14 cows per day.
    • Pre-place bales in the fall of each year in the areas you want to winter bale graze. This allows you to place bales when pasture conditions are dry and will easily hold up to the tractor traffic to place bales.
    • Move cattle though daily by simply moving the polywire to the next row of bales.
    • Make good observations to make certain you are getting the desired impact and move according to impact.
  • Unrolling Hay
    • When hay is unrolled for bale grazing, the cattle will consume about 75-80% of the hay and leave behind the remainder.
    • This produces good fertility and trample effect, but does not leave behind as many nutrients, C, and SOM.
    • This requires you to unroll hay daily or every other day throughout the winter-feeding period, so more vehicle traffic in the fields.

Forage Recovery & Rest:

• It is important to note that the best balance of protein and energy in grasses is when the plants are at or near the boot stage and slightly beyond.
• There is a big difference between recovery of plants after a grazing event and rest of the plants and soil after a grazing event.
• Recovery is when a single grass plant has at least four fully formed leaves that all come to a sharp point and the point is turning tan or brown.
  • If there are still blunt edges to the blades of grass, then the grass has not fully recovered from the prior grazing vent.
  • Plants should be fully recovered BEFORE grazing a paddock again.
• Rest comes on top of recovery and is vital to building significant rooting depth and root biomass.  
  • Rest is crucial to building plant species diversity. Without adequate rest, you will never effectively build diversity.
  • Rest allows for much greater C and SOM.
  • Rest allows the microbes to be fully fed and to greatly multiply. This is critical to nutrient and water cycling capacity.
  • The proper rest period is minimally the same period it takes for plant recovery. So, if it takes 30 days for a plant to fully recover from the last grazing event, then add an additional 30 days of rest BEFORE grazing again. However, additional rest beyond the initial rest period should be employed periodically to allow for significantly greater rooting depth to occur.

Build soil aggregate and root depth:

• To build highly functional soils that are also truly resilient, you must focus on building soil aggregate depth and plant root depth.
• Aggregate depth and root depth go hand-in-hand. They cannot be separated from each other.
• Building aggregate depth and root depth requires longer rest periods combined with planned, purposeful disruptions.
• Use the shovel test to monitor this.  You must first know what your current aggregate depth and rooting depth is. Take pictures in each field so you have a record of where the aggregate depth is each year.
• Avoid practices that may harm aggregate and rooting depth, such as overgrazing, returning too soon after a prior grazing event, not leaving enough residual after a grazing event, tillage, herbicides, etc.

Plant Species Diversity:

• It is hugely important to build plant species diversity.
• Greater diversity results in far more biomass production, greater nutrient cycling, better water infiltration and retention, better nutrition for the cattle, and greater resiliency.
• Better diversity also attracts a lot more wildlife, including beneficial insects and pollinators, birds, and other wildlife.
• Better diversity enhances the phytonutrient profile of the end products.
• This diversity should include grasses, legumes, and forbs. Ultimately, the array of each in a well-balanced pasture would be about 60%+ grasses, 30%+ forbs and the balance in legumes.

Epigenetic Selection:

• So, you’re probably wondering what does epigenetic selection have to do with grazing tips? Well, a lot. If we do not have livestock that epigenetically fit our system, our forages, our grazing management, then even the best job of grazing can still produce subpar results.
• Initiating an epigenetic selection/culling strategy can pay huge dividends in just a few years.
• Gradually reduce the supplemental inputs and parasiticides provided to the cattle to uncover those that cannot perform without those inputs. For more information, click here.
• For cows that prove they cannot perform as well as others, mark them for culling and do not save any of their progeny.
• Epigenetic selection creates tremendous resilience. Resilient herds are fairly trouble free and significantly more profitable. For more information, click here.

Documenting Progress:

• It is important to document progress, and this means you need baseline data.
• Baseline data is comprised of shovel test results (record in pictures), plant Brix tests, infiltration tests, soil temperature measurements, plant species diversity data (can use Picture This App or other appropriate plant ID App) and soil testing data.
  • Soil test data includes the Haney Test, PLFA Test, and TND Test.
  • Perform the Haney Test annually on each major area of the ranch.
  • The PLFA Test should be performed every 2-3 years.
  • The TND Test should be performed every 5-6 years.

Be Prepared for Contingencies:

• It is very important to prepare in advance for possible weather challenges such as dry or even droughty conditions, as well as wetter than normal conditions.
• You cannot prepare for these conditions when you are already in them. By that time, it is too late, and you are simply reacting rather than being proactive. 
• For either wet conditions or dry conditions, it is best to leave plenty of residual after a grazing event. Grazing too short and leaving too little plant leaf material results in lower soil mycorrhizal populations and a collapse in soil aggregation.
• Aggregation is crucial to the soil being able to infiltrate and hold water during wet conditions. This minimizes pugging and disturbance to the soil profile.
• Aggregation is crucial to the soil being able to infiltrate and hold water during dry and droughty conditions. This minimizes loss of moisture in the soil and allows for greater resilience.
• When you start spring grazing each year, graze as if there will be a summer drought. Never assume it will keep raining.

Consider Resource Concerns:

• The best use of each pasture is relative to current status and implementation of planned, purposeful disruptions including…
  • Which disruptions to use where, when and how.
  • Purpose of each disruption and understanding that purpose, plus follow-up to a specific disruption.
  • What qualifies as a disruption? For example, the addition of sheep can serve as a disruption.
  • Key observations needed for best decision-making.
• Best use of each livestock class and /or species:
  • Type of impact.
  • Timing of impact.
  • How to move each class/species across the landscape.
  • Understanding short-term vs. long-term impacts.
• Livestock water infrastructure:
  • Strategic addition of water infrastructure.
  • Cost effective water infrastructure.
  • How to use water as a tool in soil building and ecosystem management.
• The number and prevalence of flowering plant species should increase across the ranch. This supports a thriving wild pollinator population.
• We strongly believe that alignment with regenerative principles nurtures:
  • Biodiversity
  • Carbon sequestration (reversing the flow to make more Carbon go into the soil than is being released from the soil, plants and animals back into the atmosphere)
  • Improved wildlife habitat
  • Increased carrying capacity
  • Improved net revenues.

For additional information and practical perspectives visit: