All-day Grazing School at the PASA conference

Grazing School at the PASA annual conference in State College PA with Dr Heather Darby:

Grazing part one: Improving pastures and feeding the herd (or flock): The morning 1/2 of this workshop will cover the essentials of how to use livestock to manage pasture plants so that the pasture productivity and quality improve, while also meeting the nutritional needs of the herd or flock. Topics will include how different plants respond to grazing, (good and bad!), how to calculate paddock sizes, stocking density, stocking rates and decide what pre-grazing height and post grazing residual height to use to maximize pasture improvement and pasture dry matter intake for livestock. As time allows, we will look at a variety of real farm grazing systems and discuss system design, fence, water systems, & lanes.

Taking grazing to the next level: Monitoring the system and building resiliency

In this session, Dr Heather Darby and Sarah Flack will discuss methods to monitor the pasture system and prepare our grass based farms for drought, high rain fall events and other challenges created by climate change. Using photos of pastures, different plant species, sheep, goats & cows, we can learn to better observe & monitor pastures & cattle so that we can better understand if our grazing systems are working the way we want them to. Then we will go deeper into management to improve soil health and fertility and when irrigation may be a useful addition to the farms infrastructure.