- Author: Emily C. Dooley, UC Davis
Matching herds to landscape can support animal growth and ecological needs
Not all cattle are the same when it comes to grazing. Some like to wander while others prefer to stay close to water and rest areas.
Recognizing those personality differences could help ranchers select herds that best meet grazing needs on rangelands, leading to better animal health and environmental conditions, according to a new paper from the University of California, Davis, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
“Cattle can actually be beneficial for the rangelands,” said lead author Maggie Creamer, who recently earned her Ph.D. in animal behavior at UC Davis. “Vegetation in rangelands actually need these kinds of disturbances like grazing.”
Ranchers can add elements to the rangeland such as water, mineral supplements and fencing to influence where cattle graze, but little research has been done on how those efforts affect individual cows. Considering personalities could save money.
“If you're spending all this money to add a management tool in order to change the distribution of your animals, that's a huge cost to ranchers,” said Creamer. “Thinking about other tools, or selecting certain animals with these grazing traits, might be a better way to optimize the distribution on rangeland rather than spending a bunch of money for something that may ultimately not pan out for all your animals.”
Effects of grazing
Livestock graze on an estimated 56 million acres in California, and healthy rangelands host native vegetation and animals, foster nutrient cycling and support carbon sequestration.
Uneven grazing can degrade water quality, soil health and habitats. Optimizing grazing — including the even spread of cow pies — can improve the ecosystem while also reducing fuel loads for wildfires.
To better understand individual grazing patterns, researchers went to the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center in Browns Valley and tracked 50 pregnant Angus and Hereford beef cows fitted with GPS collars.
The research
The cattle, which were tracked from June to August over two years, had access to 625 acres of grasslands and treed areas ranging in elevation from 600 to 2,028 feet. In the second year, a new watering site was added at a higher elevation.
Across the two years, the cows showed consistent and distinct grazing patterns even when water sources changed. Age and stage of pregnancy did not affect patterns, though cattle tended to clump near water and rest sites on hotter days.
The cows that ventured into higher elevations and farther from watering sites had more variability in their grazing patterns than those that stayed at lower elevations near water. That suggests it may be harder for non-wanderers to adjust to some landscapes.
“Thinking about the topography of your rangeland and your herd of cows can benefit both the animals and the sustainability of the land,” said Creamer, who next month begins work as a postdoctoral scholar in North Carolina.
Gauging personalities
Keying in on personality type may sound difficult, but the researchers also found some clues as to how to pinpoint the wanderers and homebodies. Unlike cattle at feedlots, the breeding cow population, especially on rangelands in California and other western states, live largely “wild” lives and are rarely handled, save for vaccinations and weaning.
Research due to be published later this year found that paying attention to individual cow reactions during those events can help determine personalities. The cows that appeared more passive during those handling interactions tended to be nomadic.
“We found that you can maybe predict those hill climbers if you kind of look at how they act when the veterinarian or rancher handle them,” said senior author Kristina Horback, an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis.
Informing practices
For ranchers, the findings could be invaluable, said Dan Macon, a livestock and natural resources Cooperative Extension advisor in Placer and Nevada counties for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.
“Any time we can improve our understanding of cattle behavior, particularly at the individual level, it can improve how we handle livestock and manage the landscape,” he said.
Macon said that during the recent drought, it was hard to get cattle into higher country, but if ranchers could have selected the nomads, it may have saved money in terms of ranch labor and other efforts.
“If you ask a rancher who has been attentive to their cattle over many years, they know the personalities,” Macon said.
For Creamer and Horback, the research opens new doors into understanding herd behavior and dynamics, one that could be a cheaper alternative to high-tech solutions.
“Animal science tends to look overlook the mind of the animal when searching for solutions to challenges,” Horback said. “It's always been a direct line to genetics for immunity or nutrition, but nothing about the mind of the animal. And that's such a loss. There's so much we can learn from behavior in the end.”
The Russell L. Rustici Rangeland and Cattle Research Endowment supported the research.
This article was first published on the UC Davis News site.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC, The Organic Center, University of Rhode Island partner on $3.5m food-safety study for organic produce growers
Grazing sheep and other livestock can help convert cover crops to fertilizer for orchard crops. To develop best management practices, the University of California and The Organic Center are collaborating on research to help organic orchard growers safely incorporate livestock grazing into their farming practices. The project is funded by a $2 million grant recently awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative research program.
Interest in grazing livestock on cover crops in nut orchards has increased in recent years. However, research is needed to determine the best way to improve soil health and pest suppression, and to address concerns about food-borne pathogens and food safety.
“Organic farmers typically follow the USDA National Organic Program standards for raw animal manure, waiting 90 to 120 days between incorporating raw manure into the soil and harvesting the crop,” said Alda Pires, UC Cooperative Extension urban agriculture and food safety specialist in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis.
“Little research has been conducted to verify adequate waiting periods to reduce contamination risks in integrated crop-livestock production systems,” she said. “This research will fill the knowledge gap and facilitate the development of science-based food safety guidelines for grazing small ruminants in orchards.”
For this four-year project, “Influence of Orchard Grazing on Soil Health and Pest Control While Mitigating Food Safety Risk,” the scientists will study organic almond, walnut and pistachio orchards in two distinct nut-growing regions in California – the Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin Valley. The scientists will assess the effects of livestock grazing of cover crops on bacteria populations, soil health, pest control and economics.
Building soil health
“Growers have consistently raised the need for more information on grazing impacts on nutrient availability during tree growth, as well as potential to build up the biological, physical and chemical pillars of soil health,” said Amelie Gaudin, associate professor and endowed chair of agroecology in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.
Livestock grazing may provide an opportunity to quickly enhance the amount of nitrogen that can be used by plants and microbes when the cover crop is terminated. “This project will help growers develop nitrogen budgets for these more diversified systems and quantify additional benefits and potential tradeoffs for soil health – such as compaction and salinity – to guide the development of place-based best management practices,” Gaudin said.
Pest management
Houston Wilson, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, will be studying the effects of livestock grazing on orchard pests.
“Navel orangeworm, or NOW, is by far the most destructive pest of almonds and pistachios,” Wilson said. “These moths overwinter in unharvested nuts in the orchard, and so removal and destruction of remnant nuts over the winter is the foundation of NOW control. While farmers typically use machinery to do this, grazing with animals may present a unique alternative that is more cost-effective and provides additional ecosystem benefits, such as soil health and weed control.”
Outreach to farmers
As part of the project, The Organic Center was awarded $75,000 to work with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources to direct national extension and education outreach activities. These will include a social media campaign, webinars and educational sessions and a technical report for growers.
“There is an increasing interest from organic farmers to learn how to incorporate livestock into their operations to gain better soil health and fertility,” said Amber Sciligo, director of science programs at The Organic Center.
“This research is very exciting because it will holistically explore the potential risks and benefits of livestock not just to soil health, but also pest control – a truly interdisciplinary project that matches the whole system of the organic farm.”
Produce food-safety management tools
For another organic food-safety project, Pires and Sciligo will be working with Patrick Baur, professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Rhode Island.
The University of Rhode Island and The Organic Center received $3.5 million from USDA's Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative research program for the new organic food-safety education project.
“We're going to develop a new food safety management tool designed specifically for organic soil amendments,” said Baur, who is leading the project. “We're also going to develop a suite of new communication and training tools aimed at the entire fruit and vegetable sector to build a shared language between organic agriculture and the food safety community and help them work better together.”
As part of the produce project, Pires of UC Davis was awarded $1.16 million to conduct a risk assessment and create a publicly accessible dashboard to meet the specific needs of organic growers operating at different scales, under different cropping systems, in different regions.
Also participating in this project will be Beatriz Martinez Lopez, professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis, and Abhinav Mishra and Govindaraj Dev Kumar of the University of Georgia.
/h3>- Author: Dan Macon
Fair warning - you might want to file this blog post under the category, "Aren't Ranchers Ever Happy?!" I'll admit - last year, I was worried about warm temperatures, lack of soil moisture, and dried-up stock ponds here in the Sierra Foothills. We'd had the driest January-March ever recorded. Seasonal creeks weren't running. A lack of stock water was limiting access to some pastures for ranchers in my four counties. But thanks to an early start to the grass season (a germinating rain in October) and warmer-than-usual temperatures, followed by rain (at last) in April 2022, we had plenty of grass from Yuba County south through Placer County. According to the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Centern (SFREC) in Browns Valley (Yuba County), we had 3,806 pounds of forage per acre on May 1, 2022 - 20 percent more than the historical average for that date. Total precipitation from October 2021 through September 2022 was 21.2 inches - about 17 percent lower than the historical average.
The year before that (the 2020-21 water year) was even stranger. That year, SFREC measured just 10.57 inches of precipitation - the driest year since 2000 (drier, even than the worst of the drought years of 2013-2015). Even with the lack of moisture, however, the grass grew - total production was 108 percent of the historical average (3,382 pounds per acre). Once again, most seasonal creeks didn't run. Spring-fed stock water systems failed. But we had grass.
So where do we stand this year? The 2022-23 water year has been phenomenal. We have a near-record snow pack here in the northern Sierra Nevada. The southern Sierra Nevada has the most snow ever recorded! The creeks are running! Ponds are full! The May 2, 2023 Drought Map shows our region of the Sierra Foothills has escaped the drought!
And we're seeing less forage on May 1, 2023, than we saw in either of the last two drought years!
How can this be?! As of today, SFREC has measured just under 35 inches of rain since October 1 - 42 percent more than "normal." But the May 1 forage production figures are below average - just over 3,000 pounds per acre (about 4 percent under the historical average). What's going on here?
Annual rangelands are notoriously complex (in terms of biodiversity, phenology, and productivity). We've known for some time that forage production on our foothill rangelands has as much to do with the timing of precipitation as it does with the total amount. Forage production also depends on adequate soil and air temperature - warmer soils and warmer ambient air temperatures, given adequate moisture, result in greater forage production. Colder temperatures and cloudy days, on the other hand, tend to work against grass growth - as we've seen during this unusually chilly spring in the foothills.
We also know that photo period - the number of daylight hours - plays a role. I've usually thought of this in terms of winter dormancy - in early December, the days are short enough that the grass goes dormant here in the foothills, regardless of moisture or temperature. This year, however, is teaching me that photo period may be equally important in controlling when our rangeland plants flower and set seed. Even though we still have tremendous soil moisture in our rangeland pastures, I'm seeing many of our annual grasses and broadleaf plants "head out" and go to seed - they're just about done growing, despite what seem like favorable conditions. As any rancher will tell you, as soon as our annual forages go to seed, they drop in palatability and nutritional value.
I'll admit, I can't truly bring myself to call this a drought year. I can live with 96% of normal forage production - it's considerably better than the 2100 pounds per acre we had on May 1, 2015 (when I managed the cow herd at SFREC). But this year is an important reminder about how complex our grazing systems truly are. Carrying capacity fluctuates from one year to the next - and from one month to the next. Our job as ranchers is to build enough flexibility into our management systems to allow us to "weather" the valleys in forage production, and benefit from the peaks!
- Author: Jules Bernstein, UC Riverside
Disappearing native is like an environmental Swiss Army knife
Though it is disappearing, California's official state grass has the ability to live for 100 years or more. New research demonstrates that sheep and cattle can help it achieve that longevity.
Purple needlegrass once dominated the state's grasslands, serving as food for Native Americans and for more than 330 terrestrial creatures. Today, California has lost most of its grasslands, and the needlegrass occupies only one tenth of what remains.
It is drought resistant, promotes the health of native wildflowers by attracting beneficial root fungi, burns more slowly than non-native grasses and speeds the postfire recovery of burned lands. For these and other reasons, many who work toward habitat restoration hope to preserve the needlegrass.
“Where it grows, these tall, slender bunches become focal points, beautiful as well as environmentally beneficial,” said Loralee Larios, a UC Riverside plant ecologist affiliated with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. “However, identifying successful management strategies for a species that can live for a couple hundred years is challenging.”
To meet that challenge, Larios teamed up with University of Oregon plant ecologist Lauren Hallett and Northern California's East Bay Regional Park District. They tracked the health of nearly 5,000 individual needlegrass clumps over six years, including an El Niño rain year as well as historic drought.
The researchers took measurements of plant health including growth and seed production. They placed small bags over many of the grass clumps to capture the seeds and quantify the number of seeds they produced.
Their findings, now published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, were that purple needlegrass did better in places where sheep were allowed to graze. The positive effects of the grazing were amplified in times of wetter weather.
Previously, the park district spent a decade trying to assess the success of its grassland maintenance techniques. However, the district's method of applying a strategy like grazing, and then measuring the percentage of needlegrass clumps in a given area resulted in data that didn't follow a discernable pattern from year to year.
“By tracking each plant over time, rather than scanning broadly across an area, we gained much more clarity about how the grass responds to the grazing,” Larios explained. “Perhaps counterintuitively, we saw that the needlegrass generally died back when sheep weren't allowed to graze on it.”
When sheep were removed from the study sites, the needlegrass in all but two of the sites became less healthy. The researchers would like to learn whether the two sites that remained healthy have needlegrasses that are genetically distinct.
Grazing is a controversial strategy for grassland restoration. Some conservationists believe sheep eating the target grass, particularly during already stressful drought years, does not enhance their survival. As far back as the 1800s, some researchers hypothesized that the combination of grazing and drought resulted in the loss of perennial grasses.
Though drought was not beneficial for any of the plants in this study, the researchers believe grazing helped needlegrass survive in at least two ways. One, by trampling on leaf litter and other organic debris, sheep created space for new needlegrass to grow.
“Sometimes you get litter that's as deep as a pencil — so much dead, non-native grass piles up. It's hard for a little seed to get enough light through all of that,” Larios said.
Secondly, sheep eat non-native grasses that generate growth-suppressing debris and compete with purple needlegrass for resources.
When the Spanish colonized California, they brought forage grasses like wild oats that they thought would benefit cattle. Those introduced grasses spread, and now dominate the state's grasslands.
“Our grasslands are known as one of the world's biggest biological invasions,” Larios said.
California has as many as 25 million acres of grasslands, equivalent to the combined areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Though Larios does not believe it is possible to rid the state of all non-native grasses, she said it is possible to maintain or even increase the amount of purple needlegrass.
“It's great for carbon storage, which mitigates climate change, it doesn't serve as wildfire fuel, and cultivates a space for wildflowers that pollinators are then able to use,” Larios said. “We want to keep all those benefits.”
/h3>- Author: Ben Faber