ROTATIONAL GRAZING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 291, 8 December 1928, Page 22 (Supplement)

ROTATIONAL GRAZING

KEEPING GRASS DOWNMuch has been said and written of late years concerning the value of rotational grazing and the more intelligent use of pasture. The old casual methods of stocking are passing away as the fanner comes to realise that on high priced land tho search for maximum results must proceed along the lines indicated by lengthy research and experiment. Experimental work launched at Hohenheim, in Europe, some 10 years ago. gave an early impetus to the movement. Farmers long ago realised that vigorous young grass represented the best food for milk production and that tho more mature herbage, with its large proportion of fibrous stems, was less suitable, but it has remained for scientists to impress upon farmers as a body the great advantages of rotational grazing and never letting tho feed “get away.” In rotational grazing, grass is viewed as an actual crop which, like any other, has to be harvested at the time when it is most economically sound to do so. But unlike most crops which are reaped once a year, grass may be havested whenever the growth has reached the requisite height of four to six inches in the case of dairy stock, and considerably less where -hoop used as the “harvesting implement.” The periods alternating with grazing under the rotational method arc to he viewed as definite, crop growing on*‘« during which no stock is pastured on the paddocks. New Zealand, with its advancing development in grassland farming, offe--a splendid field for intensive study oi what is becoming popularly termed “the modern system of grassland farming, ’’ but which, in point of fact, is a« uld as the tethering system of the European peasant. In reality it represents the best possible use being made of grass when at its most nutrirhei stage.