Adaptive Grazing: Faster Cattle Weight Gain, Better Soil Management

At Beefy Returns, we use ‘adaptive grazing’ as a primary tool to sustain pasture land and increase daily weight gain for our cattle. Adaptive grazing simply means concentrating a group of cattle on a relatively small about of pasture land (for us it is 1/2 arce to an acre) and rotating them off that parcel before the grass/scrubbery is fully consumed (we do this 2x per day on average). This approach enables cattle to constantly and consistently forage while also ensuring the pasture land has time to regenerate.

Adaptive grazing reduces the amount of energy our cattle expend to find fresh forraging material and allows for grass to regenerate faster. Taken together this practice increases daily cattle weight gain while reducing input costs.

Adaptive grazing may also serve to mitigate some climate impacts of raising cattle by serving as a carbon sync (research into this is ongoing and inconclusive) and by speeding up the cattle fattening process through faster weight gain, which translates to less cattle methane production. While the science gets figured our, we know through experience that the process makes for better land management and healthier, faster growing cattle at Beefy Returns.

Chico State’s adaptive grazing overview provides some more details on this practice. Thanks for visiting. Please contact us via email if you’d like to learn more about the ranch and how to become a client.