When you overgraze your pasture you can hurt the environment, your pocketbook and the animals. All grazing management is the foundation of grassland based animal production since there is a impact on both animal and plant health and productivity. There are many reasons that overgrazing can occur. If you have animals that are on continuous or rotational pasture, having too much livestock on the farm or not controlling their grazing activity.

What happens when you overgraze is the plants become weakened and have reduced root length, the pasture sod weakens and the reduced root length makes the plants more susceptible to death when we have dry weather. When the sod is weakened it allows weed seeds to grow. Continuous grazing reduces forage production and eliminates wildlife cover and food while rotational grazing permits the use of forage when they are at peak prod

have had the soil tested. There are some native prairie grasses that may not require fertilizer or limestone.

When you defer fall and winter grazing you can reduce the need to feed hay. The amount and quality of forage available will be determined largely by the date you started to accumulate, the nitrogen fertilization rate, the forage species present, and the date forage use started.

Fire should be used with caution on sandy soils because wind erosion is possible when ground cover is removed. Careful timing of the fire can minimize the erosion risk. Improper fire timing can reduce plant productivity. If the burn is too early, cool season grasses will increase and deplete soil water and nutrients before warm season grasses begin to grow. As a general rule burning does not benefit short grasses. Planning is an essential tool for safe burning and should be done well in advance of the proposed burn date. Pre-fire treatments may be needed to accumulate adequate fine fuel to carry fire and meet your management objectives. Post-burn management is also critical. Benefits will be lost if recovering vegetation is abused. Burning can help many wildlife species by increasing their habitat diversity and the quality, availability and yield of forage. One of the common myths is that there is a lot of animals that are killed by fire. In all reality animals usually escape by running away or moving to unburned islands of vegetation.

All of the other perennial grass species have the same growth response and forage quality as tall fescue but most of the time they are killed by frost and undergo weather damage caused by -8-

Some topics in this essay:
, June July, Plains Fire, Kentucky Bluegrass, June September, season grasses, tall fescue, warm season grasses, warm season, soil reaches, cool season grasses, cool season, nutrients soil, grassland management, forage quality, quality forage, deferred grazing, reduced root length, soil depth organic, grasses begin grow,