A comparison of the growth of cattle under high intensity rotational grazing vs continuous grazing.

[@codywhiteman7675]

It would have been very interesting to know what the pasture utilisation was in each group. Did the IRG system grow less grass and therefore have less weight gained? Or did the IRG mob grow more grass, but due to animal health problems associated with the larger mob size reduce animal performance?

[@nandoman1981]

Thank you for posting this presentation. It would be great to hear more about what went into the decisions to move the cattle as the presentation suggests the manager's pasture assessment as the only factor. Did the cattle's condition (i.e. gut fill and manure firmness) ever come into the equation? If a beast is not getting enough grass or not on a constant plane of nutrition it will suffer. That is a fairly important factor which is hard to capture as it will change from year to year. A set stocked paddock in a good season will have cattle eating green pick and selecting the best feed. If the rotated grazing is forcing cattle to not select forage (eg eat lower quality as they don't always have access to the preferred plants), nutritional adaption in the phenotype will play a huge part. If the cattle are overgrazing paddocks through the rotation is will require longer recovery periods. It would be great to see regular weighing and pasture assessment figures (eg DM tonnage per ha) of each arm in the trial to pinpoint when the rotation grazing goes wrong. Very interesting presentation but so many confounding factors that depend on management decisions it is hard to find this conclusive.

[@patrickhartigan4915]

Hi, the video is not visible on KZbin. The audio can be heard but the image is scrambed throughout the video; occasionally the bottom section of the video is visible but that is all. Is it possible to repost the video so that we can see it. Just a comment- it would be very interesting to have Terry McCosker comment at end of the video on the methodology and the results.

[@JakeJonesx]

What fertiliser applications were used?

[@Forester-qs5mf]

My understanding is that genetics of the cattle will be significant in terms of performance under IRG. Also not sure why you couldn’t run significantly higher stocking rates under IRG with cattle untilising all the pasture and having longer recovery times, so although the return per animal would be lower, the return per Ha would be higher. The focus on gain per animal is where this study falls down. This is the classic problem of focussing on Yield per animal instead of Profit per Ha. Long term CG results in deserts as we’ve seen all round the world and there isn’t much profit in that.

[@Beeefo]

The study looked at weight gain per hectare as well as per head. Eg. At 10:38

[@wallacewimmer5191]

🎉

[@glengirot3087]

This study does seam flawed on so many factors

[@Beeefo]

It has been published in a scientific journal where it would have undergone review by independent scientists with expertise in the subject area. Studies with lots of flaws generally don’t get through that process and end up being published