Preparing your pasture for a drier climate: Grazing sheep on lucerne in the UK

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This film follows David Cross and Liz Genever who are involved in an Innovative Farmers field lab to investigate the best ways of grazing lucerne in the UK.
As the likelihood of drought increases livestock farmers are looking at alternatives to rye grass to make sure they have sufficient available forage for their animals. Farmers in this field lab set out to investigate grazing their sheep on lucerne, a legume that is widely used as forage for sheep in New Zealand and valued for its high yield, drought tolerance, protein content, and digestible fibre.
If successful, lucerne will make livestock farming more viable in drier areas previously dominated by input intensive arable production, enabling a return to mixed farming. The theory is that soil health will benefit from the nitrogen fixing qualities of lucerne as well as the reintroduction of livestock (and therefore manure) into arable farming rotations.
Find out more about the farmer-led research here: innovativefarm...