Integrating Prescribed Fire into Grazing Management for Improved Nutrition and Ecosystem Health
ARS researchers in Miles City, MT, are helping cattle ranchers improve nutrition for their herds. Conventional wisdom holds that after fires, ranchers should defer grazing on burned areas for up to two seasons to allow for plant recovery. However, when comparing grazing and nutritional data from burned and unburned patches, researchers found cattle preferred to graze in recently burned areas, where forage nutritive value was highest. The burned areas provided crude protein, fiber digestibility, energy, and a higher content of several important minerals. As a result, cattle from pastures with burned patches gained more weight than cattle from pastures without fire.
Their results suggest that practices like prescribed fire, which is used to clear standing vegetation and can reduce wildfire risk, could optimize both the ecosystem and livestock health. Related research conducted in Miles City; Dubois, ID; and Woodward, OK, revealed that prescribed fire seasonality and grazing deferment in big sagebrush plant communities had important economic but relatively moderate ecological implications. This combined research is establishing the value of prescribed fire, while providing land managers with new information about how to graze livestock in ways that ensure recovery of vegetation production and diversity.
For more information:
