Selective grazing

A selective grazer is any animal that is able to aim for and get a particular plant. Selective grazing involves just what it says, selecting something and then grazing it.

The ultimate selective grazer on the farm is probably the sheep because it:

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can PICK UP small seeds with its lips
can NIBBLE just this leaf and not the one next to it and
likes to REVISIT the plants it has grazed to get the fresh regrowth.

Horses are also selective, just not as accurate nor as nimble.

Goats are selective browsers and grazers, eating shrubs, trees and pasture plants.

Cattle are less selective because of their greater mouth size, different method of grazing - often they pull off a mouthful of grass and sometimes they pull it right out of the ground.

Hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses (not common on farms) are not very selective because of their vision and mouth shapes. Elephants are very selective because the length and manoeuverability of their trunks gives them the ability to see, smell, select and uproot or break off their chosen fodder.

Selective grazing happens when a selective grazer is allowed to choose what it will graze. This happens often when animals are set stocked rather than rotated. They graze the plants in order of their preferences. They overgraze the good stuff (as they see it) and undergraze the rest. This means the least appealing plants are grazed last, if at all.

Leaving the least appealing plants to continue growing causes many weed problems in pastures.

This sort of broad-scale selective grazing also occurs with rotational grazing when the graze and rest periods are out of balance with the farm manager's objectives. And the result can be the same, an increase in weeds and a decrease in the most palatable and most digestible plants.

Non-selective grazing happens when animals are given no choice in what to graze by the farm manager deciding

what types of animals and
how many of those animals will put
how much grazing pressure
on how large an area
for how long.

By making it hard for animals to graze selectively the land manager takes back control rather than letting the animals decide. If a smart farm manager decides sensibly,

weed problems decline
pasture quality improves
animal performance improves and
the enterprise becomes more profitable

However, if management is not up to the mark, problems are likely to increase and the farm environment is likely to go backwards. There are plenty of opportunities in the process for Learning from pests

This web page updates and replaces Grazing - selective and non-selective

Related info:

Grazing shock

Chicken tractor

Choosing a farming course and teacher

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This page was updated on December 27, 2007