Forage and Pasture
Pasture Inventory Forms
Making a Forage Inventory – Composition and Production - Basic forage
inventories provide useful information for making good pasture management
decisions. A Pasture Inventory shows the actual percentage makeup of grasses,
legumes, weeds, and bare ground in each pasture. The Seasonal Pasture
Productivity inventory shows the strong and weak pasture production seasons and
will give direction as to which, if any, management changes or additional forage
species are needed.
Pasture inventories are simple to conduct and give the landowner a chance to
really look over fields. After working with many producers in the Arkansas Beef
Improvement Program, we developed a pasture inventory form that includes the
primary plant species found in Arkansas pastures. That pasture inventory form is
included in this section and can be copied for use on your farm.
The form is a simple tally sheet. Begin the inventory by walking across the
field with the inventory form. Stop at every fourth to fifth step and then
record a tally mark on the sheet next to the category corresponding to what is
at the end of your right toe, whether it is a grass, legume, weed, or bare
ground. Continue walking across the field until you collect at least 50,
preferably 100 such points. Calculate the percentage of each category
represented from the field. Record the data for each pasture on different tally
sheets.
Inventories should be done during each part of the growing season because a
mixed grass pasture can look completely different in July compared to April or
May. The inventory helps you better plan a seasonal grazing program. After you
document the seasonal shift in forage species composition among the pastures,
you know what to expect and can manage for that composition change.
Inventories confirm the success, or lack of success, of your previous
management and give direction for future management decisions. For example, on
one ABIP farm demonstration, seasonal production and pasture inventories showed
the farm had a high percentage of fescue and bare ground, but little warm season
grasses for summer grazing. However, small scattered patches of bermudagrass and
dallisgrass were found in two fescue pastures.
To encourage the warm season grasses, fertilizer timing was delayed later
from March until May. After two more years, those pastures had naturally
converted to a high percentage of the warm-season grasses which greatly improved
summer forage availability. In another case, production inventories showed an
ABIP farm was short on cool-season grass for spring and fall grazing. Pasture
inventories showed that one brushy field had a good percentage of fescue, but
had a weed and brush problem. After the weeds were controlled, the fescue stand
recovered and was used for winter stockpiled pasture.
Seasonal production inventories can be made from historical observations of
each pasture. Simply make a list of all the pastures and give each one a rating
for its seasonal productivity for spring, summer, fall, and winter. A scale of 0
= no growth, 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = excellent will suffice. A form in
this section can be used or copied. After each pasture is rated, calculate the
average rating for each season. Low values indicate where improvement is needed
whether from management change or pasture renovation. This is the information
that will help you decide if a new forage species, perhaps a warm-season or
cool-season grass, will improve your system.
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