🌏 Grazing terminology 101: a farmer’s guide to key concepts

For many livestock producers, grass is one of the most essential resources needed to run a successful operation. So essential, in fact, that many graziers would consider themselves “grass farmers” as much as livestock producers, acknowledging that good land stewardship goes hand-in-hand with a more productive operation. To help build a foundational of grazing knowledge, we’ve created a quick “grazing terminology glossary” with words and phrases you’ll want to know.

These grazing terms are also handy to use when engaging grazing experts and peers with your next grazing management planning process. 

• Dry matter: The part of a foodstuff or other substance which would remain if all its water content was removed.
• Feed on offer (FOO): The amount of available feed or pasture mass on a given area at any time.
• Total standing dry matter (TDSM): Refers to the total amount of dry material there is in a paddock.
• Stocking rate: The number of animals allocated to an area of land.
• Animal Unit (AU): A standard measure used to compare the forage consumption of different types or classes of livestock. Most common animal unit measurements include Animal Equivalent (AE), Dry Sheep Equivalent (DSE) and Large Stock Unit (LSU).
• Stock days: The number of days one animal unit can graze on a given amount of pasture. This is typically measured as stock days per hectare (SDH) or DSE days per hectare (DDH).
• Carrying capacity: The maximum number of animals a paddock can support without degrading the forage or soil quality. 
• Grazing pressure: The demand /supply ratio of dry feed required, and the volume of feed available. 
• Grazing rotation: The practice of moving livestock between different pasture areas to allow for regrowth of grazed forage. 
• Rest period: The time a pasture is left ungrazed to allow forage plants to regrow. 
• Forage budgeting: The act of calculating forage availability versus livestock needs over time to ensure sufficient feed throughout the grazing season. 
• Residual forage: The plant material left after grazing. 
• Overgrazing: Occurs when livestock consume forage faster than it can regrow, leading to degraded pastures, reduced forage yields, and poor soil health.
• Under-grazing: When forage is not grazed sufficiently, leading to plant over-maturity, reduced forage quality, and waste.

Ready to take the next step and dive into grazing best practices and ideologies? Download our grazing guide featuring tips, strategies and considerations for real-life grazing scenarios you will face as a grass farmer. Interested in checking out our latest grazing features, click here to go through our interactive demos.