Measurement of Animal Response in Grazing Research

Stuedemann, J. A.; Matches, A. G.

doi:10.2135/cssaspecpub16.c3

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 75 publications

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“…In addition to these objectives, protocols can be added or enhanced, as follows, to address objectives directly tied to teaching and education, extension, and stakeholders needs: (i) input costs and income to provide economic considerations (Parsch and Torell, 1989); (ii) assessments of vegetation zone and climatic risk for cultivar selection, production, sustainability, and persistence of forages in pastures; and (iii) impact of stocking management on livestock classes for seasonal and year‐long pasture production systems. To meet any objectives of grazing research, careful attention should be given to field experimental design and statistical analyses (Bransby, 1989; Drane, 1989), forage attributes and animal responses (Burns et al, 1989), animal measurements (Stuedemann and Matches, 1989), and the forage–animal interface (Coleman et al, 1989; Forbes and Rouquette, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Grazing Systems Research and Impact of Stocking Strategies on Pasture–Animal Production Efficiencies

Rouquette¹

2015

Crop Science

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Grazing systems research includes a wide array of component experimentation to assess plant–animal responses on pastures during short‐term, seasonal, and long‐term periods. Pasture‐animal experiments seek to assess forage growth responses to grazing and to quantify relationships between forage growth and nutritive value to gains per animal and per hectare. These experiments have used fixed and variable stocking rate management, continuous or rotational methods of stocking, and other stocking strategies to evaluate levels of production efficiencies. Stocking strategies require the integration of periodic and total forage mass, associated nutritive attributes, specific defoliation regimen responses, and incorporation of weather conditions to meet end‐point objectives. The flexible integration processes includes forage–animal databases, availability of land resources, and intuitive experience to accommodate erratic weather conditions. Scientists have the opportunity to develop and validate stocking strategies through long‐term, site‐specific grazing systems research as well as collaborative, ecoregion research efforts. Documenting the influence of stocking density on nutrient cycling, stand maintenance, ecotype diversity, and watersheds will further define soil–forage–animal responses and impacts. Management prerequisites for application of stocking strategies includes foundational forage–animal interface relationships, land resource limitations, animal husbandry behavior awareness, initiation and termination of stocking sequences, projections and expectations for climatic changes, and biological and economic risk–reward expectations. Scientists involved in grazing system research are challenged to integrate soil, forage, and animal databases to discover and document production efficiencies and stocking strategies for implementation by scientists, students, and stakeholders.

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Grazing Systems Research and Impact of Stocking Strategies on Pasture–Animal Production Efficiencies

Rouquette¹

2015

Crop Science

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Animal Methods for Evaluating Forage Quality

Vanzant

Cochran

Coblentz

2020

Forages

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Adjustment of Animal Growth Rate Responses in Repeat Measurement Grazing Trials

Scott

2011

TOASJ

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Abstract:In animal-response grazing trials there are sources of uncertainty in one-period one-off measurements, which as partial factorisation over time, become traceable and quantifiable sources of variation in repeat measurement trials. This is illustrated for a trial comparing sheep and goat live-weight gains under two stocking rates on mixed species pastures established by three contrasting sowing methods. It used variable plot size to give uniform animal numbers and tracked changes in individual animal performance and pasture growth in different periods. It was repeated on the same plots and animals over 17 grazing cycles. The variation explainable was greater with growth rates expressed as percent live-weight increase per day, than as weight or metabolic weight increase per day. The base data sets were adjusted for specific weighing-day effects of estimated gut-fill using moving averages, and for calibration for individual animal effects by genotype/environment analysis. Collectively these significantly increased the proportion explainable by 3.1-3.8% in variance analyses using qualitative treatment variables, and 2.7-3.7% in response function analyses relative to measured climate, pasture, plot and collective animal covariates. Simulation studies, to allow for variability in the independent variables as well as the dependent variables, indicated that the proportion explainable could increase by a further 0-1.2% and 1.1-1.9% respectively for the variance or response function approaches.

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Measurement of Animal Response in Grazing Research

Cited by 5 publications

References 75 publications

Grazing Systems Research and Impact of Stocking Strategies on Pasture–Animal Production Efficiencies

Grazing Systems Research and Impact of Stocking Strategies on Pasture–Animal Production Efficiencies

Animal Methods for Evaluating Forage Quality

Adjustment of Animal Growth Rate Responses in Repeat Measurement Grazing Trials

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