Background. A large proportion of natural grasslands around the world is exposed to overgrazing resulting in land degradation and biodiversity loss. Although there is an increasing effort in the promotion of sustainable livestock management, rangeland degradation still occurs because animals' foraging behaviour is highly selective at different spatial scales. The assessment of the ecological me...

Abstract Grazing and mowing are two major land use types in natural grasslands, which have intensive effects on nutrient cycling of grassland ecosystems by deposition fecaluria versus removal hay nutrient. Plant nutrients sensitively respond to the changes cycling, while information diverse grazing regimes plant at different organs or levels incomplete. A field experiment was conducted compare ...

A study was conducted to evaluate standing crop of forage and cattle diets for a ‘I-pasture high-intensity low-frequency (HILF) grazing system, and a ‘I-pasture short-duration grazing (SDG) system on the same area. A epasture, 3-herd (Merrill) deferred rotation grazing system was sampled as a standard for comparison. Standing crop of forage was highest for the HILF grazing system compared to th...

Twenty-eight Angus (289 +/- 3.8 kg) steers were used in a completely randomized design to evaluate the effect of isocaloric supplementation of 2 different energy sources to steers rotationally grazing tall fescue pastures for 197 d in comparison to positive and negative controls. Steers were supplemented with either corn grain (0.52% BW on a DM basis; PC) or soybean hulls plus corn oil (0.45% B...

Manure application increases pasture crop production and minimizes manure storage costs. Excess N not absorbed by pasture vegetation can leach past the root zone and into ground water. A yearlong study was conducted on grazing pastures at 2 dairy farms to monitor potential nitrate (NO3) movement from the surface through the soil profile toward ground water. Precipitation, irrigation, manure app...

In contrast to large, modern confinement dairy systems, management intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) systems can provide a satisfactory income level on a farm that one family can operate with their own labor and management. This is good news for many farm families. What makes the news even better still for these families is that a traditional, Wisconsin dairy farm with average or better manag...

Practices for endo and ectoparasite control in beef cattle were evaluated in two independent experiments. First, the effects of rotenone on Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus ticks were evaluated in vitro and in experimentally infected calves. In the second trial, the effects of grazing systems associated with endo and ectoparasite treatments on parasite burden and weight gain of naturally par...

Both arthropods and large grazing herbivores are important components and drivers of biodiversity in grassland ecosystems, but a synthesis of how arthropod diversity is affected by large herbivores has been largely missing. To fill this gap, we conducted a literature search, which yielded 141 studies on this topic of which 24 simultaneously investigated plant and arthropod diversity. Using the ...