Winter is a very important period during the dairying calendar. Regions such as Southland, with susceptible soils and extended periods with soils at saturation levels will face increasing pressure to review wintering practices. On-farm options for wintering cows to protect soils and prevent pasture damage are needed. This requires a turn-around in philosophy from taking cows to pasture/crops, t...

[1] Degradation of cattle pastures is a management concern that influences future land use in Amazonia. However, ‘‘degradation’’ is poorly defined and has different meanings for ranchers, ecologists, and policy makers. Here we analyze pasture degradation using objective scalars of photosynthetic vegetation (PV), nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and exposed soil (S) derived from Landsat image...

Dry matter production data for pure lucerne, overdrilled lucerne and pasture ark presented for 14 sites on pumice soils. On average, the annual dry matter yield of lucerne, harvested at early basal shoot movement, was 50% higher than from pasture, ranging froti 128% higher on a drought-prone soil where the pasture was dominant browntop to 33% on a more moisture-retentive soil type where the pas...

The Montado is a silvo-pastoral system characterized by open canopy woodlands with natural or cultivated grassland in the undercover and grazing animals. The aims of this study were to present several proximal sensors with potential to monitor relevant variables in the complex montado ecosystem and demonstrate their application in a case study designed to evaluate the effect of trees on the pas...

Introduction Cattle production on Brachiaria pastures is a primary use of cleared forestland in the western Brazilian Amazon. About 6.8 million hectares in the States of Acre and Rondônia have been deforested, where 75% of land is now grazed (IBGE, 1998). The principal pasture species are B. brizantha and B. decumbens with the latter in decline from spittlebug susceptibility (Deois incompleta; ...

Controversy has surrounded the possible differences in pasture production which result from grazing by cattle or sheep. Experiments conducted over the 1972-76 period show that pasture production under grazing by sheep is greater than under grazing by cattle under similar intensive managements. A change from sheep grazing to cattle grazing can cause a rapid deterioration in pasture production, w...

The. seasonal pattern of nitrogen mineralization is described and compared with the potential demand for nitrogen by grasses. Peak mineralization rates occur in spring but are quite inadequate for expression of potential grass growth. Nitrogen fixation by clovers provides a significant input into the system over a short period. Consideration of the fate of fixed nitrogen shows that losses large...

Over a 3-year period, 1183 brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) were live-trapped in 125 ha of mixed hardwood forest and adjacent pasture in Westland, and 50 were radio-tracked for up to 14 months. Foraging movements between forest and pasture were much longer than previously reported. Twenty-eight percent of males and 18% of females denning c. 1000 m into forest were trapped on pasture at...