Francisco Molinar, Hilton Gomes, Dee Galt, and Jerry L Holechek, Grazing Studies: What We’ve Learned: .
Summary
During our careers in range management we’ve encountered few range professionals who have actually read any of the long-term stocking rate and grazing system studies that provide the scientific foundation for modern range management. Part of the problem is that many of these studies were published as United States Department of Agriculture reports or university experiment station bulletins that are buried in libraries or government archives. Generally they are lengthy, detailed documents that do not lend themselves to easy reading. However in our opinion knowledge of these studies is essential to anyone engaged in range management, ranching or range research. We believe less controversy would exist over approaches to grazing management, [...]
Summary
During our careers in range management we’ve encountered few range professionals who have actually read any of the long-term stocking rate and grazing system studies that provide the scientific foundation for modern range management. Part of the problem is that many of these studies were published as United States Department of Agriculture reports or university experiment station bulletins that are buried in libraries or government archives. Generally they are lengthy, detailed documents that do not lend themselves to easy reading. However in our opinion knowledge of these studies is essential to anyone engaged in range management, ranching or range research. We believe less controversy would exist over approaches to grazing management, range condition, and range trend if teachers, scientists, and mangers had a more thorough understanding of the “classics.� Our objective is to identify these “classic� studies and provide a brief synopsis of their findings. We will focus on forage production, range condition, range trend, livestock production, and financial returns. Rather than attempting to discuss all the studies, we will concentrate on whose involving native (non-seeded) rangelands that are most complete in terms of replication in time and space, collection of biological and financial data, and interpretation of results. A previous analysis of grazing studies is provided by Van Pollen and Lacey (1979). However their review focused only on herbage responses and much new information has become available over the past 20 years.
Published in The Cattle Site, volume 21, issue 2, in 1999.