[Ruminations vol. 38] Creating a Holistic Grazing Plan

For those of you who have never gone through the Holistic Planned Grazing process, it might be helpful to see how the sausage is made.

Grazing plans are generally created twice a year. For places that lack year-round vegetation growth, this amounts to an “open” growing season plan and a “closed” non-growing season plan.

The growing season plan is considered “open” because forage is actively growing and its volume is continually increasing, whereas the non-growing season plan is “closed” since you’re dealing with a finite amount of forage that must be rationed until the next growing season begins. The way you plan your moves in each of these plans will differ.

For both of these plans, there is a step-by-step process (detailed in an “aide memoire”, French for “memory aid”) to be followed. The steps should be done in order, and they center on these main questions:

What sort of landscape are you trying to create?
How much total forage will the grazing unit, or units, have to supply in the current planning period?
How much forage will an average hectare/acre of land have to supply?
How long will standing forage at the end of the growing season last in a nutritious state (including reserves for a late start to the growing season, drought, fires, wildlife, and so on)?
How long will animals spend in each paddock, or subdivision, and when will they return (the vital recovery period grazed plants require)?
Where and when will you need to concentrate animals most to maintain healthy grassland, reduce weeds or woody vegetation, or prevent soil erosion?

When following the aide memoire’s steps, which answer these questions, your responses are recorded on your grazing chart. The result is an easy-to-understand grazing plan, and anyone that understands the key insights of Holistic Management should be able to evaluate and determine where the animals are to go, why, and when.

Of course, all of this grazing planning is useless without a Holistic Context to help guide you through all the tough decisions that will inevitably arise along the way. You can plan moves ‘til you’re blue in the face, but if you do so outside the context of what’s most important to you, you might as well be planning for failure. Aligning your decisions with a Holistic Context is crucial for the long-term success of any grazing operation.

To learn more about Holistic Planned Grazing, see ebooks #8 and #9, and for more on developing a Holistic Context and how to ensure your grazing decisions are in line with it, see ebooks #4 and #5.