Getting research answers off pat

News From Agriculture And Life Sciences Division, Lincoln University

Getting research answers off pat

By Janette Busch

Lincoln University Agricultural Science Honours student Craig Trotter’s need to know how close cattle and deer grazed to cow pats meant early mornings spent collecting freshly dropped steaming cow dung from the Lincoln University Dairy Farm.

Craig then poured the dung into cake tins to make artificial cow pats. These were placed at pre-determined sites around four separate paddocks in which sheep and deer were allowed to graze alone. This was to simulate areas which had been grazed by cattle previously and then by sheep or deer.

Previous research with cattle and sheep has shown that mixed grazing livestock situations allow for the possibility of competition or complementarity between grazing species. To be complementary co- grazing animals have to increase pasture utilisation and, therefore, total animal output per hectare. They can do this by grazing close to dungpats.

“Generally, animals avoid grazing herbage near their own dung but several previous studies have shown that sheep are more inclined to graze near cattle dung,” said Craig. “In this case more total pasture is eaten.”

“While it is a common New Zealand farming practice to graze cattle and sheep on the same pasture it is less common to graze deer and cattle together. My work was designed to find out whether deer could substitute for sheep in a mixed grazing situation.”

By taking daily measurements of pasture mass and height around the cattle dungpats, Craig was able to monitor how close the sheep and deer were grazing to the cow pats.

What he found was that for most of the measurements taken there was little difference between the results for the deer and the sheep. Deer grazed just slightly further away from cow pats than sheep, but still close enough to make co-grazing a realistic option for farmers.

Senior Animal Science Lecturer, Dr Alastair Nicol supervised Craig’s work

“It’s good that Craig’s research has provided sound evidence about grazing cattle with deer. Deer farmers can be confident that when they graze cattle with their deer, the pastures will become no more clumpy than if it were sheep and cattle co-grazing,” said Dr Nicol.

ENDS

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