| Scott Robbins Project Leader, Morro Bay Watershed Enhancement Project USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Morro Bay, California John Maino is the owner and operator of an 1850 acre ranch along San Bernardo Creek in the Morro Bay watershed. John runs a cow-calf, commercial beef operation, sharing in the ownership of the ranch and business is John’s wife Susie. The ranch ranges in elevation from 40 to nearly 1000 feet above sea level. Most of the soils are clays or clay loams except for a bank of serpentinitic rock outcrops. The cropland on the ranch presently totals 92 acres and is leased out to a local farmer. Typically, the crops grown are snow peas, fava beans, squash or hay.  The ranch has been in the Maino family for eighty-three years. For most of those years it was run as a dairy farm and leased to non-family members. When John took over the ranch in 1973, he was the first family member to live on and operate the ranch. John soon realized that the past management of the ranch had led to a degradation of the resources. Bio-diversity was low, bare ground was extensive, erosion was occurring and plant health and vigor was suppressed. John knew there had to be a better way to manage the ranch. But first he had to battle with the drought of the late 1980’s. About 1987, John went to a seminar during which Alan Savory, a wildlife biologist and legislator from Rhodesia who later founded the Center for Holistic Resource Management spoke. Savory talked about the concepts of time controlled grazing and using biological planning to determine the lengths of time that the livestock are in any pasture. Savory talked about the tools of rest and grazing in managing grasslands. In order to understand fully the demonstration project on the Maino Ranch it is necessary to understand the effects of grazing and rest in our ecosystem. REST Rest means the absence of major physical disturbance and applies to a community as a whole. In the Morro Bay watershed disturbance generally comes from large animals, fire or machinery. A policy of withholding disturbance for considerable time amounts to applying the tool of total rest. Partial rest is applied in the presence of some livestock or large game, but so few and with such calm behavior in the absence of predators that a large proportion of plant life and soil surface remains undisturbed.(3) Many people who call for the elimination of all grazing do so out of the mistaken belief that rest is "natural". Actually in pristine nature, grasslands of the world rarely experienced rest at all. Within the Morro Bay watershed old plant material breaks down slowly and succession advances slowly. Most organisms of decay are scarce and only present intermittently when moisture is adequate. Thus, under conditions of rest, old plant material decomposes only gradually through oxidation and weathering. Old material that lingers even into the next growing season weakens a perennial grass plant, and several years of accumulation can actually kill it. If at the same time, the soil surface remains undisturbed, new plants do not easily replace the ones dying prematurely. Failure to note the difference between rest as a long term tool and rest as the time it takes a damaged plant to rebuild a root system has confused people for several thousand years. We correctly observed that animals in certain circumstances overgraze and damage plants. We remove the animals and witness an immediate and dramatic recovery. As Alan Savory notes, the result was that the positive and immediate effect of allowing overgrazed plants to recover, colors our ability to determine and even see eventual damage we create by eliminating beneficial animal impact.(3) GRAZING A discussion of grazing requires a working definition of the terms grazing and overgrazing. To understand the difference, imagine a clump of perennial grass. Picture a healthy plant and imagine that a large animal appears and bites all leaf and stem down to an inch or two. That is severe grazing, but not unusual or bad in that animals evolved over millions of years to graze in such a manner in harmony with grasses. In the growing season, the plant receives a short-term set back, but a long-term boost. The bitten plant requires time for recovery, the growth points at the base remain intact, and no old growth of previous years stands in the way of regeneration.(3) If the bite comes in the dormant season, when the plant has no use for the leaves and stems of the past season, it loses nothing and gains an uncluttered start on the new season. On balance, severe grazing benefits the grazed plant.(3) Overgrazing occurs when a plant bitten severely in the growing season gets severely bitten again before it completely recovers from the first bite. This can happen because the plant is exposed to the animals for too long, or because after they move off they return too soon.(7) Proper grazing tends to maintain grassland communities, increase their diversity, cover soil and retard shifts toward woody species. Overgrazing, by reducing litter and soil cover even as it damages roots, fosters a shift towards forbs, (or weeds) and away from grassland and woody species. It also promotes communities with reduced numbers of grass species. Proper grazing enhances the water cycle through healthier and more stable root systems and better soil surface cover. Overgrazing reduces water cycling by exposing soil and limiting litter production while decreasing soil structure. The cow takes a mouthful from a particular plant, then moves on a step or two, leaving other plants untouched. The grazed plant should benefit from the bite, but frequently does not because its regrowth, offering more protein and energy and less fiber will attract a second bite some days later if the cow remains in the area. Thus, one plant can get overgrazed while its neighbors are rested, and one cow may actually kill a few plants while a great many rest. This process accounts for the apparent paradox that animals grazing continuously under the management practiced most commonly throughout this watershed and the rest of North America usually produce overgrazed and over rested plants in the same area.(3) The French scientist Andre Voisin was the first to look at this problem from the perspective of a single plant. He concluded that overgrazing has nothing to do with the number of animals in a pasture. The plant that was bitten by a single cow stood a good chance of damage or death if the cow hung around too long. On the other hand, a thousand cows that moved on after a day posed no threat at all. Most plants in the pasture were bitten, but not while they were attempting to regrow. TIME Time, said Voisin not the number of animals, controls overgrazing. Because of this we must now focus considerable attention on managing the time plants are exposed to the animals. What we need to do is expose the animals to the plants for a planned period of time and then allow the plants adequate time to recover before the animals return. Any type of severe grazing animal would do the job. In the Morro Bay watershed the herds of elk and antelope no longer remain. Grassland managers today may choose the type of animal to graze their grasslands. Domestic livestock give the manager a profit producing choice that can be marketed easily. Cattle can be used to simulate the grazing animals of the past. In order to simulate the herding and movement of the original herbivorous mammals, livestock with either fencing or herding can be used. Nowadays electric fencing can provide a land manager with an inexpensive solution to controlling the amount of time that animals are exposed to plants. Grazing time can be regulated by moving animals from one division of land to another until each paddock is grazed. The amount of time needed before the animals return to a paddock is based upon the amount of time it takes the plants to regrow. This time will vary throughout the year. There are periods of fast growth, slow growth and a dormant season. The length of time the animals spend in an area must be adjusted according to the plant’s growth rate. When growth is fast, animals are moved more often, when growth is slow, the moves are less frequent. During the dormant season it does not impact the plants whether or not the moves come fast or slow. THE PROJECT The demonstration project involved incorporating a new water system, an electric fencing program and a planned grazing system. By reducing the size of the paddocks, to smaller, more homogeneous sizes, Mr. Maino is able to control the time the herd spends in any one paddock, which enables him to coordinate the animals movements with the growth rate of the vegetation. Through planning of the grazing, along with the options and control derived from the fencing and water. Mr. Maino is now able to achieve better livestock distribution and forage utilization resulting in improved range condition and better ground cover. In 1992, 26,750 feet of plastic pipe was installed along with two 18,000 gallon concrete water tanks and six watering troughs in order to supply the livestock water needed in each pasture to water the herd. Two wells supply the water at each end of the ranch for the system. The large storage tanks are located on high points of the ranch. From the storage tanks water is gravity fed downhill to the troughs. Many of the troughs were built so that they are split by pasture fences enabling one trough to serve two adjacent paddocks. A total of 34,500 feet of three-wire electric fence was built in 1993 and 1994 along with 6300 feet of one wire offset fence and twenty seven pasture gates and two water lots. A water lot is a water trough located at the corner of three or more paddocks. The trough supplies the water for all of the paddocks that come together at the water lot. The resulting system has subdivided the ranch into about thirty paddocks, the largest one being approximately 50 acres. PLANNED GRAZING Once the system was in place, John was able to begin using a planned grazing system. Johns’ planning is based on a spreadsheet that has all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year listed across the top and every paddock on the ranch listed down the side. This way there is a cell for every paddock for each day of the year. Johns cow herd is consolidated for most of the year. Which means that he can move them through the paddocks together. The bulls are kept separate from the cows for most of the year and are moved independently. The key to this system is that John makes the decisions of where and for how long the animals are in any one paddock. If there are management goals such as restoring a riparian area, or attacking a weed problem John can schedule the grazing for the optimal time. Or, he can decide to forego the grazing of a paddock, if that furthers his management goals. The annual plan is divided into two sections; one open ended plan for the growing season and a closed plan for the dormant or non-growing season. During the growing season the rate of movement through the paddocks varies with the rate of plant growth. When growth is rapid, the moves come sooner, when growth is slow the moves are slower and the rest period between grazings increases. During the dormant season, the rest periods are immaterial, because the plants are not growing. Good planning of the grazing aims at managing the animals and the land together so that:
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