Effect of strip grazing and mulching tropical grass pasture on autumn milk production of grazing cows

TL;DRAbstract

Pasture quality in the subtropics declines in the autumn as fibre content of the leaf increases and leaf content of the pasture declines (Cowan et al. 1993). Tropical pastures managed to allow animals to select leaf, result in low utilisation. However the combination of high stocking rates and rotational grazing has supported higher milk production/ha, with minimal decline in per cow yield (Ehrlich et al. 1994). This experiment evaluated the effects of strip grazing and mulching on the pasture quality and milk production of tropical grass pastures. Callide Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana cv. Callide) pasture, established 11 years previously, was divided into 2 replicate areas, each of which was subdivided into 4, 0.72 ha paddocks. These paddocks were allocated at random to the 4 treatments: (i) open grazing of the entire paddock (0), (ii) open grazing plus mulching once every 4 weeks (O+m), (iii) grazing on a 4 week rotation using daily strip grazing with a backing fence and allocating l/

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