Rest Right, Recover Strong: Avoiding Setbacks in Grassland Management

Rest Right, Recover Strong: Avoiding Setbacks in Grassland Management

As a rancher, your land is both your livelihood and legacy. Keeping your pastures productive and resilient is crucial for the long-term success of your operation especially during difficult times such as drought or shifting markets. One of the most important but often misunderstood concepts in grazing management is the difference between rest and recovery. Although they may sound similar, they’re not the same, and understanding the difference can help ranchers make more informed management decisions and impact how your land performs year after year.

Rest is straightforward and simply means taking livestock off a pasture for a period of time. Most ranchers understand this and are actively incorporating it into their grazing plan. Rest is a valuable tool, especially after events of heavy grazing pressure, drought, or other stress. It’s a chance for plants to have a break so they are able to photosynthesize, regrow, and rebuild root reserves.

But rest alone isn’t enough to keep your pastures resilient. In fact, leaving land ungrazed for too long can cause more harm than good. Without grazing or disturbance, some grasses can overtake the area and choke out other species, decreasing the overall biodiversity. It can also give woody plants a chance to creep in and further decrease your forage quality. From a distance, these pastures may look green and lush, but up close, the rangeland is less diverse and less productive.

Grasslands evolved with disturbance, both from grazing and wildfire. These natural forces shaped and maintained healthy ecosystems over time but when rest goes on for too long, it can disrupt these cycles and gradually weaken the land’s overall health.

But what about recovery? Recovery focuses on improving the functionality of the ecosystem, not just pausing its use and involves actively helping the land regain health through intentional, planned grazing management. Depending on the specific operation and available resources, this can take various forms, such as rotational grazing, adaptive grazing management, or even prescribed burns in areas affected by woody encroachment. If you are looking to truly recover the health of a pasture, it’s a delicate balance between rest and recovery.

For instance, you may have observed that one of your pastures was overgrazed or didn’t get enough moisture following a more intense grazing period, so you’re now planning to give that pasture a full year of rest from grazing. This rest period is important for the plants to reestablish their roots, increase overall biomass and improve soil cover. Once it has had a chance to rest, we can begin recovery with light grazing.

Light grazing will bring the necessary disturbance that encourages new growth, cycles nutrients and potentially helps to control more dominant grass species. This pasture may need to be grazed lightly for a few years before you can increase the stocking rate or you may have to spend more time resting it throughout the year before it is able to function properly again.

By both reducing the stock rates and reducing the time spent grazing that pasture, you are still able to leave enough vegetation behind that the plants are able to restore energy reserves, leave litter for the following year and maintain balance between the different species of grasses and forbs. Think of your pasture as an athlete. Running back-to-back marathons with minimal rest harms recovery. True rest followed by gradual, lighter activity supports long term health after intense stress.

All the planning in the world won’t change the fact that we’re still at the mercy of Mother Nature. Without rain, grasslands can’t get the rest or recovery they need, no matter how well we manage. Drought conditions greatly affect the ability of native grasslands to function properly even though they are one of the most resilient landscapes. Proper management leading up to a drought where landowners are truly resting pastures and also letting them recover can be the difference between having pasture available to graze or not if the rain stops.

Rangelands impacted by significant drought or fire often require extended periods of rest and recovery. In many cases, full recovery can take several years, and patience is essential to avoid undoing progress. When your land is beginning to recover you will notice changes on the ground and these changes include increased plant diversity, increased ground cover and overall improved soil health.

What can landowners do? Monitor your pastures regularly. Looking at what species are growing, how much litter is on the ground, how the soil responds after rain, and whether you’re meeting your production goals. Use that information to adjust your grazing plans, timing, and intensity. The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation can be used as a tool to complete full rangeland health assessments and provide a comprehensive report on the health of your pastures. This information allows ranchers to make more informed decisions based on what is happening right on the ground.

At the end of the day, good ranching is about more than running cattle, it’s about managing your land. By understanding the difference between rest and recovery, you’ll be better equipped to make decisions that benefit your livestock, your bottom line, and the long-term health of your ranch.