Winter grazing is a useful option for farmers who also raise livestock. They can feed them using cover crops they were going to plant anyway, a cost-efficient and sustainable practice. But how does winter grazing impact the soil underneath? Hayley Crowell, researcher at Auburn University, and her team worked to find out.

Daryl Obermeyer had already implemented cover cropping practices in his operation before the NRCS and On-Farm Research study started. He used this study to validate what he was doing and get concrete data and results of what was really happening.

Researchers went out about 2-3 weeks after farmers started grazing a cover crop field to measure standing and post-grazing cover crop biomass, and soil health before, the day after, and 2-3 weeks after grazing. One big factor determining profit was the number of times the cover crop could be grazed, and the quantity of grazed biomass consumed.

The two-year research project, based at MSU’s Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station Coastal Plain Branch in Newton, established row crops and cover crops that encompassed a variety of species suitable for grazing that led to increased livestock weight gain.