I do not know when pasture walks were first instituted by mankind, but since the Egyptians were worshiping dung beetles over 4,000 years ago I would guess that farmers and at least some beef producers have been looking down and paying attention for quite some time.

However, monitoring of anything other than the cattle, feed troughs and storage units was never built into my formal education.

Still, once I was exposed to it, doubling and even tripling profitability while increasing the land resource, water quality and wildlife and having fun doing it caught my attention. After that, my interest in pasture conditions and dung beetles and soil health naturally zoomed up.

Pasture monitoring tells us what’s happening and shortens the learning curve. With one or more interested sidekicks, pasture walks and monitoring are fun.

Recently we were pasture walking and a young man who works for a client asked me what we were looking for as I dug into the soil. I am not sure my answer was more than a shallow summary, but here's a little bit more.

Monitoring indicators may be divided into two major groups:

Short-term indicators are changes that are happening over periods of days, weeks and months and maybe five-year periods in the pasture. We normally pay the greatest attention to short-term indicators and they are divided into groups with emphasis on:

You’ll have likely noticed that I emphasize the importance of complete plant recovery before grazing and the limiting or elimination of partial plant rest before the cattle are brought back in. Progress in land management is all about time and timing. Remember, high animal density on completely recovered forage for short periods of time is the goal. In addition, the faster the grass is growing, the faster the cattle and the back-wire needs to be moving.

In front of the cattle, in the completely recovered forage, we monitor for:

Experience, husbandry and science tells us that plants growing in high-moisture overly developed soils are reduced in mineral and energy content. This describes our area. Cattle that we manage need to be full all the time. They need to work hard and make high impact in high densities, but they do not need to be empty. Daily and/or multiple daily cattle moves result in all the boys and girls becoming more satisfied.

Behind the cattle, pasture monitoring gets to be a lot of fun, especially when guests are visiting. We normally start with where the cattle have grazed and take a good look on through five days back with emphasis on:

Most of our below-surface monitoring begins five to 10 days behind the cattle. We dig in areas where manure is starting to smell like good rich soil with no stink. We spend considerable time seeing what is happening with most emphasis on:

The truth is that if we take care of land and work to grow the soil, the system that includes our soil, plants and cattle will provide for us. Mining of the farm needs to be old history beef producers. Consider rereading and applying the points I have made. When you are hooked into the natural model, monitoring is fun and uplifting. Days on the pasture when the sun is shining can become really good days.