Does Grazing Influence Surface Water Quality?
With confinement systems and manure storage, dairy farmers can pick the time and place to spread manure. Grazing cows pick their own time and place, which may not be ideal from a pollution-prevention perspective. Rotationally grazed cows harvest their own feed during the grazing season, reducing the need to purchase supplemental feed, machinery and other supplies. The animals are “rotated” to new paddocks as needed. About one-quarter of Wisconsin’s 1,250,000 cows get part of their feed ration from pasture, and the percentage of state dairy farms that use grazing is increasing. In studies on farms in two parts of the state, biological systems engineer Anita Thompson and soil scientist Fred Madison are studying how rotational grazing influences surface water quality. They’ve had instruments on the Bob and Karen Breneman farm, near Rio in south-central Wisconsin, since March 2005. They began a study at the Karl Klessig Saxon Homestead Farm in Manitowoc County in summer 2005. Thompson and
