Grass Growth in Drylands, How to Decide When to Graze. Holistic Management in Semiarid to Arid place

Hi all,

having read Savory's "HM, a new framework for decision making" (2nd edition) I must say it really has become one of my favorite books and an eye-opener.
But I need more information about grass growth, especially when to graze in arid/semiarid conditions. Yes I understand you cannot give me an answer like that, but I want to know how to decide when to graze.

Savory writes about a book by André Voisin (grass productivity). Is it also helpful for drylands, Voisin having lived in France?

If someone has some pdfs, it would be really helpful. In french even better, as I work currently in the Maghreb.
I work currently in a region where people work mainly with overrest, and severely degraded. Many places are on the rocks, having lost all (!) soil. But I see the potential, and want to change that. For this I need some good literature and sources as references, and not to tell something wrong because I misunderstood it.

Best
Hans

To the moderators:
This topic can be in "pasture" as well as here in greening the desert, and maybe other places as well. Please notify me if you move my post.

Anyone?

bumping this up to see if anyone can help

Parts of France are quite dry partly due to having a limestone surface so transhumance has been practiced for some time to maintain the grazing . I suspect that the traditional methods , timing and stocking rates are well known and attempts to change them are now unwelcome as in the past has lead to starvation and land degredation  . One of the reasons put forward for the civil war in Syria is the forced collectivization of the grazing resulting in soil degradation and nomadic farmers fleeing destitute to the cities leading lots of angry hungry folks with no work money or hope.
I would ask the locals is there is a pattern of previous usage
https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/resources/IntensiveGrazing.pdf might help

David

Ok, I live and manage cattle and sheep in dryland Colorado. First thing, baby grass should normally be avoided for grazing.  Depending on the grass though, teenage and mature grass should be the target.  My experience has been best when grazing a paddock somewhat quickly, then get everything off the ground for sometimes up to a year.  

I've had cattle graze standing hay (dormant) almost to the ground in winter (blue gramma - which has great dry protein content).  It really didnt look good and we had it come back stronger than ever.  You just need to give it a good break.

I would suggest observation of neighbors grazing practices and the result.  Also, you can just try it on a small scale until you get it dialed in.  In dry climates nitrogen tends to be deficient more times than not. Experiment small scale, observe the results, correct as needed.  Animals or combinations of animals intended to be grazed also will vary your plan.  Birds following ruminants work really, really well!!

I’m up in central Wyoming, been raising pastured poultry for a couple years and allowed horses access to the pasture for a few months last year, wouldn’t consider myself an expert by any definition of the word but can concur that long recovery times seem to be important, I have yet to see any grasses grow back well enough after grazing by layers, broilers or grazers to be grazed a second time in a season, though I hope to get there someday

Bob and Devon, what are your average annual rainfall amounts?

Ron Metz wrote:Bob and Devon, what are your average annual rainfall amounts?

sitting at about 12"-14" or so, the town of casper has an average of 14" next to the mountain but the farm about 30 mins north misses almost half of the storms that casper gets while occassionally getting storms that casper does not