Management Strategies for Sustainable Cattle Production in Southern Pastures

Management Strategies for Sustainable Cattle Production: On Grazed Grasslands is a practical resource for scientists who need an understanding of the interactions between cattle genetics and the environment as they select breed types across different environments and look to optimize cattle production. It explains the biologic and economic implications of grazing management decisions made to improve sustainability of profitable cattle production, but also discusses how to be compliant with present and future environmental regulations and how to optimize cattle welfare.

• Discusses how stocking impacts cattle performance to optimize beef production
• Provides grazing systems tools to maintain sustainable, productive pastures and rangelands to increase livestock production
• Presents innovations in cattle feeding and watering systems that can be used to minimize impacts on water and soil quality
• Includes control methods of noxious weeds needed to maintain forage composition, pasture and rangeland condition, and ecosystem stability

Cattle producers; Extension agents and specialists; Forage and animal scientists; USDA- Natural Resource; Conservation Service; USDA – Agricultural Research Service; U.S. Bureau of Land and Mines; U.S. Forest Service; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Animal Welfare Scientists

1. Introduction
2. Challenges of Forage-Based Cattle Production
3. Maintaining Soil Fertility and Health in Productive Pastures
4. Weed Control in Grazed Pastures
5. Stocking Rates and Methods:  The Primary Management Tools
6. Pasture Finished Beef
7. Grazing management of Forages in Subtropical Grasslands
8. Grazing management of Forages in the Temperate Grasslands of the Midwest and Northeast
9. Grazing management of Forages in the Transition Zone between the Subtropical and Temperate Grasslands
10. Management of Western Rangelands