Pasture

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mountain pasture in Switzerland
Lush lowland pasture

Pasture (from the

past participle of pascere, "to feed") is land used for grazing.[1]

Types of pasture

Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of

mown to make hay for animal fodder.[2]

Pasture in a wider sense additionally includes

browsing
. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are distinguished from rangelands by being managed through more intensive agricultural practices of seeding, irrigation, and the use of fertilizers, while rangelands grow primarily native vegetation, managed with extensive practices like controlled burning and regulated intensity of grazing.

rainfall are important factors in pasture management.[3]

World agricultural land by use, permanent meadows and pastures and cropland
Hillside pasture in Pennsylvania.

Sheepwalk is an area of

ruminants. Pasture feeding dominates livestock farming where the land makes crop sowing or harvesting (or both) difficult, such as in arid or mountainous regions, where types of camel, goat, antelope, yak and other ruminants live which are well suited to the more hostile terrain and very rarely factory-farmed. In more humid regions, pasture grazing is managed across a large global area for free range and organic farming. Certain types of pasture suit the diet, evolution and metabolism of particular animals, and their fertilising and tending of the land may over generations result in the pasture combined with the ruminants in question being integral to a particular ecosystem.[5]

Examples of pasture habitats
Grazing cattle on a pasture near Hradec nad Moravicí in the Czech Republic

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "pasture". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.
  2. New International Encyclopedia
    (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
  3. ISSN 1385-0237
    .
  4. ^ R. Elfyn Hughes, "Sheep Population and Environment in Snowdonia (North Wales)", Journal of Ecology Vol. 46, No. 1, March 1958, 169-189
  5. ^ "Agricultural biodiversity’s contribution to ecosystem functions" Archived 2015-01-08 at the Wayback Machine Dr. Devra I. Jarvis, CGIAR. Retrieved 2014-12-01
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