A large stable isotope dataset from East and Central Africa from ca. 30 regional collection sites that range from forest to grassland shows that most extant East and Central African large herbivore taxa have diets dominated by C4 grazing or C3 browsing. Comparison with the fossil record shows that faunal assemblages from ca. 4.1-2.35 Ma in the Turkana Basin had a greater diversity of C3-C4 mixe...

BACKGROUND Primary photosensitisation (PS) subsequent to ingestion of the pasture legume Biserrula pelecinus L. (biserrula) has recently been confirmed in grazing livestock. Given the potential utility of this pasture species in challenging climates, a grazing trial was undertaken to examine if both varieties 'Casbah' and 'Mauro' were able to cause photosensitisation in livestock, and if this c...

Sainfoin (Onobrychis viciaefolia Scop.) is adapted to the calcareous soils of the southern Great Plains and can provide early season forage that does not induce bloating; however, little is known about performance by ruminants grazing sainfoin. Our objective was to determine the effect of plant growth stage and grazing pressures on potential animal production from sainfoin as predicted from ene...

Increasing plant species diversity has been proposed as a means for enhancing annual pasture productivity and decreasing seasonal variability of pasture production facing more frequent drought scenarios due to climate change. Few studies have examined how botanical complexity of sown swards affects cow performance. A 2-year experiment was conducted to determine how sward botanical complexity, f...

Low-cost, pasture-based forage systems are a viable management alternative for small to moderately sized dairy farms in the Northeast United States. A whole farm analysis was conducted to evaluate the potential long-term environmental impact and economic benefit of varying the level of concentrate supplementation on seasonal grazing dairies. A representative dairy farm was simulated with variou...

Advances in global positioning system (GPS) technology have dramatically enhanced the ability to track and study distributions of free-ranging livestock. Understanding factors controlling the distribution of free-ranging livestock requires the ability to assess when and where they are foraging. For four years (2008-2011), we periodically collected GPS and activity sensor data together with dire...

The foraging behaviour (grazing time and diet composition), live-weight (LW) changes and parasitic infection (faecal egg counts of gastrointestinal nematodes) of 12 beef cows, 84 ewes and 84 goats suckling their offspring, managed in mixed grazing on heathlands with 24% of improved pasture of perennial ryegrass-white clover, were studied during the years 2003 and 2006. The results showed that g...