More information about grazing
Grazing is great for wildlife. The suitable number of the right kind of livestock can help in the following ways:
Reducing the amount of scrub and trees.
A lot of our special wildlife needs open, treeless areas. Livestock can help to maintain this by eating young trees.
Creating a varied plant structure
If an area has lots of variety in structure - tall plants, short plants and bare ground for example - then it can support a greater variety of wildlife.
Encouraging desirable plants
Livestock can be fussy! They tend to eat plants like grasses, this encourages less palatable, but more desirable, plants like heather.
Reducing biomass
Special habitats like heathland can only survive if they remain unfertilised. Livestock help by eating lots of plants and reducing the fertility of the soil.
Producing dung
Dung piles are a special ecosystem of their own! All the insects that live on dung are great food for some of the larger animals like lizards and birds.
The livestock that we use are very special. In order to do a good job, they need to be hardy and able to cope with difficult conditions. They need to be able to eat and digest the rough vegetation and cope with being outside in all weathers. For this reason we use hardy, traditional breeds. These tend to be rare breeds that are not very productive, but can taste great!
Look out for some of the following on the Grazing for Wildlife Project sites:
- New Forest ponies
- Highland cattle
- Aberdeen Angus cattle
- Dexter cattle
- Luing cattle
Find the answers to some frequently asked questions about the grazing project sites or learn some interesting facts and figures.
