How a grazing plan can benefit bobwhites and soil health

Aldo Leopold once said, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community...” At the time he was writing, much of the United States grasslands were being converted from prairie into row crop or cool season grasses. The decline of bobwhite quail followed this trend, but today there are a growing number of grazing operations who are using grazing plans that restore their pastures and benefit bobwhite in the process.  

A grazing plan is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a blueprint that a cattle owner can customize and use to maintain healthier forage and pastures for the herd while also benefitting upland birds. We spoke with Justin Carmona, a Nebraska Quail Forever northern bobwhite quail habitat coordinator, to talk about some of the practices our biologists recommend when they are helping a landowner write a grazing plan.  

Picky Eaters 

Cows, like people, have favorite foods. The way cattle eat affects the overall health of a pasture significantly. With the right management, a cow’s appetite can be a powerful tool for conservation.  

“If you have one big paddock and let cattle go into it and don’t control it, they will eat the most nutritious and palatable thing first. Then the second, and so on and so forth,” Carmona said. “With a grazing plan, we’re trying to design a system where cattle get good forage and don’t eat everything down. The way to accomplish this is splitting paddocks and allowing paddocks to rest.”

If cattle are allowed to consistently overgraze a paddock, they will keep desirable plants from going to seed and propagating themselves. In the long term, this reduces the variety of forage cattle have available to them, which has a negative effect on the soil health of the pasture, as well as the value a pasture can have for wildlife.  

Rotational grazing creates a system where cattle move from paddock to paddock, allowing different sections of pasture to rest. The exact amount of time each paddock is grazed and allowed to rest varies from operation to operation, but the basic principle is simple. This patchwork of paddocks not only creates better soil and a more varied forage base for cattle, it helps to provide a variety of habitat for bobwhite quail.  

Grazing in the Right Season 

Bobwhite quail don’t do well in pastures that are dominated by cool season grasses, such as fescue and brome. When native warm season grasses are dormant, cattle can be brought into a paddock to graze the cool season grasses, knocking them back so that native plants can have a competitive chance later in their growing season. These native warm season grasses provide better habitat for bobwhite quail as well as drought resistant forage that a cattle herd can eat when cool season grasses struggle to produce enough food.  

Reducing the amount of cool season grass is not the only goal that a hungry herd of cows can accomplish.  

Letting cattle graze warm season grasses at the right time can also allow them to set back the warm season grass and lets the forbs come up. Native forbs are highly nutritious both for cattle and bobwhite quail. They are also often present in the seedbank and are just waiting for the right management to be applied to come back up. These forbs also provide good quality brood-rearing habitat for quail chicks.  

Grazing can also be used alongside prescribed fire. Patch-burn grazing, similar to the idea of having smaller, rotating paddocks, is burning different sections of a pasture, allowing the more aggressive plants like cool season grass to come back up and then letting cattle graze the new growth. This new growth is highly nutritious for cattle and grazing it gives other plant species the chance to grow.  

Setting Up a Plan 

Financial and technical assistance is available for landowners who are looking to implement a grazing plan, especially those who live in a Working Lands for Wildlife priority geography. The Working Lands for Wildlife partnership supports the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service's (NRCS) premier approach for conserving America's working lands to benefit people, wildlife and rural communities.  

“State cattlemen associations and university extensions can also be great resources for landowners who want to learn more about rotational grazing and grazing plans,” Carmona said. “Quail Forever’s conservation staff are a great resource, but we also encourage people to reach out to other local producers to see what strategies have worked for them.” 

Quail Forever’s Farm Bill biologists and conservation field staff are available to help landowners create customized plans that work for their operation, as well as to help navigate NRCS programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). To learn more about the resources available to landowners, contact a Quail Forever biologist or find a local NRCS office near you.