As the weather cools down, North Dakota ranchers have several options to consider for extending their grazing season, according to North Dakota State University Extension specialists.

Extended season grazing systems provide ranchers the opportunity to graze longer into the fall or even the winter, reducing winter feeding and overall production costs. These systems also have the potential to improve nutrient cycling, enhancing soil health and forage quality.

Several winter grazing strategies are available, including grazing annual forages, swath grazing and bale grazing. Extended season grazing options should be selected based on resources available and production goals.

“It is critical to select an approach that works as part of your production system,” says Kevin Sedivec, NDSU Extension rangeland management specialist.

Annual forages can be used to extend grazing in the fall or provide early spring grazing, depending on the species selected. For late-season grazing, annual forage mixtures should include a cereal or grass that is high in fiber and brassicas, which will maintain high forage quality even after a killing frost.

“When fall grazing winter annual forages, be aware of the risk for nitrate toxicity,” says Sedivec, “and consider testing prior to grazing.”

If the mix contains sorghum, sudangrass or sorghum-sudangrass, there is a potential for prussic acid toxicity during or following hail or a frost. Fall-seeded winter cereals such as winter rye, winter triticale and winter wheat can provide early spring grazing and, when seeded early enough, fall grazing.

“One disadvantage of grazing annual forages is that they lose quality as they mature,” says Miranda Meehan, NDSU Extension livestock environmental stewardship specialist, “so supplementation may be required.”

Swath grazing can mitigate this loss in quality, as forages are swathed during the late summer when quality is high, then grazed in the swath in the fall and winter months. Bale grazing involves the grazing of baled hay that is placed in a tame grass pasture or hay field or on cropland, and it also addresses losses in quality associated with grazing a standing forage.

One limitation of extended season grazing strategies is the potential for increased feed waste, according to Meehan. However, implementing strip grazing, a method of limit feeding within grazing systems, can reduce feed waste and increase the number of grazing days. While this method may be more labor-intensive, research has shown an increase in grazing days when strip grazing. When grazing annual forages, strip grazing increased the stocking rate by an average of 47% and 23% in Nebraska and North Dakota, respectively.

Limiting access in a swath grazing access can reduce feed waste to 5% when moving daily, from 26% when moving every 10 days. In contrast, waste tends to be much higher in bale grazing systems — between 20% and 40%, depending on management. To put these numbers in perspective, the estimated loss when feeding hay averages between 15% and 40%, depending on storage and delivery methods. The amount of acceptable waste must be balanced with the labor required to move fence and the performance goals for the animals grazing.

“Extended season grazing systems improve nutrient cycling by directly distributing nutrients on fields and speeding up the breakdown of plant material into plant-available nutrients,” says Sedivec.

These benefits vary between grazing systems and are dependent on the length of the grazing period. When grazing annual forages, changes in nutrient availability take time in North Dakota’s semiarid environment. However, most short-term studies have shown minimal changes in soil nutrients, but increased yields in the subsequent crop. Whereas long-term research has documented an increase in soil nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon.

Research has shown that bale grazing increases soil nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium after just one grazing period.

“Interestingly, we found that when supplementing cattle grazing bales, there was a greater increase in soil nitrogen where animals were fed a supplement with higher crude protein,” says Meehan.

In turn, these benefits to soil health led to improved forage quality — specifically, increases in crude protein and digestibility.

For more information about grazing management, visit ndsu.ag/grazingfall25.

NDSU Agriculture Communication – Sept. 4, 2025

Source: Kevin Sedivec, 701-7994689, kevin.sedivec@ndsu.edu

Source: Miranda Meehan, 701-219-9251, miranda.meehand@ndsu.edu

Editor: Dominic Erickson, 701-231-5546, dominic.erickson@ndsu.edu