Reporting Forage Allowance in Grazing Experiments

Stocking rate has a major effect on animal performance, but comparable stocking rates may result in a wide range in performance across environments because of differences in forage mass or sward canopy characteristics. Forage allowance is a function of both forage mass and stocking rate and can be a powerful tool for explaining differences in animal performance. Some methods used to express forage allowance in the literature do not allow useful comparisons across grazing methods or among management strategies within a method. In addition, many include a unit of time which violates the definition of forage allowance as a point‐in‐time measure. A meaningful method of reporting forage allowance is needed that applies across a wide range of pasture management treatments. This paper suggests a method that does not include a unit of time, has application across continuous and rotational stocking methods, and within the rotational stocking method applies to any size or number of pasture subunits.