Keeping animal travel distance to less than 250 m will enhance grazing distribution uniformity and nutrient cycling efficiency. Making paddocks more near to square compared to rectangular usually keeps stock closer to water and requires less fencing per paddock. Making subdivisions based on landscape position and soil types can help keep plant community and productivity of sites within paddocks more similar. Focusing on uniform carrying capacity per paddock rather than uniform size will generally result in better animal performance. Restricting alleyway usage for animal movement only will generally minimize the negative effects of alleyways such as erosion development and nutrient transport losses.
Forward planning can result in much more satisfactory performance of the grazing system.
Many farmers neglect to calibrate their alfalfa seeder as they begin seeding in the spring. In doing so, they are failing to take into account differences in seed size and may be seeding at higher rates than necessary. Over several years, Gary Vondracheck collected information on seeding rate of different varieties through farmers seeders left at the same setting. The results show that large differences in seeding rate can occur when a seeder is not calibrated with each new lot of seed. In addition to seeding rate differences, seed lots also vary in seed size from 190,000 to 230,000 seeds per pound.