And people who have done it, even folks who have gone into it skeptically, are just amazed. Instead, MIG addresses the needs of the grass, the soil, the animals, and the producer in an attempt to coordinate them into a single efficient system. We've been trained to think that there is one way of doing stuff, that there is a best management practice. There is no 'best management practice' for grazing management. You can't do a formula.
Every day is different, every season is different, every year is different.
It is management intensive. During the grazing season, cows get a significant percentage of their ration from pasture, supplemented with enough grain to maintain proper nutrition. Over the course of a year, Wayson's and Funke's herd of Jerseys, Holsteins and Dutch Belted crosses gets an average of 60 to 65 percent of its ration dry matter from pasture. When the cows give 49 pounds of milk per head per day during this period, Wayson calculates that he spends 31 cents a day for pasture, and 85 cents a day for grain. When the herd grazes summer annuals, which must be planted every year, the cost of the forage more than doubles to 65 cents.