Improved characterization of cattle foraging strategies

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The Canadian agricultural landscape includes some 4,804,496 hectares of tame or seeded pasture and 15,391,072 ha of natural land for pasture (Stats Can 2007). The majority of this forage is used by the Canadian beef cattle industry as a source of feed for cows, bulls and growing/young stock. Understanding how cattle adjust their grazing behavior to contend with changing environmental and forage dynamics is paramount to a healthy grassland ecosystem and to optimize livestock production. Due to the challenges of working with free-ranging animals, little work has been done with respect to metabolic and behavioural strategies used by grazing animals, and to our knowledge, there is no published work pertaining to fall and winter grazing under environmentalc onditions typical of Canada. The fall and winter periods present a unique opportunity to evaluate animal response to dietary and environmental stressors.