Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Macoon, Bisoondat

Committee Member

Lang, David J.

Committee Member

Rude, Brian J.

Committee Member

Parish, Jane

Committee Member

Vann, Rhonda C.

Other Advisors or Committee Members

Kingery, William

Date of Degree

5-1-2010

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Agronomy

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Department

Department of Plant and Soil Sciences

Abstract

A 2-yr grazing study quantified pasture and animal responses of four forage systems (FS) grazed at two stocking rates (SR; 3 or 6 animals ha-1). Using „Marshall? annual ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) and „Durana? white clover (Trifolium repens L.), FS treatments included spatially separated grass and legumes within the same paddock (SS), monoculture grass (MG), monoculture legume (ML), and a binary grass and legume mixture (MIX). Annual herbage mass (HM) was similar among FS at high SR (1900 kg ha-1), but at low SR, grass plots had greater HM (2900 vs. 2000 kg ha-1) than plots of legume monocultures. Animals on SS (1.12 kg) had greater average daily gain (ADG) than ML (0.97 kg), but neither was different from MG (1.08 kg) or MIX (1.00 kg). Low SR animals had greater ADG than high SR (1.09 vs. 0.99 kg). These results indicate that SS grazing system can improve pasture productivity.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16173

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