Our objectives included: 1) determine plant community composition and relative use by large herbivores, 2) determine levels of browsing of key woody plants, 3) quantify degree of grazing on herbaceous communities, and 4) determine diets and relative diet quality of elk and cattle.
Bird use was compared among six types of farmland riparian strips (grazed, grassy herbaceous, non-grassy herbaceous, low shrubby, tall shrubby, and wooded) in the agricultural landscape of southern Québec (Canada).
In assessing the effect of grazing intensity on herbaceous and woody species abundance (because species abundance were counts), a log-linear regression was applied; this is because both herbaceous and woody species data were count data and best analysed using a log-linear Poisson regression.
Animals grazing on pasture where such herbaceous plants are prevalent or being fed with feedstuffs containing those plants may become contaminated with CAP, with the subsequent detection of CAP in the animal products.
We established small (1 m × 1 m) grazing exclosures and monitored change in herbaceous vegetation cover quarterly over 2 years, in grazed and ungrazed patches (high herbaceous vegetation cover) and inter-patches (low herbaceous vegetation cover), in woody encroachment and pasture sites in semi-arid eastern Australia.
Goats controlled shrub encroachment and canopy height more than sheep in the three shrubland types, resulting in a higher herbaceous cover under goat grazing.
We modeled bird abundance to characterize regional response to herbaceous cover, experimentally manipulated grazing to isolate its effect, and then scaled back up to evaluate how the regional environment constrains bird response to grazing.
Livestock becomes in such cases part of a wider production system which closely integrates the different factors - trees with herbaceous crops and/or animal grazing - with important changes in management skills and patterns.
