The Problem: most of Hawaii’s pastures are extremely nutrient poor. Without rotational grazing, nutritious grasses and plants get grazed out and what remains are nutrient poor grasses such as Wainaku (torpedo) grass and sedges. under those conditions, it takes up to 6 acres to just feed a single cow. Under conventional grazing improvements such as proper rotation across different paddocks and introduction of improved grasses such as cane grass and California grass, grazing density can be increased to 1.5 cows per acre. The Waimea research station has achieved 1 acre per cow density but to achieve this goal, a once a year urea fertilization regime is required.
Objective: To maximize grazing animal density using rotational grazing practices and by planting bana grass and a selection of nitrogen fixing tropical vines that can climb up the bana grass. Reported grazing density in Southeast Asia using bana grass is as high as 4 cows per acre, again with the addition of external fertilizer. We want to see if we can achieve 2-4 cows per acre density by leveraging key nitrogen fixing plants to replace external fertilizer input. Due to the scale of our farm, we are using goats instead of cows.
Funding Source: NRCS