Regular readers of Field Notes will know that we can hardly bear to let an issue go by without extolling cover crops for their many, many benefits. One of ATTRA’s latest publications shines a spotlight on one of our favorite such perks: grazing cover crops with livestock.

Increasing Cover Crop Profitability with Livestock spells it out right in the title: one of the most attractive benefits of cover crops is their potential, when grazed by livestock, to pad out the producer’s bottom line with an additional income stream.

After a brief introduction, summarizing some of cover crops’ other benefits as well as data on their increasing use in recent years, the publication makes a convincing case that grazing cover crops can increase profitability – and quickly: “Introducing animals into the farming system to graze cover crops significantly increases both the soil health benefits and the chances of making a profit the first year, compared with using cover crops in crops-only systems.”

The publication then acknowledges that grazing cover crops can add complexity to management, and digs into some of the ways that that can play out – including cover crop species mixes, livestock stocking rate, and potential soil drying and/or compaction.

Increasing Cover Crop Profitability with Livestock also discusses the potential for vegetable crops to be contaminated by manure from livestock that graze a cover crop ahead of the cash crop, as well as strategies for minimizing that risk.

Increasing Cover Crop Profitability with Livestock is available free in electronic format from the ATTRA website, or in print by calling ATTRA (800-346-9140‬).