NAC | Working Trees for Livestock: Silvopasture in the Southeast

Other benefits

Silvopasture practices can:

Improve overall economic performance of a farm enterprise through diversification
Maintain or increase tree growth Improve cool-season grass production
Allow warm-season grass production with careful canopy management
Provide shade for livestock
Produce pine straw for landscaping and mulch
Aid in erosion control Increase wildlife populations
Improve water quality
Increase opportunities for recreation
Enhance aesthetics and property values

Planning considerations

Inventory your resource base.
Begin planning with an inventory of existing resources. A local soil suwey, which is available from your USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service office, can help you determine the suitability of different sites for different forage plants and trees. Your silvopastoral system will only be successful if you use plants adapted to your area.
Consider newer technologies.
Electrically powered fences may be the only way to afford a conservation grazing approach that matches livestock forage demand with forage production. Practical solar pumps may be used to provide water to previously unusable locations.
Analyze the economic implications.
Analyze the economic implications of pasture management, improvements required, and potential return. Then plan a grazing system using a conservative stocking rate. Intense grazing, overgrazing, and poor placement of supplemental troughs, water, or mineral feeders offer the highest potential for unacceptable levels of tree damage. Overstocking or improperly managed grazing can result in destruction of young pine seedlings. Consider a planting arrangement that would enhance self pruning, such as multiple row plantings, or higher density plantings that would require more frequent thinning. Wide-row, low-density planting increases limb retention and, depending upon species, decYeases timber quality. For example, trees with large retained branches produce lower quality saw logs for lumber. Pruning is one method for assuring clear saw log production. A general guide is to prune trees when they reach four to six inches in diameter at breast height (dbh) and pruned to approximately where the trunk is four inches in diameter. Care should be taken to remove no more than about 30 percent of the live crown at any one time. (This is an accepted practice for wide spaced silvopastoral systems in other parts of the world.)
Special considerations.
To ensure an adequate stand of quality trees, consider the natural range of pests in your area. Cattle-induced injuries to lower limbs of trees may provide opportunities for insect or disease attacks. Stay in touch with others who have had experience with successful, local silvopastoral systems.
Select tree species, forage species, and a management option that assure compatibility.
Some forage plants are more shade tolerant than others. For example, in the Southeast bahiagrass has proven to be more shade tolerant than Dallisgrass or coastal bermudagrass. Nangeela subterrannean clover is more shade tolerant than some other varieties available. Selection of forage plants as well as trees that are conducive to silvopasture is important. There appears to be a minor reduction in the digestibility of some forages growing in shade. This does not seem to be significant enough to affect livestock production or gains. There is evidence of increased palatability with some cool-season grasses.

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Last updated 12.12.2000.
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