Combining cattle and sheep on pasture: how do farmers organise the sharing of grass resources ? Sustainable meat and milk production from grasslands
Résumé
The mixed grazing of cattle and sheep can optimise the use of diverse resources, enhance the quality and
quantity of grass and reduce the susceptibility of a system to climatic uctuations. is study aimed to
explore how farmers manage grass resources grazed by two species. Our results highlight four styles of
mixed cattle and sheep grazing that lie along a continuum from no link between the two species to a high
level of integration in space and time. We show that the conguration of the land and the type of bovine
production (dairy or beef ) inuence how mixed grazing is managed.