Employing livestock to manipulate vegetation is as old as grazing itself. Promoting grazing to manage vegetation as a paid service – typically called prescribed or targeted grazing – is a more recent phenomenon. As targeted grazing has gained a foothold in the land management arena, both research and experience have evolved to provide land managers and grazing service providers with more definitive tools for managing vegetation. This handbook represents a compilation of the latest research on harnessing livestock to graze targeted vegetation in ways that improve the function and appearance of a wide variety of landscapes.
The handbook is organized both as an introduction to targeted grazing for the novice and as a useful reference for those already familiar with the topic. The chapters can be studied collectively or individually, depending on a reader’s needs, and they’re written toward an audience that includes livestock producers, land managers, landowners, grazing enthusiasts, or simply interested observers. Readers will note that the same topics appear more than once throughout the handbook, for example, discussions on animal diet selection, fencing, predators, and integration with other vegetation management tools. In each instance, the editors have tried to assure that the topics are in context and germane to that particular discussion.