Pasture and dry season
What changes at the trough in the dry season
In the dry season pasture does not just shrink: it changes quality. And what was right in the wet season stops being right.
Foto: A. Duarte, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Two seasons, two pastures
The calendar of pasture-based cattle farming in tropical Brazil splits into the wet and the dry season. These are not merely two rainfall patterns: they are two different pastures inside the same fence.
In the wet season grass grows fast, carries more leaf and more protein. In the dry season it stops growing, the proportion of stem rises, the fibre hardens, and protein and mineral content fall. The animal is still standing there, but the feed under its feet is not the same.
Intake falls with it
Coarser, less digestible grass moves more slowly through the rumen. That cuts how much the animal manages to eat in a day, precisely when every mouthful is worth less. It is a double fall: less quantity and less quality.
At that point supplementation stops being a top-up and becomes what holds performance together. Not because it replaces pasture, but because it gives back what the pasture stopped delivering.
The trough in the dry season
Three simple habits decide more than any change to the formulation. The first is cover: an uncovered trough loses product to the late-afternoon rain and leaves spoiled residue in the bottom. The second is cleaning: caked residue in the bottom cuts intake even when there is product available.
The third is water. Mineral intake and water intake travel together. A water point that is distant, dirty or too small will pull mineral intake down without anyone connecting the two.
Planning before you need it
The dry season is no surprise: it comes every year, and every region knows roughly when. What is usually missing is not forecasting but lead time: adjusting stocking rate, setting aside forage, and making sure the mineral is at the trough before the pasture turns, not after.
Climate information for every region is public, published in the INMET bulletins and the Drought Monitor. Setting that calendar against the herd's own is the cheapest management decision there is.
Where the figures come from
- 1Embrapa. Technical material on pasture management and dry-season supplementation. https://www.embrapa.br/gado-de-corte
- 2INMET. Brazilian National Institute of Meteorology, bulletins and climate data. https://portal.inmet.gov.br/
Further reading
Informational content. It does not replace guidance from a responsável técnico for your herd.
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