NDSU Researchers Determine Livestock Integration Provides Return on Cover Crop Investment

Mixing crops and animals on the farm is anything but new.

Using crop residues for grazing and manure as fertilizer is a common practice, historically, but agriculture has shifted toward more specialized cropping and livestock systems. However, the two systems are finding their way back together again.

Research conducted at North Dakota State University’s School of Natural Resource Sciences and the Department of Animal Sciences has discovered that bringing livestock to graze a cover crop does provide at least a return on the cover crop investment.

For crop farmers, planting cover crops has become increasingly popular, as it’s becoming increasingly recognized as an effective and sustainable practice. But despite the benefits, there’s no short-term financial return on investment, especially in a semiarid environment like North Dakota.

On the livestock side, winter feeding is a high cost, so anything that can be done to extend the grazing season is to ranchers’ benefit.

Economic returns from cover crops are often not realized without livestock integration. There has been increased interest by farmers in integrating livestock, but only 24% of surveyed farmers reported grazing their cover crops.

Miranda Meehan, North Dakota State University associate professor and Extension livestock environmental stewardship specialist, says those farmers, hungry for information about grazing cover crops, prompted this research on integrating livestock on cover crops.

“I kept getting calls from producers asking, ‘What is the impact if I fall graze my winter rye cover crop? What will happen to forage production? Will I be able to graze it in the spring? Will it impact cover?’

“Getting the research means answering those questions, and it means Extension specialists guiding farmers to make informed management decisions,” says Meehan.

The study began as an exploration of grazing management, crop production, livestock production and their economics.

Katrina Kratzke, an NDSU graduate research assistant, is in her second year of her natural resource sciences masters program. She helped lead the final two years of the four-year study of livestock integration.

Kratzke became involved in this project because her family’s home farm in Fertile, Minnesota, began integrating livestock.

“We didn’t know if there’d be enough growth to make it worth it, and putting money into grazing without getting anything out of it was too big a risk for us,” says Kratzke. She wanted to see for herself the effects of grazing after specific crop rotations.

Grazing also benefits soil health, and the study explored how the added nutrients from manure affected the crop.

“One of the soil health principles is biodiversity, and integrating livestock is a great way to increase biodiversity,” says Kratzke.

The research team began planting in fall 2022 and included different plot treatments: dual-grazed cover crops, single-grazed cover crops, nongrazed cover crops and a control plot with no cover crops. Foxtail millet hay was planted first, then soybeans in 2023, corn for silage in 2024 and corn for grain in 2025.

Elements such as soil samples, forage samples and water infiltration rates were collected throughout the planting and grazing periods.