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Additional information

The use of multispecies swards can improve agricultural sustainability within more intensively managed grassland. One of the reasons found by the project Multisward is that sheep, cattle and dairy cows eat more when they are fed with grass-legume mixtures. The mixtures lead to a higher production of meat and milk in all cases, whether the mixtures are used as fresh forage or as silage, and for both stall-fed and grazing animals.

The animals increase their grazing time and intake when they are presented with a mixture of various pasture species. The presence of legumes in the mixtures is the critical factor to raise milk output per ha, mainly due to higher milk production per cow. Similarly, when lambs graze in diverse pastures, they gain weight more quickly than they do when grazing on pastures composed of grass only.

Mixing also seems to be good at herd level: rotational grazing of cattle and sheep leads to better average daily gains, particularly in sheep. The underlying mechanism appeared to be that mixed grazing of both species promotes full utilization of the available herbage in swards. Different grazing management and combining different grass-legume mixtures also improves the productivity because it extends the grazing season in early spring and late autumn.

http://www.multisward.eu/multisward_eng