This article originally appeared in Acres U.S.A.’s July 2025 issue. Reprinted with permission.
Livestock can be a valuable tool for regenerating ecosystems. However, grazing alone sometimes isn’t enough to get optimum response and profitability in your regeneration efforts.
Animals and birds are amazing concentrators of nutrients, and at the same time they are phenomenal multipliers of microorganisms, enzymes and soil fauna. In early spring, a blade of grass springs forth, then another and another, until the whole field is a lush green carpet of photosynthesizing blades and leaves, each turning itself to capture the greatest number of photons from the brightly beaming sunrays.
Billions of photons are captured by the chlorophyll molecule and converted to glucose, then into amino acids and proteins. Energy is being generated and transferred throughout the plant. Extra energy is stored in reserves for rainy days in the form of lipids and phenolic compounds that may also be transported through the roots to the soil microbiome, to feed and support all that is happening down there. The primary goal for the plant is to put on a seedhead to produce the next generation of itself.
Enzyme Co-factors: The Livestock Cutting Torch
Enter livestock…. Bite, rip, munch, rip, munch, rip munch…. And the process of digestion begins. This is a very satisfying sound — all herdsmen take pride in watching and listening to animals enjoy quality forage.
When a plant is growing, trillions of enzymatically catalyzed reactions are happening constantly. These reactions are creating molecular bonds that form amino acids, proteins, cells, etc. Think of these molecules as being welded together. To create a weld, you use high temperatures created by gas and oxygen or electricity. Welding takes a very specific combination of gases and oxygen for each type of material. If you tried to weld with just gas, you wouldn’t have enough heat to make the weld in any reasonable amount of time. In the same way, when a plant does not have enzyme cofactors, which are mainly micronutrients, the molecular bonding happens very slowly, or not at all, causing poor plant growth and quality.
What does molecular bonding and plant growth have to do with digestion? A lot! In fact, digestion is pretty much the identical process in reverse. In digestion, rumen bacteria and acidic stomach fluids break apart the structure of the plant to a molecular level.
Bacteria do not have a mouth, so how do they eat? How do they break apart the plants? They produce enzymes that break molecular bonds. Think of this as a cutting torch rather than a welder, as described in the protein synthesis process. Bacteria and bacterial bodies, along with the many enzymes and minerals that are not utilized by the animal, are excreted in the manure and urine back to the soil. This is a very efficient way to harvest the crop, feed the livestock, spread the manure, and inoculate the soil with microbes all in one pass. It is a very efficient way of harvesting sunlight energy and converting it to feed, food and carbon storage.
Soil Applications to Speed Livestock Regeneration
Many farms have attempted to integrate livestock to accelerate soil regeneration. Unfortunately, I have worked with many operations that have had mixed results, no results, or results that were taking too long to be practical.
Here’s what this often looks like. The soil has been farmed to dirt, with no structure left. A hardpan starts at 3 inches and goes to 15 inches. Fungicide and herbicide use for the last several decades has left the soil devoid of beneficial microbes. What grass/forage is growing has small, narrowed leaves with a bright yellow tint. There are purple hues close to the base of the plant, or some interveinal chlorosis showing an apparent micronutrient deficiency.
If some strains of bacteria are missing when livestock digests these forages, enzymes to break molecular bonds will also be missing and will limit the efficiency of the digestion process. However, a more common problem is when enzyme co-factors like cobalt, molybdenum, manganese, etc. are missing or when the overall mineral levels and energy are low. When any of these happen, feed conversion and animal health will suffer, and profits will tank.
Yes, you can supplement animals with minerals, but this will not have the same benefits as when the forage itself is high in energy, minerals, and all of those enzyme cofactors within its own structure. In other words, there are times when it pays to spend on inputs. Doing so can shorten the time of regeneration and increase productivity and profitability.
A Dairy Example
We witnessed this scenario several weeks ago on a large dairy farm in California. They had spent a full season doing tall-grass grazing and leaving a lot of residue, and they were disappointed in the lack of response they observed. The cover crop that followed germinated poorly, with limited growth in the wet season of the year when they should have been producing the significant portion of the crop.
Looking across the field, we could see the productivity potential in a couple patches of tall, dark green plants where, sometime in the past, an animal had dropped millions of microbes and a concentration of fertility. The whole field had the potential to produce at that level, and more, if it had the available nutrients. This could be accomplished by continued grazing, but it would take years because of all the factors staked against it from 30 years of lily bulb production, and the animals grazing on it would not perform well at all.
What is the solution to this dilemma? By doing a tillage pass with a deep ripper like a yeoman plow, they will be able to immediately increase the water infiltration rate and improve gas exchange. This will reduce root hypoxia, increase atmospheric nitrogen fixation and create an environment where fungi and bacteria can thrive again. It will also increase the volume and depth of roots, improving drought tolerance.
The soil analysis showed low levels of calcium and high levels of magnesium, factors that contributed to the top layer (0-15 inches) being so extremely tight and compacted. Biology trumps chemistry every time, and it might in this case, but it would take a long time. Applying some gypsum and lime to increase calcium and to balance it with magnesium will be a very worthwhile investment.
Remember the yellow, weak-looking grass with micronutrient deficiencies? Applying nitrogen, iron, magnesium or whatever the key deficiencies are will produce more photosynthates to feed the microbiome, which equates to faster regeneration and an immediate increase in forage production and quality. The animal will benefit from the increased energy and mineral levels, and because the plant will have those important enzyme cofactors for digestion, the animal will gain more value and energy to produce milk or meat products, thus directly improving the grower’s bottom line.
Because there was a lot of pesticide history on the soil from the previous landowners, the farm will also benefit from microbial inoculation. This would happen over time naturally from the animals, and it can happen quite quickly if the grazing management is tight enough to get complete coverage of manure and urine quickly. Otherwise, though, it will be beneficial to apply a microbial inoculation to get the cycle established. If a foliar is applied but there are no microbes to feed on the increased photosynthates, the impact of the foliar is greatly reduced.
Animals are an amazing resource for soil and ecosystem regeneration. However, by addressing just a few key limiting factors, the effectiveness of livestock integration can be greatly enhanced.
David Miller is AEA’s Director of Applied Agronomy
