A 1,200 lb lactating beef animal needs around 3% of it’s body mass every day. So around 35lbs of dry matter forage per day. Works out to around 6.4 tons DM/year.
Under irrigation, In areas without freezing temps, 25tons DM/acre is possible (not easy) or 4 cows. In areas with freezing temps 12-15 tons DM/acre can be accomplished or 2 cows (1 cow if the growing season is short)
10-15" rainfall zone produces around 600lbs DM/acre of which around 50% is available (timing issue) this is around 0.15 tons DM/acre. 6.4 tons DM for one cow is around 43 acres.
In a 5-10" rainfall zone it reduces to under 200lbs DM/acre total. Or 0.05 tons DM/acre or around 128 acres per cow. With that much walking their energy needs increase by as much as 50%. Or around 200 acres/cow.
Guess who grew up on a ranch with BLM grazing ground :-) My grandfather decided going bankrupt was a better than listening to a younger more hotheaded me.
Lol. A swing and a miss. Not even close to what I said. Try again. Since your from, Texas perhaps your should see a Dr about concussive brain trauma.
Here’s a hint. Divide 40million by 2 cows per acre and you get 20 million. That’s about how many acres we need to use to feed every cow in the U.S under irrigated annual crops production. Instead we use around 800 million acres (grassland plus forest).
So 97.5% of the land are we are using to graze cows, we don’t need to use. We do it because the government subsidizes archaic agricultural practices and makes it affordable.
I was around during the stone age of the internet (slrpnk.net)
I remember getting AOL CDs in my box of apple jacks
May as well buy burgers in the US, since you already paid for most of it through taxes! (lemmy.world)