Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts offarmland, grazed by domesticatedlivestock, such ashorses,cattle,sheep, orswine. The vegetation of tended pasture,forage, consists mainly ofgrasses, with an interspersion oflegumes and otherforbs (non-grass herbaceous plants). Pasture is typically grazed throughout the summer, in contrast tomeadow which is ungrazed or used for grazing only after beingmown to makehay for animalfodder.[2]
Pasture in a wider sense additionally includesrangelands, other unenclosedpastoral systems, and land types used by wild animals forgrazing orbrowsing.Pasture lands in the narrow sense are distinguished from rangelands by being managed through more intensive agricultural practices ofseeding,irrigation, and the use offertilizers, while rangelands grow primarily native vegetation, managed with extensive practices likecontrolled burning and regulated intensity of grazing.
World agricultural land by use, permanent meadows and pastures and croplandHillside pasture in Pennsylvania.
Sheepwalk is an area ofgrassland wheresheep can roam freely. The productivity of sheepwalk is measured by the number of sheep per area. This is dependent, among other things, on the underlying rock.[4] Sheepwalk is also the name of townlands inCounty Roscommon,Ireland, andCounty Fermanagh,Northern Ireland. Unlikefactory farming, which entails in its most intensive form entirely trough-feeding, managed or unmanaged pasture is the main food source forruminants. Pasture feeding dominates livestock farming where the land makes crop sowing or harvesting (or both) difficult, such as in arid or mountainous regions, where types ofcamel,goat,antelope,yak and other ruminants live which are well suited to the more hostile terrain and very rarely factory-farmed. In more humid regions, pasture grazing is managed across a large global area forfree range andorganic farming. Certain pasture types suit the diet,evolution, and metabolism of particular animals. Their fertilising and tending of the land may over generations result in the pasture combined with the ruminants in question being integral to a particularecosystem.[5]
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