Over recent years, the system of grazing management most commonly adopted by dairy producers has tended to oscillate between various forms of strip-grazing, on the one hand, and set-stocking, on the other. While arguments in favour of strip-grazing mainly revolve around the ease of grassland management, many of those for set-stocking are essentially behavioural -greater space for the cattle and, hence, less competition, aggression, and spoiling of localised areas of pasture. A current development in the southern hemisphere, ‘fast-rotation’ grazing, attempts to combine the merits of both systems. In this, the herd is given a fresh area each day, but a much larger one than in strip grazing, resulting in less close grazing and (given the same overall land allocation) a much quicker rotation over the total grassland.

This project, part of a larger one evaluating other aspects of the system, was designed to determine the effects a fast-rotation system, versus strip-grazing, on grazing, competition and aggression, and on the incidence and distribution of other basic activities.