I’m spending much of December with my parents. Their property is 40 acres in Queensland, warmer certainly with frost a rarity but it also has 300mm more rainfall a year, no doubt helped be being at the base of a mountain range that wrings out the clouds that arose on the east coast leaving a rain shadow to the west of the ranges.
My father, who is delightfully eccentric in a thoroughly germanic way, keeps deer. I’ve noticed within their complex they have cultivated the grass in a most remarkable manner. Aside from the patch that has been trampled to death because my father likes to feed the deers banana skins in the same spot (their love for them truly does prove the adage that there is no accounting for taste) the grass is lush, trimmed and altogether park like. Compared to the neighbours land barely 50 meters away the comparison is even more startling. I’m intrigued by the fact that deer do not seem to graze as sheep do, who seem to relish eating grass to the bare earth given a chance. The teeth of deer is more similar to cattle, with bottom teeth and a hard upper palette. I’m not sure if this reflects a preference not to expose the soil, and potential pathogens, or a physical inability to eat grass below a certain length, or even some combination of the two conditions. It is with incredulity that I watch my neighbors boast about putting some sheep in to clean up a field and leaving a denuded area of land with the sun and wind driving off what little precious top soil there is.
But what would I know?
Sheep are my preferred grazing animal, but it would seem that, like fire, they require careful management or run the risk of devastating the environment. However, appropriate animal pressure clearly has had a remarkable invigorating effect on this land. I can only imagine what might be possible if my parents practiced rotational grazing. Instead I will have to marvel at the effects of an introduced herbivore in a most unfamiliar landscape.