The cattle get used to "cleaning their plates" if you leave them on a fairly small area. After a while you get to have a pretty good idea how much grass they need per day.I try to give them no more than 7 days worth of grazing at one time. 3 would be better but I'm usually not there to move them.

I have clipped the pastures earlier this summer right after they finish a paddock. Clipping controls the weeds such as thistle that they will not eat. The paddock shown was last clipped maybe 4 or 5 weeks ago. With clipping right after grazing, you end up keeping the stuff they will not eat from going to seed. Pretty soon all you have in a paddock is edible forage and minimal weeds as you see on the left in the first pic.

All summer they have lane access to the woods in the background for shade but there is a lot of misc forage in and around the woods if I misjudge the grazing. So the main thing is to get them used to cleaning their plate before they get more.

Once they get down into the sward to the second or third level/timearound the paddock they seem to get to more grass and less clover top so maybe less chance of bloat? If I gave them full access to all of the clover paddocks I'm sure they would eat nothing but clover and bloat.

Jim at Dawn