2/9/2021 Understanding The Animal Unit Month (AUM)

Understanding The Animal

Unit Month (AUM)
Featured Articles
16 May 2001

By John Basarab and Ross Gould, Agrifacts, Agriculture and Food, Alberta
Gov Ropin The Web. The concept of the "Animal Unit Month" (AUM) has
been useful in helping range and pasture managers work out suitable
stocking rates for pastures under a wide variety of conditions.

In times when we are expecting the best production from our grass
resource, it is important for the producer to understand how the AUM is defined.
Such an understanding can help in fine tuning pasture management to produce the
maximum returns without causing damage to the available grassland resources.

Animal Units

The AUM is the amount of forage needed by an "animal unit" (AU) grazing for
one month. The animal unit in turn is defined as one mature 1 000 pound cow and
her suckling calf. lt is assumed that such a cow nursing her calf will consume 26
pounds of dry matter (DM) per day as forage. That consumption, combined with a
factor for tramping and waste of about 25%, results in an estimate of about 1000
pounds of dry matter (DM) from forage to supply one AU each month. This
translates into 1108 lb of hay at 90% dry matter. Various other types of stock are
assigned AUM equivalents based on size and consumption. For example, the fact
sheet Grazing Tame Pastures Effectively (Agdex 130/53-1) suggests a mature bull
is the equivalent of 1.3 AU, a yearling steer or heifer is 0.67 AU and a weaned
calf is 0.5 AU. These are the equivalents suggested by the Society for Range
Management.

Adjustments

Now come the problems. The unit and the equivalents do not allow for the change
in frame size of our cattle in recent years. To start with, most of our crossbred
beef cows with European breeding or some cows of the larger frame British

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breeding will probably weigh from 1200-1400 pounds. Cows in this weight range
need from 23.0 to 25.6 pounds of DM, or 14 to 27% more than the 1000 pound
cow. The larger calves would probably consume proportionately more as well.
Therefore, cows in the 1200 to 1400 pound weight range would be equivalent to
from 1. 1 1 to 1.21 of the original Animal Units.

Yearling heifers going onto pasture in central Alberta probably weigh about 700
pounds. Yearling steers can weigh quite a lot more! Going back to the Nutrient
Requirements of Beef Cattle (1984), yearling steers weighing 900 pounds will
need 20.3 pounds of DM to sustain a gain of 2 pounds per day. The yearling needs
almost 78% of the cow-calf combined consumption. This suggests that perhaps
the 0.67 given as the AU for yearling steers is a bit low.

The AU equivalent of 1.3 will provide the maintenance requirements for a 2200
pound bull, so there should be no need for adjustments on his account.

Table 1. Calculating AUM (Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle, 1984)

Daily Forage Dry matter

intake (lb)
Average 1000 lb cow producing 10 lb milk 20.2
per day
Extra energy needed by the calf from
6.0
grazing*
Total forage consumption 26.2
Waste (25%) 6.5
Total required 32.7
Total for a Month of 30.5 days 997.4

*10 lb of milk supplies about 25% of the energy needed for daily gain of 2.0 lb per day in a 300 lb calf

¹ Assumes milk production 90 days after calving is 10 lb per day and preweaning daily gain is 2.0 lb (weaning weight at 200 days =

475 lb). The calf requires 6.0 lb of dry matter per day from grazing.

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Summary

The main purpose of this discussion is to point out that a producer with 1300
pound cows with suckling calves should reduce the estimate of pasture - carrying
capacity by 16% compared to the requirement for a 1 000 pound cow with
suckling calf.

For example, a pasture of 640 acres of rough fescue prairie in range zone 5 has a
carrying capacity of 1.8 acres per AUM. In 5 months each AUM needs 9 acres.
The pasture will carry 71 cows weighing 1000 lb with their calves.

However, only 59 average milking cows weighing 1400 lb or 61 similar cows

weighing 1300 lb could be grazed on this pasture. Any more would be
overstocking at our current estimates of forage production. Similarly, using 0.67
as the equivalent animal unit for yearlings may lead to an overestimate of about
10% when calculating the carrying capacity of a pasture for yearling steers for the
whole summer grazing period.

Table 3. Yearling Steers and Heifers Forage Dry Matter Intake

for Various Rates of Gain and Frame Size (Nutrient
Requirements of Beef Cattle, 1984)

Daily Dry Percent of

Weight Frame
Sex Rate Matter 1000 lb Cow &
Size Size
of Gain intake Calf.
Heifer 700 lb Medium 1.5 15.5 59.2
Large 1.5 16.6 63.4
800 lb Medium 1.5 17.2 65.6
Large 1.5 18.3 69.8
Steer 700 lb Medium 1.5 16.5 63.0
2.0 16.8 64.1
Large 1.5 17.2 65.6
2.0 17.8 67.9
800 lb Medium 1.5 18.2 69.5
2.0 18.6 71.0

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Large 1.5 19.0 72.5

2.0 19.6 74.8
900 lb Medium 1.5 19.9 76.0
2.0 20.3 77.5
Large 1.5 20.8 79.4
2.0 21.4 81.7

Source: Agdex 420/16-1.

May 2001

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