 Hi, my name is Megan Wanchuck and I'm a master's student at North Dakota State University. I'm in range science and I'm working under Dr. Devin McGranahan. We are comparing cow-calf performance on patch burn grazing, rotational grazing, and traditional seasonal long grazing pastures and determining why differences in performance may occur. We are trying to determine which methods will provide the most stability and predictability in livestock performance over years where you may have differences in precipitation throughout the grazing season. So we have three years worth of data. We found that cow weight gains on patch burn grazing are greater than traditional continuous grazing and on twice-over-rotational grazing with nearly an additional pound of day of extra gain on the patch burn grazing pastures. Animals on twice-over-rotational grazing generally also underperform the season-long grazing pastures. The cattle on the patch burn grazing pastures have consistent gains whereas the continuously grazing pastures showed variability in the gains, although this variability was not different from zero. On the twice-over-rotational pastures there was also variability that wasn't different from zero. We also found that there was no difference in doing a spring-only burn on the patch burn grazing pastures or a spring and summer burn. There was additionally no differences in calf gains between patch burn grazing, continuous grazing, and the twice-over-rotational grazing. However, it appears that calf gains do come at the expense of cow gains on pasture in the continuous grazing systems and the twice-over-rotational grazing systems. So the livestock performance is largely driven by forage quality differences on these pastures. Although there's lower biomass as produced on the patch burn grazing pastures, they have very high quality forage which attracts the cattle to these patches throughout the grazing season. The percent crude protein on patch burn grazing pastures in the burn patch is consistently higher than unburned areas. There's also a higher TDN and relative forage quality on the burn patches and lower amounts of hard-to-digest components such as ADF, NDF, and lignin. A general declining forage quality is seen throughout the patch burn grazing, rotational grazing, and continuously grazed pastures which is expected in a cool season forage stand. Burn patches have a higher mineral content compared to the unburned patches, especially in calcium, phosphorus, zinc, and copper. Recently, there's been some work done at the Central Grasslands Extension Center and Headinger Research Extension Center, which has found that livestock gains on drought years in patch burn grazing pastures are higher than a traditional season-long grazing pasture. This is likely due to the ability of patch burning to mitigate drought by buffering forage resources through crude protein availability and also by maintaining animal performance. So all in all, patch burn grazing pastures have stable cattle weight gains likely due to increased forage quality from burns and therefore there's better livestock performance on these pastures.