Forage is a plant material eaten by grazing livestock. Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage.
Sorghum grown as forage crop.
Bull feeding on grass
Horse-drawn transport of fodder in Romania
Meadow of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)
In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to free range and consume wild vegetations in order to convert the otherwise indigestible cellulose within grass and other forages into meat, milk, wool and other animal products, often on land that is unsuitable for arable farming.
Dairy cattle grazing in Germany
The domestication of ruminants by 7000 BC, like these fat-tailed sheep in Afghanistan, provided nomads across the Middle East and central Asia with a reliable source of food.
The dark green portion of this pasture in New Zealand is fenced off to allow the grass to regrow before it is grazed again.
A Maasai herdsman grazing his cattle inside the Ngorongoro crater
