Cattle locations were recorded every 5 minutes with GPS collars for four summers on bunchgrass range in interior BC, Canada. Six 65 ha pastures were used in the trials which contained a mosaic of plant communities due to the hilly topography.  The locations of GPS fixes were overlaid with on vegetation polygons prepared from traversing major plant community boundaries with a hand-held GPS unit. An activity classification model was developed to differentiate grazing and resting behaviour based on distance travelled between fixes.  Plant community preference was tested in the initial few days using the chi square test, comparing the number of fixes observed in a plant community type to what would be expected based on its relative area. Grazing preference was greatest for lotic plant communities dominated by Kentucky bluegrass or saltgrass, with least preference for the upland bluebunch wheatgrass community. However due its large area, the number of grazing fixes was greatest for the bluebunch wheatgrass community.  Resting fixes were almost entirely in the lotic plant communities.  Cattle may concentrate mineral nutrients gathered from upland plant communities by defecating in these resting sites.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.