Integration of crops and livestock could provide benefits to both crop and livestock production systems, as well as be detrimental or beneficial to soil properties, depending upon timing and intensity of animal traffic and initial condition of the soil surface. We evaluated crop and animal production and soil properties in response to conversion of a long-term perennial pasture to either winter grain-summer cover crop or summer grain-winter cover crop under conventional and no tillage. Cover crops were either grazed by cattle for 6 to 11 weeks or left unharvested. Wheat and sorghum grain yield were relatively unaffected by tillage and cover crop management. Cover crops were more productive, and hence cattle weight gain tended to be greater under no tillage than conventional tillage management. With initially high soil organic C due to previous pasture management and subsequent cropping, depth distribution of soil organic C became widely divergent between conventional and no tillage. Although conventional-tillage management could alleviate negative influences of cattle and equipment traffic on compaction with periodic tillage, no-tillage management had the advantage in pasture-crop rotation systems in preserving organic matter-enriched surface soil to buffer against compactive forces. A longer term investigation is warranted to clarify interpretations.