Expanding on the Greg Judy article in SGF

The Greg Judy article in the Stockman Grass Farmer this month is a very good article...I would like to expand on it. It's always very difficult to determine when to turn out on Spring growth. If you are like me, by the time Spring rolls around, you're looking for a pasture with something to eat....ANYTHING to eat. As much as I would like to turn out onto fully grown, mature pasture, it's just not very realistic. In order to do that here in SW Missouri, I would need to wait to turn out until at least mid May. Grass stops growing here in late October. So do the math, I have to get from mid October to mid May on stockpiled forage...that's 210 days. Simply put, I need 210 one day paddocks of stockpiled forage. If I'm mob grazing year round with the same number of animals, I need a seven month rotation to make it through winter. Do you have that? If you don't have at least 210 one day paddocks, you don't. We are currently running around 160-180 one day paddocks. We won't make it thru winter on our stockpile.

Ideally you would want to reduce your numbers thru the Winter period (to stretch your stockpile) and increase your numbers in the Spring (to take advantage of the Spring flush). This isn't always easy with a cow/calf operation, but it's almost a necessity. Here's what we are going to do. We are working all cows and calves the end of September. We will be culling off any cow without a calf and early weaning a portion of our calves (calves off the heifers). We are also pulling off our Beefmaster cross heifers and moving them to a different location. All in all, we hope to cull down from 600 head of cow/calf pairs to 450 head of cows and 300 head of calves. So that gets our numbers down for this winter and hopefully allows us to stretch our stockpile to 210 days.

Now for the restocking in the Spring part: This year we are going to try the wean-guard nose clips at weaning time and leave the calves with the cows, hopefully until August or September. It seems like it might be a good way to take advantage of the early Spring flush and abundant forage available in the 3 or so months of Spring. So in a nutshell, I think ideally we want a 120 day rotation May thru September and a 210 day rotation thru the Winter. The only way to do that is to vary your cattle numbers. Keeping our stockers is how we are hoping to do that.

Ragweed

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I'm not sure about you, but here in SW MO it's been a great year for ragweed. This South Center pasture was last grazed in late March. It grew back great with tons of forage, mostly fescue and warm season grasses. But as we got later into the summer, the ragweed started coming on and we ended up with a bumper crop...in a pasture that we didn't even graze during the growing season! I hate ragweed and was concerned about how the mob would react to a pasture full of it. Well, you can find the answer in the pictures. They ate it like they eat everything else. You can clearly see the difference between one side of the fence and the other where they were just turned in. I'm really disappointed with the amount of weeds we have on the ranch this year, I was hoping that we would greatly reduce the number of weeds with our mob grazing and it just doesn't look like we have. But at least we are able to utilize the weeds that are growing by getting the cows to consume them.

Mob Grazing the South Center Pasture

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I'm happy to report that the mob grazing we have done in the South Center pasture really looks great. I have attached some photos to show the results. As most of you that follow this blog are aware, oak sprouts are our primary problem on this ranch. When we do a good job mob grazing a paddock, the sprouts become twigs and the cattle consume all of the vegetation from the sprouts...and believe me the oak leaves constitute a LOT of forage. You can see in the pictures the sticks that are left after grazing. I posted a couple of other pictures where you should be able to see where the temp fence was. We did a good job of grazing one side, but across the fence you can clearly see the sprouts still have all of their leaves and the grass/forage isn't trampled down nearly as much. This is always very interesting to me. This is truly an art...a little too much time and the cattle and grass suffer, not quite enough time and the paddock is underutilized. Overall, Hal has done a terrific job of moving through this 200 acre pasture.

A cure for water quality issues?

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This summer is no different from last. Periods of dryness create water issues as the ponds get a little low and the cows get a lot hot. As you've seen in past posts, we've had some issues with water quality and fish kill. I have attached pics of Hal's attempt to remedy this situation. I love the idea of keeping the cattle out of the ponds, the problem is in the "how". This has some promise and Hal says the pvc one has worked well for the past 3 days. I'm concerned with it's durability but it's a good start. I was also a little concerned with the area...I'm curious of whether it's enough room for 600 head of pairs. Hal says they've established a pecking order and everything seems to be getting to water. We'll see.

There is lots of info out there about watering systems for mob grazing and quite frankly, I don't think they're realistic for large groups of cattle. Fencing cattle out of ponds and setting up gravity flow concrete waterers sounds cool until you start to put a pencil to it. We'd need several hundred of these setups with multiple waterers per installation...it's just not practical. We do need to do a better job of limiting cattle access to the ponds we have, though, and this might be a good start. Water is the most limiting factor in most mob grazing systems, get it figured out before you do anything else.

Milk....

We are going to try to land apply some milk this fall on a few hundred acres to see how it works. We have a few local dairy's but haven't found a good steady supply of milk yet. I did get the name of a DFA rep out of Springfield, Murray Lane. His phone number is 479-640-6956. They get "hot loads" in Monnett from time to time that they need to get rid of...land application would be a perfect use for it. Here is a link to the benefits of land applying milk:

http://www.greenpasture.org/community/?q=node/228

A bad week...

I got an email this morning requesting an update...I apologize for the infrequent posts but since the calves stopped dying, things have gotten a little boring...until last Sunday. We had tabbed Sunday as the day we wanted to get the entire mob in and work the cows and calves. Our plan was to work all the cows Sunday morning and use temporary removal of the calves to help get the cows to come in heat. A 48 hour removal is recommended. We were also going to early wean the heifers calves. Well things got off to a good start but by 11:00 am it was starting to get pretty warm so Hal (my ranch manager) made the wise decision to work the remaining half of the cows on Monday. We had trapped around 30 head of cows we wanted to cull and had planned to load them out in the evening. Well, by 4:30 that afternoon, 2 of the cull cows we kept back were dead and Hal was bucketing water to 4 more that were down. The cows had abundant shade, plenty of space and ample water. We decided against loading them out that evening and decided to wait to see how things went. By Monday morning, 12 of the 30 cull cows were dead. Hal made the again wise decision to turn out all of the animals we had left to work, including the calves....we'd work them another time. It was very hot, but I'm not convinced the heat killed the cows we lost. Hal's more conscientious than I've ever been and I've worked cattle in weather just as hot...we work our cows in July/August every year. I'm thinking it was something in the water we hauled to the cows but I'm really not sure...I just don't think it was heat related. Obviously it's easy to blame the heat and maybe that was what killed them, I just don't understand why the cattle we worked and turned out lived and nearly half of the cows we kept back died. The only difference was the water.

As far as the mob grazing goes, things are going well. The cows get 10 acres per day and seem to be leaving a decent amount of residual forage. It looks like we'll have plenty of fall grazing available. I'm still concerned about getting enough stockpiled forage stored up for this winter...600 head of pairs will be by far the most animals we've ever carried on this ranch. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

We turned the bulls in last Wednesday, August 4th. We will leave them in for 45-50 days and will likely work the rest of the cows and calves when we pull the bulls out the end of September. Hopefully we'll have better luck the second time around.

Lost my patience....

After reading the latest from the Summer Conference in Colorado, I sent the following to the NCBA and a similar note to the CBB:

I'm sending this email to both you and the CBB. As a lifelong cattle producer who depends on this industry for my livelihood, could I ask that you please all grow up and figure this shit out! Do you really need to act like a bunch of spoiled rotten kids that aren't getting their way? Act like a goddamn professional business, set aside the bullshit agendas and figure out how to increase the demand for our product! This kinda crap is the reason I am no longer a member of the NCBA!

Nathan Sanko
Back 2 Basics Beef

and I got this response:

Hello Nathan,

I just wanted to take a few minutes to address the concerns you raised (and submitted via our website) about the relationship between CBB and NCBA. Your concerns are not unlike many in the industry who have seen the frictional relationship between these two organizations detract from our respective roles in increasing beef demand and protecting the business environment for our industry. I want you to know NCBA and CBB took conciliatory actions this week during the Beef Industry Summer Conference and have agreed to continue working together in our planning processes. I believe this was the first step necessary in mending a joint relationship that the industry needs in order to serve producers such as you.

I also want to make sure you know NCBA’s policy division continues to be a strong voice for cattlemen in Washington, DC; defending the interests of producers on issues important to maintaining your business, such as pushing back against burdensome environmental regulations and the death tax. I do hope you will reconsider your decision to not be an NCBA member. Having worked in Kansas for many years, and closely with your dad on membership initiatives, I know how important it is to you to have the freedom to operate your business, as you wish. NCBA stands behind and protects those principles every day. If you change your mind regarding membership, please know we welcome you back. If I can provide more details or answer any questions, please contact me.

Regards,
Todd


I still haven't heard from the CBB.