A decision has been made.

After several months of wavering between selling all of our cows and going strictly with stockers or keeping the cow calf operation, I have decided to keep the cows. The biggest issue was truly the ease of mob grazing stockers versus cows and calves. I am very concerned about the challenges of mob grazing the cows and calves and quite frankly am resigned to the fact that we just won't be able to mob graze them during the calving season. We tried that this year with disastrous results. The only positive was that we fertilized the entire ranch with vulture droppings. We lost about 10% of our calf crop to scours....we've NEVER lost so many. We WEANED a 97% calf crop last year. Maybe it was a bad year for scours, maybe there were other factors, but I am troubled that mob grazing, and the close proximity of calves to other calves, may have had a profound effect. Hence my desire to go to a complete stocker operation. I can tell you it is significantly easier to mob graze stockers than cows and calves and I was really looking forward to 2000 yearlings in one group "nuking" my pastures, brush, weeds and the like. The returns just weren't there to move to yearlings...so we'll stick with cows. The plan as of now is to concentrate on mob grazing August-April while giving the cows plenty of room to roam (and calve) May thru July. I'm disappointed in having to take this step, but there just doesn't seem to be much alternative.

Mob Grazing School

My father and I attending a Mob Grazing School in O'Neill Nebraska put on by UNL, Terry Gompert and Chad Peterson....Neal Dennis also attended and spoke. I have to admit I was hoping to learn more, but I need to remember that this is a relatively new practice and although I've only practiced it for 1 year, I probably have as much experience as most, especially considering the numbers of cattle and acres I have utilized. The one thing I took away was how easy it was for Chad and others in that part of the world to build fences and water cattle...only in my dreams. It was like building fence on a golf course only without the trees. The ground was flat and soft. Chad and Neal both took down the fence by unhooking the handle, collecting the posts and then rolling up the wire with the handle still attached. That would never work on my ranch. It is important to not only remove the handle, but to leave the wire through the posts while rolling it up, keeping the wire from becoming entangled in brush and trees, then, once the wire is rolled up, collect the posts. I can safely say that Mob Grazing requires quite a bit more work on my ranch than it does on Chads...simply because of the effort required to build and take down fences. That said, I think our ground will benefit more than theirs from mob grazing....we HAVE to build top soil because we have so little of it.

I am currently moving our cows and calves every day, however the density is only around 40,000 lbs per acre (250 cow calf pairs on 10 acre paddocks). We aren't getting the cows to eat any of the sumac or sprouts and they really aren't even eating any weeds. They are in waist high warm season grass and are simply topping out the best forage...our residual is around 8-10 inches in what we call the south center pasture. We simply need more cattle.

The Stocker Pasture

A lot of the pictures of eaten trees came from what we term the stocker pasture. This is a 200 acre pasture that we cut into 22, 9 acre traps and mob grazed in February (stockpiled grass) and again in late May and early June (May 20-June 12). When we came out of the pastures, I couldn't have been happier with the way they looked. The cattle had mauled the brush, stomped up the pastures and left what I thought was "enough" residual (I scored them a 3 out of 10)...all in all I thought it was perfect. I have since wondered if we shouldn't have left a little more residual because I have been disappointed with the regrowth in the pastures, even after 60 days. I am now wondering if WHEN we grazed them was much more important than how much residual we left. Although the weather has been near ideal this summer (cooler than normal with lots of timely moisture), it still got hot enough to curtail the growth of the fescue and cool season forbs and grasses. I think the solution is to continue to mob graze at various times with the goal getting a greater sward diveristy with more warm season grasses. A pasture we call the south center pasture has 200 acres of the most incredible stand of warm season grasses you've ever seen....we'll be moving the cows/calves/bulls through it starting this week. Pictures to follow.

A couple of interesting pictures

I am posting 2 pictures. One shows 2 pastures, the one on the left has just been grazed (we came out July 23rd) the pasture on the right has had 45 days of rest. Just an interesting looking picture I thought I'd share. The other picture shows what happens when cattle are not allowed to graze. My landlord has fenced out multiple "riparian" areas that the gov't "rents" from him. As you can see, the weeds have completely taken over the plot and are over 6 feet tall. The grass in the rest of this pasture is so thick you can hardly walk through it.

While on the subject of weeds, I have read lots of quotes from "mob grazers" talking about how mob grazing eliminated all their weeds. I don't believe them. While I think mob grazing can certainly help control what I would term "edible" weeds (I've published lots of pictures showing how well the cattle will eat the weeds in a mob grazing system) I don't think they will ever control mature blackberry and buckbrush and I'm not convinced that even if they eat the weeds, that the weeds will not return. The sprouts and the sumac that the cattle just devoured have all greened back up...I don't think grazing them will kill them, at least not in one year. And while my cattle will eat young blackberry bushes, I can't get them to eat big mature bunches and they won't touch mature buckbrush. So while it would be nice to think that a switch to mob grazing would eliminate the need for any type of brush control, I don't think it's realistic. I will spot spray blackberries this August and buckbrush next spring in the hopes of cleaning up some of the pastures.

Results on our home raised calves

We sold our home raised calves today. We weaned 473 calves March 5. We kept 53 head of replacement heifers. We lost 1 calf to some type of intestinal disease. So we sold 419 home raised calves (actually sold 416, Joplin Regional Stockyards seems to have lost 3 head between unloading them and the sale ring). 239 steers averaged 735.5 lbs. 177 heifers averaged 704.4 lbs. 416 head total averaged 722.2 lbs. When we weighed the calves at weaning (March 5) they averaged 528 lbs. So in 144 days, our home raised steers and heifers gained 194.2 lbs for an average daily gain of 1.35 lbs. While not as good as hoped, we weighed them just before weaning, so they most likely shrunk a bit during the weaning process and had to make up some lost weight. Also don't forget that this is both steers and heifers. All in all, I'm satisfied...and now we have a nice yardstick for future comparison. As always, the calves sold fantastic with our top group of 184 steers averaging 742 lbs and bringing $109. Not too shabby.

Temporary fencing tip

Here's a tip. Cut your insulated handles like this to make it easy to roll up fence. Tie your fence to the handle and then simply slip the handle out of the knot to roll up your fence. Slip it back in to roll the fence out.

Residual

I went back through the paddocks we grazed from May 20 thru June 15 (we call it the "stocker pasture"). The earlier grazed paddocks were a residual score of 3...the later grazed pastures I scored a residual of 6's and 7's. The difference is pretty substantial. The 3's have come back well with a current stand that is probably 5-6" high (although I expected a little better growth with 50-60 days of rest)...the grass is dark green and there is still lots of clover although it just doesn't look nearly as good as the later grazed pastures that had a residual score of 6-7. One interesting observation is that where we completely stomped up the grass along the fence when it got wet has regrown almost exclusively in warm season grasses.