Extending the Grazing Season
By Russ Wilson
Over the next few weeks, we are going to dive in and look at how we have reduced inputs, time and extended the grazing season on our farm in Northwest Pennsylvania. The winters can be cold and the spring wet. The summer can often become hot and dry, at least lately.
First, a little bit about me. I grew up on a very conventional dairy farm that couldn’t keep going. I sold the dairy cattle in 1989. After the cattle were sold, I worked at several other dairies working up to 100 hours a week learning how to farm, or at least what I thought was the right way to farm. All those dairies are now out of business.
After that I took a job in town and worked my way up as supervisor in a furniture factory. I quickly learned that wasn’t for me. I went out on my own harvesting trees.
Still wanting to farm, my wife bought a farm and 7 registered black angus cattle in 2008. We tried to farm conventionally. After 3 years, we figured out that it wasn’t possible for a small farmer to farm conventionally with beef cattle. Being a business owner. I had to make profit, or I wasn’t going to farm. We lost a lot of money in the first 3 years.
Then, I ran across Allen Savory’s Ted Talk, “How to Fight Desertification and Reverse Climate Change,” and Dan Barber’s Ted Talk, “How I Fell in Love With a Fish.” Even though Dan Barber’s talk has nothing to do with grazing livestock, I took the basic principles and started to apply them on our farm. That was the hinging point for me. We started the journey to reduce inputs and extend the grazing season. I felt like this was the only way to be able to farm. Let me take you on my journey to changing over to a low input high producing farm.
We are at a perfect place in the year to start planning for fall stockpile grazing 2022 and 2023. There are lot of things we need to look at as a livestock producer. We will go deeper into these as the blog keeps going.
1. What is my stocking rate? Many times, a lot of us are over stocked trying to raise as many pounds of animal as possible. That can be a huge problem.
2. How productive is the land we are farming? We can only feed as many animals as what the farm can produce.
3. How much time do we have to farm? Many of us farmers work off the farm also and time is limited. I am lucky in that when I have to spend time off the farm, I am teaching the techniques I have gleaned the last few years.
4. What are our resources? How much money do we have to invest in farm?
After sitting down and getting a game plan on how to make the farm profitable, the hard work began. Profitability goes hand in hand with extending the grazing season. The plan you develop must consider the end goal and most importantly you need to follow your plan as best as you can. Here are some tips to help you begin planning:
1. Invest in your education. Do some research. Try new things. Your education does not have to be expensive. I am always on YouTube learning.
2. Set goals for the farm. I feel the goals need to be just out-of- reach so you have something to work towards. For example, we set a number of days for grazing we want to work towards.
3. Do we need to fence more of the farm? My fencing and watering system cost less than the hay making equipment we were using. So, yep, we sold the hay equipment and invest our time managing the grasses than haying. It is far easier to move cows and let them spread manure than for me to break my back doing it.
4. Do we need to destock a little bit? Would having less stock extend the season for the cows we have and be more profitable? The less inputs you put in (i.e. hay, which you either buy or spend a lot of money and time making), the more profit you will make.
5. Should we not make hay and buy it? How much work do you want to put in? Could your haying time be spent doing something else that would increase your profitability or the enjoyability of your family life? Is your equipment paid for or are you making hay to just pay off the equipment?
6. How often can we rotate our livestock? The more you move your livestock, the more benefit you will see faster.
What some of our goals look like:
1. Graze 365 days a year. We haven’t made it there yet. It is in my crosshairs. We have a 7-year average of 308 days out grazing. As of 1/28/2022, our cow herd have been grazing for 309 consecutive days without any stored feeds and have at least 30 days of grazing left.
2. Reduce time and be more efficient moving livestock.
3. Lower inputs. This means we do not apply any fertilizer with the exception of corn, if we plant it. With the high cost of fertilizer this year (2022), we will not be growing any corn. The corn will be substituted with a Sorghum Sudan Grass based cover crop. We never use fertilizer on cover crops. Yes, annuals are an input through the actions. The most important being manure. Grazing has very high yields, is very good for the soil, and is cheaper than hay.
Do we need to sell the hay making equipment? This is a very hard decision for a lot of us. I had a very hard time wrapping my head around it. So as a buffer I took two years and squirreled away an entire years’ worth of hay. Only after that did we sell the hay making equipment.
The sale of the equipment paid to fence the entire farm and put money into saving. We also took some of that money and bought a cheap set of hay making equipment just in case. The equipment was like a safety net. It was the best thing we did for the farm. With the extra time I had not making hay, I was setting fence and learning. I was getting things figure out.
The first year without hay we moved the cow herd 4 times a day, we also bought a flock of sheep of 220 ewes. The ewes were moved once per day. Making all those rotations with the livestock was overwhelming at first to the point where it didn’t seem worth it. But, then we saw amazing things start to happen. The farm very quickly become more productive. This inspired me to stick with it. As time went along it got easier. In fact, it got so easy that I was able to move all those animals in 1 ½ hours per day.
This time of year is the best time to start planning for the up coming grazing season. Get some plans together. In the next blog, I will begin to help you figure out the information you need to get these plans in motion from figuring out stocking rates to culling those in the herd that need to go and so much more. Stay tuned.
