Let’s Talk “Total Grazing”

As i listen to podcasts and videos of various producers, hosts, and grazing gurus, i’ve found that there is a misunderstanding of the term “total grazing” as to be expected since at the front of it, simply implies grazing all the forage in front of the stock with little to no regard to forage recovery, soil, water, animal, wildlife, air, and human health or harmony. As taught in the Real Wealth Ranching program, this is not at all the definition but instead may be more aptly described as managed nonselective grazing or high harvest efficiency. 

Far too many seem to get hung up on the 4x daily moves as if that’s all they hear and summarily dismiss all the concepts. As part of a complete program, “Total Grazing” is a systems approach of directing life, land, and livestock which enhances and builds all those important aspects. I’m in my 6th year (2024) of total grazing/real wealth ranching and enjoy the improvements even though life has thrown some curves which have seldom allowed 4x daily moves. Remember the harmony part which includes less labor.

Although the understanding of the system is simple, the application of dynamic aspects of genetics, weather, people, animals, forage causing management to sometimes be quite challenging – it’s an art and science melded into a constantly changing symmetry in which the manager must be watching and shifting. Anyone involved in agriculture needs to be flexible and able to make quick and correct decisions. Too often, we become stuck in what we think is right (paradigms) and promote wrong understanding. This only works to set back newcomers and next generation. 

So what is the program often labeled as “Total Grazing”

As taught by Jaime Elizondo, who owns Real Wealth Ranching, it includes four pillars of focus which are integrated into a whole, but also includes harmony (including profitability) of the owner/operator’s life. Based on well over 30 years of ranching experience and a great deal of plant and nutrition science, he has discovered that some of the old ‘science’ has been refuted and needs discarded as new information has been brought to light. It’s a program - not a one-off.

The Four Pillars

1) Grazing – it is not leaving animals in a paddock or pasture until all the forage is destroyed and animal health is wrecked.

2) Calving Season – calving or lambing in the correct season for your area may be the low hanging fruit and quickest way to profitability.

3) Adapted Genetics & Selection – keeping replacements from your own herd may be a slow way to grow your operation, but it is the best (imho)

4) Nutrition – don’t skimp on nutrition and quality pastures for various classes and types of livestock.

Jaime is just now launching a quick start version (Ranching Made Simple) of his in-depth teaching. I recommend the whole online Total Grazing Academy, but this new program with its lower up-front cost will help introduce more producers seeking to explore options and opportunities.

“Fat Roots, Fat Land, Fat Cows, Fat Wallet”

Jaime Elizondo

Combine Herds and Calve on Green Grass

Combining here the first two points of profitability and harmony since, honestly, they could switch places. Both cut down on labor significantly and typically increase calf survivability.

However, after this entire year plus a few months of almost constant mud and having unfortunately purchased several unadapted cows, I’ve come to realize that if one is to combine herds into one mob, you must allow a great deal extra winter grazing forage to allow for substantial trampling waste to keep them out of the mud. It is true that there is some value to trampling, but feeding the microbes is more efficient by cycling it through the stock. It seems i can never learn all the lessons i need to in the course of one lifetime.

For reasons I’ve discussed before, my cows have been calving in mid-April – knowing that that can be a challenging time of the year. A real problem with calving out of sync is the problems continue through the year with breeding out of sync and weaning out of sync. This year (2023) my cows should start about May 1. Next year, i may move to May 15.

Your time is just as important as anyone else’s – be sure you are paying yourself and others a fair wage with benefits or your operation is a hobby and not sustainable nor regenerative.

Another issue is a problem with calving in a managed/movement grazing scheme is leaving calves behind. This happens all too much. Although it takes some planning, it may be best to not disturb the cows whilst calving and give them plenty of space. Sure, this will result in some loss of grazing efficiency, but having relaxed cows and heifers with better opportunity to bond will likely outweigh the loss of grazing best practice.

Cleanliness is paramount in a calving paddock as is being well drained with no ditches or draws. It may very well be that those need to be fenced out to avoid calves dropped into ditches and cows and/or calves smashed and killed in the mud. This has been a very expensive journey for me in that regard, even in the summer as cows are seeking cool.

Life is a balance. Harmony – Decide your goals, temper them a bit with time and grace to make mistakes. Learn from others’ mistakes since you do not have time to stumble over the same rocks. Do not forget your family and their interests and don’t underestimate how quickly the years will pass and your strength and stamina will begin to wane. Position your operation to handle the unexpected changes life will throw your way. Sharpen that pencil.

Dr Dick Diven (Low Cost Cow/Calf) suggested that in toxic endophyte country like ours in north central Missouri, fall calving may be a way to avoid the highest toxins during breeding season. However, that is completely out of sync with nature and results in huge wintering costs trying to maintain a nursing cow on winter stockpile or hay. The best time for cows to calve here is May-June – the same time during which bison have been naturally selected. Manage the toxins in your pasture and select animals which tend to thrive despite ingesting them.

Create something beautiful today!

Finally, my brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honest, whatever is
just, whatever pure, whatever lovely,
whatever of good report, if there is any
virtue, and if there is any praise, think
on these things. Philippians 4:8 HRB

Adapted Animals

Regardless of how you choose to graze, feed, or manage your livestock, adapted animals are crucial to your environment and any possible success. Build your own landrace breed specifically selected for your environment and management.

Point 4 of my blog entry, Quickest Ways to Profitability & Harmony mentions the importance of adapted animals.

I cannot emphasize enough how critical it is to find and develop adapted cattle or other livestock. The difficulty certainly is in finding the initial stock and it’s quite likely you’ll find some you think will adapt, yet it will be – maybe – only 10% to 20% of them can even survive much less thrive under your management, grazing resources, and weather conditions. It’s a long expensive process to get started since you may find that NONE of the animals you purchase will make your selection guidelines for adaptability. Make sure your budget is strong for this stage. Don’t go into debt – have a job or good investments to keep food on the table as you navigate this massive fallout stage. Culling rigorously is critical early on and only keep as replacements animals which have met all your criteria.

For example, a cattle buyer wouldn’t buy calves from Florida to put in an Iowa feedlot! The calves would be completely unadapted and would not do well at all – especially in the winter – although feeding corn can overcome some nutritional deficiencies.

Moving stock from one climate to another is almost always a recipe for disaster or a very expensive selection process. It’s far better to find stock grown in your own weather and ground conditions. Open cows and flat out death less may be substantial. Remember that semen or embryos from a different area will be the same. You will likely be going backwards with each generation of introduced genetics. Be wary of applying bandages contrary to your specific goals or you won’t be able to select the best animals for your purpose.

Some will encourage you to purchase bred heifers or cows, but I’ve been unable to justify that decision since there are simply no stock to be found – even expensive stock – that will stay in the herd for long (cows, bulls, or replacement heifers). After 30 plus years of trying to introduce animals, far and away the best is to retain my own heifers and bulls (some say you need a minimum of 100 cows to be able to select bulls from your own herd). Take your time, build slowly. Buy the best you can afford from reputable breeders who grow animals as close to how you will – won’t be perfect, but it’s likely the best place to start.

The cost of raising and developing your own replacements is substantial – compare that to buying and having a lot of fallout. Remember to include the extra labor and pasture to develop them. Will you hold them an extra year before breeding? then a separate pasture is needed to keep them from the bulls. Farming and ranching have expenses coming at you from many angles! Beware.

Another consideration that i have fallen prey to is buying cows in my area that seem adapted, only to find out they’ve been on corn since they were born! It is very likely that their rumens will ever adapt to grazing and may even die especially with highly toxic endophyte fescue pastures. That’s an expensive mistake – speaking from experience.

Other important decisions before buying:

1. what are your marketing goals – commodity or special niche? Both can be upgraded to ‘value added’ status. Value added in commodity may mean breeding for black cattle, but consider whether or not they will thrive without expensive inputs. It’s all a balance
2. Selling adapted breeding stock is a long term commitment. Until you establish an adapted line and build a reputation, much of your production will go the commodity route. Don’t think that you will receive a great premium at the get-go. Overestimating your income will come back to bite you in a hurry.
3. What class or species of livestock most closely meet your skills, market, and interest? What is the weather like in your area? Some places are simply not fit for man or beast in the wintertime. Especially as we get older and fighting the elements also gets old.
4. Build an excellent perimeter fence on your property BEFORE getting any livestock. Contact your local extension agent for the definition of a legal fence in your state or county, then build better. Stock getting out is a good way to ruin relationships with your neighbors and you will need to be on good terms with them.

Compare these two Angus cows. Photo one is clearly not adapted to my management and is very likely not bred. This is one of the 3-year-old cows i bought as a pair in spring of 2022. She suffered through the green growing season, raised a poor calf, and has not done well through an admittedly tough, very muddy winter of stockpile grazing. However, the 6-year-old cow to the right is an adapted home raised animal, raised a good calf, is in acceptable condition, and looks very much bred to calve early in the season. These cows were grazed in the same mob these past 12 months.

No hay was fed, but protein tubs were provided to help utilize the mature stockpile.

The above photos show the great importance of selecting for adapted cows. Do not make the mistakes i’ve made.

CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL TODAY!

Shalom

Consider this 3-year-old purebred Corriente cow with her first calf. She raised and weaned off a healthy calf grazing right alongside the two cows pictured above. Her calf sold for $250 MORE than what she cost for me to purchase. Now, there is very strong calf market in spring 2023, but it does show that careful purchasing of adapted animals can result in good profitability. Be mindful, however, that thin breeds like the Longhorn or Corriente will always bring less at salebarn and grow more slowly. Study the market and buy what seems to be undervalued.

Grazing and Haying

Digging in deeper on the issues of grazing and haying – points 5 and 6 of profitability tips.

These two points go hand in hand since managing the grazing during the growing season, allows one to stockpile for winter grazing and therefore, ‘kick the hay habit.’ There are several protocols to follow, but the crux is to allow grasses to grow deep roots and allow grazing only when the forages have fully recovered. This doesn’t necessarily mean to full maturity, but more at the point that protein and energy needs available to livestock are in balance. That point is different for each plant species. Nonselective grazing as promoted in Real Wealth Ranching, allows desirable species to proliferate, but can be challenging in the delicate balance of seeing to livestock needs to stay fat. Stock must be adapted to grazing and your environment.

A more relaxed approach to grazing can allow livestock to stay fat, but plant species will be less diverse and manure distribution may not improve soil fertility as quickly. However, consider the labor cost of multiple moves per day vs buying inputs and the labor to apply them. Decide what your goals are.

In any case, Jim Gerrish gives good counsel by advising to stock your pasture as to your winter grazing needs to employ the ‘kick the hay habit‘ plan. Unless your stock brings a huge premium, feeding hay very seldom results in profitability. When evaluating your standing forage for winter use, be very careful to allow for deterioration, trampling, and snow cover.

In some cases, the environment will dictate whether or not the class or kind of livestock model you’ve chosen will work. Maybe the decision needs to be made to only have stock in the growing season. Mud, ice, and snow can sure suck the fun out of cows and calves kept year-round. In fact, this past year has been muddy nearly every day and now we are well into a second year of it with no end in sight with rain nearly every day.

This will flow into the point of unadapted livestock for the environment, but i will address that in an upcoming blog.

Always, always, always put a sharp pencil to the finances of any endeavor, especially high capitalization projects – include ‘free’ labor. Livestock is not always the best use of your resources and skills.

CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL!

Effects of Grazing Mistake

While there is an abundance of stockpiled forage, this standing forage in February is not good quality. For dry pregnant cows, it’s fine – but not for nursing pregnant cows which have suffered condition loss despite having high protein tubs on free choice offer throughout the winter since protein levels are too low in the available non growing forage for that class of cattle. There is a way to have better quality stockpile even well into winter.

Going forward into this year of 2023, the plan is to graze one time through the forages in the spring when the plants have reached sufficient growth levels to not cause diarrhea in the cows. This will be when the lower leaves are slightly yellowed, plant height maybe 6-9 inches tall, though that will vary in plant species. This will allow the plants to start their final growth to maturity a little bit later in the year so they will not reach maturity until the very end of the growing season rather than late summer, resulting in more green (protein) in the plants thereby providing better nutrition for cows during the winter non growing season.

The challenge is to find that sweet spot so that the grasses can be non selectively (total grazing) grazed through yet not overgrazed (regrazed before forages are recovered) by set stocking (not moving or bothering) the calving cows (mine begin May 1). Managing cool season and warm season grasses requires observation.

To compound my problem of allowing the young and old nursing cows to lose weight was to push them too hard in grazing dry forages which had no nutritive value. Though it will benefit land next year, the practice caused the cows to lose far too much condition. The decision i made to give the cows some relief and start their return to good condition before May 1 calving was to wean their calves by February 12.

Winter total grazing cattle here one can see i forced the cows to eat old sedges which are typically unpalatable with little nutritional value.

Not to be forgotten is the importance of selecting genetically adaptive cattle. To increase the number of mouths on my farm, i purchased 40 Angus 3-year-old pairs which originated from Montana and South Dakota – clearly not our high humidity, deep cold, toxic endophyte fescue environment with managed grazing. They have had a tough time getting used to life in north Missouri and a few have fallen out. There are also several first calf heifers and ancient cows which have struggled in maintaining body condition.

Not having enough stock last spring is a large part of why my pastures were not grazed properly and resulted in the poor stockpile. However, Jim Gerrish reminds us too stock for winter grazing. This may mean removing enough animals to graze without hay through the winter. Real Wealth ranching protocols is different than more well-known grazing schemes in that one will know earlier in the year whether or not there is enough forage available.

Create beauty and harmony in your life!

Spaced-Bale Hay Feeding

In the past, i’ve been a proponent of and have often used a common practice of feeding livestock and distributing manure and organic matter in a chosen area. It is still popular and may still have purpose. If you need to feed hay, it can cut down on labor and the amount of time feeding out when it’s bad weather.

However, my experience is that it concentrates organic matter and nutrients (manure included) so much that it takes years for grass to grow back in those areas. The photos illustrate my point. Those spots are at each place a hay bale was set (truckload of 38 count 1350 lb bales) in the fall (be sure to remove netwrap in advance of setting on the ground) and now it is 3 years hence. Still no forage of significance.

Jim Gerrish has a fabulous six-part series of nutrient management with feeding hay and i highly recommend reading through it before making hay feeding decisions. Find video series on other topics on his website; American Grazing Lands.

I’ve also used, with better impact unrolling hay bales. This reduces intense trampling and distribute manure much better. However, a huge drawback is having to feed the hay in the winter, with special large equipment. Oftentimes it may be muddy which will make huge ruts in the pasture. Greg Judy sells a hay unroller which would help mitigate this, but the hay would have to already be stored near the pasture your stock is in and accessible with equipment able to grab the bale and unroll. Deep snow or ice would make this difficult. My farm is 35 minutes away and in some cases not accessible until ice and snow melts. Your situation may be different and require different decisions, but always put a sharp pencil to the situation and remember family and harmony.

So, after 30 plus years of managed grazing, what do i do now? Total Grazing! By utilizing the principles of total grazing outlined and taught by Jaime Elizondo, Real Wealth Ranching, there are few reasons to produce, haul, buy, feed hay. In fact, it really cuts profitability to do so. This has entirely eliminated feeding hay to cows for two years now and i see no reason to ever feed again unless there is a huge blizzard and 3 plus feet of snow. Which could happen, but rare in north Missouri. In which case, spaced bale feeding may be the only option since it’s already in the pasture or let the cows find their own tall stockpile. Adjust your livestock numbers to match your winter resource.

Sheep bale grazing near a small patch of timber back in 2015.

Kick the Hay Habit by Jim Gerrish is the book that really convinced me to explore and implement the move completely away from feeding hay. The only time i might consider feeding (purchased) hay is in the summer on exceptionally poor ground which has never produced forage. Unroll it and have the stock eat it so as to add microbes to the soil profile. Saliva, manure (having past through the gut will shed microbes), hoof trampling, may all stimulate and improve soil health without breaking the bank.

Create Something Beautiful Today!

In the foreground is clear indication of where a hay bale sat three years ago surrounded by tall stockpile forage.

To Mow or Not to Mow

Basically this is a math problem. What is the cost of mowing (brush hogging) a pasture vs the benefit of doing so.

Consider the fuel (which is expensive now), wear and tear on machinery, depreciation, and man hours. Now, ideally, one would not own or operate the machinery and therefore would avoid the depreciation (although John Deere tractors actually seem to appreciate in value as the dollar recedes) and hire someone to mow it for you. However, my husband has a lot of tractors and equipment, so we might as well use them, though it still takes someone to sit in the tractor.

So, i don’t know the numbers to make a math decision, but there is absolutely no doubt that the Bowyer Farm, which was cropped for 4 years with soybeans, wil hugely benefit having those suffocating weeds (ragweed and cocklebur) removed as a thick canopy preventing desirable species of grasses and legumes to take hold.

This paddock was the last to be grazed on the Bowyer farm, and like a couple others the results are the abundance of ragweed. The second photo below shows what is left after grazing then brush hogging. For perspective, there are 160 cows, 7 mature bulls, and 90 spring born calves in this photo!

With two tractors going, one with a 15 foot brush hog, and the other with a 20 foot brush hog, it did not take long for Allen and my son, Dallas, to finish the job. It’s particularly a good job these days of intense ragweed pollinating for Dallas because he can sit in the air conditioned tractor cab and get along well. My husband has to do all the fueling and greasing, however.

These side by side photos are important in that they illustrate the difference between a paddock that was grazed in a more timely manner and the ragweed and cocklebur were removed by cows grazing, thereby opening the canopy and allowing an abundance of clover and lespedeza (poor man’s alfalfa) to flourish. The second photo shows that very little is able to grow under 4-6 foot tall thick ragweed. Even cocklebur and foxtail couldn’t get a toe hold in that mess.

About five days ago (21 Aug 22), i moved the cows/calves across the road to a paddock which had been previously grazed (13 Jun-23Jun 2022) via total grazing protocols. We’ve had more than plenty of rain, so regrowth was fantastic and the forages in this paddock are at the peak of grazing readiness to provide the cows a well balanced diet. I’m convinced they’ve gained 100 lbs in just those few days due to superior diet. Clearly, one can see i’m not mobbing them for best pasture results. This is due to my severe allergies and not being able to be outside. If not for a/c in my Gator, I would turn them out in large paddock and not see them for a week or more.

Oh, the ragweed pollen!!!

Shabbat Shalom!