Lena, Wisconsin — Most of you have seen those “growing curves” for perennial, cool-season grasses. The curves spike in mid-spring, crash in the summer heat and revive in time for the early-fall grazing period. The biology of this is that a perennial can’t afford to put all of its energy into production, as it needs to survive the heat of summer and the cold of winter in order to live to reproduce again next year.

Advanced management has helped us graziers cope with the curve. Longer rest periods and stockpiled forage reduce the impact of the summer slump while extending the grazing season well beyond the growing season. The downside to such stockpiling is that much of the forage is not dairy quality, and thus limits animal performance.

Annual forages can help solve that problem. Annuals don’t know that our cows are going to graze them, and they don’t have concerns about surviving to next year. Their only worry is getting as big as they can, as quickly as they can.

As I noted last month (“Money talks: annuals have made huge strides”), annuals are broken into two categories: warm seasons such as sorghum, grazing corn and soybeans, and cool seasons such as oats, triticale, rye and the brassicas. As their name implies, warm season annuals are well adapted to heat. They also tend to be more drought tolerant than cool-season annuals. But cool-season annuals stretch the growing season by starting quickly in the spring and growing late into the fall. Cool-season grasses are generally higher in protein and contain less fiber than warm-season annuals.

There are really two approaches for incorporating annuals into your farm. The first is using them as a renovation tool. The second is designating a portion of your grazeable acres for annuals and keeping them that way. On our farm, we have tried to carefully plant annuals to fill the growth and quality slumps of perennials. I live in northeastern Wisconsin (Zone 5), and the programs I will describe should translate well to the Midwest and Northeast. They will need to be modified in the southern half of the country and the far North.

How we employ annuals

Because we have the same out-wintering lot each year, we plant Italian ryegrass in that area every spring. Ryegrass utilizes the excess fertility in that area about as well as anything, and it can be grazed about six weeks after planting and every two to three weeks after that.

We are going through an organic transition on our farm, and have found annuals to be a great way to renovate fescue-infested perennial pastures without using herbicides. We start by grazing the pasture twice — first in early May, and then again at the end of the month. By that time our soil temperatures have hit the needed 60 degrees, so we plow the sod under.

We have been using a “gene 6” sorghum-sudan cross (a warm season annual) for the past few years. I’ve also been planting 2 lbs. each of hybrid rape (a cool season that is the most heat-tolerant brassica available) and crimson clover (a warm season) with 30 lbs. of sorghum-sudan seed. The clover and rape really come through in the second grazing, and they help by providing ground cover and boosting protein content.

One interesting thing about planting a mixture like this is that it will look different every year. Moisture amounts and unseasonal temperatures can favor either the cool- or warm-season annual. In some ways, this diversification in our annual forage mixture allows us to reap the same benefits we benefit from in many of our perennial pasture mixtures. This mixture is ready to graze about 45 days after planting and again about 30 days after that. In Wisconsin, this puts our second grazing at about the middle of August.

Annuals for one year … or more

We then have two options. We can lightly work the ground and plant a perennial grass mixture, or we can no-till a cool season annual crop into the residue for a late-fall grazing. This year we chose to plant annuals, so we planted 2 bushels each of forage oats and winter triticale per acre into the sorghum stand. We let this grow until the sorghum was thoroughly killed by frost, and grazed it in late October. In April we will no-till our perennial grasses into the triticale, and then graze the triticale before the grass comes up.

(Side note: Many farmers have concerns about prussic acid poisoning from sorghum-sudan. While not impossible, this is very uncommon. Your odds of having a cow die from prussic acid are only slightly higher than your odds of winning the Powerball lottery. We usually wait at least one week after a frost before we begin grazing our sorghum again. You can also harvest this frozen sorghum as baleage. The fermentation process dissipates the acid much like it does nitrates.)

The second option is to reserve some acres for annuals and create a plan to maximize your tonnage from those acres. It is important to plan a year or two ahead because the winter grains (rye, wheat, triticale, spelt) have to be planted the previous fall.

Here is a typical two-year rotation, with expected dry matter yields:

This program extends our grazing program in the spring and fall. It also helps with the normal summer slump. I would expect the above program to annually yield about 8.5 tons of dry matter per acre. As a comparison, we expect to harvest between 3.5 and 5 tons of dry matter from our perennial pastures with good management. Also, the sorghum-sudan we graze in July actually helps the productivity of our perennial pastures by allowing us to give them longer rest periods in a drought. In a good production year, the annuals allow us to start stockpiling other pastures for winter grazing.

Of course there are some downsides to annuals. Probably the biggest one for graziers is all the fuel and tractor time needed to make this work. Most of us started grazing because we have an aversion to these things. Tillage is a must if you don’t use herbicides, and it is important to get your crops planted on time.

There are also the higher costs associated with seed and fertilizer that I outlined in the December 2012 article (“A case for annuals”). Cash-flow could be an issue if you are not budgeting for those costs.

The third drawback could be excessive or insufficient moisture, which can delay the planting schedule and force you to modify your cropping plans. Thankfully we have many different options when it comes to annuals, which helps spread the risk and give us a greater chance of success.

Graziers have always been creative, “outside the box” thinkers, and that creativity can be a huge asset when entering the world of annuals. Imagination and good management can be a dynamic combination in our efforts to grow more quality forage per acre.

Daniel Olson milks cows near Lena, Wisconsin. He is also a distributor for Byron Seeds.

by Dan Vosberg

South Wayne, WI—Scientists are showing some pretty strong evidence that the climate is changing here in Wisconsin. According to their data, we will experience hotter summers, longer growing seasons, warmer winters and more dry spells and droughts. Storms will be more violent, with more downpours and fewer gentle rains. It’s hard to argue against their predictions when the weather we’ve been receiving lately seems to support them.

2012 is over, thank goodness, but it will probably be remembered as the year that forced us to look at doing some things differently.

One thing we’re realizing about this changing climate is that you never really know when it’s going to turn dry or when it’s going to rain. You have to be ready for both. This means leaning a little more toward drought-tolerant plants. It also means being flexible and having a Plan B and possibly a Plan C.

For example, there’s always enough moisture to get seed started in the spring. But if we’re in a serious dry pattern, we may not want to plant a bunch of cool season perennial grasses, because if it stays dry for a while, the seedlings will die. So instead we leave the seed in the bag and concentrate on summer annuals, hoping we can plant the cool season stuff in August or next year.

We may also want to spread our risk by staggering our plantings within acceptable windows. For instance, during last year’s warm spring we were told we blew it when we waited until May to plant corn. But as it turned out, our corn fared better than others around us because it hadn’t tasseled during the worst of the drought and heat as the neighboring fields had done. So as weather volatility increases, we may not want to put all our eggs in one basket even if doing so carries the potential for the biggest yields. We need to play a little defense.

We may also want to diversify our forages even more between perennials and annuals, and spring, summer and fall plantings.

The double-cropping advantage

This past year we were pretty aggressive with double-cropping, and it paid off. We’re looking at continuing to move in that direction. After the rootworms hit our river bottom corn (never a problem before), we planted forage sorghum. When we took corn silage off, we planted oats and rape. These things also suffered from dry weather, but we got enough tonnage to justify doing it. We ended up grazing until December 4.

After we took cornstalks off we planted winter rye. We finished planting it November 1, and it all came up. The longer growing seasons we will experience should give us more double-cropping opportunities provided we get some rain. With the high costs of land and purchased feed, we have to be more aggressive with this.

This is where I think we have a slight advantage over the corn and bean farmers. They will get yield bumps from a longer growing season, but I think we as livestock farmers and graziers will be able to take advantage of the longer growing season even more. Our grass will come on sooner and grow later in the fall when their seed is still in the bag or their crops have long been harvested. By double-cropping annuals we could get significantly higher yields and have more homegrown feed for our livestock.

Saving dollars and moisture

In fertilizing pastures last year, we threw the calendar out the window and put nitrogen and potash down when we were pretty confident it was going to rain. We didn’t want to put a lot of dollars out there if it wasn’t gonna work for us due to lack of moisture. We might need that money to buy hay.

I’m a firm believer that if you grow a good sward and it starts to lose quality in the summer because of something other than heading out, you graze it or hay it no matter how tall or where it’s at in the grazing rotation. However, we have to be careful not to graze pastures too short. We’ve known this. But research has shown that as we get more violent rainstorms, a taller stubble and thicker pasture on our hills will collect and hold much more of the too-much, too-fast rain. This is something we’ll be very mindful of in the future. It’s a bit of a challenge for us because bunch grasses are our favorites on the hills, but they don’t maintain thick stands without interseeding.

In another effort to minimize buying feed, we’ve tried to secure enough land to raise all our feed. This is no easy task, as we have to compete with cash grain farmers who are willing to pay big rent money. We have found some opportunities in the non-tillable land category, though. There are a lot of former dairy farmers around with old cow pastures sitting idle. As more dairy farmers go out of business, more of these pastures become available for rent. The catch is they have to be grazed, and they’re usually pretty small. This means we have to do more shuffling of cattle around to different locations. But in return, we’re feeding these animals at a reasonable cost.

Last year — mostly because of feed costs — we made some changes to the way we feed stored feeds to our cows. We rented a TMR mixer. We wanted to have a scale to allow us to know exactly what was going into the cows. We also wanted to chop up the hay somewhat so the cows couldn’t pull it out of the ring feeders and bunks. Now, if we use ring feeders, they are the more expensive, “hay saver” types. Hay is just too expensive to use as fertilizer without being eaten first. We also wanted to use liquid molasses and blend different, cheaper feeds that the cows normally wouldn’t free-choice. We also wanted to increase milk production per cow.

The TMR did all of that. But the mixing takes more time, another tractor and more fuel. To become more efficient with the TMR, we’re putting up a hoop shed that will be set up for drive-through feeding. This will also serve as a place for the cows to be on those hot afternoons. It will provide shade, fans and sprinklers if needed. Yes, this is not low-input, but we’ve seen the results of not having such facilities: reduced milk production, pregnancies that don’t go full term and feed that spoils from sitting in the rain, snow and hot sun.

We’ve also continued to reduce the amount of corn we’re feeding. Liquid molasses, forage sorghum, brassicas and the move toward breeding with Normande genetics have all contributed to this.

Easier for cows, not us

It would be nice to say that such changes have made our lives easier, but mostly that’s not the case. They are designed to make our cows’ lives easier, which will hopefully result in more milk per cow while keeping our feed costs under control enough to ensure the extra milk is made profitably.

The changing climate will be less predictable and more stressful. However, it may offer us more opportunities to grow our own feed if we’re smart about it and are willing to work for it.

Dan Vosberg milks cows near South Wayne, Wisconsin.

Whitesville, NY—For centuries farmers around the world have been sprouting grains and feeding the green material to their stock, usually with spotty success. The 1959 edition of Frank B. Morrison’s venerable publication Feeds and Feeding referred to “clever promoters” making “extravagant claims” about the benefits of various hydroponic systems for growing green fodder from seeds. U.S. livestock nutrition experts are generally skeptical about the potential benefits of sprouted fodder, although most withhold official judgment because almost no studies have been done here due to its rarity.

Photos: A. Fay Benson. A mat of sprouted barley, ready to be tossed in a mixer or torn up for feeding.

Or at least until now it was rare. The onset of high grain and forage prices and growing interest in no-grain feeding programs has produced at least a mini-boom of interest in producing green fodder from the seeds of small grains. Articles about farmers employing fodder systems to produce greenery for everything from chickens and geese to beef steers and dairy cows are showing up in alternative agricultural outlets — often with accompanying advertising from companies selling such systems. Some farmers have reported spending a few hundred bucks to provide greens to their poultry, while others have paid six figures for commercial fodder production systems capable of producing much bigger volumes for larger dairy herds.

John Stoltzfus says he spent $5,000 on the materials to construct a sprouting room in his barn mow. Stoltzfus, who has an 80-cow, organic-certified dairy herd near Whitesville in western New York, says that daily feeding of the equivalent of 1-2 lbs. dry matter per cow of sprouted barley produced noticeable improvements in herd health and butterfat tests on both winter rations and summer pasture while leading to reduced hay consumption. He no longer feeds grain: Stoltzfus thinks the barley sprouts can help him achieve more than 40 lbs. of milk/day from his primarily Holstein herd from forages alone.

“We’re very excited about everything,” Stoltzfus told an online audience during a recent “webinar” sponsored by Cooperative Extension’s eOrganic program. “I think it’s here to stay.”

Report: costs two to five times higher

Others beg to disagree. For instance, here’s the opening line of the executive summary from “Review of Hydroponic Fodder Production for Beef Cattle,” a 2003 publication from Meat & Livestock Australia: “Profitable use of sprouting grain as a feed source for commercial cattle production appears unlikely.”

This report, which was the most comprehensive Graze looked at in researching the subject, stated that decades of research and farmer experience indicate that the costs associated with fodder production are two to five times those of the original grain, and that any potential benefits provided by the green feed are not likely to overcome those costs.

Australia is the epicenter of modern sprouted fodder production. Grain prices have traditionally been higher than in the U.S., and farmer interest in artificially producing green feed has periodically waxed and waned, with sprouting tending to be more popular during the severe, multi-year droughts common to Australia. Several Australian companies sell everything from individual pieces of equipment to complete fodder production systems.

Fodder production involves soaking grain until it is fully saturated, and then placing the seeds in trays or troughs for the sprouting and a few days of growth. Any seed can be sprouted, although small grains are by far the most popular, and barley is viewed as the very best of the small grains in terms of yield. Stoltzfus said he has also realized high yields from sprouted triticale.

The seeds are kept moist — by flooding the trays or spraying the sprouts — for a growing period that commonly lasts six or seven days. The end result is a mat of greenery that can go into a feed mixer or be torn up and hand-fed.

Feed quality, health benefits cited

Proponents say that such fodder carries nutritional benefits not available in unsprouted grains, harvested hay and even, in some cases, fresh pasture. Jerry Brunetti of Agri-Dynamics has been one of those proponents, noting that sprouting removes much of the grain starch that can lead to overly acidic conditions in the rumen. Brunetti also points to research indicating that sprouted barley has higher levels of many vitamins, minerals and sugars, and that these are in highly digestible forms within the sprouted feed.

Stoltzfus said that he’s seen the benefits, as “foot problems went away” and cell counts declined in his herd after he started feeding the sprouted barley fodder. He said butterfat tests have risen with the sprouts and declined when he stopped feeding them for a while. The benefits are noticeable both in winter and summer. He said milk urea nitrogen (MUN) levels often averaged 18-20 on pasture, but never got above 15 last summer with the fodder supplement. Stoltzfus thinks he can keep MUN at about 12 if he feeds more fodder, which he intends to do with a planned expansion of his sprouting room.

“Even though the grass is digestible, they’re utilizing it better” with the addition of a pound or two of barley fodder dry matter, Stoltzfus added. “They get more energy from fodder than from pasture.” Stoltzfus said he also sees positive health results from feeding the fodder to his calves.

Stoltzfus provided feed tests of his fodder and the barley that produced it, and fodder indeed showed reduced starch levels and increases in protein percentage and a variety of minerals compared to the grain. However, energy levels did not increase to any real degree, with NEL of the sprouted fodder shown at 0.88 and the grain at 0.87.

The Meat & Livestock Australia report noted that while sprouting has been shown to change the nutritional profile of grain, it is difficult to make a statement that the changes produce better livestock performance. For instance, “There is conflicting evidence that sprouting improves or reduces DM digestibility,” the report notes. The Australian paper reported that while some research has indicated improvement in livestock performance with the feeding of sprouted fodder, “The majority of … trials have found no advantage to feeding sprouts compared to other conventional livestock feeds.”

The Australian summary pointed to a study of sprouted oats in the 1960s, which said that while sprouting “will not increase milk production in cows that are already receiving sufficient energy … it may increase milk production in cows that are not receiving a high level of nutrients. This could explain some of the (positive) results observed on farms.” Perhaps this, too, is why some no- and low-grain livestock producers in the U.S. are reporting good results.

Sprouting reduces total dry matter

But any improvements in nutritional quality come at a price: virtually all studies of sprouting indicate a loss of dry matter compared to the original grain, the result of the respiration that takes place in the sprouting process. Morrison’s Feeds and Feeding pegged the decline at 25%. The Meat & Livestock Australia survey of the literature said the losses varied from 7% to 47%, and that the very few reports of dry matter gains could not be substantiated.

While the sprouting literature indicates a wide variety of production performance based on the efficiency of the systems studied, Stoltzfus’s 6-7 lbs. of sprouts produced per pound of barley seed appears to fall within the rough average of the research cited in the Australian report. His feed test showed the sprouts at 12.1% dry matter, compared to 87.6% DM for his barley grain. Thus, the dry matter loss in his situation may be near 10%. At the $550/ton Stoltzfus says he’s spending for organic barley these days, the losses are not minor.

Mold the biggest production issue

Meanwhile, even its advocates acknowledge that the sprouting process itself is not foolproof. “We had a lot of failures,” Stoltzfus noted. “Mold seems to be our biggest issue.”

The sprouting literature agrees that mold is a major potential problem, as it commonly reduces yields and occasionally sickens stock. Mold spores are common in most seed, and the damp environments of sprouting rooms are certainly capable of promoting their growth. Sprouting requires very clean seed that is virtually free of chaff and weed seeds. Sprouting rooms must be kept at nearly constant temperatures (around 70 degrees F.), and humidity must be kept constant, but not too high. Stoltzfus said he’s found that a small amount of air movement helps the situation.

Research has indicated that washing seeds in a chlorine solution reduces mold growth, and Stoltzfus said his problems have greatly diminished since he started employing water that is chlorinated at levels similar to those found in city water supplies.

Sprouting also requires constant labor for soaking, handling, cleaning and feeding. The Australian report stated that daily labor requirements range from two to four hours, while Stoltzfus said his system requires closer to an hour-and-a-half of daily attention. He said he uses 300 gallons of water a day, with all of it diverted to his calves.

The reported costs of sprouting vary tremendously based on the source doing the reporting and the system being employed. Stoltzfus said he has fed as much as 14 lbs. of fodder/cow a day to his milking herd, or 2 lbs. of barley at the 7 lbs. of fodder yield he cited. At $550/ton, that comes to 55 cents/cow in daily costs for the seed alone. The New York dairyman said his additional utility costs are minimal, and that he has the available labor for running the system.

Costs for setting up a system range from very little to very large. Australian companies offer packages that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the need to build or renovate facilities to accommodate sprouting adds to the overall expense. Stoltzfus chose the do-it-yourself route, with homemade irrigation trays made from aluminum gutter material housed on painted wooden racks. Seeds are soaked in five-gallon pails. He acknowledged needing to make a lot of adjustments along the way to create a satisfactory system capable of providing a 95% germination rate.

And he isn’t done yet. Stoltzfus says he will expand the sprouting room, raise the ceilings and perhaps add a commercial dehumidifier in an effort to increase production and minimize the environmental problems that can hamper that production. He figures that one pound of dry barley seed requires one square foot of production space. Stoltzfus also intends to buy a TMR mixer, as tearing up and feeding the mats by hand once a day is not very efficient.

“It’s a lot of hand labor,” he said, adding that the cows will “sling it everywhere if you leave it in big chunks.” Stoltzfus said he’s down to feeding just 5 lbs. of fodder/cow per day because he’s added cows and started feeding some to the calves. While his stated goal is to feed 10-15 lbs. and have the herd milk at 45-50 lbs./day with a 4.2% butterfat test without feeding grain, Stoltzfus added that “we’re still trying to figure the optimum level” for fodder feeding.

What’s the bottom line?

The bottom line appears to be that the bottom line on fodder sprouts has yet to be determined. “I am skeptical of the value of sprouting for most producers because of the labor, although there may be a place for it if there is a grass-fed milk market,” offered A. Fay Benson, a Cornell University Small Dairy Support specialist who has closely followed the Stoltzfus project. Others feel that sprouting may be best suited to those in drier climates facing chronic problems with pasture production and finding reasonably priced hay. Producer testimony indicates that the humidity control problems suffered by sprouting operators in the East are far less of a problem in places with less moisture.

Kathy Soder, a pasture specialist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Pennsylvania, will be working with Roman Stoltzfoos in the coming months to study the production capabilities, feed quality and economics of the system Stoltzfoos recently installed on his Lancaster County, PA, dairy. (See Organic forum, October 2012.) “We should have something by mid-year,” Soder said.

Kerkhoven, Minnesota — There is a trendy new “Foodie” culture, of which we are a part. We sell into it. We also never gave up cooking in our house. The Foodies often point out a generational difference in this way:

Your mother or grandmother, they say, might ask you after eating if you got enough, thus linking the provision of food with the concept of food as fuel. Your wife (husband?), lover, or live-in who cooks is more likely to ask if it was good, putting food and eating into the vicinity of sex, where the sensation is at least as important as the result. Foodie culture blames the first comment for all manner of modern ills, such as overeating and the consumption of bad food. And while it admires your grandmother for knowing the uses of a pot, it tut-tuts over her idea of a human as a hole to be filled.

Yesterday, a late-model white pickup pulled onto the yard as I was walking from the shop to the hog house. I watched as a tall, elderly white-haired man disentangled himself from steering wheel and door threshold and made his way over to me with his hand outstretched in greeting. He was dressed in tan cargo shorts, a short sleeve shirt and sandals — a real contrast to my work shoes, long sleeves and wet handkerchief around the neck. He said he was my second cousin, Nelson. He had heard of us and our farm, and had slowly worked out our relationship.

“Your great uncle Jake was my grandfather Jake,” he said. “And my great uncle Albert is your grandfather Albert.” We took Nelson and his wife into the house, got out the picture albums and spent an hour talking about what we knew of the family, including what we had learned about our common ancestor on a trip to Europe in ’07. There, we found the few buildings left of the orphanage in the town of Nijmegen in the Netherlands that once housed 1,600 orphans, mostly children of families who could not keep them fed. Our great grandparents had grown up there, learned trades, met and married, and emigrated from there.

They soon landed near Pipestone in Minnesota, up on the Buffalo Ridge. But, Nelson said, they found it impossibly cold and windy up there and soon moved down to a farm near Edgerton not far away.

“Jake wasn’t much of a farmer,” Nelson commented.

“Your grandfather?” I asked.

“No, old Jake, our great-grandfather.”

I said that old Jake had learned the shoemaker’s trade in Nijmegen, so perhaps wasn’t interested in farming. Nelson said he wasn’t much interested in shoes, either. But every day at about nine o’clock in the morning, one of the sons, Jake or Albert, would need to have a horse hitched to the buggy, ready for their father to drive to town. There he would spend the morning doing a few errands, but mostly arguing the finer points of theology with the other idlers in town. Being of Reformed background, these probably consisted of an analysis of the indications of election by which God would make known to you and your neighbors whether or not you were “chosen.” Old Jake probably picked up at the orphanage that this was how important men spent their lives, and never got beyond it.

Meanwhile, the boys Jake and Albert were back home learning farming first hand. And thus, through Albert and then my father Jake, as well as my mother’s family, the farming line comes down to us here and, by the looks of it, into the future if the grandchildren have their way.

Albert’s farming was an iffy thing — not because of a lack of ability, but because the Depression kept him landless until the final eight years of his farming lifetime. Always on a rented farm, and always on the move, he often had trouble keeping a cow fed and sufficient potatoes on the table. My father, the oldest, filled the gap by spending his entire teenage life pitching manure for one farmer or another and bringing the money home to his family.

When he was allowed to keep his earnings after age 21, my father kept at it until he accumulated a team of mules and a few dollars, and thus felt ready to marry — to the dismay of his parents — the strong-minded, studious German girl he had found. They set out to make a life together on a rented farm.

By the age of 30, he was a little bent-shouldered, a tempered-steel rod of a man with a soft center where his family could dwell. He had lost all his teeth. At six-feet and one inch, he was three inches shorter than his own father. My mother blamed this on not enough to eat and too much work, and she carried to the grave her grudges against the people who had caused it.

So when my mother asked the people she fed whether they had got enough, she wasn’t encouraging obesity, bad food or careless eating, rather speaking from the very core of her life in this world and her understanding of it.

I respect the newfound respect for food, and can even tolerate its more fad-like aspects. I like that it tries to connect the food with the land and the people who produced it. It is quite simply the only game now in opposition to the “food as commodity” and “unlimited corporate opportunity” approaches.

But the food movement has far to go if it is to rise to the level of my mother’s visceral understanding of food. It must make good on its belief that everyone, in the argument of Vandana Shiva and others, is entitled to good food. How it will do that, I confess I cannot quite see.

Jim Van Der Pol grazes and markets from his farm near Kerkhoven, Minnesota.

Amherst Junction, Wisconsin — Most of Paul Onan’s milking cows are contentedly grazing lush pasture at high noon with the mercury heading toward the upper-90s. It is a scene many a midwestern dairy grazier would pay a lot to duplicate in this terrible summer of 2012.

And Paul has paid more than a little. More than $12,000 for a well and a 10-horsepower submersible pump. Equipment valued at more than $10,000, although most of that cost was covered by a government grant. About $500 worth of electricity used during a period of four weeks, with much more to come should the dry weather continue. Close to an hour’s worth of daily labor to move equipment, plus the usual hassles involved in fixing the broken parts that come with anything mechanical.

All to irrigate about 30 acres, which hasn’t produced enough pasture to avoid having to feed some haylage since July 1 to his more than 90 milking cows along with this year’s calf crop.

Are the returns worth the investment, costs and the labor? “For me, yes, it’s a paying proposition,” Paul answers. That assertion is backed by an analysis included in the aforementioned grant. Tom Kriegl, a farm financial analyst with the University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability, figures that Paul comes out ahead with irrigation if the system is employed for a lengthy period at least one year out of three.

And here, it most likely will be used at least that often. Paul’s sandy soils dry up in a flash despite nearly 20 years of good grazing management. Pastures not reached by irrigation were dormant in early July despite having received rains into the middle of June. This is irrigation country. Many of Paul’s neighbors are tapping the relatively high water table to irrigate cash crops, and the Golden Sands potato region a few miles to the east has an even higher table and is even more dependent upon irrigation.

Paul says he suffered from dry weather five consecutive years starting in 2005. “Most of those years, we were on full (stored) forage for three or four weeks at mid-summer,” he describes. “That gets expensive.”

But despite a relatively small land base and the local culture, Paul wasn’t ready to invest in irrigation until the local Golden Sands conservation district obtained a two-year Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI) grant used to lease two K-Line pod systems and accompanying plastic feeder lines from a local dealer. Paul did have to pay for the well (six-inches in diameter drilled to 103 feet) and pump.

The K-Line standard is 12 irrigation pods at 50-foot intervals, creating a 600-foot surface irrigation line that can be shifted back and forth across the pasture with an ATV or some other low-horsepower machine. Each shift is capable of irrigating three-quarters of an acre in 50-foot strips with 50 pounds per square inch of pressure at the last pod. Paul’s pump creates 100 psi at the well head and is capable of producing 100 gallons per minute. The system was designed to run up to three pod lines at the same time, and Paul was operating all three of his during the height of the dry spell this summer.

The 80 acres of milk cow pasture are divided into four long, narrow strips that are temporarily split with polywire to create 12-hour grazing breaks. Each of these strips has a riser fed by the well near the road, giving Paul the ability to irrigate a total of about 40 acres — essentially the front half of the 80. However, this summer he was putting water on just three of the pastures, with the fourth out of commission until the next substantive rains arrive.

Paul acknowledges that he’s not being the most efficient irrigator. To water the additional 10 acres he could put in a fourth pod line, or even shift one of the current lines. But that has yet to happen.

Also, making only two shifts per day is putting too much water on too small an area: Paul estimates that an inch-and-a-half is being applied to the 0.75-acre strips every 12 hours. Eight-hour shifts would provide a more appropriate amount of moisture while offering the potential to cover more acres with the same number of pod lines. The Golden Sands grant report suggests that six-hour shifts would be even better in terms of spreading investment costs over more acres while still applying enough water, although that analysis noted that such a strategy would require midnight labor.

Paul Onan spends about an hour a day moving his irrigation lines.

And the shift pattern here isn’t the most efficient. After the pod line has been shifted across the width of the pasture over the course of seven days, Paul starts back in the opposite direction, arriving where he had begun nearly two weeks earlier. It means that the edges of the pastures are being watered at inconsistent intervals — a reality that was showing up in early July in the form of brown, stunted grass in areas that hadn’t been watered in more than 10 days — a couple of which had seen 100-degree air temperatures.

Paul says there’s at least one major reason for this inefficiency: “Labor is a problem around here.” At age 60, he is running the farm largely by himself after an intern departed last spring.

It’s not easy for Paul to allocate an extra half-hour at a specific time of day to move three pod lines. Also, with the current schedule he is able to shift the lines while the cows are walking to the barn and eating their supplement. He can do the shift at the same time he’s moving the break wire, thus avoiding the need drag 600 feet of plastic piping through standing polywire and posts. Perimeter fences are an even bigger problem in such shifts, which is another reason why Paul isn’t trying to irrigate the fourth paddock with his three lines.

Paul says he’s glad he took out the permanent cross fences that once split the long strips. “We couldn’t do this if we still had the old five-acre paddocks,” he asserts. “With irrigation, fewer fences is better.”

The fact that the cows frequently graze amid the pods is a bit of mixed blessing. It’s a pretty good deal on very hot days, as most of the cows alternate between a cool shower and going out to put their heads down to graze. “They wouldn’t be doing that without the water,” Paul said as the sun bore down. He noted that on a recent 102-degree day, about two-thirds of the herd remained on pasture even though they had access back to the barn. Both milk and solids levels had declined markedly after the first of July, but Paul blamed the inclusion of haylage in the barn ration for much of that.

The down side is that cows are certainly capable of damaging things like plastic fittings. Indeed, one connector with damaged threads had popped off on the morning Graze visited, with water gushing out the end of the line and virtually nothing coming from the pods. Paul says he usually has to fix something about twice a week when the systems are operating.

In reality, the major problem with system breakdowns seems to lie with pulling the lines through tall, lush grass. “There’s a lot of force on these (lines) when they’re being pulled around,” Paul notes. To reduce that force (and to stay dry), Paul doesn’t follow K-Line’s advice that the system be operating while being moved. But that means he has to be extra careful not to kink the empty lines.

The pod system’s limitations include timing of fertilizer applications: Paul waits for rainfall like everyone else due to the reality that some of his acres won’t see water for several days at a time. It’s another reason why a center pivot might be a better system — at least if he could afford the costs of drilling at least a 16-inch well and installing a pump capable of producing at least 5,000 gallons per minute, plus paying for a pivot. And Paul thinks that all irrigation in Wisconsin will someday come at a price beyond the current nominal annual pumping permit.

Despite the limitations that come with pod irrigation, the simple fact of the matter is that it is doing what it’s supposed to be doing on Paul’s farm. In early July the areas being watered were an oasis amid the surrounding area of dormant grass and shriveling corn. His orchardgrass, bluegrass, white and red clover and (in the lower areas) low-alkaloid reed canarygrass were lush, thriving and being grazed well by the herd. (Paul notes that interseeding alfalfa hasn’t worked with his sandy soils, while pure stands tend to die quickly under grazing pressure.)

And at least according to the grant-funded study, the extra forage produced is more than paying for the related fixed and variable costs, including Paul’s extra labor. The trial took place in 2009 and 2010, his first years of irrigation.

Pasture growth was monitored using an electronic version of a rising plate meter. In the dry year of 2009, areas irrigated between July 1 and September 24 produced two dry matter tons of forage during the period, or 1.5 tons more than adjacent, non-irrigated strips.

Everyone involved in the trial acknowledged that irrigation started too late in 2009 because the new system wasn’t operable until mid-summer. Grazing had ceased by June 15 and pastures had gone dormant by the time the pods started working at the beginning of July. Also, no pasture growth was seen during an initial week of attempting to irrigate only at night. Grazing did not begin again until July 20. The 1.5 tons of extra pasture attributed to the additional water was thus considered a very conservative number.

The trial viewed the extra forage as being equal to 150 RFV hay, and thus valued it at $150/ton. This was compared to ownership costs (amortized over a 20-year period) and the costs of operating the system. In 2009 Paul was using only two pod lines and covering 20 acres with twice-daily moves. Ownership was figured at $107/acre and operating charges at $82/acre. The value of the extra feed grown with irrigation was pegged at $258 (the hay cost was tied to 1.725 tons as fed, equaling 1.5 tons dry matter), producing a net return of $69 per acre.

That might be a very conservative figure. An additional half-ton of forage dry matter likely would have been produced if the irrigation had commenced before drought stress was obvious, the trial report noted. Also, more frequent shifts and additional pod lines would have allowed far more acres to be covered, thus greatly reducing the per-acre investment costs tied to the well and the pump. The report presented scenarios in which per-acre profits might rise above $200.

Then again, irrigation was a money-loser for Paul in 2010, which featured precipitation far above the norm. That year he operated the K-Line for just a few days, incurring some operating expenses with no measurable returns in addition to the fixed costs of owning the infrastructure.

Yet according to Kriegl’s calculations, Paul can have two wet years for every one dry one and still come out ahead with his irrigation system. That’s exactly what he had prior to 2012, as last year also featured a lot of natural precipitation.

Other studies in Wisconsin have suggested that the results of irrigation are not as positive for grazing dairies with heavier soils and deeper water tables. “A lot of this has to do with well depth and the water-holding capacity of your soils,” Paul figures. He thinks that for many graziers, any shot at successful irrigation will depend upon access to drainage ponds, preferably with the ability to recharge naturally.

Pasture irrigation recommendations and precautions

A two-year study of Paul Onan’s pasture irrigation system, funded by the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative, found that while irrigation seems to pay off on Paul’s farm, that won’t be the case for everyone. Here is a list of findings and recommendations offered by report authors Brian Nischke, Alex Crockford and Tom Kriegl:

1. Inexperienced irrigation managers usually wait too long before starting to irrigate. Waiting too long usually means that some potential yield is lost and the irrigation manager has to play catch-up to avoid losing more yield response.

2. Applying one inch of water per acre per week will use water more efficiently compared to applying two inches of water per acre in one pass for the next 14 days for several reasons. First, some of the irrigation water will likely run off because two inches applied at one time will exceed the water-holding capacity of most soils that will respond to irrigation. Second, more of the moisture in the two-inch application is likely to be evaporated. Third, if adequate rainfall resumes one week after the two inches are applied, a portion of the two inches that was applied would not have been needed. Also, weather forecasts for periods eight to 14 days in the future are less accurate than forecasts in the next seven days. Delivering two inches of water in two passes doubles the labor cost compared to delivering two inches in one pass with the K-Line system. However, labor cost was only about $1.00 per acre-inch in 2009. Therefore, it doesn’t take much gain in efficiency of water use to offset the added labor cost.

3. The operating cost for two acre-inches was $21.25 in 2009. It would only take a dry matter yield increase of 283 lbs. of dry matter valued at $150 per ton to pay for the two inches of water.

4. Increasing yields typically increases the need to add nutrients. This means that more fertilizer will likely be required to consistently achieve higher yields from irrigation over a period of several years.

5. Like any other capital investment, an irrigation system is more likely to pay for itself if used close to full capacity.

6. Ask if irrigation is the best use for your investment dollars. Even if this investment will pay for itself, look to see if there would be another way to invest those dollars for a higher return.

7. This study happened to use the K-Line system. The same economic principles apply regardless of the irrigation equipment or system used.

8. Before investing in an irrigation system, learn as much as you can about the principles of irrigation, the characteristics of your soils, and your micro-climate. With this knowledge, try to project your potential costs and gains before investing. Get estimates of the cost and labor requirements of the irrigation equipment you would use. Your county agricultural agent can help find the information.

by Mike Hillerbrand
Yanceyville, North Carolina — Most of the buzz in grass-finished beef circles today is about the benefits of small frame sizes, English genetics and marbling ability. This, it is said, is the sort of beef genetics required to produce profits straight from pasture.

Meanwhile, Baldwin Family Farms is producing lean, large (frame score 7-8) Charolais cattle on grass and selling critically acclaimed beef to loyal retail and wholesale customers.

With their Baldwin Charolais Beef sold in 11 Whole Foods stores, and a recent win in the Wall Street Journal’s national grass-fed beef taste contest, V. Mac Baldwin, wife Peggy, son Craig and grandsons Steven and Patrick aren’t just talking big. They are delivering outstanding lean beef from big cows to customers who are waiting in line to buy.

What’s so special about the Baldwins that allows them to break modern grass genetics “rules”? Nothing, really — they just focus on the fundamentals. The Baldwins breed for reproduction and fast growth while employing good animal management. They work hard at producing top-quality forages. They don’t waste money aiming for a grade of beef that is too difficult or costly to produce. And the Baldwins focus on supplying their target market with a product it wants to buy.

Genetics are essential to the operation, but V. Mac doesn’t blindly follow trends. Having successfully raised large-framed Charolais for more than five decades, he doesn’t buy into the small-frame argument. “Last time I checked, all cattle were sold by the pound,” chuckles V. Mac. “Which size steer would you rather sell — a thousand-pound small-frame breed, or a thirteen-hundred-pound Charolais?”

While he doesn’t hold any grudges against small frame proponents and doesn’t discount the need for some breeds to downsize a bit, V. Mac does have strong opinions about cattlemen in one part of the country pitching their ideas as a magic bullet for everywhere else. “My father always quoted Teddy Roosevelt: ‘Do what you can, where you are, with what you have,’” he relates. “You can’t copy a program that works out West where there is eight inches of annual rainfall and it takes 40 acres to carry a cow/calf pair, and expect it to work in an area that gets 56 inches of rainfall and only takes an acre or two. Every cattleman has to do what’s best for them, where they are.”

V. Mac’s perspective on genetics was triggered decades ago when Craig was active in the local 4-H club. V. Mac and Peggy were raising Angus and polled Herefords at the time. “For a 4-H project, we AI’d some Charolais genetics to some of our black Angus cows,” he recalls. “They produced awesome, mousy-colored calves. We knew then that Charolais/Angus crosses would work great for Southern ranchers.” Baldwin sold his black cattle and started raising registered Charolais for breeding stock.

V. Mac credits a big part of his current success to “providentially” stumbling across strong grass-based genetics in the 1990s. In asking ABS about a bull he was using (Bar HR Performer), he learned that it came from the Rogers Bar HR Charolais Ranch of Collins, MS. Owner Harlan Rogers was both an innovator and grass man, demanding that his cows raise their calves on grass alone. Their genetics were developed over years of selection for excellent maternal characteristics, high weaning weights and fast growth. Rogers’ breeding philosophy was simple: “Select the cows for grass, select the grass for cows, and let the cream rise to the top.”

“We built up a nice business selling registered Charolais bulls in our region of North Carolina,” says V. Mac. “We saturated our market at about 50 bull sales a year. At that point we had to choose between advertising nationally or staying small.” Stay small is what he did until opportunity came knocking in an unexpected way in the mid-’90s.

“One day a guy in a white pickup drove by the farm, stopped his truck and came up to the house asking if we had any Charolais steers to sell for beef,” V. Mac recalls. It turns out that he worked for Laura’s Lean Beef. V. Mac had visited visited Laura’s Kentucky farm in the mid-’80s and knew she was making a big bet that America’s health-conscious housewives wanted lean beef, but the two had lost touch. This time he stayed in touch.

V. Mac branched out from the breeding stock business, buying Charolais steers from his bull customers and raising them with his own cattle on grass. Laura bought his steers by the tractor trailer load and finished them on grain.

Producing for Laura’s worked well for Baldwin until once again providence intervened. “We were loading up the last tractor-trailer load of cattle for Laura and didn’t have room for about 15 steers,” V. Mac says. Not sure what to do, they decided to turn them back onto grass.

The steers grew as well on grass as they would have on grain. V. Mac knew he was on to something. But since Laura’s wasn’t buying grass-finished beef, he needed another market. It was 2000 and the internet was just starting to become mainstream. “American housewives could research what was the best meat for their families. There was a market ready to buy kitchen-ready cuts,” V. Mac recalls. By 2001, they had stopped selling to Laura’s Lean Beef and were finishing everything on grass.

V. Mac notes that American Charolais genetics are not the same as French Charolais, which produce double-muscled cows up to 2,000 pounds and bulls up to 3,000 lbs. His cows top out at about 1,400 lbs., with bulls at 2,100-2,200 lbs. Yet this is still a large-framed animal that is supposed to be expensive to grow and maintain on forage, and which some say won’t produce the overall quality of beef said to be preferred by American consumers.

V. Mac isn’t totally against fat — he believes there will always be a market for Choice and Prime beef for white tablecloth restaurants. But the Baldwins have decided not to produce a product that they can’t (and have no desire to) deliver. V. Mac calls his beef “Select-plus,” and he has found that Baldwin Family Farms customers are very happy with what they’re getting.

“We sell lean beef because that is what America’s housewives want,” V. Mac explains. “Our customers don’t want to pay for fat and we don’t want to feed grain to our cattle to grow it.”

If “lean” is the main message, then “quality product” is right beside it. Again, V. Mac doesn’t believe that fat is required for quality. “Quality starts with flavor,” he explains. Aside from struggling to meet demand, further proof of Baldwin Charolais Beef’s quality came in 2010 when the Wall Street Journal ranked it No. 1 in a competition among five of the nation’s premier grassfed beef brands for flavor and overall quality.

V. Mac also says his USDA-inspected butcher, Chaudhry Halal Meats in Siler City, NC, is an important part of the equation. Owner Abdul Chaudhry dry ages Baldwin beef for 21 days, thus aiding tenderness and flavor. Says V. Mac, “His work quality is great and service is outstanding.”

Halal is the Arabic term for “legal.” Halal meats must be processed in a pork-free facility where a ritual blessing is said before each animal is killed by severing a major artery. V. Mac says that while some customers are concerned about Halal’s connection with Islam, others like the fact that it represents careful slaughter. V. Mac and Peggy, both very committed Christians, don’t worry about such issues. “I consider Abdul Chaudhry a very good friend. We talk about spiritual things and we talk about the beef business,” V. Mac explains. He appreciates the company’s honesty: “I would trust Abdul with uncounted money.”

V. Mac says his Charolais herd is well adapted to the North Carolina heat and his management methods. “We don’t baby our mama cows,” he notes. About 500 bred cows are placed on tall fescue pastures until shortly before calving, making the best use of the area’s least expensive forage. “We’ll make sure that coming into the winter they have plenty of hay on their backs, or ‘fat’ as some people call it,” chuckles V. Mac. The cows may lose up to 10% of their body weight over the winter, as nutrition is not a priority. Heifers are kept on good grass to gain weight all winter.

“We start with spring calving — it’s the way nature intended,” says V. Mac. Calving begins with the heifers in mid-March, while cows start in May and continue through September to help spread out harvesting. He says the white Charolais settle easily in the summer heat. “Angus people in the South can’t do what we do (because) the heat and fescue endophyte toxicity kills their conception rate,” V. Mac says.

Cows are bred on the hoof from the selection of about 25 bulls kept on hand, but heifers are bred artificially: V. Mac says AI is easier without a calf at side. AI also offers the opportunity to introduce new genetics. The Baldwins are focusing on developing longer-bodied steers to increase the number of loin steak cuts. Heifers are generally bred to calve at 30 months instead of 24, as V. Mac doesn’t want to have to spend money to supplement winter growth for pregnant heifers.

Close to calving time, cows are moved to pastures planted to high-quality annual forages with a goal of replacing lost fat reserves, gearing up for milk production, and getting them into shape for breeding.

Calf weaning and management depends on the grass. Ask V. Mac about his target weaning weight, and he’ll tell you he doesn’t care. If grass is in short supply, weaning might be at five months and about 450-500 pounds. If there is plenty of rain and grass, the calf may stay on its dam for eight months, reaching 650-700 lbs. Steers and females destined for harvest are grown exclusively on annual pastures. They are generally harvested at 24 to 28 months, weighing approximately 1,300 lbs.

Producing the highest quality forage possible for as long a season as possible is a key component of the Baldwins’ business.

“Years ago everyone around here did the same thing: plant perennial fescue and clover pastures,” recalls Baldwin. He was doing the same thing until 1995, when he heard R. L. Dairymple speak at a North Carolina Ag-Extension conference. Dairymple, a grazing expert from Oklahoma, promoted crabgrass and winter annuals for nearly year-round grazing. The Baldwins planted their first winter-annual pastures in 1996.

With about 500 acres of his own land in annuals, V. Mac can get 2-3 lbs. of weight gain a day on young cattle. All 2,000 acres of leased pastures are in fescue. While he would like to have more annuals, converting the leased ground wouldn’t be cost effective.

His blend of winter annuals — two bushels/acre Canadian grazing rye, 25 lbs. ryegrass, 10 lbs. crimson clover (with 5 lbs. red clover and 1 lb. white clover added every other year) — is seeded in the fall, either over prepared land or into standing crabgrass. In North Carolina, this means sowing starts around the third week in August with a goal of finishing by October 1. The annuals are mixed in the seed box of a grain drill pulled behind an Aerway aerator. A double-roller cultipacker is pulled behind the grain drill.

V. Mac favors rye over wheat due to its winter hardiness. The rye furnishes most of his grazing in early winter and matures in the early spring. The annual ryegrass and clover make great companions, increasing dry matter. The crimson clover is very winter hardy and matures early, fixing significant nitrogen. It also provides good grazing in February and March when it is most needed.

For new pastures, crabgrass is oversown the following spring with a broadcast spreader mounted to a truck or ATV. The crabgrass provides forage from mid June until the first frost, when the winter annuals pick up again. Baldwin gets two or three grazing rotations on crabgrass through the summer and then grazes it short to prepare for the fall over-seeding of winter annuals. The crabgrass re-seeds itself.

V. Mac says his seeding management isn’t being copied by the neighbors. “It’s too much work and too much money for farmers that have already established their fescue pastures,” he says. But based on published data, annual production from the annuals/crabgrass combination virtually doubles that of fescue and clover, providing an additional three to four tons of dry matter. V. Mac figures the additional production from the annuals program is well worth the $100/acre annual cost (about $60 for seed and $40 for fuel and labor). There are two other distinct advantages. “The endophytes in fescue can produce off-flavors in beef, and my steers grow twice as fast on my annuals program as they would on fescue,” he explains.

Beef isn’t the only Baldwin enterprise, as V. Mac and Craig have steadily built a hatching operation with eight poultry houses producing 16 million hatching eggs a year. The eggs are important for farm cash flow and the litter that is produced serves as the farm’s primary fertilizer and is an important contributor to beef profits. “It was Harlan Rogers who first talked me into getting chicken manure,” explains V. Mac, recalling a visit to the Rogers Bar HR Ranch. Rogers emphasized the importance of maintaining top-quality forage. “Harlan told me to go find some chicken manure, and I told him I would have to truck it more than 50 miles. Harlan said, ‘So? Go get it!’”

At about 2,400 tons a year, the egg operation produces all the litter the Baldwins require. New pastures typically get five or six tons of litter per acre applied as a jump start, and three tons are applied annually for ongoing maintenance.

Baldwin Charolais Beef is sold through both retail and wholesale channels. Retail sales are through their on-farm store and the internet (www.baldwinbeef.com), although as of this spring there was a four-month waiting list.

Wholesale accounts for 75-80% of total sales, with Whole Foods one of the biggest customers. After winding down the relationship with Laura’s Lean Beef, the Baldwins began selling their products at the farmers market near Chapel Hill, NC, and customer testimonials helped open the Whole Foods door there. Now Baldwin Charolais Beef is sold at Whole Foods markets throughout North and South Carolina. Their processor delivers fresh primal cuts to the Whole Foods warehouse.

“We have always liked wholesale customers because of the cash flow,” V. Mac notes. Of course a cut of the profits goes to the middleman, and buyers have an influence on price. “In an ideal world we would sell everything direct,” he says. But wholesale demand is also strong, so V. Mac feels he needs to balance both channels. The Baldwins found that wholesale marketing also drives retail sales growth. Whole Foods promotes the Baldwin Charolais brand, and shoppers seek them out to buy direct. Their location on a state highway made starting a farm store an obvious choice. The store also is the base for the online sales shipping operation, which was started in 2005.

The Baldwins’ selling approach is the same for both retail avenues. “We encourage new customers to try our ‘Family Pacs,’” V. Mac explains. These offer a wide selection of cuts and ground beef, giving newcomers a sense of the Baldwin quality. Each of the three different Pacs has a different selection of cuts and is sold at a different price point. The Baldwins also sell quarters, sides and individual cuts through the farm store and online.

Another unique option for customers is the “Home Delivery Plan.” Customers select the cuts or Pacs they want delivered to their homes every month, paying a flat rate that includes shipping costs. Basically, the Baldwins will sell quality beef just about any way their customers want it.

Most of the online sales are from east of the Mississippi River, but customers are as distant as California. “We have a lot of customers in the big cattle states of Texas and Florida,” says V. Mac. “But they like our beef better.” All sales are backed by the unconditional “Baldwin Guarantee.” If a customer is not completely satisfied, Baldwin refunds the purchase price plus shipping costs.

All said, the Baldwins have avoided many of the trends of a very trendy business, building a successful grass-finished beef operation by sticking with fundamentals and adopting practices that work for their location. Avoiding trendy shortcuts has helped them weather the lean times and prosper in the good ones.

V. Mac gives the credit where he thinks it belongs. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,”’ he says, quoting Psalm 37:4. “We have worked hard over the years, but the Lord has blessed us in a big way!”

Mike Hillerbrand farms and writes near Cary, North Carolina.

Chetek, Wisconsin—As most of you know from my previous articles, over the past two years I have taken steps toward “mob” grazing — especially with the non-milking cattle. We went through a multi-year drought and, as I analyzed my farm, its growth patterns and fertility levels, I realized we needed to take some steps to offset the next drought. With our sandy loam topsoils and pure sand subsoils, we were drying out too fast.

I felt we needed to do something to capture more of those big dumps that seemed to be the source of most of the rain we did get — things like trampling more organic material to provide a soil mat that would retain more moisture, and feeding the soil life that builds humus and organic matter, became top priorities. I am intrigued by the concept of soil biology releasing tied-up nutrients in the soil. Over the years I have applied some trace minerals, rock phosphate and high-calcium lime, and have done some foliar feeding. However, a truly sustainable/organic farming system should be pretty much self-sufficient, and it appears that mobbing may make that goal more possible.

We run four groups of cattle here: the milking herd, the nurse-cow group that raises the calves, a “heifer” group that can include everything from yearlings on up to a few dry cows, and a bull herd of yearlings and a few two-year olds. All four groups are moved to new pasture twice a day, with the milking herd moved a third time at mid-afternoon on many days.

For me, mob grazing involves trampling a tall, mature stand to the ground so that regrowth starts from the ground. Back-fencing is moved every one to three days, with sooner being better so regrowth can start right away. However, sometimes an extra day helps trample the wastage better. I figure about 140,000 lbs. of liveweight per acre for each grazing break. We do move the heifers in the middle of the day at times, so that would push up the weight per acre a fair bit.

The goal is to move herds through the paddocks three or four times during the course of the season. The mobbed fields can still get two additional passes, although last year a dry fall kept us to two rotations on those fields, with a short third pass.

We are not doing this kind of grazing with the milking herd, and we really haven’t changed the milk cow grazing all that much from what we’d been doing over the previous 10 years or so. They always ran through some fairly mature pasture at times, but only for short durations while alternating with higher-quality forage. I never pushed them on the very tall forage, so it was not trampled. We clipped the refusal.

Now, if the cows leave some extra, I let it regrow and run the heifer or bull group in the next rotation to trample what the cows left behind. I’d estimate milking cows are stocked at 75,000 to 90,000 pounds per acre depending on the field, forage quality, and how much of the plant I want them to eat. But we also give the extra break in the afternoon at times, so that increases the stocking.

It’s not uncommon for my milking cow pastures to have headed-out grasses and legumes in bloom, but the plants are on the immature, green side. White clover in these stands provides a little more protein.

The nurse cow group had 14 to 17 cows and at least 30 calves, and was grazed at the same stocking rate as the milking herd on three- to four-foot tall forage, although last year the forage wasn’t fully mature. The calves did great.

However, we may have had some less than ideal results from grazing the milking herds on pastures that were too mature. We had periods of heavy rainfall in 2011, although we did have a dry spell at mid-summer. That made me nervous about another drought, so instead of skipping some of the more mature pasture like I normally would, I kept that pasture in the rotation, which was the second of the season. The clovers were getting mature and the grass was losing its lush, green look, although it was not as rank as the first growth would have been.

I felt the cows could have been milking better and gaining more weight. We tend to peak at close to 50 lbs./cow in spring/early summer before dropping back to around 40 lbs. by mid-summer.

Overall, the milking cattle weren’t thin this past year, but they just maintained the same condition all summer. It wasn’t until we started grazing the fall oats that the cows really gained condition and got their nice, oily coats. We had some warmer weather, which may have caused the plants to lignify, possibly creating another issue.

Next year we’ll graze the cows on some greener pastures to see if that makes a difference. We’ll still turn in to forages that are knee-high or taller, but they won’t all be quite as ripe. We should be able to maintain a higher level of milk production for a longer period if I keep working on it while improving the nutrient density of my forages. Then again, I do like experimenting, and this does cost me some production. I can deal with lost milk, but crashing the body condition, breeding or long-term health of my cows can have lasting implications. I’ll keep experimenting with maturities to see what’s possible on this farm, but I caution anyone wanting to mob graze milking animals on mature forage to go slow.

We had another great year of mob grazing the heifer and bull groups. I noticed that you really have to watch your animals when everything goes ripe and before new growth fills in. For me, that period is mid- or late-June through July. We were giving the heifers and bulls the same size of break all along until I noticed the heifers losing their shiny hair coat. I had been making them eat at least three-fourths of the forage, when maybe half to two-thirds would have been better. So we started giving them a little more grass. We wasted a little more, but I don’t think we’d been leaving enough litter in the first place.

I really think that we dairy farmers can do the same things with our non-milking animals that beef farmers are doing with their cattle. I’m seeing weight gains and frame growth just as good as I’ve ever had on this farm. For the young stock, we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing.

I do like what mob grazing appears to be doing for my pastures. After the cattle move through, the grass dies and looks brown for a few days, and at times it looks like the new grass will be smothered out. But after a couple of days, the new leaves are coming through, and after two weeks the stand is thickening up well. In mature pasture the seeds start to germinate and grow — the number of new seedlings is incredible. This regrowth is like hair, and it is actually much thicker than the original stand — contrary to some claims that a stand will thin as time goes on with mob or “tall” grazing.

During our dry spell, it was interesting to see the ground still moist under the ungrazed, mature portion of the pastures when everything else was dry at the surface. We also got 10 inches of rain in two weeks during late July, with the last seven of those inches coming in two- to three-inch pours over a three-day period. The waste from the mobbing formed a mat that protected the ground: They barely made any tracks, even though the ground felt like mush under my feet! We did keep them moving to avoid the chance that they would track it up.

I am almost certainly giving up some yield compared to if I was running four grazing rotations during the season. I have to do some more comparison in this area, although right now I’m fine with giving up some yield in order to build soil.

There is also the issue of needing organic bedding — the mature forage would be a good source of that. But we have taken a lot of hay off certain fields in recent years, so I wanted to leave the residue to see what it will do for the soils and the pastures. I think this will provide future benefits in terms of better yields and soil tilth.

It seems that weather patterns are changing, and it will take some adapting to make the best of the situation. I’m excited about figuring out ways to capture the rain that falls on my farm, and continuing to build organic matter and soil life to survive the next drought.

Cheyenne Christianson milks cows near Chetek, Wisconsin.

Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin — Jim Langmeier and his sons — Joe, Mike and Keith — are humble people who don’t pretend to be doing everything right. Spend some time visiting with these guys, and talk turns to concerns about disappointing milk solids tests, mistakes made with hay crops, and yearling heifers that aren’t up to par. The Langmeiers acknowledge they have a lot to learn about grazing and overall management of permanent pastures.

Says Jim, “We aren’t doing anything special.”

That could be argued. Over the past few years, the Langmeiers’ Holstein herd has consistently produced roughly15,000 lbs. of milk per cow during 300-day lactations without the aid of a single kernel of grain. Last November this seasonally calved, organic-certified herd peaked at 55 pounds of milk/day on baleage and the final days of fall pasture. If the past is repeated, at dry-off (mainly around June 1) the herd will be at 45-48 lbs./day on pasture and a bit of baleage.

What’s more, these Holsteins first freshened at around 24 months having never tasted grain. All heifers and cows are bred AI, and last year close to 70% of the herd calved within a 21-day window starting August 1. A walk among the grazing cows as they neared peak milk last fall showed nearly uniform good to very good body condition. The Langmeiers regularly have surplus animals to sell for dairy purposes, even though Jim says they’ve only recently returned to the quality of cows he wants after selling his best animals in the mid-1990s to take some time off from milking.

With about 400 acres of very good soils, plus a hundred acres or so of permanent pasture and some rougher ground, Jim and his wife, Sabrina, and their sons have the land base to grow a lot of forage. They also have the available labor to do an excellent job of handling the details of raising calves without grain, artificially breeding all cows and heifers, and consistently putting up many tons of milking-quality baleage.

But it’s not like the Langmeiers have lots of fancy buildings to help cows produce milk through the winter: While the three-sided calf barn is new and first-rate, the free-stall barn dates to the 1970s. And all of the advantages in the world don’t necessarily guarantee that a 120-cow herd (150 calved) on a no-grain ration will support five families, even with the organic milk check.

Says Jim, “this is the most profitable way I’ve ever farmed. I’ve always believed in hay. It’s gotten us through a lot of tough years.”

The Langmeier farm spills down the north side of a broad, fertile ridge that runs across southwestern Wisconsin. This is corn country, with 200-bushel/acre crops quite common. Most of the dairy cows have gravitated to large freestall buildings and corn silage rations.

Meanwhile, Jim Langmeier has been moving in the opposite direction over the past quarter-century. His path began in 1988 in the midst of that year’s historic drought. Jim had never really liked growing corn, and in 1988 the sprays simply didn’t work. “Alfalfa saved us that year,” Jim says.

He started doing some experimenting and found that for his cows, forages were making far more milk than grain. At the same time, Sabrina was strongly encouraging him to stop using crop chemicals. Jim listened and, though he didn’t realize it at the time, he was on the path toward becoming an organic producer.

He tried a lot of things, and made a lot of mistakes. Jim stopped filling the blue silos, switched to silage pits, and by 2001 had sold the chopping equipment and gone entirely to baleage and pasture. Upon returning to milking in the late ‘90s, all calving was shifted to the fall. The last corn was grown in 1999. The herd and land were certified in 2002, and the Langmeiers started shipping to CROPP/Organic Valley the next year.

By 2004 they were down to feeding four pounds of daily grain/cow. Later that year they reduced it to two pounds. The milking herd went entirely without grain the next year, and the family has never looked back.

Calves need a good start if no-grain dairy is to have a chance of working. The Langmeiers, who haven’t fed any grain to their replacements since 2003, started raising calves in the new shed four years ago. Mike is in charge of the calf program.

He used to house calves individually for the first two weeks of life. Now, calves are started in individual pens for five days. They get a gallon of colostrum in each of their first two feedings, and learn to suck milk from a single-nipple bucket. At five days they’re grouped — initially with about nine other calves, and ultimately in groups of eight.

The Langmeiers are big believers in keeping their calves hydrated. Each day through three months they’re offered two gallons of milk/day per calf in two equal feedings, sucking from 10 Braden nipples inserted to 15-gallon pipeline acid barrels attached to plastic tubes. Jim and Joe note that while training takes longer compared to using gravity-flow nipples, problems with coughing and calves sucking each other have been eliminated since moving to the nipples/tube combination from the previous practice of dumping milk in group tubs.

But milk is just part of the picture. As soon as the calves are done consuming milk, a five-gallon pail of warm water is added to the barrel. Sometimes the calves will finish that off right away, so more water is added. The pens housing all but the youngest calves have access to water fountains, but Mike still comes back at mid-day to dump even more water into the nipple barrels in a successful effort to promote consumption. Even the younger calves drink a gallon of water a day, Joe figures.

The view here is that keeping the calves well hydrated is very important in building gut capacity, reducing stress and preventing scours, with the only real downside being the need for extra bedding.

“I think providing adequate fluids is key, I really do,” Jim emphasizes. Water is mixed with the milk starting at three months, and then gradually increased until weaning at five months.

Dry hay is important, too: calves have free-choice access to it starting by day two. Soft grass is extremely important here, with the most tender forage with the least legume content going to the youngest calves. Indeed, the Langmeiers try to avoid feeding legumes to any of their calves during the first winter. They target specific fields for calf hay: in 2011 some grassy fourth crop was just the ticket; in other years they’ll cut and bale grazing refusal that has yet to head out.

Joe says the key is to expand calves’ rib cages as they grow toward their careers making milk from bulky forage rations. He explains, “We don’t push calves to milk. We grow them to milk.”

Calves also have free-choice access to salt, kelp, humates and a milk-cow mineral. Some calves slow down at a week or 10 days and require a boost with a scoop of electrolytes added to a half-and-half mix of water and milk.

They’ve also had a few calves come down with pneumonia the past couple of years. The building has curtains on the north wall that the Langmeiers would close on cold nights. But they think this caused problems with temperature variations and moisture build-up. So late last fall, they rolled up the curtains on the north wall and installed shade cloth that allows better air movement and a more consistent climate, while also being a lot cheaper than curtains. Joe says he’s pretty confident that the change is doing the trick. Come spring, calves are usually the first animals on pasture.

The Langmeiers do so well at raising calves, and have such a low involuntary culling rate (about 10%), that they almost always have cattle to sell for dairy purposes, which is one reason why they’ve stayed almost entirely with Holstein genetics. Another reason: “We know Holsteins,” Joe explains. “With all the other changes we’ve made, we felt we needed to stay with what we knew.”

In selecting bulls, number one on Joe’s list of traits is calving ease, with feet and legs, body depth and openness also important. “I don’t even look at milk — I just skip right through,” he explains. He says that while calving ease and feet and legs offer plenty of choices within the breed, the rest of his preferred traits aren’t so easy to find, and tend to accumulate in a handful of families.

Joe says that after more than a decade of working on this, he’s starting to see a few cow families in the herd that do particularly well. Jim says his average cow has definitely gotten wider, as there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of squeezing taking place in the double-eight milking parlor, which dates to the 1950s.

While most everything is still black and white, the sons are thinking of doing some crossbreeding in an attempt to tighten the calving window: while the bulk of the herd freshens in three weeks, the season drags out through November. Already they breed smaller heifers to Jersey, and are doing some experimenting with Norwegian Red, Ayrshire and Flekvieh.

Perhaps more important than breed to a system that relies on late-summer/fall calving is the ability to harvest quality forages. “We want them to be eating the same quality forage at the bunk as they’re grazing in the field,” Joe explains.

First-crop is typically harvested starting May 20, and sometimes earlier if orchardgrass is starting to shoot seedheads. They aim to cut second and third crops at 28- to 30-day intervals when clover starts to bloom and alfalfa is at bud stage, while fourth crop is stretched out to 60 days. “If you want to get milk out of grass, you can’t have many seedheads,” Joe asserts.

The Langmeiers study weather forecasts out to two weeks in search of harvest windows. With a pair of 13-foot discbines, two balers and four people to do the job, they cut an average of a hundred acres and as many as 150 in a single day, baling most everything the next day, and in-line wrapping within a couple hours of baling.

Baleage at 50-55% moisture seems to be the sweet spot. “As soon as the feed gets drier, they start heading down on milk,” Joe says. Most years some bales will be a little too dry, so the Langmeiers mix and match as best they can in an attempt to keep the sub-par forage from hurting milk production too much. All baleage is unrolled in bunks at the freestall barn — these guys aren’t big fans of tub grinders.

As the years pass, the Langmeiers are becoming less and less excited about two things related to their forage program. One is alfalfa: Their cows just don’t milk as well on it compared to red and white clovers. The Langmeiers avoid pure legume stands, so grass is always a major component of the forage ration here. However, in calculating their hay inventory after last year’s serious summer drought, they were surprised to find that red clover fields produced just as much feed as alfalfa stands. And they say that whether hayed or grazed, stands with at least 40% red clover make far more milk than those with similar percentages of alfalfa. Indeed, they say their cows will lose weight if forced to eat too many bales with high percentages of alfalfa.

Until very recently, Joe thought he had to have alfalfa as drought protection. But starting this year and until something indicates otherwise, clover will be the main legume seeded. Joe figures he can always put some alfalfa back in the mix when the stands thin out down the line.

Also, these no-grain guys are coming to dislike tillage. While they experimented a lot, for years their basic rotation was four years of alfalfa, clover seeded with a cover crop (usually with oats), and then back to alfalfa, also with a cover. But too often it’s been too wet to cut the oats within the small window available before it throws heads. Too often they’ve either torn up the seeding or had it shaded out, while harvesting subpar feed that cost too much milk.

“Cover-cropping seems to be hurting us the most,” Jim asserts. So they’ve purchased an Aitchison drill, with a goal of interseeding both legumes and grasses as needed in permanent stands, and tilling up only the 10 acres needed to make bedding.

While mechanical harvest gets a lot of the attention around here, the Langmeiers take grazing seriously — perhaps more seriously than the great majority of fall-calvers. They offer 12-hour grazing breaks to the milking herd, have water on paddock, and rely heavily on temporary fencing in managing the grazing. The cows usually gain a couple of pounds of milk when turned out to pasture in late lactation, and by sometime in May the bunk ration has been cut back to almost nothing. Fresh cows peak in late fall while pasture is still a major part of the ration. Joe estimates that 85% of the cows’ total dry matter intake is coming from pasture for half the year.

Most of the herd is dried off by early June on Kentucky-31 tall fescue in a grove of trees. The Langmeiers like what pasture does for the dry cows, saying that they freshen in good condition — but not too fat — with shiny coats. Milk fever isn’t a concern, and just four of the first 135 cows calving last year failed to clean.

For fields that see the most grazing, the Langmeiers like perennial ryegrass, meadow fescue, white clover and some chicory. Those that see more mechanical harvest tend to be heavier in soft-leaf tall fescue and red clover. They really like perennial ryegrass, as it produced well even through last year’s drought, and Joe says ryegrass will be prominent in the seeding mix across the entire farm.

Jim and Joe say they still have a lot to learn about grazing. This year they’ll put in more permanent fence as part of an effort to intensify their management. Joe says the dairy pastures haven’t been stocked heavily enough at midsummer after the bulk of the herd was dried off and sent to rougher pasture, thus leading to uneven grazing and reduced yields. This year, they’ll use polywire to do a better job of controlling things within established paddock boundaries.

Joe also intends to lengthen the grazing rotation from the previous 15- to 20-day rounds out to at least 20-25 days, and probably even further. Compaction has become a problem in some places, so they’ll likely try some subsoiling this year. The only fertilizers they’ve applied in recent years are dairy manure and 500 lbs./acre of gypsum annually.

Young stock definitely need some additional grazing attention, Joe says. For years their system of moving the young stock every two to four days and allowing some back-grazing produced excellent results. But this didn’t work as well in last year’s drought, and Joe says they shorted the heifers in trying to stretch the feed supply out too far. Last year’s calf crop was not as big and shiny as the Langmeiers like to see, some of them had ringworm, and breeding performance has been subpar.

Says Jim, “We need to start managing them like the milk cows.” This year they intend to put dry cows and bred heifers together in one group, add the young calves after they’ve become comfortable with grazing, and move the combined herd every 12 hours.

There are other concerns. Milk urea nitrogen (MUN) levels were in the 19-22 range last year. Milk solids declined from the typical average of 3.9% milkfat and 3.1% protein to 3.5% and 2.6%, although they came back closer to normal over the winter.

And milk production this lactation has been a bit of a disappointment. Joe says the daily milk peak had been increasing by about a pound per cow for several years, reaching 59 pounds in 2010. But this winter the herd never topped 55 pounds despite the Langmeiers’ view that they had done their best job ever of managing the hay crop for top quality. Jim speculates that the cold, cloudy spring combined with a period of extreme heat and humidity robbed the forages of some of their milk-making ability, and the milking herd may also have been shortchanged on quality feed during the height of last summer’s drought. In hindsight, Joe says they probably should have opened up their good baleage sooner to get some extra energy into the cows.

“I don’t view this as a failure of the no-grain system — it was more a failure of management,” Joe explains.

So by no means are these guys considering going back to grain. The sons say they’re committed to following the current path for the foreseeable future.

“If we do things right, we see no reason why we can’t (peak at) 60 to 65 pounds,” Joe says.

Jim says he doesn’t like getting hung up on such numbers. Indeed, production per cow might go even lower down the road. This winter the Langmeiers have been running an experiment with once-a-day milking. Twelve late-calving cows — split fairly equally between high, moderate and low producers — were milking around 45 lbs./cow six weeks into the OAD trial. Joe and Jim say it’s possible that they’ll expand OAD milking and add cows with a goal of improving forage production, forage utilization and total milk produced from the farm, while also cutting down on labor.

One way or another, Jim is certain of at least one thing: “Cows weren’t meant for grain.”

Hinckley, Minnesota—One of the more rewarding things I do is visit sheep graziers around the U.S. and Canada who do an outstanding job producing a quality product. I’ve been absolutely amazed at the healthy, well-grown lambs with clean backsides and loads of bloom that reach marketable weights on all-forage programs.

Photo: Janet McNally. Janet McNally’s May-born lambs were raised on native pastures until weaning, then finished for six weeks on turnips. They were wormed with valbazen August 1 and September 15 for flukes. Average weight for the entire lamb crop was 82 lbs. on November 16, and another five weeks of grazing should put the average to 100 lbs. Including the dam’s feed cost, total per-lamb feed cost from birth to 100 lbs. is $18.

While everyone is almost on their own in exploring what works and what does not, many of these people come to the same conclusions on some things, such as breeds that work and those that do not. Yet they may have a dozen different strategies for addressing problems such as parasites, all of which work. The bottom line is that there are a good number of producers around the country producing quality, grass-fed lambs.

Evidently that message has not quite reached everyone. For instance, Dr. G.F. Kennedy, an outspoken veterinarian and sheep producer near Pipestone, Minnesota, is known nationwide as the go-to expert on sheep health. Dr. Kennedy announced in his October 2011 sheep newsletter that, “unless you are in a semi arid or dry region, lambs on grass generally don’t work. If the worms don’t get them, coccidia generally will. Our grass here in the Midwest and in the heavier rainfall areas just doesn’t work without extremely good management and I question the risk reward value.

“When we deworm sheep we need to move them to a dry lot and then rotate pastures. Without, we just keep worming and get nothing back except exercise,” he added. “Be careful of running replacement ewe lambs on grass or with the ewe flock. My fall born lambs I no longer allow to graze their first summer. It just isn’t worth it. When I do, they have numerous problems.”

There is a basis for Dr. Kennedy’s thoughts, and it has to do with fact that the majority of U.S. sheep and beef cattle are still grazed on unmanaged pastures. I especially noted that in 10,000 miles of highway driving this past year, as it was a very rare sight to see cattle or sheep on pastures that were being managed any better than simply tossing the animals into a pasture in the spring, and then leaving them there until the snow flies in the fall. Most of those pastures appeared to have never mustered more than an inch of forage.

Photo: Jeff Rogers. Jeff Rogers’ Clun and Clun mule lambs graze intensively managed, improved pastures in western Washington (38 inches annual precipitation). Most of these lambs will reach 130 pounds by six months of age. Jeff controls parasites by using daily moves, adequate rest until grass is reasonably safe from parasites, clipping to control quality and reduce parasites, and lower stocking density to meet organic rules, leaving behind a 4-5 inch stubble, or 1,500 lbs. dry matter/acre.

This kind of “management” will indeed result in problems with parasites and coccidia in the more humid regions of the U.S. It also will result in low forage yields and reduced carrying capacity. As land is the largest of all costs in the livestock business, it behooves us to manage it so that we harvest as much product as possible. Yet pastures are often treated as if they are unresponsive to management.

I also agree that the mixed prairie grasses prevalent in Minnesota can be challenging, as the plants are not very palatable. Higher rainfall rates increase the management challenge, while improved species have a way of freezing out. The area where Dr. Kennedy lives is corn and soybean country, where busy spring schedules mean that pastures are not likely to receive the attention they deserve.

So it really is not so surprising that Dr. Kennedy has concluded that raising lambs on grass is not worthwhile. As a veterinarian, his focus is on treating the problems that result from poor management. It can be very frustrating dealing with sheep flocks suffering heavy parasite infections on over-used pastures.

Problem is, Dr. Kennedy is not comparing apples to apples. The predominant lack of pasture management is akin to the intensive confinement producer feeding lambs a whole-corn diet without balancing the ration to prevent calculi. Or not taking care to introduce feeder lambs to grain slowly to prevent acidosis. Or not feeding ewes properly for pregnancy or lactation. Or not properly bedding or ventilating the barn, thus causing problems with coccidia, pneumonia, and baby lamb scours. Without proper management, there will be losses in a traditional, corn-based confinement operation.

Pasture is no different, as low input does not mean no input. You also need to apply management if you want to prevent losses on pasture, even though the problems and the management are different. So it is rather silly to try to make a valid comparison between a well-managed, grain-fed system and an unmanaged, grass-based system.

I asked pasture-based sheep producers in humid regions of the U.S. to provide some photos of their grass-fed lambs, and a few of them are reproduced here. They show a wide variety of very nice lambs being produced on grass. I also asked for some commentary on how they avoid the parasite and coccidia pitfalls. Here are a few thoughts:

These specially selected North Country Cheviot lambs (with a smattering of Scottish Blackface) were reared on Islands off the coast of Maine, where annual rainfall is 48 inches, plus 70 inches of snow. These lambs are not managed beyond careful stocking of the islands until fall harvest. Ewes remain on the islands and are never drenched for parasites. Target is 40-plus pounds carcass weight, with lambs sold into a high-end market. Scottish Blackface and North Country Cheviot rams selected for parasite resistance are important to successful grazing in this wet climate.

1. Breed choice is important. In the photos, you do not see really tall-framed sheep or breeds typically found in midwestern confinement situations. British and European continental breeds work best on midwestern and East Coast pastures, but I don’t mean the tall, Americanized versions. Successful pasture operations use breeds that are well-adapted to the forages grown in their area. Hair sheep tend to work well in warmer climates.

2. Grass must be managed for quality and parasite load. Just like ventilation and sanitation in the barn, grass needs to be managed for optimum nutrition and to keep animals from ingesting high levels of parasite larvae and coccidia. Six-week pasture rest periods can eliminate drenching by allowing peak parasite loads do die off somewhat before the sheep return. Clipping pastures between grazing events helps reduce parasite loads while keeping paddocks vegetative. Some grazing crops, such as chicory and birdsfoot trefoil, have been found to reduce parasite burdens. Rotating grazing events between sheep and cattle can also help keep vegetation at peak nutritional value while reducing sheep parasite burdens. Since parasite larvae climb up and down the grass with the dew, managed grass that is taller than the grasses found in most continuously grazed stands effectively reduces the number of larvae that sheep ingest. Fencing off access to surface water and having a clean bed to lie on each night will eliminate clinical coccidiosis.

3. Annuals are great for finishing lambs. In the northern states, the growing season is not long enough to allow lambs to reach a state of maturity where finish comes easily. Also, grasses prepare for winter by pulling sugar from leaves and stems and storing it in the root, thus reducing the palatability and energy content of fall grasses. Grazing annual crops is infinitely helpful in assuring lambs reach desired market goals, with the important bonus that tilled crops are parasite-free.

4. Producers are using new technology to manage parasites. Examples are using FAMACHA scoring of eyelid color, and culling susceptible animals. Copper wires in a bolus device have been shown to improve parasite resistance. In other parts of the world, producers are using EBVs for parasite resistance when selecting their rams.

5. Predator control is enhanced. Managed grazing usually means smaller paddock sizes, which also enhances the effectiveness of guarding animals and overall predator control.

6. More time is available to manage animals. Moving fences, clipping paddocks and monitoring parasite status takes time, but so does hauling feed and manure in a corn-based confinement operation. Because the pasture operator is not hauling feed and manure during lactation (and in some cases lambing), a lot more time is available for managing the animals.

Photo: Bob Leder. Veterinarian Bob Leder grazes these Dorset/East Friesian/South African Meat Merino wether lambs in eastern Wisconsin, which averages 32 inches of annual precipitation. Lambs are drenched every three to four weeks before weaning, then moved to clean hayfields for fall grazing. Terminal sires include Shropshires and Oxford/Hampshire crosses.

7. Margins are competitive on pasture. Northern conditions dictate that pasture lambs mature earlier to achieve a marketable product. This often means selling a lighter-weight lamb (80 to 130 lbs.), so those accustomed to corn-finished lambs often scoff that too much income is being lost. But there is more to the equation, as feed costs are much lower in a pasture-based system. So even with slower growth and lighter weights, the margins are very similar, if not better, in a pasture system — especially for those not located near a cheap source of grain or byproducts.

Portable electric fencing, livestock guarding dogs, and new knowledge about genetics and parasite management have greatly aided our attempts to meet the challenges of producing lamb on grass in the more humid regions of the country. Sheep require management whether they be kept in confinement, or out on pasture. Producers who have adopted new technology and applied good management practices have become successful pasture lamb producers. Do not let the naysayers stop you from capitalizing on a largely untapped resource.

Janet McNally grazes sheep near Hinckley, Minnesota.

By Jon Bansen  Monmouth, Oregon—Many years ago I heard the statement that it takes 20 years to become a good grazier. So as we approached 20 years of intensively managed rotational grazing, the running joke around our farm was that I’m almost a good grazier. I shouldn’t have been so smug: As we start Year 21, I feel I’ve learned more grazing lessons this past year than in any other since the very first one here.

What changed? I decided to eliminate almost all grain and stored forage from the milking herd’s diet during pasture season. We’re now down to feeding two pounds of daily grain/cow and no stored forage during the grazing months.

I’ve been challenged that it is only possible to feed this way with relatively high organic milk prices, even though New Zealand graziers adopted this strategy when their milk prices collapsed after subsidies were discontinued. I firmly believe it is the right approach no matter the feed price. As grain inputs rise in price, cutting feed costs becomes even more profitable no matter who buys your milk. This is the means for controlling costs while providing high-quality feed for milk production.

Two arguments are always used to counter the idea of feeding diets extremely high in forage. The first: “You are leaving a lot of profit behind because added grain would yield more milk income over expenses.” And then there’s the ever-popular “You are going to have skinny cows that won’t milk and breed back.”

As I discussed this new approach of feeding cows with a fellow dairyman on the same low-grain track, we both noticed that while on paper extra grain should lead to higher profits, in reality we have noticed increased profits with our new feeding approaches.

What’s up? Higher-producing cows have hidden costs that slowly eat at the extra money coming in from that additional milk. Slightly higher mastitis incidence, hoof problems, vet bills, the need for more vaccinations, off-feed cows, calves with higher mortality — all of these things eat at profits. These costs don’t have to be drastically higher to affect the bottom line.

The other way higher supplementation decreases profits is through reducing grass production on grazed acres, as cows with stomachs already partially full of feed are more selective when grazing. Supplemented cows are also pickier about the weather they will tolerate as they graze.

We are attempting to produce the highest quantity and quality of pasture to feed our cows. Years ago when we fed 20 pounds of grain/cow per day, the cows would avoid eating orchardgrass in the sward even though it produced fairly well and fit our weather patterns. They picked out the perennial ryegrass and clover, as their bellies were more than half full of grain and they didn’t feel like eating everything offered in the pasture. This led to at least a 20% reduction in forage raised and fed through the cows due to their refusal of perfectly good grass.

With a grain-supplemented grazing herd, often the focus is on the purchased feed and additives in those feeds. Even if the nutritionist is working for the feed company and the services don’t cost anything out of pocket, you are still paying through the higher feed costs or expensive feed additives that you are told you need. It turns out that if you feed a high-enough percentage of pasture, you don’t need a nutritionist.

Higher-producing cows need more of everything, including minerals. This leads to the worry of many a dairyman that they need to feed more mineral supplements. Mineral supplements mainly end up on the ground behind the cow. It is much more cost-effective to deliver minerals to the cow through pasture. We take forage samples to make sure we are not deficient in any needed macro- or micro-nutrients.

All of the above problems lead to one the biggest hidden costs of feeding grain: replacement costs. As the grain-fed grazing cow is asked to carry more milk, the stress on her udder reduces her longevity, thus increasing replacement costs compared to a herd with slightly lower-producing cows that consume more forage and less grain.

Feeding more at the barn also leads to higher machinery, labor, and energy costs. No mixer wagons are needed to feed pasture. There are also higher energy costs associated with cooling larger amounts of milk, along with longer milking times that add up to higher labor bills. And we have increased our milk components greatly by going to a mostly grazed diet.

As for skinny cows, they are not the result of too much pasture in their diets. Skinny cows result from feeding pasture that is either too low or too high in quality, with high-quality pasture having too much protein and not enough fiber. Pasture quality is completely within our control.

This is where most of the lessons of the past year were learned. As I reduced the grain last pasture season, it became apparent the cows needed more fiber in their diet. The rotation had been at 22 days, and the grass was moving through the cows too fast. Protein levels were too high, leading to higher milk urea nitrogen levels. This put stress on the cows and reduced breeding performance.

We slowed the rotation to 32-34 days, turning the cows in on forage that was four inches taller than with the faster rotation. We found that this not only provided a better balance of protein, sugars and fiber, but also produced more forage on all our acres. Protein levels declined to around 20%, compared to the high-20s we saw with the faster rotation. Manure was firmer, and body condition better.

Water retention in the soil increased, with the soil staying moister in July and August. We were able to turn the irrigation off for the season earlier than normal. Last summer was cooler than the norm, so we’ll see if we get similar results this season.

Total forage production appeared to increase, as the same number of cows were fed with less grain and no stored forage through the end of the grazing season. Milk production was down slightly, but component levels were higher. The pasture season was longer last year, as grass grew well through the early part of October. When the frosts came, we had many more days of grass ahead of the cows going into late fall compared to the shorter rotation.

This spring led to more breakthrough lessons. We had one of the coldest and wettest springs since records have been kept, which ran head-on into my decision to reduce grain amounts earlier and graze harder early in the season.

In a normal year we can get the cows out by March 20, but this year, with only one March day without rain, I had to keep the cows in the barn until March 31 due to the wet soils. Our perennial ryegrass did stay active during the late winter due to the lack of a late deep freeze.

Four days after turnout, I turned the grain down to two pounds a day and told the hired guys to stop feeding silage. The weather pattern stayed wet through the middle of May. Many days saw half an inch or more of rain, forcing us to pull the cows off the paddocks from time to time.

In previous years when this happened, we fed more forage and grain. But this spring we fed little or no forage in the barn and kept the grain at two pounds. Even on the wettest days the cows went out after every milking and filled their bellies with grass before being let back to the barn. (This requires good cow lanes, though).

And there was something else going on here. On the days and nights with less than a tenth of an inch of rain, the cows stayed out on the pastures. They trashed the gate holes in the fields closest to the barn, but were much less concerned about being left out in the rain if they were in the most distant paddocks. During one week of particularly wet and cold weather the cows were across the river out of sight of the barns in our only remaining field with fescue in the stand. I made the decision to leave the cows out during three nights that saw between half an inch and an inch of rain.

Almost no damage was done to the field. Part of this was due to the fescue, but mostly it was from the cows staying spread out because they couldn’t see the barnyard lights. Milk output did suffer that week, but all of the dairymen I talked with in our area also had big declines, even though most of their cows stayed in the barn.

In previous years we would have kept the cows in the barn on several of those days, and pulled them up earlier on others to feed supplemental forage — all in an effort to maintain milk production. Now I see that this only led to lower pasture productivity and higher stored feed costs.

Since turn-out our Jerseys have been ranging from 38 to 45 lbs. of milk/day. When the diet is at 90-100% pasture, expect day-to-day fluctuations in milk production. It is easier to determine the causes of the fluctuations when you’re not dealing with the variables caused by changes in grain or stored forages. If we continue to lose milk while going to the pastures across the river, we will replant those fields.

Costs for energy, grain and hay will only increase. Dairy people who start making adjustments now will be able to not only ride out the changes in agriculture, but profit from them. Changing the grazing scheme and breeding for strong, deep-bodied cows will make for a profitable grazing dairy now, and increasingly so into the future.

Jon Bansen milks cows on an organic farm near Monmouth, Oregon.