GRAZING MANAGEMENT – Graze magazine

December 30, 2025

Building a diversified grassfed farm

A niche of beef, lamb, and pizza

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Decorah, Iowa — Tom and Maren Beard are building community around their grazing farm in the rolling Driftless hills of northeastern Iowa.

That includes direct marketing grassfed lamb and beef raised on the farm, and it includes welcoming hundreds of folks onto their farm each weekend during warm weather for wood-fired pizza made with local and regional ingredients.

The Beards manage around 250 acres of land, about half of it rented. Tom does about 50 acres of organic row crops, and the rest is permanent pasture and hay ground. Only half of the land is tillable, given the slope and tree cover of some parts of the acreage.

Managing both species

Tom and Maren keep about 150 hair sheep ewes and 20 cow-calf pairs and finish 6-10 head of beef a year slaughtered at 20-30 months (the rest of the calves are kept as replacement heifers).

Both species are moved once a day with 30-day rest periods for pastures when the grass is growing fast, and lengthening when growth slows.

December 2, 2025

Thinking outside the box with grazing

Amos Stoltzfus is finding his path as a first-generation dairy grazier

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Kinzers, Pennsylvania — Amos Stoltzfus was new to grazing when he started in 2017. He’s made that fact an asset.

There’s no “way we’ve always done it” with a new farm and a new venture, so Amos has been experimenting with a variety of grazing and livestock management methods to see what fits on his operation. And he’s not afraid to adjust routines if a better way comes along.

“We have to be open minded to changes,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be done this way every time. Nature is never the same — weather patterns, growing seasons. Why should we do things always the same way?”

Shifts in markets

Amos and his wife Rachel milk around 40 cows for Maple Hill’s grassfed organic market on 70 certified organic acres. They’ve come a long way since starting eight years ago with 50 purchased yearling heifers.

The farm was certified organic when Rachel’s father bought it and asked the couple if they wanted to dairy on it.

There wasn’t an organic market available at the time, so when the heifers freshened, the milk went to a conventional market. But Amos didn’t use any prohibited inputs that would make the land lose its organic status.

November 17, 2025

From seasonal conventional to organic

Low-input dairy graziers make shifts for long-term sustainability and efficiency

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Belleville, Pennsylvania — After 30 years shipping conventional milk on a spring-seasonal schedule, the Bylers switched to the Organic Valley truck and moved to bi-seasonal calving.

But that’s just one of many adjustments they’ve made over time to set the farm up for short- and long-term success.

Low-input management is the cornerstone, and that means outwintered herds, nurse cows, natural service, limited machinery, and more. Matt Byler, 53, and his son Garrett, 31, run the 250-cow dairy with a full-time DGA apprentice and a part-time employee.

Cows doing the work

The Bylers manage around 750 rented and owned acres, although some are still in the process of organic transition. Their central Pennsylvania ground is relatively flat. The milking herd has access to the 320-acre home farm for year-round grazing, and there is off-farm acreage for young stock and dry cows.

All grain is purchased — the herd gets 10 lbs./head/day in the parlor. The pelleted mix is primarily ground corn and provides 20-25% of cows’ dry matter needs for the day. At times the herd gets some purchased corn silage too.

October 17, 2025

Working into grassfed dairy ownership

First-generation graziers find a future

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Garnavillo, Iowa — A few years ago, two young folks left existing careers in search of a more fulfilling life. Today, they’re married and building that fulfilling life together working into ownership on a dairy, as a longtime grazier passes the torch.

Nicole Blanchette, 30, grew up in suburbia and hadn’t been on a farm. She realized her post-college research job at a hospital wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

The Covid-19 pandemic was the last straw — she wanted to be out of her downtown Chicago apartment. She thought, “I like being outside, I love food, and I love animals, so maybe I should try farming.”

That led Nicole to Cliff McConville’s All Grass Farms not far away, and she joined the operation as a Dairy Grazing Apprentice through DGA. There, she fell in love with dairy and realized this was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

She was about to graduate when she met Paul Blanchette, 37, but they almost didn’t cross paths.

August 25, 2025

A growing herdshare business

Nurse cows and tall grazing help make the system work smoothly for the Bairs

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Troy, Ohio — Two dozen years after first turning their conventional herd out to pasture, David and Annette Bair are bringing on the next generation, milking 48 cows for one of the largest herdshare programs in Ohio, and eyeing more growth as demand continues to expand.

It’s a long way down the road from where things were at when David got fed up harvesting feed for the confinement dairy around the turn of the century. He was moving from 3rd and 4th cut hay straight into corn silage and then directly into high moisture ear corn, and it was a lot of time to spend on the tractor.

“I was spending every day for 90 days that the weather was fit in the tractor chopping, and it was costing a lot of money to do that,” David says. “I just thought we could do better if we could just send the cows out and harvest their own feed.”

When he pitched the idea of letting the cows out to graze, his dad was hesitant but willing to try.

“My dad’s biggest fear was ‘what if it turns dry?’,” David explains. “He was worried pasture wouldn’t be able to keep supplying forage if it turned dry.”

David seeded 25 acres and grazed the herd in 2001 for part of their ration. And one part of his father’s fear came true as the season turned dry, but the pasture didn’t fail them.

June 10, 2025

Raising triplet lambs on pasture

Using management and selection to make triplets an asset in grassfed production

By Janet McNally

Triplets have never been regarded as an asset in an all-grass system. I have within my flock a line of ewes with the prolific booroola, or B, gene. This is a line of sheep I started before I switched to grazing.

A ewe with one copy of the B gene typically gives birth to 2.47 to 2.78 lambs. Suffice to say I have had to address how to raise triplets in the context of a grass-based system.

Over time my method of raising triplets has evolved.

Barn-feeding bust

Initially only one in three ewes had enough milk to feed all three lambs.

So I did what everyone does. I pulled the third lamb off, raised it in the barn on milk replacer and creep feed, then returned it to pasture after weaning.

They invariably crashed no matter how good they looked at weaning. The weight loss was inevitable, and they would not recover by market time.