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A few pictures

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
The blue cloud mountains of central Alberta for those of us unable to buy a place with a real mountain view.
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Snow is on the peaks already, maybe I'll get a skiing holiday yet.
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This is what I would call a thick red bull! My 3 year old frame score 4, likely about 1800-1900lbs but I haven't weighed him recently.
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Pulled him this morning after running with 40 cows for 2 months - sure hasn't lost much condition. I love the masculinity and character he demonstrates.
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Cows awaiting their daily mooove!
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My "unfair advantage" - a grass based system and child labor!
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Calves learning about stock density
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Grass on my steer fattening pasture been grazed twice and will be skimmed once more to put a final finish on the steers.
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Enough to last 'till mid October
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A more typical scene in much of west central Alberta - tens of thousands of acres of good land producing next to nothing due to poor or non-existent management.
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Justin

Well-known member
i'll agree with you, that is one thick red bull. if he was any deeper he would need longer legs :wink: cattle and grass both look good and healthy :D
 

per

Well-known member
No doubt you can manage grass and I love that bull. At the risk of looking stupid by this question, is he Angus? I think I have that bulls virtual brother. When this pesky harvest is under control I will post a pic. Boy is your helper a cutie.
 

lazy ace

Well-known member
Totally agree nice looking bull.

How many years have you been cell grazing and how many would it take to improve the overgrazed range you showed?

have a good one

lazy ace
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Thanks folks - Per he's a straight Luing bull - a son of my 23 year old cow. If he looks good enough to be an Angus I'll take that as a compliment though :roll: :wink: :lol:

Lazy Ace - still fairly new to managing grass under Canadian conditions. Only been on this place since '01 but have been experimenting with managing the grazing since day one. The real beat up pastures take a while to bring around - I would start by giving them a complete growing season rest. After 5 or 6 years production could be quite good. If they have not been beat up so bad you can turn them around in 2 or 3 years. We benefit from living in a good area for grass - usually good rainfall and good deep mineral soil do the land responds quicker to improvement than on drier, poorer soils.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
No wonder you like red cattle; you have a red progeny!!!
She is really cute and so serious about her job.

I like the bull and the grass. Those mountains are interesting too. :p
Thanks for the pictures.
 

bverellen

Well-known member
Grassfarmer;

Any idea how many lbs. per acre you are stocking at, and how much "new" grass do you give them on each move?

How much rest between grazings?

Your pastures look great, keep up the good work!!

Thanks...

<><

bart.
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
bverellen said:
Grassfarmer;

Any idea how many lbs. per acre you are stocking at, and how much "new" grass do you give them on each move?

How much rest between grazings?

Your pastures look great, keep up the good work!!

Thanks...

<><

bart.

Bart, we still work at relatively low stocking rates when you consider lbs per acre. The cow group pictured are on a rented pasture we have for the first time. It was ungrazed for 2 years so actually had too much dead grass/litter on it. We are harvesting around 40 cow days per acre off it this pass, the group is just under 80 pairs so we have probably around 65,000lbs per acre on it. Until you get the yields a lot higher it is not really possible to implement the super intensive stocking rates some people use.

We graze most of our place only twice a year - a light pass in the peak growing season to set back maturity and then a fuller utilisation pass at whatever time of year we need it.
Exception is the steer fattening pastures which we usually graze 3 times to keep the quality up. In a typical year we would graze that with 30,30 then 20 AUDs/acre on the three passes. This year yield is way down because we were dry early in the season. Looks more like it will be 15, 25 then 15 AUDs acre on the three passes this time.
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Beautiful pics, thanks for sharing those. That bull is impressive and it's hard to believe he's been with 40 cows for 2 months. Obviously don't have the heat problem there I have with mine here.

Any oil/gas production there?
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Whitewing we definitely don't have the same heat problems as you - we only hit 30C once this summer - we had hard frost in early June, 1st July and mid August. These cattle can handle -40C in winter though.

Oh yes, lots of oil and gas production around here - up to 5 wells per quarter on some of the stuff I'm renting.
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Grassfarmer said:
Whitewing we definitely don't have the same heat problems as you - we only hit 30C once this summer - we had hard frost in early June, 1st July and mid August. These cattle can handle -40C in winter though.

-40C....or F for that matter.....amazing. My guys here shiver when it's 16C and complain about "the cold". I tell them it's finally comfortable.

Tell us more about how you manage your grass production. The pics are impressive, especially when compared to the surrounding area. I'm assuming accumulated snowfalls have an effect as well.
 

MYT Farms

Well-known member
Holy smokes, I wished we grew that kind of grass around here. Or more, I wished we managed grass like that around here. Really love your cows and am impressed with that lovely grass.
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Not really any magic to share with you Whitewing on the grazing front. This is more a list of what we don't do than what we do. We don't reseed as such (only spread legumes by adding the seed to the cows salt), we don't use any miracle grass species, we don't use fertiliser or any other soil amendments, we don't control weeds either mechanically or chemically, we don't mechanically harvest grass and we don't overgraze.

The only thing we really do is plan and control the cows movement using a grazing plan, electric fences and a graziers eye. I read up on all the Holistic / MIG/ High Density stocking/deferred grazing and every other type of grazing I could find information on then picked pieces of each that seemed to make sense in our situation and tried them. Some worked some didn't - trial and error has given us a workable system but we are constantly refining it.

We started by buying a property in a good area for grass and that sure makes life easier. We have an annual precip. average of @22 inches plus it never gets really hot here in summer. Both are conducive to good grass production.
 

bverellen

Well-known member
Another question if I may(you can tell me to shut up anytime;)

How do you address water and mineral needs in conjunction of with strip grazing?

<><

bart.
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
bverellen,
We address water in a number of ways - most of the home place is set up with a 1'' pasture pipeline and small movable troughs on skids. Then we have a couple of tanks on wagons, one solar filled and one filled with a gas pump which we can fill out of the river which runs through many of our pastures. Very occasionally a cow will get to drink out of the river but generally they are fenced out. In winter we have 2 frost free nose pumps on quarters that we feed on but they are really as a precaution against not having snow. If we have plenty good snow the cows lick it for water, we always have the first calf heifers on the nose-pumps as licking water can be tough sledding for them. Water development has been critical to implementing the type of controlled grazing we do.

Minerals are easy - a few homemade pieces of junk and a few of those round plastic containers with the rubber lids that someone else posted pictures of in another thread. We mount them on two wooden skids and then we can tow them to move.
 

bverellen

Well-known member
Thanks alot, Grassfarmer!!

I have kind of envisioned some low profile wagons with a tank, mineral bunk and perhaps a small storage box of sorts for spare poly wire, posts and what not.

Your pictures and posts have been most helpful, thankyou.

<><

bart.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Grassfarmer, thanks for providing proof that the bull "in my minds eye" is achievable...may need to give him a few more cows next year. That looks like my cows waiting on me to get things ready.
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
RobertMac,
He got a bit of a rest this year as I was using his sire for the last time and he finished up with quite a few instead. Last year the bull pictured covered 65 head as a small 2 year old, some of these were ET recips. but still we got over 50 calves off him this year.
 
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