Effects of different pasture/hay field management techniques

[RobertMac]

 

[RobertMac]

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[PureCountry]

How much rest do you give in your area RobertMac?

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Rod, what are you doing calving in mid-Feb?????? You're bale grazing, rotational grazing, doing so many things right for your resource base, then you calve in February??? You're a harder workin' man than I am. May/June is too easy for me to ever go back again.

This mid-Feb calving is an accident called "unplugged electric fence to work on it and then forgot to plug it in". I normally calve mid-March, although I was planning on moving to mid-Feb in a couple years anyway.

My reasons for it are many:
1) No disease. Period. No scours, no flies, no mosquitoes. And by the time the spring melts come and things get sloppy up here, the calves are developed enough that I don't have to worry about them getting scours or pneumonia.

While I realize that May/June calving on grass minimizes scours/pneumonia as well, it doesn't eradicate it like mid-Feb calving does. And I've seen June newborn calves with flies/mosquitoes clustered around their eyes to the point where they can't see out of them.

edit: I need to change the No disease to "almost no" or "much less than any other time of year". I remembered this morning I treated one of my early born calves for pneumonia 3 years ago.

2) Weather patterns. Up in my neck of the woods, snow sticks around well into April. But then the switch gets flicked on and we turn into a muckhole almost overnight. And we don't dry up until sometime in May. By that time the spring rains are coming, and I've got to help my father with seeding which lasts into June. So that leaves July/August, which is haying time. Fall calves have too high an energy requirement come Jan -40 for my minimal management practices, so no joy there.

3) Feb/March/April calves are already well started when we put them out on grass at the end of May. They utilize forage, and its far more efficient to put forage directly into a calf than it is to stuff it through a cow then into a calf. I haven't dug through my books lately, but the last time I calculated things out, my late winter calves averaged 1/3 lb ADG more than my spring calves did. 1/3 of lb may not seem like much, but its free weight gain.

4) Because the calves are utilizing forages better, its easier on the cow. My winter calving cows, by August, aren't being sucked as much, so they're able to use the dry August grass to start putting on fat reserves for winter.

5) I market backgrounded calves in Feb/March. Having a couple more months growth on my calves means that I not only have the feedlot market to sell to, I have heavy calves that will likely finish on grass (or come close), satisfying that market demand.

6) I have bupkus to do in Feb/March.

7) I like it. My cows get completely ignored during the summer/fall/early winter months, so winter calving gives me a chance to "reconnect" with my girls.

So there ya go. You asked

Rod

 

[Ben H]

Fertilizer Costs Drive Up Cost of Making Hay
Friday, 25 July 2008
While rising grain prices have gotten a lot of attention, far fewer ranchers are paying attention to the rising cost of making hay due to higher fertilizer costs. Penn State extension in their July newsletter estimated that the fertilizer value in one ton of grass hay is now $84. That's the cost of the 50 pounds of nitrogen, 15 pounds of phosphate and 50 pounds of potassium each ton of grass hay contains and this does not include micro-nutrients. Using Pennsylvania custom machinery rates, it takes $35.37 in machinery costs to make a ton of hay. At a per acre yield of two tons per acre, add pasture establishment costs of $25.63 per ton and land rent at $30 an acre ($15 a ton) and you have a total cost of $160 a ton and this does not include the cost of fertilizer spreading. If you figure a 1000 pounds of hay in a large round bale this would be an out-of-pocket expense of $80 a roundbale. Now, consider that you can often buy grass hay for less than its fertilizer value ($42 a roundbale) and that this exercise did not include weather losses which are typically high in humid climates. Put a pencil to it and you will probably find that is far better to buy hay from your neighbors than to grow your own.

-Allan Nation's Blog

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

While I know it costs more to make hay than many seem to realize, I have issue with the $35 worth of equipment to make 1 ton of hay. My fuel/equipment costs are more along the lines of 10 bucks/bale, with a bale being 1800 lbs. I'd say Pennsylvania needs to quit buying green tractors. :lol: :lol:

 

[RobertMac]

How much rest do you give in your area RobertMac?

From 'as much as necessary' to 'as much as possible'...I know that's not a good answer, but there are so many variables involved. The one thing that is for sure is that rest is beneficial to the plants...especially the ones cows like to eat!! Rest is what makes a rotational system produce more forage than a continuous graze system. This is the way I learned the point that moven' on made...the surface area of the plant above ground is roughly equal to the surface area of the plant below ground. In continuous graze, the cow keeps the plant above ground small so the root system becomes small. Rest allows the plant to grow more leaves that capture more energy to make more roots. The more roots allow the plant access to more soil to collect more minerals and moisture and the roots are energy reserves used for faster regrowth.

Maybe a better answer...long enough to get enough regrowth to satisfy your cattle the next time they are put in that paddock. When my regrowth slows because of drought or cold or what ever environmental factor, I slow my rotation. When I get rain or it warms up and regrowth takes off, I speed up. This is what the grass gurus mean by "grazer's eye"...and most of the time I think I'm blind!! The one thing I think I do right in my system is to give my cattle fresh grazing every day or two. But my system is not going to correlate with different regions and/or environments. Read all you can, then go out and learn what Nature is telling you on your land.

 

[PureCountry]

Rod, thanks for the descriptive reply. If that's what works for you, great!

RobertMac, it sounds like you have a system that works for you and your environment. That's what we're working on here.

BenH, thanks for posting that blog of Allan's. Interesting stuff. Hay prices are steadily climbing around here this year. Poor crops within a 50-60 mile radius are mostly to blame. Even out that far, it's tough to find the quality I want, at a price anywhere reasonable. Oh how I wish we'd been seeding my parent's cropland down 5 years ago. That 650 acres would be awful handy in Alfalfa and Brome right now.

 

[per]

Had the privilege of taking in a pasture MIG grazing tour with some excellent graziers including Jim Gerrish the other day. It sure helps with motivation and idea's to see other's and their issues and bounce questions off those that are "doing it". Was pretty impressed with the coach driver navigating some narrow Texas Gates and narrow back trails.

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Rod, thanks for the descriptive reply. If that's what works for you, great!

<chuckle> I re-read what I wrote, and I think the most important reason is:

"7) I like it."

I get to see almost all my calves get their first sucks, watch them beat the snot out of momma's bag when she's not letting enough drop, and see them them stuff their noses into a snowbank only to get torqued off and beat the heck out of it. So, I figure we all run livestock for one reason or another, but whats the point unless you're enjoying it? Sure as hell can't get rich doing it, so you might as well gather as much enjoyment as you can while you're doing it. I don't even mind getting put over the occasional fence by an overprotective mother.

'Course, I'm not all that bright. :lol:

Rod

 

[DOC HARRIS]

Rod-

Very well documented post! The so-called - new - protocols of Rotational Grazing, Mob Grazing, Bale Grazing, Pasture Rotation, Grass Management all refer back 60 years ago when Soil Conservation was the "watch-word"of the day, along with Contour Farming and Crop Rotation!

But the idea of letting the cattle "harvest" the hay crop was unheard of, and it was suggested that I was out of my mind when I mentioned the idea at a Ranchers meeting in 1950. The idea immediately died on the vine! Along with that theme, do you just place the round bales on the ground, or cut the ties and roll them out, or place them in a round bale holder?

-I started my bale grazing experiment on some light land I had that really needed some extra nutrient and fibre. Some of the land was blow sand that hadn't grown anything in decades. This was 3 years ago. In the first year, I really didn't see much of a difference, but I did see some nice ground cover in both wasted hay and manure. Its important to note that the wasted hay wasn't any more than you would see with a cheap round bale feeder. It was more waste than you'd see with my hay saver feeders, but not a whole bunch more. In the second year, we had good moisture and I really started seeing some results. The grass in the marginal areas was standing about as high as the grass in the good sections, and even the blow sand was growing grass. But only around where I set the bales. The cattle however, wouldn't touch the grass until it froze off. It was possibly too nitrogen rich. Now this year where I've been bale grazing, the grass is rich, thick and lush, sometimes standing 2 feet higher than the non-bale grazed grasses. The cattle are happily munching on the grass and the grass cover is fairly consistent around the pasture, not just collected in the bale placement areas.

This radically different method of "Cold Weather" hay-feeding is a free gift to Ranchers and Farmers alike, and I say "It is ABOUT TIME!" that more people understood the benefits of it.

DOC HARRIS

 

[PureCountry]

Don't know about Rod, but we just dump ours and cut the twines off, leaving them for the cows to roll and play with. Local Ag. research group is going to conduct some soil samples and document the regrowth on one pasture where we bale grazed on top of stockpiled "native" grasses. I'm curious to see how the micronutrients are affected. We can tell by the darker green of the forage that something good is happening, but it'll be interesting to see the effect on a deeper level.

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

I put the bales on the ground, then try to get back and cut the twines later and let the cattle do with them as they please. I noticed on bales that I didn't cut the twines on, there was more waste than on the cut twine bales.

I tried a round bale feeder and hay saver feeders, but you lose some of the advantages of bale grazing such as not having to start your tractor at -40, plus you have to haul them to a storage area, then haul them to the feeders. With raw bale grazing, I grab trailer loads and dump them wherever I please. I also noticed that wherever I used bale feeders, my tame grasses were killed off and native sprung up in its place, which I didn't like to see as my tame grasses easily outperform the native grasses.

One thing I also noticed is that bales that were in place before the snows were almost completely consumed, versus bales placed on snow. The cattle seemed to dig for those little sticks of dead grass under the bale.

Rod

 

[LCP]

Bale grazing sounds like a good idea but I have a few reservations.
How much hay is lost from the cows bedding down in the stuff they didn't eat right away? I would also wonder about how much hay would be lost if you had an open winter in which the cows decided to pick out the tasty, palatable hay, lay on the rest, and go find standing forage for the rest of their diet. (I say this after feeding intermediate wheatgrass/alfalfa hay to a group of cows last winter and half of it (the grass portion) never got eaten.) That makes the hay the cows did get in their belly pretty expensive. An open winter lends itself to the possibility of a dry summer, and whatever hay you could have carried over is now worm food. Not a complete waste, I understand, but come the following December some more bales might be more valuable, not?

What about this scenario - unroll only enough hay for a day or two and make them clean up a little more? The primary benefits I see of doing it this way are 1) less fuel usage in terms of making hay due to increase in harvest efficiency 2) You're able to build your hay inventory in case of a drought in which you can't find enough hay for the winter.

I don't mean to discredit or criticize those of you who bale graze...I am not even stuck on the way I do it. I am just wondering about these other factors. Believe me, I am here to learn not judge.

 

[DOC HARRIS]

I think that all of these ideas have merit, according to the particular usages to which they are applied. Some of you may have herds of 20 or 30 cows, and some of a 1000 or more cows. Are you also feeding a year-round Mineral supplementaion program, and are you also feeding a Protein supplement - Soybean cake for example?

Anything that can be accomplished that will minimize the -40 degree 'chore' problem will help keep them "down on the farm"and increase the bottom line PROFIT factor - to say nothing of creature comfort for animals and humans.

Thank you all for your input to this subject!

DOC HARRIS

 

[PureCountry]

Doc, we're calving 240 head and breeding 275 this year. We feed no grain, only hay, and we do use a loose mineral formulated for our area, based on the soil/grass samples I've taken over the years. In winter when we put the cows on stockpiled forages, we add in a vitamin mix.

This is a system that's developed out of neccesity, common sense, and alot of trial and error. It's the cheapest way we've raised beef thus far, the best system we've found for harvesting our free solar energy on our land, and coincidentally, it's made the healthiest cows we've ever seen.

LCP- I will never say that bale grazing is for everyone, I'd be lying. It works for us because it doesn't require feeding equipment. We don't like owning things that rust and depreciate. It works for us because we have very light sandy land, in some areas with large open sand holes/dunes, and it's the fastest way to rehabilitate those spots. It also works for us because it's a relatively cheap system for feeding cows. I'll never say it's THE cheapest, but it's cheap enough, provided you make the cows stay on the edge of hungry and root around to clean up the feed, as you eluded to in your post. I believe it's a system where we can improve the land and feed cows for $1/day year round, or less.

However, to me the ultimate system is growing enough forage for the cows to graze year round, except for the years when we actually get snow like they do in Rod's country, which has happened once in the last 15.

Have a good night everyone.

 

[Ben H]

I have played with bale grazing a little bit, first comparison is horses vs. cows. The horses do a far superior job of leaving less of the bale behind, this is without any feeder. Also, if you have stockpiled grass the horses in my opinion are a better snow grazer, they will use their hooves to paw the snow, they can also break a crust. This is from my observation. I have read about some people running horses with their cows to break up crust for the cows.

I currently use feeders, one a hay wagon (can fit 3 4x5 bales) and a cone feeder on skids. Calves have trouble reaching the hay in both of them and have to feed some on the ground as well. When you unroll a bale the cows prefer to "graze" they hay then eat it out of the feeder. I've tried providing both options and there is no doubt about their prefrence. Unfortunately I don't have adequate "winter fence" on the fields I would like to really try some bale grazing, hopefully that will be taken care of within the next year. There is an NRCS EQIP deadline at the end of the week I have two application going in for, both properties will include a frost free nose pump.

Nobody ever pushed earth wire return systems in my area, except maybe for the sheep. I never considered the issue of snow and ice as an insulator. Dry ground as far as grounding goes isn't usualy an issue. We had a lot of snow last winter and my calves were challenging the fence, I added a ground wire between the top two strands and problem solved, I now build with every other wire as a ground.

The challenge I see with bale grazing is the moisture we recieve in Maine, I think, off the top of my head, we average over 36" a year, if not it's 26". We can't swath graze for that reason. I'm concerned about the moisture on those bales I put in the field. On the other hand I have been sort of high dentsity grazing lately to clean up some land I'm reclaiming, the cows found an old bale that was years old that had been put on the field edge, there was nothing left of it. Being in the southern part of the state and having some influence from the coast, we can get storms with rain, or freezing rain at any time durring the winter. There is a farm in Vermont doing bale grazing, they throw a ring feeder over them and zig zag the poly wire across the field putting the wire in the bales.

Here's the other issue, if you start looking at these bales as fertelizer then when does the fertelizer value become higher then the feed value? Isn't that wehn we become less and less concerned with waste? On the other hand, anything that goes through the stomach isn't wasting the fertelizer value, it will make it available sooner durring the next growing year.

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Doc - I went off a mineral program a couple years ago, but I think I'll be back on it next year, as my calving season went from 6 weeks to 9 weeks and I believe my calves had a little more growth while on it. Its tough to say since I was using different bulls back then.

LCP - My total waste on a bale is about the same as it would be if I were using a non-hay saver bale feeder, maybe a hair more. For me, this is a non-issue because I then have good ground litter (which manure doesn't provide) for my lighter soils. Unrolling a bale every couple of days doesn't have the same equipment savings, and I think this is substantial, especially for someone like me who lives much of the winter at -20 to -40.

Ben - interesting comment with regards to fertilizer value. As I mentioned to LCP, I'm not interested in just the fertilizer value, but also in ground litter cover which helps in moisture retention for a couple years after the bale was set down. Once the grass in the pasture begins to make use of the nutrient, it provides its own litter when not overgrazed. The litter also provides a slower release of nutrient as compared to cow manure. In my country, with as much run off and rain as we get, that controlled release of nutrient is priceless.

As Pure said, don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily believe that bale grazing is for everyone, but in my case it worked extremely well to regain lost pasture capacity and save on fuel/equipment costs.

Rod

 

[RobertMac]

LCP, you handle bale grazing the same as you handle paddock rotational grazing...if you want the cows to 'clean-up', feed only enough for them to fill up. The way I decide how much is enough is to watch BCS...the majority maintaining good condition with a small minority at the low end of what is acceptable BCS for your region/conditions. Make those 'low end BCS' cows candidates for culls and, over time, you end up with a much more efficient herd that will raise better(more profitable) calves! Kit claims that if he isn't culling at least 10% of his cows, he is being too easy on them!!!

...my calving season went from 6 weeks to 9 weeks...

Rod, why are you punishing your cows that stayed in the 6 week window? If they can do it, why shouldn't all of them? Cull from the 6-9 week group and replace them with heifers from the 1-6 week group. Using bulls you raise, will also improve adaptation of the herd.

This is a system that's developed out of neccesity, common sense, and alot of trial and error. It's the cheapest way we've raised beef thus far, the best system we've found for harvesting our free solar energy on our land, and coincidentally, it's made the healthiest cows we've ever seen.

And it only gets better...you're on the right track, Pure Country!!!

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Rod, why are you punishing your cows that stayed in the 6 week window? If they can do it, why shouldn't all of them? Cull from the 6-9 week group and replace them with heifers from the 1-6 week group. Using bulls you raise, will also improve adaptation of the herd.

I guess I don't really look at feeding an all natural mineral balanced for the mineral deficiencies in our soil as punishing my critters. While I understand the desire to keep only the most fertile animals, I also understand that our soil is deficient in certain minerals, as such, those minerals need to be supplemented to ensure that the product I am creating for my customers and my family is of the healthiest and highest quality that I can produce. For example, we are Selenium deficient up here. Since a bovine's body cannot produce this mineral through synthesis of other minerals, but rather deposits it through intake, that means a non-supplemented beef in my area will not be an excellent source of selenium for my children and my customers. I guess I don't really have any proof of my theory, since I haven't seen nutritional analyses done on non-supplemented versus supplemented beef, but if the body can't create it, it has to get there somehow.

Rod