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Holistic Management

I have taken a holistic management course on pasture management and have adapted ideas into my everyday management. I would suggest reading the book "Holistic Management, A beffter framework for decision making" before taking the course(s). There are some holistic management workbooks that are very helpful also .

Ranching for Profit website has some interesting webinares and a book call The blue book by Stan Parson's that is good.
http://www.ranchmanagement.com/index.html

The holistic courses and Ranching for Profit are a great source of ideas and new ways of looking at things. You need to apply/adapt the ideas to your unique situation/operation. youtbe has lectures by Neil Dennis, Jim Gerrish and a guy from texas that is good all worth watching/listening to.
 
I don't know if we are holistic or not, but if you are pragmatic the information can be applied in a lot of very handy, interesting and profitable ways. Also recommend ranching for profit and to take a look at the book store at Stockman Grassfarmer.
The George Morris Centre C-Team and EDP programs are also EXCELLENT for the business perspective.
 
From what i have seen looks like it works, but is there anybody that does it in mass numbers? 300 to 500 head not 30 to 50. Every article i read the pastures are not even 100 acres and they divide them up. Anybody doing this with sections? Seems very labor intensive.
 
I think that the Holistic Management class is well worth the money. I also have been to the ranching for profit school. As an employee the HRM class has been invaluable. The RFP school was way more intense, lots of it made since lots of it needed time to soak in. The RFP school seemed pretty fast and furious to me, I would like to take a couple more refresher coarses. To answer the question about numbers, I have applied HRM to large numbers of pairs and yearlings (over 500hd) in pastures averaging in that 450 - 600 acre range. I truly believe that the biggest mistake people make is stereotyping it as intensive grazing. It is just what it says Holistic, looking at your entire operation as a whole and using planning aids to fit. There is not a book or a model to follow that will give you all the answers, it is a guide and every operation will be different.
I will try not to rant here. One of my biggest complaints with HRM is the people that are choosen to educate the public through extension and so fourth. I have been to numerous ranch tours and seminars where someone was choosen to tell about their HRM practices. Most of those ranches are applying intensive grazing practices but not HRM management. You can turn anything around to make it look or sound like you want it to, in the end a spade is a spade. If you are grazing the crap out of your productive land and trying to tell yourself that your improving the land and maximizing profits, what are you doing for your less productive land and true animal production on the whole operation. Almost every single one of those people talk about the productive ground and when you ask how they manage they rest of the ranch they don't implement hardly any kind of management plan on it. Then you here how it is not possible to implement a HRM plan on the other ground. That is the same problem everyone else is facing, they don't see how to make it work. The whole point is to open your mind and look at things from the possible side not the impossible. There is nothing in the planning manual that says you have to move your cows everyday. If you plan your grazing system around recovery, everything else falls into place. The key is enough rest so that your pastures will recover and improve if there is improvement to be made. Remember the whole picture is not just grazing, include family, financial, animal production, and life goals. Pretty soon you have a well oilded machine. In the end sustainable production and not milking the cash cow is what truly matters. How many quick fix guys do you know that are still around. Sorry to carry on. I have seen so many BS representations, I truly believe in HRM. It is a can do thought process and attitude, not a convienent management tool. When everyone else is asking why I ask why not, maybe the impossible is possible.
 
All the comments are very interesting and serioius ranchers can learn from them, however, 'flyingS has an excellent point regarding all of it: "it is a thought process attitude".

Seeing such courses, classes and ideas as a guide, not a blueprint makes sense, as there really are no two IDENTICAL ranches, therefore, one 'plan' can't serve all, imo.

mrj
 
I think that the Holistic Management class is well worth the money. I also have been to the ranching for profit school. As an employee the HRM class has been invaluable. The RFP school was way more intense, lots of it made since lots of it needed time to soak in. The RFP school seemed pretty fast and furious to me, I would like to take a couple more refresher coarses. To answer the question about numbers, I have applied HRM to large numbers of pairs and yearlings (over 500hd) in pastures averaging in that 450 - 600 acre range. I truly believe that the biggest mistake people make is stereotyping it as intensive grazing. It is just what it says Holistic, looking at your entire operation as a whole and using planning aids to fit. There is not a book or a model to follow that will give you all the answers, it is a guide and every operation will be different.
I will try not to rant here. One of my biggest complaints with HRM is the people that are choosen to educate the public through extension and so fourth. I have been to numerous ranch tours and seminars where someone was choosen to tell about their HRM practices. Most of those ranches are applying intensive grazing practices but not HRM management. You can turn anything around to make it look or sound like you want it to, in the end a spade is a spade. If you are grazing the crap out of your productive land and trying to tell yourself that your improving the land and maximizing profits, what are you doing for your less productive land and true animal production on the whole operation. Almost every single one of those people talk about the productive ground and when you ask how they manage they rest of the ranch they don't implement hardly any kind of management plan on it. Then you here how it is not possible to implement a HRM plan on the other ground. That is the same problem everyone else is facing, they don't see how to make it work. The whole point is to open your mind and look at things from the possible side not the impossible. There is nothing in the planning manual that says you have to move your cows everyday. If you plan your grazing system around recovery, everything else falls into place. The key is enough rest so that your pastures will recover and improve if there is improvement to be made. Remember the whole picture is not just grazing, include family, financial, animal production, and life goals. Pretty soon you have a well oilded machine. In the end sustainable production and not milking the cash cow is what truly matters. How many quick fix guys do you know that are still around. Sorry to carry on. I have seen so many BS representations, I truly believe in HRM. It is a can do thought process and attitude, not a convienent management tool. When everyone else is asking why I ask why not, maybe the impossible is possible.
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flyings i see that you are in the sandhills are using this, how is it possible to graze the grass as they say and not have sand blowing every where before recovery is possible?
 
Eatbeef my philosopy is a long one and I know that sometimes people get tired of reading long post. If you all would like for me to share my thoughts I will gladly do that. The first response is anything can be managed or mis-managed. I know guys that graze like they have for the last 50 years that have more sand showing than they ought to. On the other hand I know some that are on a mob grazing system that have lots of sand as well. Common sense has to prevail and experience is an invalueable tool. I was fortuneate enough to have worked for an extremely progressive outfit that educated me very well, not only through educational classes but practical experience and several experienced role models.
To answer your question briefly, no one should ever graze to the point that the soil will erode in any grazing system. This is one of the mis-perceptions that the people I talked about in my earlier post give other producers. Anyone who tries to maximize anyone aspect is not truly holistic now are they, you have to optimize every aspect in order for them to all be sustainable. Everything has to be within reason.
 
Could I get a good definition of Holistic Management. My first experience was in college when we had a hippie with hair down his back explain that he was holistic with 5 cows on 30 acres and he never touched the animals period. Second experience is with a neighbor that claims to be holistic and he does run 200-300 cows in a group but the sprouts and brush are taking over and he has little grass. I have a bad image of it so please give me a better outlook on it. Thanks
 
Another thought: how does the old rule (at least it was established on this ranch about 120 years ago) of "let the cattle eat half and save half".

And I believe that means the top half of the plants, more or less, since they do seem to grub their favorites down and leave some grasses they don't like, depending on the season.

We also use different (for the most part) pastures for winter, early spring, late spring, summer into fall, depending on weather/drought (frequent) excessive moisture (rare!)/mild or severe winter, etc.

Also have recently tinkered with the system a bit recently to get more use from the bluestem grasses in our rougher pastures (that are usually the calving and early spring pastures) in late spring.

We are well into drought mangement at this time, barring some decent rains pretty soon.

mrj
 
flyingS said:
Eatbeef my philosopy is a long one and I know that sometimes people get tired of reading long post. If you all would like for me to share my thoughts I will gladly do that. The first response is anything can be managed or mis-managed. I know guys that graze like they have for the last 50 years that have more sand showing than they ought to. On the other hand I know some that are on a mob grazing system that have lots of sand as well. Common sense has to prevail and experience is an invalueable tool. I was fortuneate enough to have worked for an extremely progressive outfit that educated me very well, not only through educational classes but practical experience and several experienced role models.
To answer your question briefly, no one should ever graze to the point that the soil will erode in any grazing system. This is one of the mis-perceptions that the people I talked about in my earlier post give other producers. Anyone who tries to maximize anyone aspect is not truly holistic now are they, you have to optimize every aspect in order for them to all be sustainable. Everything has to be within reason.
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please share your thoughts and though processes of HM/ :D
 
http://holisticmanagement.org/holistic-management/
Here is a site that will give you an idea of what you will see if you take a HRM class. Remember that HRM means Holistic Resource Management not Holistic Range Management. I have tried to incorporate Holistic mangement into my entire life. Basically every time I make a decision I try to think about how it is going to affect everyone and everything involved.
HRM to me is managing for the whole, you might say the greater good. If you manage for the whole no one thing should ever suffer, long term, to benefit another. Your product, nature, people, and finances should all be able to work together. That makes it sound easy, which it is not. HRM is a planning intensive practice that will yield results that are life changing if you so desire. I am not here to tell anyone how to run their business. I would like to say that I see lots of people that are succesful and unsuccesful that are satisified with par. Even when things are good I have to wonder if there is something that I could be doing to improve. That is a challenge and can be very stressful, never being satisfied is not very rewarding. Sure lots of you have awesome cows and your range looks good, you are paying the bills and life is good. That sounds great, I have to ask what are you leaving on the table. Everyone has room to improve, finding where at and implementing a successful plan is the challenge.
Pat I will share some thoughts when I have more time to gather them.
 
Most of the educational seminars and ranch tours that I have been to have represented high density or mob grazing. Everyone automatically assumes that this is Holistic Management because sooner or later Allan Savory's name comes up. I have even seen Savory himself speak and give his thoughts on a ranch tour. All of these people have something in common, they are concentrating lbs/acre to create what you might call herd effect. The other thing that they all have in common is that they are grazing a fairly stable environment. Most of the time the speakers are grazing a sub-irrrigated meadow or live in an area with a high annual rain fall. We all know that it in good years your margin of era is decreased, years like this year seperate the men from the boys so to speak. I have grazed sub-irrigated meadows in drought years and years that have above average rain fall, I have also grazed Sandhills range in drought years and years with above average rainfall. In good years we all look smart, it seems that it is hard to mess up. Finding a way to get through the tough years is always a challenge. Planning is essential in my mind. Nothing is set in stone, but if you have guidelines to reach the goals you have in mind you can judge where you are at in reaching those goals. Planning is the only way that you can tell what you want to accomplish. Always right your plans down so that you can refer to them. It is as important to record what you have done so that you have a reference to look back at. Once you have done both you can see where you are going and where you have been.
The main concern on this site in relation to HRM, seems to be grazing management. I have a real issue with the intensive grazing or high density grazing paradigm. I do not disagree that herd effect is a very useful tool in range management. There are a few things that I see that take place. These people are generally maximizing there grazing ability. Very few of them are maximizing animal production. One tour I was on, the pairs were in terrible condition, bad enough they had to tube a 2 or 3 month old calf while everyone was watching to try to keep him alive. I was not impressed. I had an opportunity later in the day to ask how the gentleman managed his Sandhills range. His response was we season long graze. That was apparent by the range condition of his hills, I was not impressed. I firmly believe that in any environment in order to improve range condition you have to let a certain amount of range mature and seed out. By doing this you not only are re-seeding your pastures naturally but you are also building root mass. I prefer to let 25% to 30% go to seed. Does that mean I can not use these pastures, no. There is a certain number of pastures needed in order to make the system work. Ranching for profit says at least 8, I am not sure because I have never worked with that few of pastures in a rotation. I prefer 20 plus. That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. In the Sandhills we will get cool season growth anywhere from April 1st to early or mid June. Warm season growth is generally from June till August. Then we will get some cool season growth again anytime from Sept. on, depending on weather obviously. My goal is to improve my pasture and optimize my stocking rate. My plan to do this involves building root mass as well as plant density and diversity with being able to possibly increase my stocking rate at some point. My first step is to look at my growing seasons and how long they are. Basically cool season growth in our country last about 60 to 75 days, warm season growth last about 90 days. Now I have to decide how I am going to plan a system that allows me to maximize my grazing potential ( grazing potential doesn't necessarily mean maximizing stocking rate, it should mean building a sustainable long term asset). How many days of rest do I need to get full recovery on my pasture and will I be able to fully recover every pasture I graze. In cool season growth it will probably take me on average 45 days and warm season probably about 90. It is impossible to rest every pasture long enough to fully recover in a growing season. I prefer to plan my resting period so that it is long enough to allow a given number of pastures to go to seed in one growing season or the other. I use 120 day rest period, meaning that at a minumum it will be no less than 120 days before I come back into a pasture. Many people do not manage cool season grasses, they just try to capitalize the grazing potential. I feel that cool season grasses are equally important as warm season grasses. The University seems to only focus on warm season management. With a 120 day rest period you generally will be defering 25% or more of your pastures for warm season growth and well over that for cool season growth. Many of you are probably asking why I don't use a dual rest rotation. The answer is simple, I can not maximize my plant production in a dual rest rotation because I am try to maximize grazing potential instead. That sounds contradictory but it is not. If I am always trying to maximize my grazing potential year in and year out, I can not probably improve my range much. Although if I concentrate on improving my range I will be able to increase my stocking rate due to the increase in plant production.
I also believe that in order to capitalize on animal impact a person needs to run as many animals in a herd as they possibly can. Water is almost always the limiting factor in herd size. I have used solar powered submersibles, pipeline, and submersibles under the bottom check on a windmill powered by a gas generator to remedy my water problems. The one thing that I see lots that does not make sense to me is water storage capacity ( tank size ). I see lot of 10ft tanks as well as a fair number of 20ft tanks. Lots of people will justify the small tanks with cost. If a 20ft bottomless tank cost me say 1200 and a 30ft cost me 1500, I still say the 30ft is cheaper. A 20ft tank holds 4000 gallon while a 30ft holds closer to 10,000 gallon, that make a 20ft cost .30/gal while a 30ft cost .15/gal. I just doubled my water storage for half the cost plus I have increased the area for cattle to drink out of allow more cattle to drink at once. Maybe that is over simplified, but I don't think so. Water probably will show more return than any resource you have on a ranch, it sure seems to be the most limiting factor for sure. The larger the storage the larger number of cattle it will water, the amount of water pumped makes an obvious difference as well.
Going back to the number of pastures. Cross fencing is a tremendous tool that will decrease the time it takes to improve your range. Without going into great detail, I like to have enough pastures so that I do not have to move my cattle more than once a week. If I use a 120 day rest period I need a minum of 17 pastures ( 120 days rest divided by 7 day grazing period). If I can add a few pastures it gives me some room for era and allows for things like weaning, working cattle, shipping, etc.
There are limiting factors for sure, one of the most difficult is a ranch that is not contiguos. If you are not able to move cattle from pasture to pasture and have to move across a neighbor it complicates thing greatly, unless you have enough pastures in the other rotation to justify the moves. I have set up a rotation on a ranch that had lots of pastures that were not contiguos, it was a challenge but turned out very succesful. The cost of fencing and water improvements are high, I think the return will out weigh the cost. There are very few things worth having that will pay for themselves in a short amount of time.
 
So basically just use some common sense.In years of drought I plan to graze hayground and in years of plenty stockpile hay and rent out extra pasture. Trick is don't be overloaded on a good year.In a nutshell know your area and manage it accordingly.
 
Where most fail is to overstock I believe. Very interesting flying s. Would you care if it isn't too much of a personal question to tell how many animals on how many acres?
 
flying s - i agree with your posts. The biggest thing in holistic management and RFP is to figure out your goals and then work on how to get there. The people part (attitudes, etc) is huge. Many ranches run on a holistic plan without being aware of it as such, and many others have taken all the courses and still don't have a holistic approach. It is a bout much more than cow numbers and grass management.
 
RSL said:
flying s - i agree with your posts. The biggest thing in holistic management and RFP is to figure out your goals and then work on how to get there. The people part (attitudes, etc) is huge. Many ranches run on a holistic plan without being aware of it as such, and many others have taken all the courses and still don't have a holistic approach. It is a bout much more than cow numbers and grass management.
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:agree:
 
4Diamond I don't mind at all. I want to clear something up though. I am going to tell you because you ask not to brag. Some people on here don't like to reveal numbers. Myself I have no secrets. I have run as many as 580 plus pairs in one herd and as few as 150 or so, I have also run up to just short of 800 yearling heifers in a group. Most of the time I ran a cow calf pair on about 13 to 14 acres year around. The yearlings about 5 acres for the summer. I hear all the time how labor intensive HRM is. I would disagree. I have found that I can go check one group of cows and go on with my day. The management gets diffucult when you have to check several bunches, especially if they are spread out over a lot of country. I had 520 first calf hfr pairs and 800 hd of yrlng breeding hfrs one summer, it was a lot. My rotation was really long, 20 miles from the house to the east end, and relatively narrow. The hfr rotation was far less than desireable to get to, having lots of really rough country and only one way to get out with a trailer making closer to 30 miles to get back home at times. Of course it was really slow going and very time consuming. Keep in mind I have always worked alone with just the help my wife could give if she had time and a couple of border collies.
I hear about all these people moving cattle several times a day, the first thing that comes to mind is quality of life. That kind of management is labor intesive. I ran a dual rest rotation for 3 years, moving cattle every day to every other in the first rotation and every other to every fourth in the second. You don't really have much time to do anything but check cows and water and fix the big holes in the fence. I took a management position on a different ranch and implemented a single rest rotation that I had used on the yearlings the year before. I felt like I got a better response from the range and I actually had time to do something else. I moved cattle not much sooner than once a week.
 
Isn't part of the reluctance of cattle ranchers to "tell all" regarding how many cows/how many acres do you own or operate on because it is like asking "how much money do you have"?

We really like the answer a NE rancher gave in a semi-public situation where an un-informed as to rancher maners fellow asked an older Sand Hills rancher how many cows and how many acres he had: "I have enough cows to eat the grass, and enough land to grow the grass my cows need."

Or a Texan, believe it or not, in a similar situation when asked by another ill-informed person from another state, "how big is your ranch": "It's substantial, sir, substantial".

My dad got very angry with his brother-in-law, and my uncle, a 'city slicker' visiting the family ranch, when the uncle asked my husband that 'impolite question'.

My dad informed my uncle that ill-mannered question was just the same if we asked said uncle how much his triple-dip pension from the Navy, his job as a federal attorney after retirement from Navy, and his Social Security was, as well as how much he had stashed away in CD's!

Those two old men were polar opposites, politically, and it gave my dad considerable satisfaction to be able to 'read him from the book' so to speak, on ranch country manners.

Moral of these stories: I just never know what to say when someone, well intentioned and a fine person otherwise, asks me that question.

I have on occasion, when asked that question by a visitor at our ranch, gently pointed out that we were five families working to support ourselves by caring for the land and the cattle grazing on it, and that it wasn't considered any more polite a question than it would be to ask someone in another profession what their income was.

How do any of you handle that question, or feel about it being asked?
mrj
 

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