• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Sand hills grass

B

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
22,792
Location
Big Muddy valley
Is the grass in the sand hills a strong enough grass that if a rancher had some stock piled forage the cows could winter on it with just a bit of protein supp?

We can do it up in this country but our winters can be tough enough that you can't count on doing it the majority of years. :?
 
Yes and no. It all depends on the winter. I know back in the 70s there were lots of guys that did the range and cake deal. I also know of a hill that was created because of doing that with out having enough hay to back up the standing grass. I think they buried close to a 1000 head of cows that winter, or spring.
 
I understand you have to be prepared for the worst. Especially those killer spring storms. But they can come even if you fed cows hay all winter.

I don't mean forget them.

Maybe there isn't enough natural shelter. :?
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Is the grass in the sand hills a strong enough grass that if a rancher had some stock piled forage the cows could winter on it with just a bit of protein supp?

We can do it up in this country but our winters can be tough enough that you can't count on doing it the majority of years. :?
Click to expand...

It can be done, but my old cows never fail to let me know when they are dissatisfied with their grazing conditions in the wintertime. Right now I've got 49 young fall bred cows up in the hill on leftover summer grass, soapweeds, salt, mineral, and good fresh water. These were treated quite well, with cake and hay, during the sixty days when the bulls were with them (from November 1st until January 1st). Even during most of January they got some rough swamp hay, but about the first of February they were trailed up into the hills where they now reside.

Comparing our Sandhills grass to the hard country grass in South Dakota, the hard grass has a lot more punch to it. Since we have an abundance of poor quality swamp grass hay, it is my preference to feed this to cows in the cold winter months instead of making them grub for a living out in the hills. Everyone sees things differently, but this is my take on the situation.
 
well I know the sandhills in SK aren't nearly them same , but we had a fella to the south of us that tried to only winter graze , there sure were alot of dries to be gathered in the spring , but they all lived .
 
Soapweed said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Is the grass in the sand hills a strong enough grass that if a rancher had some stock piled forage the cows could winter on it with just a bit of protein supp?

We can do it up in this country but our winters can be tough enough that you can't count on doing it the majority of years. :?
Click to expand...

It can be done, but my old cows never fail to let me know when they are dissatisfied with their grazing conditions in the wintertime. Right now I've got 49 young fall bred cows up in the hill on leftover summer grass, soapweeds, salt, mineral, and good fresh water. These were treated quite well, with cake and hay, during the sixty days when the bulls were with them (from November 1st until January 1st). Even during most of January they got some rough swamp hay, but about the first of February they were trailed up into the hills where they now reside.

Comparing our Sandhills grass to the hard country grass in South Dakota, the hard grass has a lot more punch to it. Since we have an abundance of poor quality swamp grass hay, it is my preference to feed this to cows in the cold winter months instead of making them grub for a living out in the hills. Everyone sees things differently, but this is my take on the situation.
Click to expand...

That's what i was wondering. The swamp/slough grass here makes not bad cow feed as hay but not very good dormant season graze.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Is the grass in the sand hills a strong enough grass that if a rancher had some stock piled forage the cows could winter on it with just a bit of protein supp?

We can do it up in this country but our winters can be tough enough that you can't count on doing it the majority of years. :?
Click to expand...

I was wondering the same thing myself.
 
Look for research from the Gudmunson Sandhills Lab, part of UNL. They have been doing research for quite a few years on winter grazing, instead of feeding. They developed several different ways to deal with forage quality, and incidentally they are the researchers that provided a lot of the information on May-June calving that we used when we were in the process of making that decision.
 
My take on it is that every ranch and paddock is different. Take clippings of stockpiled pastures and test it. If it's good enough for maintaining a cow, graze. If the snow comes like it has this winter, you better have feed to fall back on - and equipment to get it to them. I could push my cows and be making them graze in the hills this year through 3' or more of snow. How many opens would I have come June? Who knows? How many can I afford? Not many.

Some would argue that after a few generations of doing that with beef cows a type would "evolve" that is able to do it no matter how bad the winters, and still breed back. I believe a type would evolve that could survive any winter. Breeding back is another issue entirely.

I know this - Mother Nature doesn't care how many opens she has. Her herd is all about survival. Mine is about making a living unfortunately, and in the real world populations of deer, elk, moose and such, I estimate the open rate to be about 20% per year, far worse on winters like this. Who can run a sustainable business with a 20-30% decrease in sales?
 
I guess I should have said that there are still lots of guys that do mostly a range and cake operation. You get down towards the Dismal river, and they winter graze a bunch. Back in the late 70s, I know of lots of guys that got themselves in trouble, because of too nice of winters, then we had some REAL bad ones. I know one outfit, that had enough hay to last a week, going into the winter, and we got snow in early November, and it never left until late March. There was enough snow that you couldn't get a truck anywhere close to the ranch. It was an out of area owner, and he told the hired man that the hay he had, was all he was going to get. Neighbors helped as much as they could, but they still lost close to a thousand head. We picked corn right in front of the planter that year.
 
Was that the winter of 85-86 WP? I'll never forget that one. The summer was a drought. The corn frosted about the middle of September so wouldn't dry down. What was there was about 45# corn then the snow hit the first week of Nov. Couldn't get the corn out till April. Fed cows for 6 months that year. That was my first year out of college and I was seriously wondering about my choice of careers. :?
 
I was raised on the head of the dismal. The thing you want to remember is that country has huge high rolling hills with valleys... Huge sandhills that the cattle have made trials running sideways slowly going down because the hills are too tall to come straight down on.. We didn't feed our cows till we started to calf in March.. With the storms those big ole hills are alot of protection and you would see maybe 20s to 30s cows holed up in a draw in the hills just as fine as a frog hair... Yeah we did cake them everyother day.. I'm thinking if I remember right three pounds a cow.. Cows prolly averaged 1100 pounds... South of Whitman is a whole differant sandhill country..
 
I think it was in 77-78? Don't really remember, other then my Dad was going to a Veterans class at Dunning, and he didn't make it home for 3 days. As the crow flies, we were only about 20 miles away, and we never had a bit of snow. Mom always gave him a hard time, because where he ended up staying, was a single gals house. If I remember right, there were 4 or 5 guys stuck there. I would have been in either 8th or 9th grade, and at the time we were back grounding close to 2000 head of calves, on corn silage, and rye pasture.
 
LazyWP said:
I think it was in 77-78? Don't really remember, other then my Dad was going to a Veterans class at Dunning, and he didn't make it home for 3 days. As the crow flies, we were only about 20 miles away, and we never had a bit of snow. Mom always gave him a hard time, because where he ended up staying, was a single gals house. If I remember right, there were 4 or 5 guys stuck there. I would have been in either 8th or 9th grade, and at the time we were back grounding close to 2000 head of calves, on corn silage, and rye pasture.
Click to expand...

My guess would be the winter of 1978-1979. That was the longest coldest snowiest winter in my memory, and it lasted from early November well into the spring. You'd break a trail to feed hay, and then would have to break the trail again to get back home. Every day was about the same. One old hired hand on a local ranch said, "Everywhere you drive there are three tracks--a track on each side where the tires went, and one in the middle where the differential drags."

There was a multitude of jackrabbits that winter. I was still single and helping on my dad's Hereford ranch at the time. One day I had made a circular route feeding stacked hay, with a 1066 IHC two-wheel drive tractor pulling a Lehman stackmover and a hydra-fork to pitch the hay. I got stuck at the "top" of the circle, so started out walking back home. Mileage wise, it was considerably closer to go the short way, but the snow was so deep I had about decided to go back around the way I'd originally come with the feed outfit. All of a sudden I hit firm footing. It was a well-packed rabbit trail going from the irrigated alfalfa field near where I was stuck, heading over the hills to the pile of ear corn that was near the buildings. As long as I stayed on that rabbit trail, the footing was good, but if I stepped to either side the snow was soft and deep.

Since it was so hard to get around to feed, we were feeding yearlings a diet of straight alfalfa. That is the wrong thing to do. Those calves got very washy, and some ended up with huge manure balls frozen on their tails. We packed hot water, and would catch these calves, hold them down, and use the water to get the basketball sized balls of frozen manure washed off. Alfalfa is good stuff, but only in moderation and fed with wild hay.

Oh, the memories. I was dating Peach at the time, and the thought of our upcoming June wedding helped get me through. :wink: :-)
 
Soapweed said:
LazyWP said:
I think it was in 77-78? Don't really remember, other then my Dad was going to a Veterans class at Dunning, and he didn't make it home for 3 days. As the crow flies, we were only about 20 miles away, and we never had a bit of snow. Mom always gave him a hard time, because where he ended up staying, was a single gals house. If I remember right, there were 4 or 5 guys stuck there. I would have been in either 8th or 9th grade, and at the time we were back grounding close to 2000 head of calves, on corn silage, and rye pasture.
Click to expand...

My guess would be the winter of 1978-1979. That was the longest coldest snowiest winter in my memory, and it lasted from early November well into the spring. You'd break a trail to feed hay, and then would have to break the trail again to get back home. Every day was about the same. One old hired hand on a local ranch said, "Everywhere you drive there are three tracks--a track on each side where the tires went, and one in the middle where the differential drags."

There was a multitude of jackrabbits that winter. I was still single and helping on my dad's Hereford ranch at the time. One day I had made a circular route feeding stacked hay, with a 1066 IHC two-wheel drive tractor pulling a Lehman stackmover and a hydra-fork to pitch the hay. I got stuck at the "top" of the circle, so started out walking back home. Mileage wise, it was considerably closer to go the short way, but the snow was so deep I had about decided to go back around the way I'd originally come with the feed outfit. All of a sudden I hit firm footing. It was a well-packed rabbit trail going from the irrigated alfalfa field near where I was stuck, heading over the hills to the pile of ear corn that was near the buildings. As long as I stayed on that rabbit trail, the footing was good, but if I stepped to either side the snow was soft and deep.

Since it was so hard to get around to feed, we were feeding yearlings a diet of straight alfalfa. That is the wrong thing to do. Those calves got very washy, and some ended up with huge manure balls frozen on their tails. We packed hot water, and would catch these calves, hold them down, and use the water to get the basketball sized balls of frozen manure washed off. Alfalfa is good stuff, but only in moderation and fed with wild hay.

Oh, the memories. I was dating Peach at the time, and the thought of our upcoming June wedding helped get me through. :wink: :-)
Click to expand...

It's funny how different the weather is depending on where ya live. In 1977 we were in a terrible drought. We had received about a third of our normal moisture which is 13 inches on a good year. Things were pretty bleak in our crops and our range. Some folks were forced to cut numers by over half. Our little church held a special fast and we all participated. We had a father and sons outing planned which we do every spring. Just an overnight trip to the mountain where we visit and eat and stay over night and then head home after an early breakfast. It was decided to break our fast at our breakfast. Our church leader gave a wonderful prayer that morning as we gathered for breakfast. As a nine year old even I was impressed with his heartfelt prayer to bless our food and plead for moisture. By 9 am the black clouds were gathering, and as we packed up our camp the rain started to fall. We all got soaking wet while packing and you never saw so many happy faces ever! We had several guys get pretty stuck as we made our way off the mountain. Nobody minded the mud and the shoveling and the sliding around. We all returned to our homes quite sure that prayers were answered! It rained for the better part of the rest of the week. The drought was broken, crops were saved, cattle didnt get sold and folks gave lots and lots of thanks! :D '77 holds fond memories for me. :D
 
:D I was just over a year old when the snow started to fly in 78. :D :D I was old enough to remember the winter in the 80's that Big Swede was talking about. We had an 8ft windbreak fence on the north side of the corrals, my sister and I could sled over the fence and down through the corral for quite aways. We also tunneled through the drift on the south side and we could stand up and walk the width of the corral up next to the windbreak.
An older gentleman told me that the winter of 78-79 wouldn't have been that bad if they would have had the kind of equipment that they do today. I can't help but wonder how true that statement is, of course you would have had to been able to afford that equipment.
 
That's kind of an average Saskatchewan winter :wink: You manage for the average put prepare for the worst. I think most outfits anywhere can increase their grazing season a bit with the will and a some selection. You manage for the average but prepare for the worst.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Is the grass in the sand hills a strong enough grass that if a rancher had some stock piled forage the cows could winter on it with just a bit of protein supp?

We can do it up in this country but our winters can be tough enough that you can't count on doing it the majority of years. :?
Click to expand...

Back to the original question, there is another consideration. All the "stock-piled" grass set aside for winter use takes away that much summer pasture. With summer grazing rates at from $30 to $36 per month, and hay available for $50 per ton, somehow it doesn't make a lot of sense to be short of summer pasture and skimp the cows during the winter on low quality grazing when good hay can be purchased economically.
 
This brings up old memories.......

I was in college in Omaha and called the govenor on our pay phone at the dorms. I can still remember the operator asking for more coins as I talked... :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: Now days that would be considered a prank phone call....
 

Latest posts

Back
Top