Extending the Grazing Season and MIG Rotational Grazing Plans

[WildRoseBeef]

Since I've been doing some planning on making the farm into a cow-calf operation that focuses on management intensive grazing (i.e. rotational grazing) as well as going year-round on grazing as well, I came across this link a while back that has helped me decide what winter grazing method to go with.

Year Round GRazing (scroll down and click on link below under "Year Round Grazing Handbook")

Breed of cattle is also important to decide on which will do best on grass alone--and I'm caught between three breeds I'm quite partial to: Red Angus, Hereford and Shorthorn. All three are known to do well on grass alone. Thoughts?

Now with MIG also comes water systems to implement. I've already got an idea of where to run water lines so that cattle don't have very far to go for water, but the types of waterers I'm a little stuck on...I'll have to do some research there.

There are a few areas of riparian areas that I want to fence off for wildlife habitat and to only use for times when grass gets low. The more grassy areas around the part of the farm where the steers have been set to graze (the small groups that were singled out to eat down the grass), I don't know what I should do with, whether I should use that as a possible area for horses or do the same like we did in the past and have a few cattle to keep the grass down while the rest of the herd is out on the quarter.

Anyway, that's what I plan to do with the farm in half a nutshell.

Questions? Thoughts?

 

[wynedot55]

heres somethings you need todo as well.decide what cool/winter season grasses you need to estb.then how big are your grazing cells gonna be.an can they graze in snow.have enough hay to feed till theres grass.have freezeproof waterers.if it gets to bad to graze you can bring the cows to the corrals.youd prolly want to go with both hereford an shorthorn cows.how much pasture an hay ground do you have.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

I've heard to go with the grasses that are best growing right now, like the two species of brome (meadow brome, smooth brome), as well as kentucky bluegrass, fescue and maybe some wheatgrass, in order of importance/commonness.

The grazing cells can vary in size, since they would be fenced with single-wired poly wire electric fence, but the larger paddocks themselves would range from 30 acres to 50, depending on how the water plan and the use of the fences that are around now turn out. So in other words, it'd be like strip grazing, where within a paddock of say 40 acres the cattle would be allowed to graze 10' or 20' depending on the amount of forage available at a time, with a back fence so that they don't back graze the stuff they were just moved off of.

The snow depends on how deep it gets; bale grazing can be good for this since we rarely get a depth of snow in flat areas more than 4' deep. There's nothing wrong with having cattle to eat snow either, there's been operations that do that; yet fresh water should be available in the mean time when the snow gets hard and crusty.

Having enough hay to feed or enough winter feed is also important that I would have to calculate out, but of course it also depends on how much forage has grown during the year and whether I need to either buy hay or sell some animals. I hope I would have to do neither.

The thing is is that I have two quarter sections to work with: about 320 acres at the maximum. I want to put most of it into pasture, at least the stuff that isn't in pasture already; the other part of the 2 quarters I can't is a few acres set aside for handling facilities and the home acreage on the home quarter as well as a neighbor's acreage on the other quarter. Right now we have about 100 acres put into pasture and feedlot in the home quarter, and about 60 or so acres set aside for hay and silage. The rest is all cropland. It is that cropland (as well as hay) that I want to use for pasture, as well as hay. So in other words the part or parts that I can't get the cattle to graze in time before it all goes to seed (or flower, whichever you want to call it) I can cut for hay. This will be apparent when I start with only 3 or 5 3-in-1 cow-calf pairs. Perhaps it would also be apparent when I build my herd up to the projected number of 80 or more.

I know there are neighbors around that have Shorthorn and Hereford herds, so I do plan on looking into those for possible foundation stock.

 

[jhm47]

Just how cold does it get in Alberta? Here in SD, we often get several weeks of weather where it doesn't get above 0, and the nights often drop to -30 to -40. I can tell you that our cows wouldn't survive by just grazing in that. If you get 4' of snow, your cows won't have any chance to graze. Just walking around in 4' of snow is a challenge (believe me, I've been doing it for 60 years), let alone trying to graze in it. Put extreme cold and 4' of snow together, and those poor cows will be lucky to be able to eat enough to survive even with the best hay. Please be prepared with an emergency supply of hay and silage for your cows.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Also I have learned that while grass only can work you need your soils up to snuff-not just par. Personnally, I would recommend you keep an open mind to the fact that there maybe issues with one to all that you will need to supplement something more.

On the snow for water, I'm not sold on it and would hesitate on it. Snow contains a variety of moisture in it. Most of what we had this last winter was dry. It would take a lot more of it to keep them hydrated than a wet snow. I keep water tubs and would recommend that anyone with animals should.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

kstavan is in Canada and I know they do some grass only feeding. He would have probably be able to help you with questions. I do know he recommends to keep an open mind about feeding supplements if your cattle are not thriving.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

I said rarely gets that deep, the most its gotten is 2' to 3'. JHM, you're forgetting where I'm from: CANADA, the land of COLD and SNOW....; I live ~150 km north of Edmonton, Alberta. We're not in prairie where there is lots of deep snow like it is in SD, but even then I can't go without saying that we don't get deep snow either, nor nasty blizzards. Which means that we get winter days where it very rarely gets above 0 C, most days its -10 to -20 C with nights going below -30 C, as well as some cold snaps the days stay around -35 C with nights going below -45, sometimes getting to -50. And yes I've walked through deep snow as well in most winters for as long as I remember, it is not fun. But the article that I posted have producers that graze cattle through cold winters like that and are able to do so with enough planning and flexibility. Did you read it, btw? For some darned reason I couldn't post the direct link to the article that is clickable... :/

No silage: just hay, with minerals as well. I thought I mentioned that I wanted to do bale grazing, and not stockpiling? Stockpiling would only happen when the pastures have gone to dormancy and the snow is still not that deep. When it gets deep or when the forecast calls for more snow going beyond their level of grazing its time to move them to a better area where they readily have access to feed; i.e. hay bales. Of course this also depends on forage availability if I can afford to have a pasture ready for them to do any stockpile grazing.

But I do agree with you JHM, it is always safe to have a Plan B and Plan C, and if at all, a Plan D.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Temp conversion chart--We're dealing with both C and F here so I thought I would make things easier by reposting it here.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Also I have learned that while grass only can work you need your soils up to snuff-not just par. Personnally, I would recommend you keep an open mind to the fact that there maybe issues with one to all that you will need to supplement something more.

On the snow for water, I'm not sold on it and would hesitate on it. Snow contains a variety of moisture in it. Most of what we had this last winter was dry. It would take a lot more of it to keep them hydrated than a wet snow. I keep water tubs and would recommend that anyone with animals should.

Yes, I realize that. I know that soil tests need to be done if any improvements are needed to be done on the current pastures as well as on the proposed seeded areas.

Flexibility is also important with this type of operation, that I also realize. I am keeping an open mind to learn as much as I can and plan accordingly. With that I can't say that I will be having an 80-head cow-calf herd (it's hard to say until I get there), because according to some calculations done the carrying capacity for a quarter section under fair grazing conditions is 15 AU. Under excellent conditions its 32 AU. But I think that is totally off because if it was that then we wouldn't be able to sustain and have a great stocker steer herd of 80+, which translates to ~40 cc pairs on just one quarter section. That's why I say that I can possibly do 80 pairs or more, since with rotational grazing you can have a higher # of head on a nonconventional system compared to a conventional one.

There were studies done on cattle being able to eat snow. Proof:
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/faq7991
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/for8666
http://www1.foragebeef.ca/$foragebeef/frgebeef.nsf/all/ccf1020

kstavan is in Canada and I know they do some grass only feeding. He would have probably be able to help you with questions. I do know he recommends to keep an open mind about feeding supplements if your cattle are not thriving.

I hope he comes on here and gives me some pointers.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Here's the link for the Year Round Grazing Guide:

http://areca.ab.ca/sitewyze/files/YearRoundGrazingFinal5[1].pdf
It's a big file so it might take a while to come up, especially if you're on dial-up. But it's worth the read.

GRRRR...the dam link won't work...you'll have to copy and paste it to get the file to come up.