Grazing Cover Crops and Native Pasture: A Rancher's Practical Approach

0:08 Thank you Keith. I need to do a couple acknowledgements before I start. I'd like to introduce my wife to you. Nancy, would you please stand up? I always say she makes life great, but it's far more than that. She's my partner, my best friend, my confidant, and the one that I bounce ideas off of, and also the one that once in a while I regret to say I fuss at, but anyway that's life. Nancy, I very much appreciate you.

0:30 We ranch in Hughes and Macintosh counties. I'm a fifth generation rancher not from that area but from Northeastern Oklahoma. Relocated there in the 80s after college and actually took a job running a ranch for another family, and over the years that ranch has just grown and grown and got quite sizable. Nancy and I have invested in property in the same area. The Lord blessed us with Nancy coming through as a DVM from OSU back in the 90s.

0:59 We pretty well just fully graze cattle. We're a cow-calf stocker deal. We raise our own replacement heifers. That's a little bit about our background. We just pretty much ranch. Being able to grow forage is of utmost importance to us. I'm like Terry, I don't like to buy fertilizer. I don't like to run the spray rigs. I like to graze cattle and I really like to just stretch electric fence and move herds. I like the sound of large mobs of cattle going into a new paddock and biting that grass off. How many y'all know what that sounds like? Is that not cool, followed by that.

1:34 You need to be thinking not everybody gets to do that. Okay, so let's go on to the next one. What we're going to talk to you a little bit about is utilization, because that's what we've got. How are we going to utilize this forage, being whatever kind of forage it is. Okay, well we have very seasonal forage diversity in our operations. We are heavily balanced towards warm season forages that meets the protein and crude and TDN requirements of lactating cow until the fall. And we have a fall glut. We have a winter deficit to where it will not. And we kind of rely on introducing small grains and turnips. We subdivide pastures and we have rotational grazed for several years with pretty large herds of cattle.

2:19 We experimented with some summer cover crops, and that's how we first kind of started going this way when we droughted out on some sandy soils that had some Bermudagrass monocultures, of which I visited with Allan quite a bit today about these Bermudagrass monocultures in our area are a problem. Okay, they came to be because of a lot of the cropping ground came out of peanuts and row crops in our area, and it was a lot of very aggressive promotion through the soil conservation agencies in our counties that put these in. And a lot of people put a lot of Bermuda grass out. We did too. And on sandy soil it just would not hold up to those drought conditions. And therefore, that was our first experience with a summer no-till cover crop, and I was utterly amazed at.

3:13 How that crop yielded with no input. Ain't that a gruesome sight? Are we animal grazers just a little bit different? That's millet seeds in a dung pie and I thought that was kind of neat. That was some high density stocking. It probably wasn't much over 150,000 lb per acre for us, but it was a pretty large group of cattle that were allowed to graze on those sandy soils prior to introducing or no-tilling in cool season forages in the fall. And that was some of the residue that was left. Those cows grazing that summer cover crop.

3:55 Some key points that you know, water points are an issue. The electric fences, everybody's probably got some way of putting those up. We kind of use an old four-wheeler and just kind of put it up as you're driving, real quick, not a big deal. Kind of like that stock density, get those urine and manure piles scattered out. That's some of the residue that we left. You know, and I, Alan, I had mentioned to you earlier, but you, we really don't have very many people in our area that we can have these kind of discussions with. When I talk to somebody there are very few people that are experienced with no-till, and when you talk to them about well, now what can I expect going through that kind of residue, I've heard all kinds of stories from the soil. Oh, it'll flip your seeds out of the ground. You know, competition's.

4:39 Going to get you, you won't get any sunlight, you're not going to have good germination. I'm of the opinion after watching this, I don't worry about it and I am thankful to have that residue and it is not an issue, but nobody told me that. This is just—we just try to make use of what we've got. Everybody has different systems and you know, you read all kinds of things from how to set up grazing patterns, paddocks, how to do shifts, what kind of densities, what kind of groups.

5:06 I'll tell you what, this slide right here just shows the stuff that we have and we're just trying to make it work and that's how we kind of do everything. From how we handle our paddock setups, I used to calculate how much grass was standing, what kind of animals I had there, what the requirement was, what kind of residue I wanted left, and go at it at that angle. And you know what works probably far superior? Go out there and look at those cattle, look at the fill on them, see how content they are, see what they're biting off first, see what they're doing, and then change it tomorrow to make it better. It is not rocket science.

5:45 Cool season cover crops. This was a cool season mix that was no tilled out and it was put in basically—it's not a summer fallow because we just do not have bare ground. Bare ground, you can't graze very many cattle on bare ground. I don't know how it is out here, but it don't work well where.

6:03 We're from so we want something on that soil all the time. This will turn to crab grass if we have enough moisture. After that it will turn to a fox tail and nothing in my world eats a fox tail and I don't know why fox tail is there. That's one of those things I don't understand. And then we'll go through there and I'm not a proponent of glypho. I wish I could do it better but I do glypho these acres and then I'll run a no-till drill in and we'll put in this cool season cover crop mix. This is kind of what the residue look like. That's after we've done a burndown on it.

6:42 Now I want to give you a glimpse of kind of what we do. Grazing animals is what we do. You cannot graze them if you don't have forage. We're spread off over a lot of country and we have a lot of different kinds of forages and we've kind of tried to put together a forage bridge that through a calendar year lets us arrive at annual grazing. Right here would be some native grass country that we rotate through with fall with spring cabin pairs. And let's see, I have, I've had large groups. We've grazed groups as large as 1,800 head in one herd. It would be a combined group of calves, yearlings, bred heifers. We do have fall. We do have some fall calves starting last year. We usually merchandise those but the Lord blessed us with, as you know, lots of stock water last year and because of that lots of grass and we kind of hung on.

7:34 To some inventory, kind of manage our cows a little bit differently. You know, those are a pretty good revenue source, and in our country, probably the thing that brings you the least amount of value is a thin suckdown cow in the fall time of the year. And we kind of manage those cows—we carry them on over, we graze them through there, and we send them out to Hereford, Texas and sell them across the scale, hang them on the rail, and sell them that way on our cow program.

8:01 Want to talk to you a little bit about a new day. The cost of operation drives everything—cost to supplement, cost to cover crops. I know we've mentioned it today about how that cost really is, but it's a little different in my application, and I'll tell you why. I have choices. I have choices as to how I can utilize that land and what that land produces, and I need to make those choices wisely so as not to spend too much in certain areas I don't need to spend on. So that's kind of how I approach this.

8:33 Now I have a nutritional deficit in the winter, and we could feed cubes and we could feed hay. We could feed cubes and leave cows out on native range. We are blessed to be apart for multiple years with an internship program through the Noble Foundation and have had some wonderful young people come through there. We have no problem finding them something to do. Last year, one of our interns was assigned a task: I want you to evaluate from an economic standpoint what would.

9:04 Be the most economically feasible way for us to winter these cows and I gave him some constraints. One, we could think about a cover crop scenario to where we limit how we move cows on and off. We could think of a hay in a cube deal and we could think of a protein supplement range cube out on native range. And what we found was the cover crop deal was not the cheapest.

9:30 But I'll tell you what, when it's me and Nancy and one other employee and our kids helping, and spread over about 15,000 deed acres, and last year last summer last winter we wintered about 1,500 cows, I would a lot rather grazeazy cows and move them from one paddock to the next as I have mechanic and fight the mud and start tractors and feed trucks and put the miles on those things. And it just works a whole lot better for us—quality of life.

10:05 That is a mature season cover crop mix late in the winter, early in the spring, and Jim Johnson helped us to drive at the seed mix. That was a beautiful field we rotated through that with a nice set of replacement heifers all winter, did excellent on that. That's the driveway going to our shop. That's just volunteer crimson clover that we have kind of managed. It's probably been put out I really don't know, it could have been 20 years ago, and we just kind of manage that to where that's kind of what that clover looks like. It's a pretty sight in the spring and I enjoy that when you see.

12:10 Christmas and everything and got out of the pickup and got ready to go and he said with a puzzled look on his face he looked at me and said well now I guess I'll let you out you can just get out and go do whatever it was you were doing. He didn't have a clue what I was doing and his life was a blur he was running around the feed truck sitting out hay and cubing everything and fighting the mud.

12:32 I have been there limit grazing cool season small grains residue height we like to leave if we can at all we like to leave some of that wheat and some of that rye and come back to it for a second grazing or a third grazing it's just kind of like having money in the bank. We have done this very successfully in the past when we bailed a lot more hay and it was easier managing it wasn't it Nancy when we fed hay but we we've used this year we're using adjacent stockpiled forage for their roughage and when we fed hay in those areas we would just unroll however many pounds you wanted to feed for that size of herd.

13:10 And they would go out and graze for a couple hours on the green stuff and come into that and they would just almost move themselves and it was just really easy I'll tell you what it's a little more challenging now when where they're going is the best it's going to be for another twenty something hours so I have some challenges in that regard. We have chose to kind of we've been on this program since the first day or so of December cow body condition is.

13:36 Probably a good solid five we see later in the year than most folks do. Try to take advantage of that nutritional flush to increase body condition prior to breeding. That's just naturally given. We'll probably wean these spring calves in February is kind of what the plan is.

13:56 The help I kind of mention what that is. These are a couple of helpers I was tying up some electric fence and changing things a little bit after we moved to mob one day, and I looked over there and there are those two girls were just sitting there watching me like what are we going to do next. You know, and they usually go with us and work horseback or off a four-wheeler and really good help, and they hardly ever complain.

14:16 I want to talk about a few things. I wanted to give you a glimpse of what we do. One of the things we do is we burn. Boy, I'll tell you what, we spent a lot of time talking about organic matter in a group like this and you're thinking why in the world would someone burn up their residue. You know, our country is not all flat and it is not all really good topsoil. We ranch on a lot of acres that are thin soiled, sand, rock covered land that you can't get over with anything but your feet or a horse. A lot of acres are that way, and you know one thing that country wants to grow is bushes and Eastern red cedar. We started—the drought of '11 was one of the hardest times of my life, Terry. I have to disagree with you.

15:06 Understand your concern. I can make it in the mud because I can buy a snorkel and goggles, but when it's dry I can hardly make it. That was the hardest time in my life. We burned several thousand acres. We kind of do a control burn 3 to 4,000 acres on a 3 to 4 year rotation. We burned a sizable block of that land in the spring before that drought of '11. That was a year we had an 1,800 head mob. They grazed across 10 miles of country. When they went into that area it didn't take them very long to be dissatisfied, and it didn't take Nancy and I very long to realize, 'Man, this burning deal is something else. We better rethink this.' And it scared us enough we put a quit on the burn deal until last year, and that may have been one of the worst things I've done because it's caused a brush increase.

16:06 Without that fire suppression, it's caused a little bit of a red cedar increase. And if you can manage those prescribed burns successfully and safely, they are a cheap and effective way to keep that brush with some pressure on it. They just really are. So all things said, we've learned a little bit. I've talked to lots of people about what burning does to that root on those big bluestem and little bluestem and Indian grass plants. I'm of the opinion that it does not damage that root system. It recharges very well unless you have the stress of an additional drought, and that's like a double whammy in the same.

16:50 Okay, this is a unique shot. You will probably not guess what that is. That is out the window of a 1946 Tailor Craft, probably somewhere around 1,500 foot, and it's looking down on last year's control burn. What you're seeing right there, those aren't specks in a Petri dish, and that's not fungi. What that is, that's looking through the window at that plane, and that's looking at brush piles where a Marshall tree saw was run on a half section and the brush was piled with a grapple. We just let that stuff cure out and just let it lay there, and then when it comes around in that rotation, just burn that pasture like you burn everything else. Look what those brush piles look like. Those are ash piles.

17:39 That's just one way that we put a little pressure on that brush and try to clean it up a little bit. This is my last slide. This is NY's new puppy. She got about a year and a half ago. That's old Penny Winkle. Old Pennywinkles had a tough day beside the shoot. That was pre-checking day on heirs, and she got tied over there to view and observe from a distance. That little old gal, she just kind of sat there back and forth, wanting to get into everything just that whole day. She spent a whole day in the mud, but she's glad to be here. I'm thankful to do this, and I'm thankful that God allows me to, because it's a stewardship issue. I want to leave this thing better than I found it, and He's the one that I don't want to disappoint. Thank you all for having me.