Grazing Forage Mixes on Row Crop Ground: A Cash Flow Alternative to Corn

0:04 Hey everybody this is Keith birds with green cover and I'm here with one of our favorite farmers Jeff Stefan from the Crofton Nebraska area. Jeff has been a seed grower a customer and a friend of green covers for many years now and I asked Jeff the other day if he would be willing to just have a little chat about how he's utilizing his livestock as a big part of his operation and potentially even using them using some of his crop ground acres to be harvested through the cattle and not through a combine which is a pretty big deal right now with the current prices of commodities.

0:43 So we're just going to have a quick conversation about that concept how Jeff sees it working in his area on his ground and also some of the interest that some of his neighbors are starting to show in a similar concept. Jeff thanks for taking the time to join us here it's always great to visit with you and just tell us a little bit about you know how you're utilizing livestock in your operation and even to the fact of not harvesting some of

1:06 Your acres with a combine. Yes, currently we most of our cattle come in the winter time and they're mainly grazed on what we all stockpile cover crop after our spring crop, our small grain crops. And you'll have some quite substantial biomass out there by the time they'll probably come in November, and they'll be there all winter. And that we've been doing that for quite a few years.

1:39 The last few years we started playing around with just designating a field to graze cows in it. Corn works really well, you know, just use we were just using like a Heritage corn or a brown mid rib corn where we would paddock graze cows for the whole year on a particular field. After the corn is formed ears and made green, usually we'll start right about at tassel. You know, it's like when the pastures are really running out, and if we'll also graze maybe some spring crops, some oats and peas, and we'll start before and I think you probably need to start them before the ears there so they.

2:31 Get acclimated to the corn. Yeah, good point. And we'll start paddock grazing them. Then, you know, most of your biomass is there at tassel. And then as they go along, we'll graze them all the way into full maturity when it's starting to dry down. And by the time they get to that point, they get really good at going into a new paddock and taking all the corn off. And at that point it doesn't affect them anymore. And the calves are getting big, and even they will, you know, take the ears off. We get some really nice looking calves that way.

3:08 On corn, but recently the interest is if I'm going to use a rotation, you know, if I want to rotate to corn, would it be better if I just put in the diversity and get more legumes and get a 12-way mix in there instead? Because, you know, here's my chance to really charge up my rotation. So this coming year, part of this—it's an 80. We have a small herd that we can run cows on. Part of it is already drilled to oats and peas, and that'll be, you know, like an...

3:46 Early graze. And I should also add there's a pasture hooked on these usually for flexibility, you know, to run them from pasture to the crop field.

3:58 So the plan then would be we'll probably graze a little pasture and then we'll go to oats and peas. But meanwhile there's going to be a large part of the field we're going to drill it to just a warm season—well, not a warm season, a mix, a 12-way. And I know I ran it through your calculator, trying to pick out the best things and I have like twelve different varieties: peas and vetch, sunam cow peas. I'm going to be rotating at the corn so I'm hoping to really, you know, charge this ground up. And pearl millets, some BMR short sorghums, collards, safflower, sunflower, flax, buckwheat.

4:44 Sounds like it'll work, sounds like a virtual buffet out there to me. So if we are limited on moisture, that's going to be the first thing I drill in that part of the field because I want to see if we can get the biomass anywhere as close to like say.

5:03 150 bushel corn crop, you know, could you get that much biomass? Yeah. And you know the thought is, you know, will they be able to utilize a half of that total biomass dry matter? And that's the numbers I'm using if, and because if they can, right now pasture in our area is $2.30 a day.

5:32 Because, you know, we've been plowing up all the pasture. There's very little left. Yeah, there's a really high demand for it. Our joke now is the pasture is an exercise lot between corn stocks. So and I would guess that $2.30 doesn't buy you a lot of high quality forage because those, they've probably been abused pretty hard over the years. They're slick pastures that the water runs off. They're basically broken.

6:01 So by the end of June, I mean the quality is really hurting. Then you're basically hoping to get them through to where you can get them on corn stocks. That's a long time to the end of June. Corn stocks, if you can get them on a warm.

6:23 Season crop at that point, you're gaining weight on your calves. I mean, they're just doing that much better. Yeah, so that will, you know, and plus I want to be able to get some numbers on that.

6:36 So you're taking out of corn production planning a very diverse cover crop mix, get as much biomass as possible, try to keep the cows in good condition, put weight on the calves until you can go to other options later. So yeah, it'll be really interesting. We can do a followup to this video later on in the season when you have some of your numbers—how much biomass, how many grazing days, etc. etc.

7:03 One question I was going to ask: have you considered kind of combining the two things you talked about, maybe plant your corn in say 90 inch row or something and then plant this diverse mix in between? Have you done some of that?

7:18 Yeah, and so I'm glad you brought that up. So we have done, well I've done 60 inch rows with interseeding. I still don't get quite as much forage as I'd like.

7:33 You know, obviously we're harvesting the corn. My nephew's plan this year is he has a very degraded field, and it's some school ground he's renting. He wants to strip crop corn and multispecies cover crop. He's like, okay, I'll get at least corn on half of the field. The rest is going to be to a multispecies full season mix. And he's going to do it the width of his sprayer. He says he doesn't want to Mickey Mouse around too much. He'll have the advantage of those edge rows on the corn. It won't be near as good as when you go narrower strips.

8:21 They have a lot of cows, and the plan is to combine the corn early and send them in there. One thing we see when we graze our cover crop acres, normally we will have a cornstock field right beside it. And it's interesting to see after a few days of that really hot ration, you'll see them out in the corn stocks. We like watching them balance. So their thought is here, you know, we can put them on this.

10:10 Know which is legitimate but if you're grazing the whole thing anyway right, you know a much cheaper corn hybrid, it's like what you were doing with your open pollinated corn and just grazing the whole field but you're grazing the corn on the ear along with this diverse cover crop mix that might be, you know, best of both worlds scenario.

10:35 Yeah yeah. So I have and what I love about it is these are a lot of young producers that have been talking about doing this and have been asking me questions. We have quite a few of them and it's been more just the last few weeks. Their interest is they've been running the numbers on, we have cows, we have enough cows up here so they're like if we would just plant some oats and peas and graze and then and then see what happens after that, you know, plan a mix.

11:05 A lot of times, you know, if they don't have much experience with it their thought is like, is always like well what's the one thing I can plant after that, you know, the magic bullet. You know, they want to plant like tough grass or this and they want to hype it again and

11:17 I'm like, did you ever think of just throwing a whole bunch of stuff out there and putting cows on it? Well, yeah, at $2.30 a day good biomass. I bet that cash flow is better than corn for sure. You know, because there's nobody getting rich growing a commodity crop this year, right? And that's I think that's the reason why we're seeing this late surge on oats demand here is they're starting to run those numbers. It just costs so much less money to put in a small grain, you know, and go from there.

11:53 Yeah, so I just estimated the numbers. Like say 100, say marginal soils, 150 bushel corn yields. If you just figure the half the dry matter, it was like $550 worth of dry matter, figuring 30 PBS for a cow-calf pair a day, a dry matter. It came out to like $500 worth of grazing, and you know our cash rent's about 280 on dry land, and that'd be quite a bit for some of this ground we're talking about. But I'm not, I'm to the point where I'm...

12:36 Ready to try it on irrigated. Yeah, well, I mean, because you can grow that so much cheaper than, you know, a full corn crop because, you know, you said the majority of the biomass is made at tassel. You probably have only used 50 to 60% of your water and maybe 50 to 60% of your nutrients. So if you run short of water, run short of nutrients, still got the biomass right.

13:07 And in all these discussions we're having, it's we're not even talking about the benefit of the following year or if it's a multispecies for years, where that gains with the weed control and everything else. So I mean, that's the exciting thing about it is finally getting some diversity into the system. Economically, you know, yeah, no, that's there's so many benefits. There's, you know, it's less risk, it's less inputs. And don't do it on the whole farm, you know, it would be silly to do that. You know, you probably don't have enough cattle or enough management to do.

13:50 It, but you know the purpose that I wanted to have this conversation is I hope we can encourage some other folks who are watching this to take a look at, you know, think outside the box. You know, too many of us are just inside that corn soy bean box, and when money's—you know, when the profits are good, that's a good box to be in. But you know, when things get like they are now, you need to start poking outside those edges.

14:15 So it's exciting to hear that you've got some young guys in your area that are taking an interest. Like I said, maybe we'll do a followup this winter. Would love to hear how your experiments or your trials are coming out, as well as the ones that they're doing there too on the kind of the strip corn, strip right type thing.

14:34 So yeah, we would love to have you, you know, help collect some of that data, maybe even share some pictures this winter, how some of that went. We can do a follow-up webinar. So Jeff, thanks so much for taking the time to share some of this information with us. I think it's a great opportunity for people to not only really improve the health of one of your poor performing fields on your farm, but also have the potential to turn that into some additional cash flow this spring. So thanks everybody for watching and we'll talk to you next time.