How Ashley Licking Uses Cover Crops and Rotational Grazing to Feed Cattle

0:00 Hello everyone thanks for joining us. Today I am excited for the conversation and presentation we're about to hear and take part in so it's my pleasure to introduce Ashley here. Ashley Licking is from South Central Nebraska near Guide Rock which is really close to Blade in Nebraska so basically just a neighbor for us.

0:23 She grew up on the family farm working with her dad Lanny for years. Lanny's been a Green Cover customer really since the beginning of Green Cover's founding and so the Burns and the Lickings go way back. Ashley is finishing up her schooling at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and then her and her husband will be coming back out to the farm to take over part of the operation.

0:47 It's a diverse operation with both row crop production and livestock side of the business. The livestock business is primarily breeding stock seed stock bulls and heifers. They're raising Red Angus Black Angus Hereford and composite animals and then also doing some direct marketing meat for the animals that don't make the breeding program.

1:12 So really excited to hear the presentation that Ashley's prepared for us. She's going to talk about the livestock the farm how they're using cover crops to both improve the soil but also feed the livestock and how that all is working really well for them down in South Central Nebraska.

1:30 With that I'll turn it over to Ashley. Of course if you have any questions throw them in the chat and we'll have some time for Q&A afterwards. But otherwise Ashley you can go ahead and share your screen and start your presentation.

1:44 Thank you so much Nathan. All right hi everyone as Nathan said my name is Ashley Licking. I have grown up working with Licking's Cattle Enterprise. My dad started this enterprise in 1996.

2:02 A little bit about me so the little picture of the little girl that's me. When I was little didn't know then but we do not like hay. We don't like having to use it. We like grazing our cattle on cover crops or corn stocks or on grass and we keep the hay feeding to a minimum.

2:20 But as Nathan said I plan to graduate in December as long as I pass all my classes this next semester from the University of Nebraska with a major in animal science. I've been married almost a year. We got married July 15th so that's coming up here in about a month.

2:38 My husband is going to school for Landmark Implement. He is working to be a technician at the Landmark in Red Cloud and he's going to school in Milford which is just about half an hour from Lincoln so we can live together in Lincoln and he can just go to school from there.

2:54 As Nathan said I grew up on a farming ranch near Guide Rock Nebraska. That's where I still am currently. My husband and I live in a little apartment area just during the summers until we graduate. My parents are graciously letting us stay here while we're finishing up school and then when we graduate we plan to move back about a half mile down the road.

3:15 There's another house that my dad actually grew up in and Lord willing will move in there and then take over the Family Farm and Ranch primarily the ranch side. I have six siblings. I'm the oldest girl. I have one older brother and then five little siblings and Lord willing some of them will also want to come back and farm with me.

3:36 I would love to work with my siblings. I was homeschooled through high school. All of us kids were homeschooled all the way through. My youngest sibling is 10 years old and she's being homeschooled. They do a lot of online classes through Omnibus and some other operations. I didn't do that. I just was homeschooled. I learned everything from a book.

4:00 A little bit about our operation so we're a family business centered on glorifying God and being good stewards of his creation. We view our animals as just stuff that God has given to us. It's not ours. It's stuff that God has given to us so that we can take good care of it and glorify him through that.

4:19 As Nathan said we raise and sell bulls and bred heifers annually. We sell seed stock. That's going to be my primary focus when I come back and we graze cover crops grass and stock residues with only water salt and mineral available. We do no grain, no pellets, no protein supplements and as I said no hay. We don't want to have to feed our cattle not just because that's not good to let our cows do that. We want our cows to be able to breed out of that but also I want we don't want to have to take hay out and take care of that.

4:53 There's less labor involved when you're not supplementing. We raise red and black US Hereford and composite cows. These are a few pictures from our ranch spread out over the years. One of our focuses is on longevity, and that middle picture right there is a photo of a 17-year-old cow and that's her 15th calf that she's given to us.

5:21 Our cattle, we will sell them if they ever don't breed back or lose a calf for any reason. We want to have a calf consistently for us, or else they're out of our herd. We want to keep that longevity in them.

5:36 This is a picture of my little sister, this was a few years ago. She's not quite that cute and little anymore, but this is a February planted mix. There's some canola, which is the yellow flowers, and there are big flowers that are sunflower, but this is also primarily oats. We planted this again in February and it'll be sprayed out in June once it starts to run out of steam.

6:17 These are our development bulls here. After this is sprayed out, we'll plant a second cover crop, which will be the Pearl Millet sorghum sedan and floor mix from Green Cover Seed. Green Cover Seeds floor mix has dozens of varieties and it adds great diversity. We love their floor mix. These are development bulls. This big Hereford bull was one of our herd bulls, but this was a few years ago, so he has passed on since then.

6:46 This is a photo of some of our development heifers. This is the Pearl millet and brown mid-rib sorghum sedan mix. We like to start grazing when it's at knee height and then rotate through paddocks to prevent it from getting above shoulder height. Otherwise, it gets too stemmy and you don't get quite as much for the cattle through it. We rotate them through and then regraze after 30 days of rest.

7:17 We sometimes hay it, and when we hay this, we'll hay it when it's just above shoulder height or just above chest height to keep the stems fine and to primarily have leaves. If this was planted after oats, it was planted in June. If it's planted early season, then it's planted onto corn or soybean stubble, and that'll get planted early May. We aim for it to be ready to graze mid to late June, and then we should be able to get three grazings out of it.

7:55 This is what happens when you have too much cover crop and not enough animals. This is a little bit higher than chest and shoulder height. This is well above my head. But this is what happens again when we've been grazing all of our other corn cover crops and we just haven't made it to this field yet. As you can see, they're trampling. These are our development bulls. They're trampling down a lot of the forage there, and they'll be able to eat some of it, but it's just not going to be as efficient. So this is a way better problem to have than the opposite, which is not having enough food for your animals.

8:34 Green Cover talks about it's taking care of the soil too. It's not just for the cattle. So that's taking care of the soil for the next time that we plant. This is just oats. This is a photo of one, I think that's just one of our herd cattle in a field of oats.

8:54 Our soil is our bank. We like to keep all of our money in the soil and we like to keep it there. We don't do any tilling. We try to keep all the nutrients in the soil. We try to just shave the tops off when we did hay or when we did wheat. We tried to just shave the heads off of that so that it would protect. And of course, using the cover crop mixes protects and holds the soil together too.

9:21 This slide, the one over here on the right, my dad would kill me that I have this cow here. This is something that my husband brought into the program. My husband worked for an exotic animal ranch out in the sand hills, and then we got married and he moved back here. This is what he brought back with us. This is an Indu Brahma mix, I believe. My dad can't stand her, but we're going to try to breed her this upcoming breeding season. If not, we'll just butcher her. She doesn't really have a purpose. She's just kind of cool to have in there, but she's on the Pearl millet mix with the rest of our herd.

10:09 In a bowl out there maybe and this was early seated to Alfalfa. Vernal Alfalfa was early seated out here and they're out there grazing. That they also had access to cover crops at this time as well and then the photo on the right over here this is again the Pearl Millet and this is our development bowls from that year as well.

10:33 So rotational grazing is another aspect that we like to integrate into our program. This is a I love this picture because it shows what the ground looked like right after they had been grazing on it hard and then what it looks like after it has been resting for about 30 days and so we like to graze our grass really hard, beat it down to just about nothing. Not nothing, we like to have something there but then it'll come back. We let it rest and it'll come back like that.

11:07 And so this is an example of a pasture that we're actually grazing this spring. This is a I can't remember how many acres the whole pasture is but it's eight paddocks that are about 16 acres of paddock and we have 45 pairs grazing and this is a photo of what it looks like before the cows have touched it. None of the cows have been on this paddock at all and then we try to rotate. We try to keep the cows in each paddock eight to nine days.

11:36 So this is a paddock right after it had been grazed for nine days and you can see that it is very worn down. It's been eaten a lot of, we've actually just called the cows and they're over here. They're ready to move. They're ready to go into the next pasture or paddock.

11:52 This is just after nine days of rest. This looked like this nine days ago. This paddock was grazed for nine days and has had nine days to recover and is already shooting back. This was the paddock before so this was grazed for eight days and has had 18 days to recover. This was the paddock before which was grazed for eight days and has had 26 days to recover and then this was the first paddock that they were in. This one was also grazed for eight days and this has had about 34 days to recover.

12:25 And so you see by rotating through this we still had I believe three more paddocks that hadn't been touched yet so by the time we get back to this paddock it'll be completely ready to graze again and we can just continue to loop through that circle until braiding season which is August.

12:43 Our cattle graze in tough conditions so this bottom picture is a photo of our cattle on corn stocks and we try to give them a little bit of protection on the corn stocks. We typically like to have a pasture next to it or a little area with trees so that they can have some protection from the elements but they don't always get that but they're grazing and we are not feeding any hay as they are out there on that. This year we didn't have to feed any hay and last year I think we had to feed a couple bales of hay to one of our herds just because it ended up the grass came in a lot later than normal. I believe there was a little bit of a drought last year but yeah our cattle graze in really tough conditions. If they can't make it through that then they can't make it in our program and we'll sell them.

13:33 This is my grandpa. He was a third generation farmer which makes me a fifth generation farmer. He always said that you can never make a mistake that you can't make twice and so far I haven't. We've made a lot of mistakes on our farm but none of them were fatal so we could make them again but we're going to try not to and so I just wanted to touch on a couple of the mistakes that we made, something that we learn from and hopefully you can take away too.

14:03 We grazed too long so in that previous pictures I was showing you of the paddocks, if you graze one of those paddocks too long then it can hurt the soil and it can hurt the grass regrowth but then the paddocks ahead can start getting too overgrown and they won't be able to. It'll get too mature and it won't be as efficient and then my dad would play it safe and he would understock with cattle rather than overstock. That's not a terrible mistake to make but it's just again being inefficient and you want to utilize the economic potential and you don't do that when you're under stocking.

14:43 When you understock you just don't have, you could put more cattle on there than you are and then those cattle are somewhere else grazing something and it's just not efficient. Then my dad also fertilized his fields. He used to because he didn't think that the organic matter or the cattle manure that we spread or the nitrogen credits from the soy beans or the cover crops, he didn't think that that would be enough.

15:10 We would still need to fertilize and take care of the soil more but he's realizing that he does not need to do that now. And then the last thing for our seed stock program was we just started out with the wrong kind of cattle. My dad bought a half a dozen to a dozen cattle from the sale barn and tried to work them but they were huge and they were inefficient. And as I say here, just like us when we are too large we become extremely inefficient. And they were just eating so much and then not producing near enough. And they were dying quickly and they didn't have longevity, they weren't lasting long. And it was just a pain. And then they also had low disposition which is important because my parents were planning on having kids. They had a bunch of us little kids and they didn't want cattle going nuts or hurting us or killing us. And so disposition is important too.

16:09 So as I said we raise cell breed heifers in bowls and I'm just going to walk you through some of the important aspects that we try to breed for and we will call for if they do not fit into the program. The picture up here on the top right, this is one of our herd bulls. He's a composite and he, I believe he's eight years old now. This photo was taken a couple years ago but he's still kicking, still doing well. He's part Herefords, part Taranais, and part Angus I believe. And then over here on the left, this is one of our heifers from a couple years ago. This is a cow but they're grazing the corn stocks with no supplements either.

16:55 So one thing we breed for is a good disposition. This is my little brother James. Lord willing, he's only 13 now but Lord willing one day he will grow up and take over the farming side and help branch with me and we can work together on the farm. And that would be a dream come true. I would love to work with him but he's showing you here a few different areas of our good disposition. This photo on the left is a photo of one of our herd bulls. This was taken just back in August. He's one of our Reds herd bulls that's assassin and he was just loving it. He was just hanging out. I don't know if I have a video later in this presentation or not but my another one of my younger brothers actually hopped on his back and just kind of sat on his back while he stood there for a little bit. And he just, he was just chill, he was just loving it. I love that I can go into a pen with bulls like that and not be afraid that my little siblings are going to get crushed. And then this picture over here on the right is a photo of James again with some heifers from that year. Those heifers were breed heifers and so they're about a year and a half, almost two years old and James is just out there vibing. They're, the heifers are curious and they want to come up and see him and I love being able to see my siblings do that.

18:16 We also breed for calving ease so we want our calves to be around or less than 70 lbs when they're born and we've gotten to that point. Our calves normally range from 78 to 60 lbs. That's a normal range for our calves. This calf right here was actually 49 pounds. This photo, that's me. This photo was taken probably about 10 years ago but we don't necessarily want to have miniature cattle. We don't want to have teeny tiny cattle like that. But then this calf over here, he was only about 63 pounds and that was a heifer. And we want our heifers to be able to calve easily. We don't want to have problems and we've actually never had issues with the cow giving birth due to calving ease other than a freak triplet deal that we had probably five or six years ago that this cow had triplets and she was just couldn't deliver them and so we had to take her into the vet. But sometimes we have to pull our heifers because they're small and heifers just need assistance sometime. That's something that we're finding out, that that's just really hard to breed out. A heifer's but as we continue to decrease, increase the size of our calves at birth. And then we want them to be able to increase in weight very rapidly so that they have a good weaning weight. And so calving ease is important.

19:40 Good udders, so their appearance. This picture on the left, she has a good udder. She has it's even, the teats are small. It's a good production udder. She's, I believe that she was seven years old when that photo was taken. And then this photo over here, the udder is not quite as beautiful as we would like it to be. But look, you can see that calf, you can see that that calf is getting plenty to eat. And this photo was probably taken in November or December and the calf that calf was probably eight months old at this point. And the fact that that cow can continue.

20:22 To graze on cover crops and produce milk so that a calf looks like that is what breed. For oops, so as I talked about before, longevity is another aspect that we want to. This is a cow we saw before. She's 17 years old and you can tell her age is starting to show on her hips are starting to show a little bit and she's just looking a little scrawny. She's always had this cloudy eye that I'm just not sure where she got that. She's always had it, it's never caused any problems, but this is a cow again that's 17 years old and her udder looks good, she looks good, her calf looks good, and as she continues to rebreed we will rebreed well if her calves start looking terrible then we're going to stop breeding her. And then this cow over here, she was 10 years old when this photo was taken and that's her calf and again just a great looking 10-year-old cow who bred back and caved again this year.

21:34 Some of our reading is herdsires. We do a lot of AI'ing and we use genetics from Pharaoh Cattle Company and Oldie Cattle Company and then of course our own genetics. We actually used to work with Pharaoh Cattle Company when my dad first started. We would sell our bulls through their program and their genetics were what we needed in our herd and that's what we needed to start building an actual efficient herd. We worked through them for a while but then in 2016, I believe, they had a sale that was in Nebraska that was 100% our bulls and when we did that my dad realized that we could start doing our own sale. And then for succession planning purposes he wanted us kids to be able to have something to come back to. We broke off from Pharaoh Cattle Company and started raising our own cattle and doing our own thing and having our own sales. We've cut back a little bit on some of Pharaoh's sires but we still use some of them. This bull down here is Colorado Hobo. He was an incredible bull that Pharaoh had for a while. He actually came to our farm and I didn't realize who he was at the time but I was probably about six or seven years old and he was out laying in our pens and I thought I bet it'd be cool if I jumped on his back. You know, just sat on him for a little bit and so I did. I went out there and I sat on his back. I didn't realize the danger that I could have put myself in because I was by myself but I just sat on his back for a little while and chilled and then he stood up and I just hung out with him for a while. Love that bull. He is an old bull.

23:14 This top left and top right, these are both OC cat or OC bows. This one on the left is Red Grazer and this one's Easy Red. Those have been two of the best Red Angus bows that we have added into our program from another program in a long time. We love those bulls and I actually don't know if semen is still available on either of them. And then this bull down here was a bull that one of our friends—he's partially ours too. He actually passed away recently but this is Amazon. He was another amazing bull. He was an AI sire and a natural service sire so he was here on the farm for a while and we loved him and semen is actually available on him if you're interested in purchasing semen from him. We have it on our website which is just I cattle.com.

24:05 And then some of our blacking is herdsires. So this is Barrel of Y. He was a great bull, loved him for a lot of different aspects. The only thing that we ever saw negative about him was he had a little bit of a bump on his back and some of his heifers would have a little bit of a hunchback and that just doesn't quite look as sharp. And then this right here, this is Extra Easy. He is an extremely calf-ease rated bull and we've used him on many of our heifers and we've never had an issue from him. His caving is, his calves are small and they quickly gain weight after they're born. And then this bottom picture here is Picture Perfect. He we use on some of our older cattle. His caving is still pretty good but we like to use him on our cattle because he's just thick. So those are some of our blacking as herdsires.

25:04 Hereford AI herd sires. This top one is one that we raised. This is Triple Axle and semen is available on him as well. I love him. I mean for his genetics too but he's got this pigment around his eye which is incredible for preventing pink eye and so we love his calves. His heifers are extremely maternal. They're great mothers. And then this one down here, this is Battle Rert and we've used him for quite a while too. We used him on a lot of our composites. Crossing him with a composite or a Black Angus has turned out amazing because you can see he's.

25:42 I believe I was told he was on grain before this picture was taken, but regardless that is a good looking bull. And then some reasons why we choose the AI. So this picture up here, this was the first time I ever stuck my hand in the back end of a cow and it was not quite what I was expecting. And these men in both of these photos is our AI technician. He has been working with us for 19 years, so since I was two. I don't even know if I knew he existed when I was two because my dad and him used to do everything together. But now he's been teaching me and training me how to AI, and Lord willing when he retires I can take over that part of our program as well.

26:26 AI gives us a lot more options when it comes to sires. If we just use natural service then we would put one or two bulls out in a pasture with the cattle and the calves would be just from one of them. But we can purchase semen and then use all sorts of our own and then some other. We breed Wagyu to some of our cattle that are not going to fit in our seed stock program. And so we can breed Wagyu. We will never keep a Wagyu animal on our farm for long because Wagyu cattle are insane. They taste amazing but their disposition is not good. But AI is one of our favorite weeks of the year. My mom always comes up with extravagant meals and games and stuff that we can do while we're AIing, and it's just a great time.

27:24 Another positive aspect is that we can choose when calving season will be. We always try AI at the very end of July or at the beginning of August so that we will calve at the beginning of May, and then we'll put our natural herd sires in a couple weeks after AI, and so we'll calve through June. So we're kind of at the tail end of calving right now. We've probably got about 20 or 30 cows that still need to go, but we're done with the AI. And after two weeks when we started calving, after two weeks we had had over 50% of our calf crop born and they were from AI.

28:02 So now I just want to share a few photos with you guys of our operation. As I said it's a family thing. I've got a lot of siblings. These photos were taken a few different years apart. But this up here, these are the three littlest siblings. They're actually down here as well. This is Rachel, James, and Lydia. Rachel is now 15, James is 13, and Lydia is 10.

28:28 This is James again. James loves the cattle. He loves everything with the farm, and so he's going to be in a lot of these photos. And so that's him and my older brother Robert when we're working cattle. I'm not sure what we're doing in that photo, but that's them pushing the cattle back there. Robert's not a huge fan of the cattle, which is fine. He doesn't need to come back and do it, but he enjoys working with his siblings.

28:56 And then this is a photo of my family minus my husband. This was taken a few years ago. So this is my mom and dad, love them to death. And then Robert, me, this is Hannah, this is David, and then Rachel, James, and Lydia.

29:13 This photo up here, this is my little brother David, who's not so little anymore. He's huge, but he's about 17 years old. And he was just putting out hay for our pigs right here. We do a little bit of a pig feeder program that I'm not a huge fan of. I love pork. I love eating pork, but I'm not a huge fan of actually taking care of pigs, so that's my brother's deal. This was just a funny instance when my dad had David out working and David somehow pulled the steering wheel off of the tractor. And my dad for some reason started laughing instead of yelling. My dad thought it was funny.

29:50 This is a photo of my little brother James and then a cow, her number is 144, and my basketball jersey number was 44. My husband's basketball jersey number was one, and so James always considers this to be our cow because it's our numbers together. And he spelled my husband's name totally wrong. And then this photo up here, this is you can't see it super well, but this is me and my little sister Rachel. We went out. We'll hook up anything we can to the back of a four-wheeler when it's snowing and we'll just drag that around. And we had just been sledding. And then this is my little sister Lydia and I checking cattle, just making sure all the cows are taken care of.

30:35 We also do stuff with our friends too. So this was actually, she was one of my bridesmaids, one of my friends from college, and she grew up on a ranch as well, and she came out to help out with the sale. This is one of my brother's friends. He came out for AIing. And this is one of our friends, one of my dad's.

30:55 Friends' daughters came out to help. This is actually a Wagyu calf, a Wagyu crossed with a Hereford right here, and so you can see she's got a longer face. Wagyu calves have really long legs and as I said, they're just nuts, they just run all the time and I can't stand them. This is one of my friends, she came out to help out with calving. So this is a calf that was born this year, just a little heifer. This is one of my disciples up in Lincoln. When I'm there, she came down for the sale and she's a city girl through and through, but she loved coming out and looking at the cows and I had her help me push the cows down the lane and she just thought that it was the funnest thing. And then over here, this is my grandma and one of our friends, Johnny Nell. He was helping my grandma bid on some animals during the sale.

31:48 Just a few photos of calving season because I like babies. This was taken last year, this was taken probably two or three years ago. This is one of mine and my husband's cows and there's my husband right there, he was excited about it. And then I love that photo, apparently, because I have that everywhere. This is the same cow from right here and this is her calf this year. I believe all three of these are out of that triple Hereford bull that I talked about earlier, the one with the pigment around the eyes, and you can see that pigment is coming through. This bull is out of him as well. All four of these calves were out of that triple axle bull and you can see what the mom looks like and then what the Hereford bull looked like a few pages back.

32:47 This is the dam of our herd, Roaring River, who is the red Brockle face bull that I showed a few pictures back as well, and then that's his half sister. I already showed this photo. This photo was a couple years ago. Her udder ended up this or last year got really bad, but here it wasn't so bad. We had to sell her this past year due to the udder. And then this was an instance of twins where the cow actually claimed both of these calves and I was shocked. Cows don't normally claim both of the calves. We normally have to take them home. And actually, one of these I have photos later—one of these just had twins of her own. So this is a few more photos of calving season.

33:32 This calf right here is now three or four years old and has had a couple calves for us. She's four years old and has had a couple calves for us. I don't think this heifer made it through the program because I'm pretty sure she did not breed when it came breeding season, and if a heifer doesn't breed, we don't give her a second chance. We send her to our feed lot. And then this calf, my sister was angry because this calf was born at the beginning of August and we don't even want to be calving in July, so this was a little bit of an accident baby and we just don't want to have to deal with this. You can see in the back here that we're feeding some hay. I know I talked about earlier that we don't like feeding, but this is the beginning of our AI season. And during AI season, we have our cattle in the lots for about a week and we feed them a little bit of hay, but they also have access to cover crops back here during that week, so there is a little bit of hay feeding that goes on, but not much.

34:31 And then these are just a few photos. Here's the photo of my brother riding the bull. But these are just a few photos of how gentle our cattle are. I love that my siblings and I are able to go out and be around the cows. This is James and his first calf. He bought this heifer in the sale and then this was his first ever calf and he was so happy. And then this is me checking on the development of heifers. A few more photos of that photo shoot where they're out with the heifers. This is Rachel and Lydia just hanging out with the cows. The heifers are just curious and gentle and we love being able to go out and do that.

35:14 So these are just a couple videos I want to show you as well of the cattle being gentle. This was me hanging out with the heifers one afternoon. I wasn't a huge fan of that moment right there. This was Christmas Eve of 2020, I believe, and this is what I like to do Christmas Eve—go out and hang out with cattle. I love being able to spend time with the cows and just hang out. I was supposed to be taking photos but I was definitely not. I'm just living my best life.

36:05 This is the video of my little brother with C.

41:37 Really good and thorough presentation. So yeah, for any of the attenders, if you guys want to drop some questions in the Q&A chat, there we'll get to them as we have time. There's already a couple in there, but I'll start off with a few of my own questions. Early on you mentioned limiting hay, except maybe around AI and time, especially for our Midwest viewers. You know, in Nebraska, obviously we have summertime pastures and we have corn stocks, but like February can be a hard time to still have grazing resources or March—things get really muddy and a lot of guys don't want to have livestock out on corn stocks for compaction reasons and that kind of thing. What are your forage opportunities that you guys are doing like late in the winter, early spring before stuff's green out?

42:31 Late in the winter we typically still have them on corn stocks in February. We try to keep them on cover crops as much as we can in the fall and early winter, and then when that stuff dies out is when we switch to the corn stocks. And as you mentioned the muddy pastures, a lot of our fields also have a direct access to pasture, and so whenever we see that a rain's coming in or that it's going to get real wet, we try to push them into the pasture so that they don't compact the soil. And especially in the rainy season, like in May when we're on cover crops, we will do the same thing. When we see rain come in, we'll try to make a mad dash to get all the cattle into either the pens out here or into pasture so that they're not compacting the soil.

43:18 Yeah, that's good. That makes sense. So then, is it normally that you have certain acres that you're always raising the annual forages on, or is the crop rotation one where, like, you're doing corn and then a grazing season and then, you know, back to another cash crop? Like, what's the crop rotation? Could you take us through that? How are you integrating the forages?

43:38 Yeah, so in a given year it will depend on which field. We have some of our smaller fields we will only plant to cover crops, but then some of our other bigger fields that we plant to corn or to corn and soybeans, we will plant the corn and harvest it and then either immediately graze the corn stocks or plant a cover crop over it, but then in May we'll graze the corn stocks and then we'll plant cover crops over it in April or May and then we'll get a couple grazings out of it and we'll continue to do that. So I think there's some fields that we switch back and forth. Sometimes we try to get the cover crops out as soon as possible so that in May we can plant corn again, if that makes sense. So sometimes the cover crops are between cash crops, like within a year, but then there are fields where you're raising corn for one season and then the next season it's just a series of mixes that you're grazing, going back to a cash crop, other than fields that are always annual forages.

44:49 What is your land base as far as grazing resources? You obviously have some of the native range. Is that most of the forages you're grazing and the annuals are a supplement, or is it like 50/50? I don't know, I'm curious—how many cows could you even run if you weren't doing the annual forages?

45:12 That's a good question. During the year, it's probably about 50/50. We try to keep the cattle on pasture as long as we can until that runs out, and then in August we'll move them to the cover crops and we'll graze them on that, but it varies per year. And I haven't quite gotten the whole rotation down. My dad still needs to explain a lot of that to me as well. Most of your cows are spending some time on the natives, like in early spring, like right now when things are really lush, but then come that summer slump, that's when you're going more towards the pearl millet, sorghum, sudan mixes. And I guess just one note for the attenders—you mentioned the floor mix. Ashley essentially works as a seed company, and on occasion we have either batches of seed that just on their own aren't going to make the cut, and so we tend to just mix a hodgepodge of things together. We make sure it's good and cleaned out, you know, that there's not weeds or anything. It's not literally floor mix just swept up and sold, so it's clean seed, but it's a diversity of whole different things. And we can't guarantee what's in it. We'll get occasional seed tests, but if you want more information on the floor mix, we call it remix because essentially we're just

46:27 Remixing things together and the way you guys are utilizing is perfect. You know, having a little bit of remix but then adding mostly sorum sedans and pearl millets so you get that diversity but you still have that good production. So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

46:43 So we'll answer a few of these questions in the Q&A here. So you talked about smaller cow size. What's your ideal weight on a mature cow? Yeah, we try to range anywhere from 1100 to probably 12 or 1300 is what we like our mature weight to be. And then for height, we don't like them to be higher than mid chest height and so about a four or five frame score with an 11 to 1200 pound animal. Okay, so they're not that much smaller in terms of weight. Yeah, a little bit smaller than some of those cows get really big. But more about the stature, the St relative to the legs, more efficient forage driven animal. Okay, that makes sense.

47:37 All right, you mentioned that the one bull has the one Hereford bull had the red around his eye and that helped with pink eye prevention. Can you or can maybe it was the pigment of the eye or were you referencing the hide color or the pigment of pigment of his eye specifically? I was referencing the hide color so that color around the eye that you won't find pink eye as often in any other species or in any other breed other than Hereford. Herefords get pink eyes really bad, really easily, and it's because of that white color. Flies are what brings about pink eye. Flies transmit the disease and flies are more drawn to the white bright faces of cattle and then they kind of stop when it gets darker. So with that bull, since he's got the white face but then that dark pigment around the eye, you'll get the white face calves that you want but it'll keep that pigment around the eye so he won't look like a full Hereford if you want that full Hereford look. But the color around the eye is what deters the flies. You can still possibly get pink eye. It's not a guarantee but it's still possible.

48:50 What do you what's the treatment protocol on pink eye on your guys' operation? On our operation, we like to let them heal themselves and any sort of disease or injury that cattle get, unless it's a huge cut that we need to sew up, we do not treat our cattle. We want them to be able to recover from that themselves. And sometimes that'll end up with a Popeye or a cloudy eye. The Popeye is not so great of an outcome but the cloudy eye we can deal with. But the fact that most of our cattle can heal from that is what we're breeding for. However, we do have eye patches that will use a glue and patch onto the eye. There's not a whole lot of ointment or something to really heal that. You mostly just want to protect it from the elements and you just want to let it heal on its own with the cloudy eye.

49:41 Is it in there a vis like is their vision hampered by that or which is visually you can see it's cloudy but they seem to have perfect perception most of the time. They seem to have perfect perception. It's mostly if you're looking at the cow. Some people don't want the look of a cloudy eye. It just doesn't look good. Most of the time it doesn't cause a problem. There are sometimes when it they do have a little bit of a seeing disability but they tend to get over that.

50:07 Okay, on the on those fields where you're only another question from a tender on the fields where you're only planting the cover crops so the smaller acres, is that normally like a two mix system like you're planting the summer mix you said in June or maybe in May grazing it to three times if with a rapid rotation and then are you following that up with like an over wintering cover crop or a fall like is it normally just one planting and that's all you do in those fields? What's your management system there? Yeah, we try to plant just one time in February for those fields. I think it depends on the field but I believe the smaller pastures that are out there right now are the pearl millet mix. Okay, and that's what we plant in February. AR and then that will be rotated through and then I don't know if I can accurately answer if we plant another one before winter. I know that it hasn't been planted recently and our pastures are coming up with cover crops right now so I'm not sure when that would have been planted. So you might even have some volunteer type seed? Yeah, there's probably if it's if you're planting in February, that's probably the oats mix that you. Oh yeah, that's what that is with the.

51:27 You know more of a cool season type mix for early spring. I mean really you probably plant depending on when you need the forage. If a lot smaller fields are connected to your perennial pastures, then more of a one planting for the large abundance of warm seasons for that summer slump is probably ideal and you don't even need an early spring mix, but in other instances you probably do. So it just kind of depends and as a year-to-year decisions.

51:58 One of the attendees sent us a question asking about twofold. You showed the picture of grazing alfalfa. Obviously if anyone's livestock producing and they see a bunch of cattle on alfalfa and they think they're all going to bloat. Could you speak a little bit to kind of bloat management when you're grazing these high protein, whether at alfalfa or even a young cover crop? And then also on like the sorghum sudans, is there any ever nitrate or prussic acid concerns that you're managing?

52:29 With the alfalfa, that photo that I showed was an aerially seeded pasture. We lightly seeded that and so there was alfalfa in there but there was a lot of cows and they also had access to cover crop and cornstock. It's just a matter of checking up on them, making sure we haven't had any issues with bloat when we put them on alfalfa. The only issues with bloat that we've had sometimes is when we put them on cornstocks the very first time the cows see cornstalk in a given year. If they consume too much corn just immediately, sometimes they'll have problems with bloat. I don't think we've lost any, we've just had to turn some on their sides or even one bloat management technique that we haven't had to use often is when you see a cow bloating, there's this tool that you basically puncture their gut and you just let the gas release, which is a pain to do and we don't like having to do that. But we honestly don't see that much problem with our bloating in our feedlot. We see some problems with bloating just because that's really heavy grain that we put the cows on and in a feedlot you'll have bloats every once in a while. I don't know if I can honestly speak too much into the other question about nitrate issues or prussic acid issues in the sorghum. As far as I'm concerned there haven't been any issues, but that might be something that my dad hasn't explained to me yet and so I don't think I can accurately give an answer to that.

54:01 If you're grazing animals through those forages and if you're not having any health issues, part of that's probably because you mentioned kind of cutting back on some of the fertility, relying more on the manure and the soil benefits, so you're probably not fertilizing those pastures very heavily, which is going to lend itself really well to not having nitrate issues. You won't really have nitrate issues if you don't have a lot of nitrogen fertilizer out there. And then the prussic acid, since you're waiting until that forage gets up three feet tall, isn't really going to be a problem either. So good management goes a lot of ways in minimizing concerns there.

54:40 Going back to the kind of pasture management, you showed some pictures on the perennials where you take the forage pretty hard, looks like when you're grazing through. Have you guys ever considered not pushing it quite so far on that initial graze to allow maybe a faster recovery, or have you just found for your system that more aggressive grazing just works better? A lot of times in pasture management we hear terms like take half, leave half. It looks like you're taking maybe more like 70 or 80%.

55:18 Yeah, we, this is what works for our program. There are definitely probably other programs that would work differently with the amount of cattle that we have on that pasture and how long we have to be able to rotate it. Each of those paddocks, for every day that it's grazed, gets about a week of recovery. So they're grazed for about eight days and then since there's eight paddocks there they get eight weeks of recovery or even more than that because it's a little bit more than a week per day that they're getting grazed. So we haven't had any issues and as you saw in the photos it came back well and pretty quickly. So we haven't had any issues with that. If you have more cattle and you don't have as much time to let it regrow, then you.

56:06 Might want to consider the take half, leave half, not grazing it quite as hard, but that's what works for our program.

56:13 Yeah, well, and I think the key there is that that long rest period, you know, 60 days of rest, that allows a lot of recovery. I think where overgrazing becomes more of an issue is when that rest period doesn't immediately follow it. Then you're coming back too soon. But with the long rest, and also you mentioned earlier, maybe this was even offline before we started talking, but you know, up until now this has just been your dad and one hired hand, primarily, yeah. So there's labor constraints that are a factor there, too. If you can only get around to getting the cattle moved, you know, every week or week eight days or whatever, you kind of have to just, that's the context, right? That's the context of the operation.

56:58 So obviously, have you seen like any improvement in carrying capacity since you started, you know, more of the rotation grazing management? Or I don't know if you've perhaps taken any, like, organic matter readings or water infiltration or anything, any metrics to kind of back up the fact that, hey, this is working better? Or just visually, you know, carrying capacity increased or anything like that?

57:21 Yeah, we haven't done any test or reading or anything on any of our pastures, but even from my inexperienced eyes I can see the difference. Those pastures that have gone through rotational grazing, there are pastures that we have that we bought from someone else who would just put all their cattle on it, not rotational graze, and then they would just tear the entire thing to the ground and then keep the cattle in there because they didn't have any other place to take them. In doing that, you could keep them on there for probably a month, but then you don't have anywhere else to go. In doing the rotational grazing, I can see that, as you said, we graze really hard, so that initial paddock looks bad at the moment, but the rest period that it has and the regrowth that it can do makes the entire pasture look so much better. So again, I don't have any numbers to back that up, but just visually, rotational grazing is, my husband gives me a hard time because when we're driving down the interstate or something, we'll see a pasture with a bunch of cattle in it that is just grazed to the ground, and he'll always say, Ashley, you know what would make that better? And I like, rotational grazing. I like, you're right honey, but I'm a huge fan of rotational grazing.

58:37 Very good. Alright, we got one more question here. Have you happened to notice any species change in the pastures since you started rotationally grazing?

58:46 That would be a good question for me to get back to someone on. More ask your dad, who was there before we started. Yeah, Jay started. Okay, no, that's fair. Well, very, it's a good question and I'd love to be able to answer it, but I can't. No problem at all.

59:07 Well, with that, it's already one o'clock, so maybe we'll just stop there so we don't go too over time. Ashley, I just, yeah, I want to thank you for your time and your, you know, taking us through your operation and showing how you guys have kind of turned what was just a conventional corn soybean cropping system into this diverse enterprise with both the cash grain and the livestock and different avenues, and how you guys are experimenting and trying different things and new markets, and just bringing it all together and really pursuing both. I like on your operation how I see the soil health principles are going forward. You guys are trying to farm regeneratively and improve soil and improve the livestock and improve the quality of your genetics, but also the family piece and the faith piece, and how you're trying to just build an environment where you can work with family and people like you want to work together, and you just want to do things the right way. So it's really refreshing and encouraging to see. With that, again, just thank you for your time and just sharing your story with us.

1:00:15 I want to thank all of our attendees for tuning in today. Next week, join us again for the next edition in our integrating livestock series. We are going to be hearing from Max Martin, who's in Northern Texas. So we're going south a little ways and we're going to hear from a Northern Texas producer who's raising both a diversity of livestock and crops. So yeah, with that, thanks everyone for joining us. Have a great day.