How Max Martin Integrated No-Till, Cover Crops, and Cattle for Profit

0:00 Very excited today to have our friend Max Martin here as our speaker. I've known Max for quite a number of years. In fact, we were just chatting about this—you know, eight or ten years ago we were doing a series of Southern soil health conferences. That's what we were calling it, and Max was one of our speakers at one of our conferences that we did in Ardmore, Oklahoma. He did such a great job that I've always thought, gosh, we need to get that guy back in front of people again.

0:30 Max is really unique. He has a really unique background. So not only is he a rancher in Loving, Texas—they run, I think, 500 feeder calves out there on the pastures that they have, pastures and fields in Loving, Texas—but he's also got a deep background in software development. So he started a software company back in 1980, which is really early for software development. So he was in on the very ground floors of that. And so he has a very analytical mind that he brings to the ranching industry as well, which I think is good because it helps him to look at things just a little bit differently. Again, it's not a right or wrong perspective. Other people's backgrounds just give you different perspectives, but it is unique. And I really like people with unique perspectives because I think it's really easy for us to learn from someone who has a different background than us.

1:28 Hopefully we can all pick up some of the software mindset that Max brings to not only the ranching industry but also the pursuit of soil health, because that has been a big passion of his from the very beginning. How can we raise these animals, and at the same time how can we improve and regenerate the soil that he's been blessed with down there in that area? So again, Max brings that unique perspective of the software development. His company develops software—fraud prevention software and other things for the financial and behavioral health industries. So it's not even related to agriculture, but the analytical mindset will apply to all of these different sectors. So again, I'm excited to hear him bring that perspective to the ranch, to soil health, to regenerative agriculture, and how he's using that.

2:26 So Max, with that, I think I am going to hide myself off screen here. We'll turn it over to you. Go ahead and kind of do your presentation, and then I'll jump back on and we'll start the conversation. And then folks, please as you get questions, as Max says something you've got a question you'd like to follow up on, you don't have to wait. Pop it right in the chat, pop it in the Q&A box, and we'll be getting to those questions after the presentation. So Max, take it away.

2:57 Thank you, Keith, very much. I'll run through our decade of trying to put together a best model, a model that improves our ranch assets and creates sustainable cash flow and profitability for our cattle operation. And I'd like to share that model with you all so that you can understand what issues we ran across. Because when we started eleven years ago, we had issues. We found solutions, and we've created opportunities. I'll share with you what I've learned because what works is a whole lot better than what doesn't.

3:41 The objective today is to discuss how I have integrated no-till, cover crops, and cattle so that we can have your operation be successful, and you can perhaps prevent some of the failures that I've had. At the ranch, we run about 540 mammals, most of them are blacks, reds, and baldies, and our bulls are Charollet bulls with the top 15% of EPDs. And those are—we're talking about terminal EPDs for the carcass and for gains. So you can see right there, one of the aspects, cornerstones of our model is cross Charollet with Angus. So we get an F1 cross, which gives us about a 40-pound lift right off the bat.

4:34 We run full cow-calf as well as feeder operations, and we try to take that calf up to about 900 pounds. One of the other foundations we have is both fall and spring calving. And I'll get into that in a little more detail. And we have eleven years of history of no-till that I'll share with you today.

5:02 The principles that we deploy in our feeder calf operation, you know, you kind of have to start with saying what's ranching all about.

5:12 Ranching for us is about animal reproduction and grass. It's pretty simple. Underneath that we've got to have water and we've got a waterers shed management program that we work on continuously every year, and underneath that is soil health because we've got to have the soil to produce those forages.

5:35 The first thing we focus on is animal reproduction. We obviously got to have a high breed up. We also want to insert genetics into that calf. We do that by ensuring that Mama has good nutrition throughout her three trimesters of carrying that calf. We want a very rigorous disease immunization program. Now I use the word disease immunization versus vaccination because there's a big difference. We monitor daily, if not weekly, that body condition on that cow because in our climate with our moisture, it's very difficult to ever catch up if you get that body condition behind.

6:21 The second foundation for our model is forage production. We want a lot of species and we want it to have 12 months availability to our stocker cattle, and we'll go through how we're accomplishing that. The third pillar is watershed management. In an industry in an area where we get only 22 inches a year, we want to capture water, we want to retain it, we want to stop erosion. So we've got a significant amount of our capital in watershed management, and all that is meaningless if you don't have the soil to produce those forages. So that's the bottom line of our model.

7:10 In the pictures you can see some of our feed lot operation, and of course we're in country with mesquite and a lot of brush, so we have an extensive brush management and pasture renovation program, and I'll get into a little bit of that later.

7:27 We try to produce 900 lb calf, a calf that the feed lots want to buy. What do they want? They want carcass, they want gain, they want disease immunity. So here's how we execute these principles. Feed lots want gain. We want a calf that gains a lot of pounds. That's why we want to inject those terminal EPDs for our bulls into that calf. We're looking for gains, we're looking for carcass dressability, and those are the things that the feed lots want. We're looking for a lot of disease immunity. For example, we do mineral analysis of our forage and our pastures. We then have a company develop a custom mineral vitamin mix for us so we can get that calf on a good start on immunization. Then we follow that up with a very timely VAC 45 protocol vaccinations.

8:30 When we sell that calf, we want that calf to be part of a truck load that's very uniform because those feed lots, you've got to have a tight tolerance on uniformity. So we use on-ranch scales. We measure frequently those calves and try to keep them together. We use a very strict 60-day breeding season, and we double sort those calves before load out. In the sense that we've learned that if you take those calves into Oklahoma City, which is where we sell our calves, and you have much of a variance, that auction house OKC has to separate those calves out and sell them at a discount, which hurts. We watch those auctions, and sometimes those auctioneers on a small unit just don't spend enough time, and the buyers don't want a small unit of four or five calves, so those discounts really sometimes get pretty heavy.

9:25 The other thing we want from our profitability program is we want a low cost of gain for that calf, and we use three methods for that. During our winter, we use trial. Summertime we use cover crops, and I'll also speak about how we use klein grass as a transition, particularly in those years where we don't have enough water. We chose trial because when you look at the stem to leaf ratio, it's much better than wheat.

10:03 So here's a picture across the year of our forage because this is the main driver for our cattle operation. So I mentioned we crop twice a year, so we have a summer crop cover crop that supports half of that herd, and then a winter crop where we graze the other half of that herd. So cover crop is a big deal for us because it gives us forage in the summer that we wouldn't normally have here in North Central Texas. At our farm feed lot operation, we

10:38 Also have a transition forage which we use 100% Klein grass for, and we like that because our cover crop gets hard on water and our winter trade ail hasn't quite started up. We've got a backup where we can put those calves on Klein grass while we're waiting on that trial to get to a production stage where we can graze those calves.

11:02 We calve in May and September, it gives us our forage ready and alignment for July and May. We've got those bull economics going into that because with high genetics bulls, I pay more at our bull sales for our bulls because those bulls are about top 15% of the AICA database. So we pay a premium for those bulls, but we use them twice a year. A bull will last us about six years, so if you do the math, we have a bull cost of about $19 per calf. So we get better genetics and a cheaper calf way.

11:46 The other thing we like about two seasons of calving is it gives you a better program on managing your opens. So when a cow pulls up open, we give her a different color tag and we move her back one cycle. If she comes up open the second time, then we load her out on the trailer and get rid of her in the herd because she's not going to breed up to meet our standards. The other thing we like about two season calving is it balances our labor through the year.

12:17 So here's what a typical July looks like for us. When the rest of North Texas is out there with their high horsepower tractors doing tillage, we're starting to graze our cover crops. This is what our cover crop looks like in early July, and at the same time that's when we typically start our watershed management program, whether we're building new tanks or cleaning them out or building spreader dams. And also in July we take a look at and start ground training our colts for the year. Currently we've got a two acre tank that we're building, a one acre tank, and four dams on a creek that we've already started for this summer.

13:05 Here's a picture of what that cover crop looks like in early August. This picture is worth a thousand words for you. You can see it's pretty intense. I'm sitting on an ATV with this picture and you can see it's over my head. You can see some millets. We really like all the millets in our mix. This picture happens to be a couple years old, and you can also see some hemp. And I've got a hemp story to tell you that's perhaps our biggest disaster and biggest catastrophe. When we started, we'd go out in the summertime and we look and be very proud of all of our hemp, and the following year we decided we needed a lot of hay. So we want to bail a lot of our hay. In between mowing, raking tractors to run balers on our balers, we had 14 flat tires because we had a great year for hemp and that hemp stock was about as big as round as your finger and hard as a 16 penny nail because it hasn't had much decomposing. So there is my love-hate relationship with hemp.

14:17 Okay, here's a picture. What do we see here in late August? Well, this is where the magic happens for cover crops. What you see here is a component of cover crops which makes that magic. Look at the canopy because those leaves—you'll begin to see in a few minutes that weed management was our number one issue when we went into no-till. That canopy is a big weed management tool. You can begin to see at stem a huge amount of biomass, tremendous root structure that we've got. So we like very much these cover crops because of what they give you in the way of animal protein, in the way of weed management, in the way of root structure, in the way of biomass. So there is a lot of contribution that this simple plant is giving us throughout the year.

15:15 This is a summer picture. Here's a winter picture. Canola and some radish again, big root structures, and of course we've got plenty of biomass for our tractor. So we don't so much depend on these things in the wintertime, but we're going to talk about roots and soil compaction. So we're looking for roots in this particular case. Add canola and radish to our mix, which gives us a big impact there we can achieve.

15:46 So much with our cover crops. So the criteria that we use for our mix is one of the most important things we do in the year, and as Keith can tell you, I'm very particular about the kind of mix we want because we have a tremendous criteria on grazing. So we want protein, but we also...

16:11 Want plant diversity, I also want root structure for soil health and soil organic matter and I also want weed management so I kind of want it all in our criteria and this slide shows a list of criteria that's important for us to consider. When we select that mix we've got root structures, we've got weed suppression, we've got biomass with decomposition rate is an important thing we want to control, certainly with our moisture conditions on and off, and we want to know about hardiness and germination. We also want to know about postgrazing regrowth. If we can get that plant to regrow after it has been grazed first time that's a good thing for our protein element.

17:05 So we've learned there's a huge upside for the right mix and having that we're still experimenting, we still don't think we know about the perfect mix. I mentioned to you that weed management was probably our number one issue when we went into no-till.

17:27 So here's a little bit more information on how we do our weed management because today other than Johnson grass we really have kind of conquered a good weed management program. The cheapest and best is to use cattle and we use that when we can to manage our weeds. The second thing is the species itself and the blowout on the orange list I've here are some things I want to talk about because cover crop has a tremendous direct competition with the weed which is important. I happen to think more of the allopathic capabilities of that species because I think every year we're seeing that to be more and more important. While there's a lot of scientific publications out there about these allopathic chemicals, I wish there were more, but we know certain species have higher allopathic traits and properties than others. But for example on our own anecdotal research when we drive around on ATVs we never see a weed within 10 inches of a sunflower and the same with our sorghum, so I think there is more to the allopathic nature of cover crops and we're seeing that every year. Certainly cover crops give us microbial resistance to weeds and the residue of the biomass is certainly an insulator that prevents weeds from being germinated. We also depend on a broadleaf mix because we think that just gives us a good vegetative canopy so there's all the tools, albeit some complex more than others, that we use for weed management to solve that biggest issue that we've had.

19:33 Now let's speak about some other issues that we've had that have difficulty. We've got about 20,000 hooves out there on that cover crop or trench with those cattle stomping on that every day, every hour of the day so it's a big issue but ironically enough it's an issue that's simple to solve. It takes roots, it takes a lot of roots and it takes 12 months with the roots and that has solved that problem pretty easy. We mix one pound of turnips and one pound of rape seed into our triticale when we load our drill every year. Just that simple mix gives us 380,000 roots per acre or 78 roots per yard, that's a lot of roots that offset that soil compaction. And of course our summer crops are heavy root producers as well so we have 12 months of active roots into that soil and that has solved that problem pretty well.

20:41 Another issue is prussic acid and how do we prevent bloat on our cattle and here's the way that we've solved that. We keep legumes fairly low ratio to grass, grass is high and we hold off on any grazing on those sorghum until they're about 20 inches high and we religiously of course use bloat block. To give you a little bit of an idea, this year we've run 500 head and we know that we've had one problem with bloat that happened to be when we were on site. We caught the heifer, put her in a pen for two days and was not a problem. We caught it but it is, it can be a big problem.

21:30 As far as the mix is concerned, here's kind of a base mix that I kind of like as far as balancing out all four sectors of species. We use about 20% legumes, we like that very much actually from a nitrogen producing point of view as well as a good canopy for weed management. Naturally I'm biased in my criteria for protein so we really like grasses, we like sorghum, we like millets that gives us a lot of regrowth.

22:03 Also gives us a lot of protein so we're running this year about 60% on that category. I like broadleaves. I like buckwheat because buckwheat is known to have high allelopathic characteristics for weed management. Has do sunflowers. I also like oats. Oats got a good biomass, got a good canopy so we get a lot of mileage out of our broadleaves not only for protein but for weed management. And brassicas give us the roots that we want so we like brassicas as well.

22:39 Okay, let's shift a little bit of the conversation to how do we know if we're succeeding or not. We've been in this game for 10 years and we know we're succeeding. So let me run through the five measurements that we have learned to use. We didn't always know this, but now we know how to measure success across all of our dimensions of our program. Of course for me the first thing is cattle and we want to know that cost of gain. I'll go through some of the cost of gains in a minute that we find on our cover crop so that's the most important criteria that we use. As we started out 11 years ago, if you would have told me that one of our main metrics was soil organic matter I would have said something like, 'Why is that so?' Well, we found that measuring soil organic matter is probably one of the most important measurements that we have.

23:37 We did very simple, cheap soil tests when we started out. We learned that that was insufficient. We've moved to more advanced soil testing. We added the Haney soil test which we think a lot of. We measure our own water filtration on the ranch and of course throughout the ranch we're constantly measuring our water retention. So those are the five elements that we measure consistently to know if we're succeeding or not.

24:10 I mentioned soil organic matter. Every year we're learning to appreciate soil organic matter even more than we did last year because it's the everything dimension of our program. It's a storehouse for nutrition. It improves the soil structure and it drives so many of the factors. It stabilizes pH and we had a pH problem when we were prior to no-till. We did not have good control over our pH and we tried to achieve pH control through artificial means only to find out that it was short term. Naturally, when we studied that, the only long term metric that you have to control pH is soil organic matter. We haven't had pH problems since. You can see here the impact of a 1% increase in soil. So I'll show you what our soil is in a few minutes. We've made tremendous strides in that area.

25:13 So we've learned that it's been easy to monetize the soil organic matter into the point where we now review it as one of our major capital assets of our entire ranch.

25:26 I meant to mention to you the Haney test that we've gone to. This will give you some of the results of this year's Haney test for us and keep in mind we've been an operation for only 11 years with no till and cover crops. First thing we want to measure is soil respiration because those microbial activities and bacteria, they need breathing just like human beings. Andy measures that on a scale from zero to a thousand. We're sitting this year at 474. We've made tremendous strides in this area. You can see there over on the right side of the slides the Haney comment that they send them. See that above 200, so we're very pleased with the respiration that we've had which improves that soil microbial activity which keeps that going on the nutrient cycle. You can see there are nitrogen in next three areas we're producing a lot of nitrogen. We're producing about 15 pounds of nitrogen per acre out of the nutrient cycle. At the end, Haney has a summary soil health metric, the 0 to 50, we're sitting at 33. Their comment is very seldom do their soils exceed 30. Our soil infiltration is running about 1.5 inches an hour. That's moderate. I wish we had more of that.

26:58 Now let's turn to a little bit on the monetization of all this. How does all this affect the bottom line? Well, we like you are in the commodity revenue side business so your most important element is on your cost side. The two grazing seasons is a huge factor for us, gives us a better alignment to forage, low cost of gain, gives us better economics of our bulls so we have a better bull at a cheaper price. We love grazing in the winter. It's a

27:34 Good hay producer and it's the leaf U dimension of the TR is very good for grazing point of view. We've gone through the summer crops that's a big deal for us. No till has been a big deal for us although it has taken a big adjustment to get used to it and we try whenever we can to reduce our herbicide cost through either no termination which sometimes gets a little risky or through termination with cattle.

28:04 So the payback factors that we've experienced is we have achieved the low C cost of gain we want for our feeder candle operation. We've lowered our horsepower equipment cost and reduced capital that we need. We spend less time in the field. We have less diesel for cost although we do admittedly have offset any herbicide cost and we have much better soil health.

28:33 So the next question that you're going to ask is in a cal operation how do we monetize cover crops. Keith loves this slide. We paid Keith this year $116,000 for seed that seed has given us or will give us three months of grazing for about 220 250 hand of feter cattle after we put them on our 45 day grain operation in the feed lot. So you can see the math that we have with our gains with our cattle and our amount of beef produced and of course with today's $2.50 price you're going to rack up an improved revenue of 123,000 bucks with a $116,000 cost. We've got a little cost in putting the grain in but not a whole lot. So you can see you've got a pretty whopping three-digit ROI that that cover crop gives you. So your cover crop payback is huge. Cover crop for grain for grazing for can be monetized and dimension of that cover crop for soil quality. So I couldn't be more of a high class user of cover crop. We love it.

29:53 We did learn a lot of lessons so if I can help you with lessons learned to shorten your pain we would certainly like to do that. Weed management has been and is a continuing operation. We've been successful using cattle for that. When we started quite frankly I couldn't identify weeds very well. We can maybe identify 20 of the weeds we had to manage no more. I couldn't tell you the germination times of that weed throughout the year. So that's been a learning education step for us. We now know germinations. We can now spot those weeds and we now know when the best time to manage them is. We were not students of herbicide and herbicide groups now we are. We know when to use them when to rotate them out.

30:46 So health monitoring we thought we were making success and quite frankly we were measuring. We were we measured more success over 10 years than we'd really thought. We know the fertility levels that we're getting out of that soil. We understand the importance of soil structure. I speak very highly of W laboratory and their handy management testing method that's been very successful for us as an indicator. We very much like the species and the variety of cover seeds we're getting from Keith in the balance of legumes and brasas and grasses because we know we have en antagonistic goals. On one hand I want to consume that plant with high protein with cattle. On the other hand I want to preserve that preserve that biomass for our soil program and for forage termination. We have a lot of grasses so it's very difficult for us to manage with a physical structure a roller. So we try to use cattle and graze that out but sometimes the rain allows us to get head of that going into sewing TR. So we do have to use glyphosate and 24d to determinate that.

32:14 So we like the profitability of this program. It works. No tail works. Cover crops works. Integrating cattle with two cycles. That works. So it's been a very good program for us. No il does require some adjustments but the benefits in no il have been very good for us. Cover crops is just a plain no-brainer for us. As far as where I'm headed obviously with $260 cattle futures this morning we like our cattle program. We're going to continue to experiment with cover crop species. We're currently soaking sewing about 29 30 pounds an acre. We're going to try to ramp that up to 40 knowing that sometimes our summer rains won't support that but we really like the effects we're.

33:07 Getting we're continuing to have to work on weed management we like the soil results that we're getting as far as watershed management that's perhaps the biggest area of the ranch that we're improving our assets we got a good clay base we got plenty of opportunity across 13,000 acres to retain our water so we hope this blueprint has been helpful for you and helping you achieve and fulfill your objectives because you and I are the stewards for America's soil tomorrow thank you Keith and I'll turn it back over to you for questions that you may have.

33:45 Yeah great thank you Max I love that last comment especially about how you know we are the stewards of this soil of this land for you know for future generations and I think that's why you're a great customer of ours because you know our mission statement here at Green cover is to help people regenerate Steward and share God's creation for future generations and that's exactly what you're doing and the changes that you've made on your ranch is stunning you know I mean we have pretty good soil here in Nebraska and we would love to have 4% organic matter in a 30 plus soil Health score on the Haney test and you know a respiration of 474 I mean those are incredible numbers particularly for the environment that you're in down there in West Texas or West Central Texas anyway for limited rainfall so hats off to you great job of what you've done.

34:55 I've got three pages of notes here so I'm going to ask a few starting questions and then we've got questions coming into the Q&A box here as well so folks continue to put those in so Max when you turn out you got 250 head of stalkers in a group are you rotationally grazing those in small paddocks and then moving every day are you doing every week moves what does your stocking rate versus moving look like.

35:28 Well you know we don't have the small paddocks down here in Texas I mean a fence cost would drive me crazy the other thing of course is Labor we have basically four Fields that we can rotate those 250 head with yes we rotate them and of course we rotate them with respect to various times of the year because I'm preparing for that TR so naturally I'm going to rotate and try to graze down as much as I can which saves me 7 to 10,000 dollars of herbicides and of course sometimes I don't have the rain to graze them but yes we try to rotate and we can down to maybe 50% of that stock and then we try to move them on.

36:17 Okay and so when you talk about the cover crops and the TR are all of your cropped field getting that every year or do you have different fields that you do one or the other and you kind of rotate around that way no we plant every field every year in TR and every field every year in cover crop okay and again in a 22 inch rainfall average which means some years you're 10 and some years you're 40 probably to get that that's impressive to essentially be double cropping is that pretty rare for your area or most people just kind of doing the one crop a year no it's very rare we have a few no tillers around but they don't do cover crops and so they don't.

37:11 Now you know our problem is not only 22 inches of rain but it's when we get it because we get it in April and May and then we get it in September and October so sometimes you know I am stranded in the summertime and that's why I've got that third backup of clang grass and of course we like 100% clang grass in our feed lot Farm operation whereas in our pasture year I'd like that to be more cast throughout the year so we use about 60% clang grass in our pastures when we renovate them and 40% native so that I can have a longer duration of that.

37:51 Yeah yeah and so by doing the two plantings a year you're spreading out that capital cost it's very much like doing two cabins a year you're spreading out that bull cost you're spreading your land cost out across two different grazing seasons and not just one like many of your neighbors would be yes and that also gives me a bright product that I can enter those caves in a little bit more diverse market price so if the market price happens to be down one side set of the year at least I've got the other side of the year to send to cavs hopefully we get a.

43:11 To or that they want to in their little micro environment, so you're exactly right. And the other thing is, because I know on our own ground here in Nebraska, you know we always struggle with low pH. Well, one of the things that lowers pH is using a lot of nitrogen fertilizer. That is a very good way to lower your pH. And so then you're always having to offset that by putting lime on. And so as you have been able to switch over to being far less dependent on any added nitrogen, which sounds like now there's very little if any, you know your pH's aren't bouncing all over the place because of that as well.

43:47 Exactly, yeah. So that's a great question on that, Barry. Hopefully that answers that question. Question here on how are you planning the TR Kay, and I think we kind of answered this. It's going in after you graze a cover crop, no-till being no-till drilled right? And what approximately what part of the year are you doing that in? September, October?

44:10 Well, we don't like to do it in late September because you run the risk of armyworms. And of course on the other hand, you know I want to get that in as early as possible so I can graze it early as possible. So that gets back to that clang grass, you know. So the tradeoff: do I want to run the risk of armyworms versus getting it out? But generally, I like the first week of October. We've got a Great Plains 2600 no-till, and I plant about 3/4 of an inch to an inch, and I plant about 2.1, 2.2 bushel per acre.

44:46 Okay, and then you know, so that's you're getting that in first of October. Are you able to start grazing that then, like in April probably, or when are you out? Oh no, well of course, given good rains we would like to be in there by Thanksgiving.

45:02 Oh, okay. So you're all grazing that? Yes, oh yes, yeah. We want to move in there as quick as we can because again, back to that cost of gain, you know. My cost of gain in while I have cattle in a feedlot is a buck 10, buck 20. So that's too much, you know. So in 45 days I really need to get that calf out of the feedlot. If I can put that calf in the fall on TR Kay, we do. If I can't, I'll run them on that interim Klein grass because we try to save that Klein grass as that transition based on what our rains are looking like in October on that TR Kay seed.

45:44 Yeah, so you've got multiple options there. Yeah, I've got multiple options, but on the negative side I got to get them out of that feedlot because that cost of gain, I don't want to live with that.

45:57 Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I'm just used to again, up to our climate up here in Nebraska, you know we just run out of growing degree days. What's your typical first frost date down there?

46:04 November 4th. November 4th, okay. Yes, so so you're getting your trilan five to six weeks ahead of the normal first frost dates. You're getting a good jump on it. Before—well, that's, you did hit the problem. You've got to get a good jump before that first frost because quite frankly it's going to be the latter part of February before it starts growing again. So that's your tradeoff on armyworms. You know, one year I went in early and got wiped out by armyworms, so that's no fun. So we try to kind of compromise and get enough growth prior to that frost where we can get grazing because that's a small window.

46:46 Yeah, yeah. And that's where you know you just got to be set up and ready to go so when that window opens up, right, you're ready to go on it there. Very is also asking the question here, and again I think we've kind of talked about this mostly—pretty much all no-till. Do you ever have to do any type of tillage at all to kind of smooth things up, you know, from hoof traffic or anything like that, or do you feel like your Great Plains drill is able to just kind of move through there and do it?

47:15 Yeah, we don't. We don't have any tillage. Now you're right in the sense that cattle paths—when you got 500 cows in there, and we also by the way, the summertime we'll turn out dry calves or old cows, so we'll have more—you're right, I mean sometimes there are trails throughout the year that can put a pretty good rut through those fields, but we just do the best we can. Yeah, we're no-till, meaning none, zero. I mean, you know, to me no-till causes too much damage on the soil structure, so we just don't want to do it period.

47:57 Yeah and again just give us the context of your area. Is that pretty rare? Do you know most of the guys, they're doing one crop a year and doing a lot of tillage to do that one crop, or what does that look like in the neighborhood?

48:12 Well, I'm in both Young and Archer County, Texas, and I would say that I know of virtually no rancher in my two counties that use cover crops. There are some use no-till, but they don't use cover crops. Now, in the next county over, I do know one rancher that is no-till and has an operation similar to mine, so it's almost unheard of. My neighbors don't agree with my no-till program, and then quite frankly, some of them think I'm crazy.

49:01 I think it gets down to, you know, I was born and raised in Illinois, so I've been in good soil all my young life. And as you mentioned, to come down here and get these soil results in Archer County, Texas is unheard of. And when Haney gets the results, I call them and say, are you sure these are mine and not somebody in Nebraska? But we don't have enough soil science in our farmers and ranchers today, and I didn't have it either. I couldn't have told you about the seven kinds of bacteria and microbial activity, but thanks to YouTube, there's about 7,250 things on YouTube that you can get out there and learn, and I listen to those things, you know, five and ten a week. Because we've got to have better stewards, we've got to have more soil science, just like genetics and cattle. I didn't understand genetics, I didn't know what a terminal EPD was, and now I've studied those things. Organizations like the Charolais Organization in America, Kansas City, they've got a plethora of database on genetic values. Genetics works, soil science works. Period.

50:25 Yeah, I love your comment about YouTube there. I just was looking at our YouTube channel yesterday and I saw that we had 365 videos posted there, so when we put yours up there, Max, you'll be 366. So now people can watch one a day for a whole leap year. But yeah, there's tremendous amount of resources out there for anyone who's willing to put the time in to learn, and you're right. Looking at those numbers, I, you know, we would love to have those numbers and we consider ourselves good farmers, you know, to have a respiration or to have the soil health score over 30 is incredible, and that respiration over 400, it just shows that you've got a tremendous amount of biological activity happening there, which is really what changes the game. Now, they can't live without having a living plant, and you're keeping, you know, so the soil health principles, you're keeping the living root in the soil as much as possible, you're keeping the soil covered, you're minimizing the disturbance, you know, you're maximizing that diversity. Because your mix, I'm looking at your mix here that we sent you, you know, it's there's 12 different things in it: mung beans, cow peas, forage sorghum, sorghum sudan, brown top millet, pearl millet, oats, forage collards, radishes, buckwheat, sunflower, and okra. You know, so you've got, you know, six different plant families, you've got all kinds of diversity out there. Your other crop, the tri-K, doesn't have a lot of diversity, but it's partially by design so you can do some targeted herbicides if you have to. But you've got that big punch of diversity coming in every year, and that's really keeping your biological diversity really ramped up there.

52:10 Have you done any biological soil test like a PLFA or anything like that to just get a feel for where you're at from the actual critters in the soil?

52:21 No, but if you'll send me an email, we'll get her done.

52:27 Well, that would, I'm all for testing. We had too simplistic testing because I didn't understand the microbial, the importance of monitoring and measuring the microbial levels. So, you know, when we went to Haney, we learned that you've got to have a more advanced structure for metrics, and that has really helped us. So I'm open to that, and thank you for helping me know that I need one more.

52:53 Yeah, I will, and the other thing I'll send you, Max, is we got a deal started with W Labs this year where we want to get people like you who are doing these summer cover crops to send in a forage clipping.

53:06 Of your cover crop kind of at maximum growth they're going to run it through their cover crop nutrient test and it will return about 12 different nutrients, 12 different minerals, and it will show you the level of nutrients in the cover crop mix. Then you can kind of look at, okay, well we know that this is cycling back through the system. I'll send you that as well. We're doing a project with Ward where we're getting a discount on it, so we're giving you the free test. All you got to do is clip it and send it in, and then we'll talk about the results. So if anybody else is interested in that, just let us know. But I think that's going to be really interesting to see, you know, the massive amount of nutrients that a good healthy ecosystem cycles because it's not just the plants and it's not just the biology. It's the two of them working together that make it work and make it cycle.

54:04 You talked about magic, you know, you talked about how August is when the magic of cover crops happened, and I think that magic only happens when you have that diversity of cover crops paired with the diversity of the biology, and you obviously have both going there. Another question here that somebody's asking is has the armyworm pressure declined with the improvements in soil organic matter or cover crop usage, or is that still something you fight every year?

54:35 Well, depending on the temperature of that time of year, armyworms every year is a problem in our area. I typically try to wait until it cools off just a little bit because when you're out there sitting on that drill at a 95 degree temperature, that's just an invitation for armyworms. So we typically wait it out, but as I pointed out, the trade-off is you may be losing a week or two growth and that wind of narrow on you. So it's a trade-off, but on the other hand, I've seen not mine but I've seen neighbors' fields literally get wiped out overnight with armyworms. I'm talking about one night there was wheat there on Thursday and on Friday it was a bare field, so it can be massive problems.

55:28 And that's difficult to really control with just good soil health practices because they're migratory. They move in and out, so it's not just what you're doing on your soil. It's those migratory patterns. So you can build some resilience, but you really can't eliminate that as a threat because you don't have control over it.

55:57 So most guys in your area, they're planting probably just grazeout wheat once a year. Are they planting kind of that same time frame or are they trying to get planted earlier because that's the only crop they're growing for the whole year?

56:09 Well, so many of my neighbors buy their calves rather than have a cow-calf operation, so they try to sow very early. We're always one of the later ones to sow, and of course they're out there running at risk on armyworms trying to get that growth. Some of our neighbors buy Mexican cattle so they come in thin. They need to be fed. Can't put them on the feedlot because of cost of gain, so they're trying to get out there on grazing.

56:45 And again, when you're only doing that one crop a year, then you've got to try to maximize that. So yes. I really like the theory of two crops every year, two grazing seasons, and you're just really spreading that out. Your neighbors may think you're crazy, but I think you're being crazy all the way to the bank. But see, early on we didn't have that clanggrass. We just had cover crop and traditional k-forage. But I got caught with my pants down two or three times where we didn't have enough rain and I just plain ran out of groceries because my traditional k-forage wasn't ready and our cover crop was already grazed out. So that's the reason we then put a field in and we put it in 100% Klein grass. And of course we're on the edge of the Klein grass territory, meaning a little bit north of us you run the risk of freeze-out. But Klein grass has been a fantastic backup for us.

57:48 So do you have any neighbors at all that are coming to you and saying how are you getting so much productivity? I'd like to know more about what you're doing, or are they just kind of hunkering down and doing their own thing? Well, every once in a while I'll

58:02 Have a neighbor come and say hey we're kind of intrigued, what was your capital cost to buy a sprayer and to buy a no-till drill? And then you know once you tell them the capital you got tied up in that, the conversation's kind of over. They just don't want to make that shift because admittedly, sprayers are expensive to get a good one. You got to get a good size when to get productivity. No-till drills are expensive. So it's the capital thing that I think stops. But tillage equipment and all that stuff isn't cheap either. I mean you don't have any investment in any of that kind of stuff too.

58:45 The dynamics between neighbors is really fascinating. And if folks get a chance, when we do the recording on this on YouTube we can put a link here. Peter Vick has a series called Root So Deep—it's a four-part series where they interview regenerative farmers, regenerative grazers much like what Max is doing, and then a neighbor, a direct neighbor who they have a good relationship with but is not doing these practices. And they really document the struggle that neighbors sometime have in asking questions and getting information. It's a very powerful film series. I really recommend everybody watch that because it really opens your eyes. Not only is there a ton of science—they bring in high-level scientists to document how much better the regenerative practices are than what just regular ranching and grazing practices are—but then they look at it from that social aspect as well, which I think is really fascinating.

59:49 Max, one more question. Tony popped one in here at the end. He says on that cover crop payback slide, you know when you had the 673 ROI, how many acres is that involving in that calculation? 640 acres. 640 acres, okay. So really not all that many for that number of cattle and that big of operations.

1:00:09 Well, we kind of hit our time limit here. Max, do you have any parting pieces of advice for people that want to try to jump in and start something, you know, where's kind of the low-hanging fruit of where they should start?

1:00:26 Well, if you're not a soil scientist, we need to be one. On the cattle side, if you're not a student of genetics, strive to be one, because those are two scientific fields. When a neighbor comes over, you kind of point your finger down to the earth and you say okay, what do you call that? And if he uses the word dirt, you know he's not a soil scientist. You stop using the word dirt when you become a soil scientist. So there's kind of the difference that you can see with neighbors. Yeah, and we've got it's a science world. Cattle is a science world. Genetics is a science world. Yeah. And we got to be better at it.

1:01:21 Easy to do is a really important piece of equipment that you showed in one of your slides that takes almost no capital investment. You had a picture of your spade, your shovel, out there. And you don't have to go to a four-year school to be a soil scientist, but you got to be in the soil to study it. And that's a huge piece of it—is get your shovel, carry it with you, dig down, see what those ruts are doing, see what they're doing to the soil, look at earthworm activity, look at all these things because that's how you learn. YouTube and fade and you'll be in good shape.

1:01:57 When we started no-till, Keith, I had one of the folks from the Noble Foundation say well why don't you go out and tell me how many earthworms you get, you know, with a hundred shovels full? We got no earthworms, none, zero. And now I typically get from two to four earthworms for every two or three shovels. So you're right, there's some simple ways you can do it.

1:02:26 Yeah, you know it's a simple way to take a torch and cut off a piece of four or six inch pipe and do your water filtration, you know, you're the one that kind of got me into that. Some simple things you can do. Well, great advice folks. You know, get out there, look at your soils, get on YouTube, learn as much as you can. We will be posting this to our YouTube library here in the next week or so. So we encourage you to invite your friends to watch this, to get some good advice and to join us next week as well. We'll have another—I think we'll have an organic dairy dairyman from the East Coast. Eric Z is going to be next in our regenerative livestock series. So Max, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for taking the time to share your unique background and your thought process of how you're doing things there at your ranch in Loving, Texas. Thanks for joining everybody, take care.