Summer Cover Crops for Grazing: A Western Kansas Alternative to Cash Crops

0:00 You started grazing cattle on cover crops. So do you have much, you know, perennial grass, native grass at all, or are you pretty much doing it all on annuals?

0:13 Well, up until 2026, so in 2024, we closed on some ground and bought some ground that was farm ground, like 120 acres of farm ground and 320 acres of grass. So that's the first time I've ran cows on grass. I've ran replacement heifers on grass. I guess I would say there was a quarter that I'd use for replacement heifers that once or twice I put 15 cows on it, but not mass, you know, 300 acres of grass. So all my experience up to last year was all on cover crops, grazing cows on cover crops. I did, you know, run into killing some of those replacement heifers with CN D, claustrated strands of CN D. And so that first year I ended up moving some.

1:15 Of them of the replacement heifer program to grass. And so I, because I had that bad issue that first year, I was always trying to do that first generation of replacement heifers on grass and the cows were all on cover crops. So yeah, I've had a ton of experience of grazing cows on every spring cover crop, summer cover crop, winter cover crop, and the highs and lows and what works and what doesn't work in my environment.

1:44 And I really like how you mentioned Kevin Wilty and one of our earlier podcasts that we did here at Green Cover was with one of our neighbors, Kip Einrix, here in Nebraska. And both of those guys didn't have a lot of grass, so they took farm ground and they planted perennial grass because that's the type of farming that they wanted to do. And so just because you don't have grass doesn't mean you can't get grass.

2:08 back because it would have all been perennial grass at one point in time. And so again, it's just seeding some of that back to what it naturally was and what that land very likely remembers how to do very, very well. Are you looking at seeding anything back to perennials like Kevin and others have done?

2:28 Well, and I forgot to mention that too. My neighbor is going to sell his cows and so he's going to let me rent his grass. And so between the grass I bought and that grass and then another neighbor's letting me rent grass, I'm going to be able to move all my cows onto the grass. And where we got, we just got a contract with Halter last May. And so we're going to be doing rotational grazing on the grass, on the cover crops, on the, I'm sorry, we're going to be doing

3:04 Rotational grazing on the grass with those GPS collars from Halter. But I did want to back up, Keith, because I think you know, you brought up in saying that about Western Kansas being very very challenging to do regenerative. I think that that's true, but the problem is is that people only see regenerative. I guess not only but the big there's a big challenge in regenerative agriculture where people are only thinking in terms of immediate profit. They're not thinking in long term. So like if I'm getting more plants out there and those plants are creating more root exudates, they're creating more aggregates. I'm increasing the ability of my ground to take on more water. And that's why I brought up Kevin Wiltsy. When I went to a field day that they did earlier this winter, he brought.

4:08 Some of his soil. And I've seen the water infiltration test. Candy Thomas was there and so Candy put the ring down in the ground and the water infiltration test she did on that circle in the on Kevin's ground, his was like the fastest I've ever seen. That water went like an inch of water went into his ground in like 30 seconds.

4:45 So like the problem that farmers see is they think that everything is all the same. They think there's no difference between tillage and no till and or having a bunch of cover crops or and I'm even thinking about that in terms of like your corn and rows like you're not getting the aggregates in the center of those rows if unless you're not interseeding cover crops in your ground. And so like people have to be

5:10 Thinking of that in terms of where your water is going to infiltrate into your soil and building that up to where in 10 years from now your water infiltration rates are 10 times faster. How much more profitable are you going to be in doing that? And so like I think that you know if you're able to take farm ground in my area and you're able to find what works in terms of getting cover crops integrated and finding out what's going to work in your system. For us, we realize that if you try to do a living root in the ground at all times and you don't have moisture, your ground is going to blow. And so really like the best way to get a cover crop in is to do a fall cash crop and then do a summer cover crop. And I think that you know you can run cows on that over the summer. But if it's the first time that you've done that, you're going to run into issues.

6:11 With compaction, I think the best way to — if you have the situation I have where you have limited water, you have irrigation, you could run cows on cover crops like I have. I think the best way to integrate cover crops right now are the things that we're doing: you have cows and you run plant a summer cover crop and then you graze that over the winter and then you go back to a summer cover crop. And even if you're like, well, I don't have cows. Great. Buy old cows that look terrible at the sale barn, run them out on your cover crops. They'll gain a ton of weight over the winter and then you sell them. And your only experience is having those old cows on your cover crops. You graze that. They gain a ton of weight and then you sell them and then you avoid issues with compaction because your ground's frozen while the cows are.

7:58 Did a long go period. And so it's like I had to go through 10 years of trying things and doing things to get to the point where I'm like those things work in our area. And to me everybody can do that. Like you pick one quarter and you get it. You go to your local NRCS and you ask them how can I get in the equip or the CSP program with cover crops. They tell you how that helps you pay for your cover crops and you just start on one quarter or two quarters and you figure out what works on those two quarters and then integrate that across your entire landscape of your farming operation in my opinion.

8:33 Yeah. And you know, you were talking about the summer planted cover crop and the beauty of that is that that is the absolute best time to get all the diversity in there because you can plant both warm season and cool season species. And so that's where you get the

8:49 Richness of that plant diversity, you know, that Christine Jones talks about so much. You can't do that if you're stuck in a corn soybean rotation and you're always planting cover crops in October or November. And so what you're doing and being able to harvest the income through the cattle, you know, it's a beautiful system because you're maximizing all that diversity. By doing the winter grazing, you're eliminating a lot of the issues that you talked about with compaction as well. And you're really building the soil at the same time you're putting all that weight on those cattle. So I love that system. It's a great way to go. And you know, for some people when that's all they're doing, your equipment costs are almost nothing, too, because you know, you don't have to depreciate a combine on those acres when—

9:43 You're harvesting it with your cattle. Yeah. And I was talking to Scott Raven, I think he said that I think it's John Herman. I thought he said that he got rid of all of his farming equipment other than his planter and he's planting summer cover crops and doing contracts with stalkers and running stalkers on it. So he didn't even have the cost of the stalkers. He's just getting paid to graze the stalkers on the summer cover crop. He's building up the health of his soil and not having any of the equipment cost.

10:16 Yeah. And there's a number of people doing that. And here's the other thing, Jay, is that especially in very arid environments, you know, because you're what, 14 to 16 inches of rain on average. Yes. Somewhere in that neighborhood. And and

10:30 You know, people would look at that and go, well, you know, you're really going to struggle to grow cash grain crops. And you do. You know, some years you do really well, other years you don't. But what a lot of people don't think about or don't realize is that it takes about 50% of the water for this crop to grow the majority of the biomass, vegetative biomass, and the other 50% to actually produce grain and take the grain all the way out to, you know, full maturity harvest.

11:01 Well, most years you have at least 50% of rainfall. Now, there's some years you don't, but most years you're going to have at least 50%. So in most of those years, you can still grow the majority of your biomass and if you're grazing it, that's really all you need. And so that's why the system that you're looking at and talking about doing can really work so well in an arid environment or a low irrigation, you know, as your wells start to, you know, shrink. And we've got some of those here in our area, too, where our wells just aren't very good. And so, you know, we can't go after the highest production corn, but we can still go after incredibly good production with a little bit different system.