Travis Isbell on No-Till Cover Crops and Livestock Integration in Central Texas

0:08 I won't be as good as our last guy. Yeah, put the pressure on me a little bit. You can see here where we ranch at. Got Lampasas there, but we got Georgetown, Austin. We're getting pretty urbanized, so one problem we're finding is we're losing lots of land. Even though we leased a lot of country, doctors and lawyers from Austin coming in behind two or three hundred acres, not sure what to do with it. So luckily for...

0:42 Right now we're getting at least some land, but our struggle was trying to figure out how to keep our numbers up with decreasing land all the time.

0:56 Graduated in 2011 from Tarleton, came home to the family ranch and couldn't have been a worse time. I thought that as I was going through this, but it might have been the best thing for me. I learned how to keep all the cows there on the ranch on the worst of.

1:16 Times and couldn't—like I said it could have been the best thing for me. I'm 100% know till now I run the 1590 drill. I think it's the best thing that I can do for my operation. I like the single disc openers on it, less damage. One thing I will say, when I was going along starting my no-till process, there was no one around for me to talk to about it. All the old-timers I'd ask, they say son, you're wasting your time.

1:54 No-till won't work, just leave it at that. So I finally just jumped off the cliff, bought me a drill, was talking to all these companies about how big of a tractor do I need to pull this and stuff like that. And later they tell me, well gosh, I need probably need 150 horsepower tractor to pull that 1590. And I'm telling you today I'm pulling it with a 7210, it's a 90-horsepower two-wheel-drive tractor and I

2:22 Get along just fine. This is a picture I took this spring about a week before that picture. That little water hole there was nothing but a feral hog water hole. It was down to nothing for probably three years. We had zero runoff. We had a stockpile of warm season grasses there that you see. I thought I'd never see that thing full again. The spring a week before this picture was taken we had six inches of

3:01 Rain in two over two days and that thing didn't run up a bit of water seven days later we had six inches in about three hours that's what you get. I come over that hill, I just stopped there and I'd take a picture of it because I swore I'd never see that thing full again.

3:25 This is the cover crops that I'm doing at home. This is a coastal Bermuda field that I thought it dry, drought it out. I was playing with the

3:39 Covers and one day I was just sitting there thinking I was like, you know what, I'm going to try alfalfa. I don't know why I live in Central Texas, it'll surely it will never work, but I bought enough seed to do 50 acres and there you go, I got this alfalfa growing pretty good. And this in this coastal, old coastal patch that's the same field I had some. It was a cool season mix there were sweet clover and alfalfa, trilla Kaylee, I think.

4:56 Coming up through that native grass, we sprayed every acre we could. We thought that was the way to do it, that was a way to grow more grass. And been trying to leave the fertilizer in the spray truck part and seeing some more diversity in our warm season grasses there. And you see there's a little winter stuff coming up through there. This is another cool season mix I had. There's oats in there, sweet clover, alfalfa, again this is an.

5:32 Abandoned coastal field there's some coastal growing up through there. I put this slide in there because I get all these questions all the time, you know, people there in town seeing what we're doing and asking questions. Can you run that drill through a warm season crop or warm season grasses and still have some production with your winter stuff? That picture was taken about probably a

6:08 Month ago and I'd say it's doing pretty good. Also with that a few years ago when I started out my no-till adventure I thought I need to shred everything right before you come in and plant. After I went to a few of these seminars and learned a little bit, I learned that was probably the worst thing I could be doing. So now I'm leaving that standing cover and implanting right through it and not having any problems.

6:40 At all this is my mix that I'm planning behind my my oat fields that I that I graze for winter winter grazing this year I planted this mix. I don't think I got it in the ground till about June the 15th and which was way later than I thought. I figured you know, be combine and oats first of May, you know, going to plant this right behind my combine I'll be good to go, have lots of you know, summer grazing. Well we were wet, couldn't combine and like I said I got the last of this out around June the 15th and still got some pretty good grazing out of it.