Water Buffalo, Yak, and Cover Crops: Integrating Livestock on Rocky Ozark Soils

0:00 Hey everybody, thanks for joining Keith Burns with Green Cover here. It's exciting to kick off another webinar series. You know, when we talk about the principles of soil health, a lot of times the one that people struggle with the most, including ourselves, is how do you properly integrate livestock into the operation. Certainly more challenging for some than others depending on infrastructure and any manner of things. But as if it wasn't challenging enough to just integrate regular livestock, we got a guy here with us today that said doing cattle are easy, I'm going to do weird things like water buffalo and yak and all these other things that are just very unique. But there's a reason for it.

0:44 So I want to introduce you to Michael DeWeer. We have known Michael now for a number of years, and Michael, how was that two, three years ago we were at your place and we toured through your paddocks and saw the buffalo and just had a great time? Not just seeing the unique animals but seeing the unique soil changes that are happening. Michael is with H Boo Operations Beyond Organics in Kosong, did I pronounce that right? Kosong, that is Kosong, yes, Kosong, Missouri. There is not much in Kosong, generally a gas station and 200 people, yeah, so it's not a very big town, but it's right on the edge of the Arkansas border, so it's in the Ozarks.

1:33 Michael is blessed with a lot of things, good soil is not one of them. They have to build their own soil. So when he's going through this, remember the context of southern Missouri Ozarks—lots of rocks, very thin soils. What he's doing and what he's going to show you is really pretty remarkable, and it's a great testament and testimony to the power of the soil health principle and not just the first ones but the livestock integration as well.

2:05 So I'm excited about what he's going to share. If you were at our Iola conference last November, Michael was part of our livestock panel there, and the information was so interesting that we really wanted to have him back on for a broader audience. So Michael, I'm going to turn it over to you. Go ahead and share your screen and then you can kind of introduce yourself and your operation and your own story of how you've gotten to where you're at.

2:31 All right, perfect. I'm actually going to go off screen just so that when people are focusing on the slideshow here, okay, yeah, I'm thrilled to be here with Keith and Green Cover. I met Keith three years ago—he came to the ranch, I think it was two and a half years ago, Keith. I have been here for four years, excuse me, down here in the Ozarks. I was born and raised in Central Illinois where the topsoil is actually present and the rocks are not, and it has been an education from the word go.

3:17 I took over management of the ranch. The ranch is owned by Jordan Rubin, who has made his claim to fame in the nutraceutical and supplement side of the equation. He's the founder of Garden of Life supplement company. He sold that, and in the in-between between selling Garden of Life and starting Ancient Nutrition, he bought this ranch as well as another couple ranches and started a grass-fed dairy in the Ozarks and sold milk products—raw milk, cheese, etc. About five years ago that disappeared, and I came in after a transitional period, and I have had an education every day since I've started here.

4:04 If my dad was still alive, I'd go back and apologize to him for grumbling about the one or two rocks we'd find occasionally in a post hole up there, because here you're just thrilled to find any soil. It's made its own unique changes. We're down here in the Ozark Plateau about two hours directly south of Rolla. We get about 42 average inches of rain a year. When I moved here, I thought the people were kidding me that we're two days from a flood, two weeks from a drought, and they weren't kidding.

4:37 It's been an interesting transition. Like I said, we started this—will be our third, actually moving into our third year in the fall. We're Jordan launched the ranch program: Regenerative Agriculture Nutrition and Climate Health. I know that's climate health, not climate change. We're definitely firm believers of Godly stewardship over the land. The study has tweaked a little bit. We're in partnership with the Rodale Institute and SNAP Lands LLC. Forge Consultants are on the team as well, and it's a seven-year program using annual cover crops into our existing pastures and an Allan Savory style managed rotational grazing program.

5:24 We're measuring about 35 different indicators on soil health, including everything from soil organic matter to PLFA tests. The list goes on and on. That's an ongoing study, and it's exciting to see some changes. We're this is our third spring into that, and I think we're really seeing some the

5:45 Changes are happening and happening a little quicker so Keith Talc asked me to talk about integrating warm season annuals into dormant cool season pastures. Tilling the soil in the Ozarks is not advisable because of the rocks and it just is not feasible, so we know till. I thought I'd start with this picture. This is a group of 100 water buffalo feeder bulls that are on a 5 acre pasture. This was last, I think, the second week of August. We'd had some timely July rains, which we don't always get, and we planted our warm season covers to start the second week of May. This year we're a little behind because we've had moisture, but you can see those are frame four water buffalo. Comparatively to beef cattle, and they're over belly deep in the brown top millet, sorghum sedang grass. We'll go over some of the specifics later. Not only is it unique, Jordan has made life even more unique because our largest numerically speaking group of ruminants are water buffalo.

7:00 Water buffalo have a lot of unique features and Jordan likes unique things. That's why he has a chiropractor who's been in practice for 30 years and raised organic grass-fed beef on the side. Now he's his ranch manager. I guess he likes to do things a little bit outside the bubble. Water buffalo, worldwide there's an extremely large population. There's only maybe a million and a half, maybe two million. I've not seen very numbers here in the United States. We've got 300 just right around 300 mamma cows and then the assorted calves that come off of that at this time. We are selecting for meat, not milk. Water buffalo has been made famous over the years for their mozzarella, which I've had. I haven't had the privilege of that yet. I've had the milk and the ice cream, but it's a $30 a pound mozzarella that they say once you've had it you'll never go back. The Italians have made that famous, but we're not set up for milking anymore. Our old milk parlor, very large milk facility where they made cheese, etc., is out now. Actually a nutraceutical manufacturing facility. So we're focusing on meat.

8:17 That's where we're at. People ask me, is it possible to integrate annual cover crops into the fescue belt of the thin-soiled Ozark Plateau? I say it is possible because we're seeing it. The recipe in my opinion is we have to have great faith. Look at Psalms 86:8-10. You have to have great faith and you need great counselors. Proverbs 20:18. Keith and Davis and the rest of the crew of green cover, the Rodale group, Ryan, White Brandon Dalton, Richie from SNAPS. Those are just some of the counselors that we lean on here to come up with some wise choices. We need great seed, which green cover has been vital from the word go of this program. I cannot speak highly enough of the quality of the seed. I've just seen different people down here have different seed companies and they just haven't had quite the results that we do. So kudos to Brian, Keith Davis and everybody else there at Green Cover.

9:25 I have a great team of ranch hands and I have a great team of livestock. The picture on the right there is actually some of our summer annuals coming up. Excuse me, that's our fall planted annuals coming up in early spring, a year ago. Like I said, we don't till anything. It's just no-till drilled. We have a very basic drill. We use the animals to do our work. In my opinion, we need some required tools. We need forage harvesting equipment, we need tillage equipment, planting equipment, quality seed like I spoke about, plenty of sunlight which we usually have here in the Ozarks, and moisture, which is a give and take. I know I shouldn't complain because I know maybe some of you guys watching and gals watching this are in a very dry area, but that is obviously a very rate-limiting ingredient.

10:16 This is how we harvest and how we till. This is a group of that same group of bulls I showed in the earlier picture. They left the ranch averaging almost 1150 pounds at about 26, 27 months, which is pretty quick for a buffalo. They have a slower maturity, they have a slower rumen. They can do really good things with some more lignified, heavier forage that shouldn't be overmature forage that a typical beef cow really won't do as well with because their rumen just slow churns. They have a higher bacterial fungi protozoan overall critter count in the rumen. I think that's one of the aspects that they bring to the table, that asset they bring to the table. That they're actually inoculating that soil in a very unique way, different than the cattle and the sheep and the goats. But they have a larger foot and they can definitely make a little more of an impact on that soil when they're stepping. Their feet hold up extremely well to wet environments. Not that we have that here a lot, but we do have wet, soggy kind of winters. Their feet hold up really well.

11:21 Well, and that's kind of what they're known for worldwide. While they make great animals for rice paddies, this is a picture of what we Jordan called the fluid experiment. I'll get to another picture coming up here, but in this group we had 7 acre paddocks made with poly netting that we moved every day of the year, 365 days a year. We had buffalo, beef cattle, hair sheep and goats followed with ducks and chickens. It was part of a really intensive research project and we fed food waste to the fowl that came after, which was leftover vegetable waste, etc., from health food stores.

12:04 We don't do this program anymore. We had five and a half hour one-way trips to get our food waste from Kansas City, three and a half hours to Memphis, and two and a half hours round trip to Springfield, Missouri. But it did some interesting things to the soil, and it was interesting to see all the different manure and impact of the different species.

12:22 This is a picture we have a commercial cow beef herd. This is a group of 24 heifers that we had out. This is our spring explosion this year of our fall cover crop blend that we no-tilled into our fescue dominant pastures. This is over a seven acre pasture. We left those in there about four days and the whole goal is to obviously harvest over half, give or take, trample the rest. This year we've got some timely rains and we've been actually able to go back over some of these paddocks now twice before we actually were drilling into them, which is the first time we've been able to do that because moisture's just been really great this year.

13:06 Picture of some goats. We do have a small contingency of goats that we do for brush control. We have large paddocks. I need to have probably 1,500 goats, but we don't have quite the fencing infrastructure on those locations yet. But they do a good job. They obviously browse the forbs, the woody bushes. We have a lot of blackberry intrusion, Himalayan blackberries, buckbrush, and bucaro because the Ozarks are always trying to kind of return back to a forest.

13:40 This picture is kind of cool. This is an irrigated section of ground that's 53 acres where we had those 7 acre rotations. We, this was last fall, I only irrigated this I think nine times because we didn't have that 7 acre high density movement going on. But those are 95 pound, 90, 85 to 95 pound average hair sheep. This is last, I believe it was first of September. That's an 800 pound heifer there. And you can see that this is our second, I think, pass on this paddock of our warm season cover crop into fescue pastures. And it's gotten so tall you can't hardly see the grazing animals. So they really did exceptionally well. The market lambs did well, and the heifer really put on a lot of flesh and came through this really in excellent shape.

14:33 This year we're actually going to be harvesting hay off of this. We're transitioning to become certified organic with our livestock. The ground has been certified organic since 2008, and we're also working for regenerative organics certified with our livestock. So we have to harvest our own hay because organic hay in this area is not easy, if at all possible, to get a hold of. So we're going to use this section for actually hay production. We poured a lot of nutrition on there with our intensive grazing.

15:05 I like this one. This is a water buffalo in a ghillie suit. They use their horns. They really throw stuff up. They kind of do some micro tilling at times. They don't tear the soil up terribly, but that vetch was so thick. As they eat the undersword they just came up with the headful. So I wish I could have that much hair, but that's just not my lot in life.

15:30 Here's another harvesting tool picture. That's the 90 wean calves. These calves we weaned on the third of May came off our water buffalo herd. They averaged 470 pounds. You can see on the right hand side of the picture where they're at. They've been in there I think that was two and a half days, and it was I think six point seven acres or seven point seven acres, maybe, in this one. And then you can see on the left where it has not been grazed—that's our fall-planted spring annuals coming through in abundance.

16:04 Actually, I should have—I didn't get a picture taken—but the field on the left now looks almost as the field on the right now looks like what's on the left, and that's been 32 days since we rested. We've drilled into it and now I've got cover crops coming into this abundant regrowth of our spring annuals, so it's pretty exciting this year. This is just another picture on the left—just a reverse shot of what we just looked at—that grazed down well, what litter you know trampled on the ground. We've got good soil contact with all the carbon-rich residue. And over on the right, what we haven't hit, one thing we've noticed, our early numbers coming in our PLFA tests, we're seeing a three-fold increase of our biology count in the top three inches.

16:53 The second 3 in but our biology counts are blowing up and actually the lab called said is this the same ranch, so I was thrilled to hear that. And we're organic matter is ticking up. Average organic matter in this area is probably around 1.5, maybe 2%. We've got some up to 4 and a half percent, and some of that was coming up before we started this intensive program. But this particular section of the ranch had been pine forest eight years ago, a lot of pine duff. We used, they used—excuse me, it was before me. They planted different things, never really took, and they used crushed eggshell for calcium source also to kind of neutralized some of the pH. Did some chicken litter, but this piece of ground has not blown up like this since we started doing the annual rye, annual cover crops with the rotation. So it's really exciting to see the biology and the numbers from the studies coming up.

17:52 This is a picture. This is on the north end. The picture you just saw previously is on a half mile south. I just took them out of this pasture two days ago. You can see how they laid everything down. We're getting a little mature on the rye. The triticale starting to lose leaf underneath. It's starting to mature out. We've got pods coming, doesn't seem to phase them. I've read that there's some photosensitivity issues that you sometimes need to watch. We threw sheep out here last year with no problem. And this is only 3 and a half pounds an acre VCH is in that blend. So we're not going to plant this year, but you can see how they laid everything down. The lignified rice stocks are laying there. They just did a really good job of laying it down and tilling. So that's our version of burndown here in the Ozarks. And that's just a close-up picture. You can see the manure there has already been worked on by some of the soil beetles. We have the small dung beetles. I have not seen any of the large ones here yet, but the soil critter life above the ground and below the ground is definitely really flourishing.

19:00 So in this picture here, this is a 625, averaging probably 1250 pound animals because the water buffalo. But so there's about 600,000 pounds of animal pressure in a 6 acre paddock in that picture. And there's one coming up that shows you what 12 hours looks like afterwards. And this was our first spring after planting fall cover crops supplied by Green Cover. Again, another plug for Mr. Burns.

19:29 This picture shows it. Don't judge me for the cattle. I came here and inherited Jersey, Brahma crosses, and that was done for a purpose. The Jersey cows' feet did not hold up well to the Ozark rock, so they bred Brahma bulls and a few other types on some of these cows trying to put better feet. And then when they got rid of the dairy, they kept these cows as brute cows. So you can see the horn and some of the Brahma resemblance. But what I want you to really look at is that's our summer annual crop. That was two years ago, 5 feet tall. That was at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the next morning at 7 o'clock, you can see what they've done to it. They have cleaned it off. That's about 650,000 pounds of pressure—650, because there's some calves in there—on six acres in about 14, 15 hours. So they did a great job of grazing it, laying down all the dry matter left over. And that is what I think a big part of why we're really seeing some of the biology changes. We've got covers, we've got biomass, and then we've got animals eating it and tilling it.

20:40 I just like this picture. It's young steer, fall two years ago. That was second grazing through our summer annuals that in our 53 acres. And relishing, I think that's Prometheus stock. It's really fun to watch them eat the heads off those black sunflower seeds as well.

21:00 Here's another picture. Poly netting, same thing. Somewhere out there behind that poly netting is a bunch of 90 pound hair sheep. But good luck finding them. But they were 24 beef heifers and right at 100 market lambs on four acres, and we moved them about every two, two and a half days. So again, grazing it, laying it down, increasing our soil biology, soil carbon, and the exchange rate just keeps exponentially growing.

21:30 Here's a picture of what 3,000 ducks and chickens look like in 7 acres. Actually, that's 1.4 acres. We had to double it because it was wet. They did a great job laying down a lot of manure. But ducks are little jackhammers in terms of compaction. And if you have moisture and it gets a little slurry and a little slick, that little beak is like a little jackhammer. So that concentration caused a little issue, but they did do a lot of good things. The bug count, etc., and again their manure is just different than everybody else's.

22:03 Program we have real basic equipment. They have a 10-foot Great PLS no tail drill and a 1983 John Deere tractor and that's what we drill with. Picture on the left we grazed through it, we had some much grass I need to get my fall covers in. So you can see I had a lot of trash, a lot of standing residue. The drill laid it down nicely and those earlier pictures you saw where that abundance of growth, that's what we went into. So I wasn't afraid to go into a lot of residue because the covers have proven they can do it. I think there's a lot of fear out there that oh you can't plant that heavy. I would tend to disagree.

22:42 Now this piece of ground we graze this extremely short because this is a very densely, this field has been in Kentucky 31 Fescue probably since like the mid 70s. So we grazed it really hard, really short and then we drilled into it to try to make sure that our covers would get up ahead of the Fescue. This is a fall, this is a year ago, did really quite well. This has not been as easy to transition. Not all the fields have been this well established in the Kentucky 31. But in this one field, this one third, we never plowed. I'm kind of glad we didn't use it as a control. But we have gone back through, you know, graze it short, drilled it, and then came back in about 7 to 9 days later and graze it again. So any Fescue that was starting to out compete or get ahead of some of our covers we graze back. But I've only done that once and I haven't had really any significant problem staying ahead of the Fescue.

23:41 This is a picture of some volunteer crimson clover, 2021 fall we had crimson clover, we haven't planted it since, this was this year. I just like this picture. This is on that little poor ground up here in the north end of the ranch that was a Pine Forest. You've got the crimson clover, you've got red clover, you've got the I think that's the trill in there, some of the rye, and that little yellow, there's there's some buttercup. But there's a little bunch they call it hop clover, I'm not sure what the technical term is. But that is, we haven't planted that and it has come back and it's more of a quote unquote native legume. I don't believe it's historically native, it was introduced at some point, but it's really done a great job. So I just like the fact I can look down at the ground and I don't see the ground.

24:28 When we started this program four years ago we had about 50 to 60% I believe I'm using the right terms, I'm no expert, but basal cover. You could see a fair amount of dry bare ground. Last fall and this spring again we had nearly 100% on the entire part of the ranch that that ground was covered with something either dead, decadent, or growing plant.

24:49 That's a picture of our Fescue up here on the north end of the ranch. It's a higher Fescue. This is another section that been in Kentucky 31 since 1974, 1975. The vetch has really occupied it. It's hard to see the clover, it's coming up in there extremely well. And until we started using the vetch in this particular piece of ground, we had not seen a legume really take hold. And now we seeing the red clover we planted, we've seen the crimson clover come back voluntarily and but we're seeing the linao white and some of the others. So it's and the hop clover is really so it's cool to see the biology working together. And I know that's a fungal bacterial thing and I'm not an expert on that ratio, but all I know is biology is coming alive and that's what I'm really excited about.

25:39 Here's just a picture of, that's the back end of my truck, you can see how tall the, this is non-irrigated and this was a year and a half, this was last year when we had a little more August timely rain. You can see the pearl millet, there's a little sunflower in there, I think I have a picture coming up, but sorghum Sudan grass and it just really did well. But we had some really timely rains and I had to plug my favorite company because I think the cup fits and this is just a great biodiversity picture with what we had and what we've added and what's growing. So I just think it's kind of a fun picture I took out in the pasture the other day.

26:15 That's a picture of our summer blend we've got going on right now and I'm going to go over like the blend mixes. So this is our fall and our summer, our fall last year and our summer this year cover crop blends that Davis and Keith have helped me put together. We've tweaked, I have a couple coming up here that our previous blends, but this is what we planted last year: the warrior vets, red clover, the heslet serial rye, trale, and the perennial rye. We up the trale last year and downplayed the serial rye a little bit. The serial rye seemed to get up so much faster and then it went to a higher, it got to maturity faster. And I think it was Keith or Davis, maybe suggested that we try a little more tril because it'll pace a little more evenly with the vet and some of the other things and I think it did really well, stayed a little more leafy, didn't get to mature before full maturity before we got on it to graze, which worked out very well.

27:16 Also planted, I think it's 30 or 40 pounds of vetch, and I don't remember my poundage on some straight hay ground, and that's done really well with the triticale. The ride just got up above it and it went, it just kind of matured out faster. So the triticale and the vetch have paced themselves really well. And the summer blend what we're drilling right now, the playay and cow peas, 4 pounds an acre, mung beans. Like I said earlier, we dropped the Pearl Millet and we're going with some Japanese and the white Wonder Millet in addition to the brown top Millet. Brown top has done exceptionally well here, and one of the locals, I don't think you're doing well unless somebody around you says, hey, what's going on? That looks different. And a couple of the guys at bale or hay that are not afraid to ask questions, and they noticed that our pastures look so much different on a couple of sections that butted up against County roads they travel on. And they said they remembered their grandfather planting some type of millet and vetch when they were kids, and they haven't done it in 30 years. Well, last year they planted some vetch and some millets, so we're making changes.

28:22 The impact clover, the forge clover, have been a really great addition. They survived the frost, and we've had some really great stands of the clovers throughout the year, but they really keep growing after we get cold, late somewhere in mid to late October. Buckwheat's done well, and then we upped the blackout oil sunflower. Need that dark, that long tiller root. We have fair amount of compaction. No, that's another statement: we have a lot of compaction in the Ozarks. We lack that thing called organic matter, but we're gaining.

28:53 And this is just a picture of what we did previous, last spring, and in the fall before, very similar, just tweaked a few of the things. I like the Boston plantain. We're probably going to put some of that back in next year. It seeds itself down for a human and animal snack. Bit of trivia: the plantain is the richest omega-3 fatty acid plant that you can put in your pastures, and chickens really thrive on it. Does really well for eggs. And a friend of mine had bought a little house, and he's from there, and he bought this house and it was abandoned, and he woke up the first Saturday morning when he moved in, and there was like a whole group of like 15 people in his front yard, like picking things. And he went out front and he asked, can I ask what you're doing? And they said, oh, we, this is an abandoned house. He goes, well, not anymore. I own it. And what are you planting? They were picking the plantain out of his yard. They were all from immigrants from Greece, and they knew the benefits of plantain, and they were harvesting his yards for their salads. So kind of a cool thing. So the plantain's been a real cool addition. It's done well. But like I said, we just tweaked the sunflower and modified. We dropped the sun hemp on our non-irrigated ground last this year, and we're only going to put that under irrigated, because it just doesn't seem to do well if we get a dry spell. I just like black oil sunflowers.

30:20 I think these are some cool pictures, just, you know, multiple heads of the plant in the middle, and then you can see some sun hemp in the background, and the bumblebees, the pollinators, are just having a party on our pastures. And to me, that's just stinking cool. This is my great team. I got three ranch hands. My daughter's on the left putting reindeer gloves on top of a water buffalo. We got Randy and Sean. But nobody had worked with buffalo before we started here, and we've all become big fans.

30:52 No two years alike. We plan and God chuckles, right? So what we see on the left at September 2022, you can see the collards and a little bit of the beans, I think, in there. That stuff was only about this tall in September because we went 97 days without rain after planting. You see a little Pearl Millet shot up there. We got some rain, and then everything started popping. And on the right, you can see this year's summer annuals out having to compete with all this vetch that's come back. That's actually been a hard graze field that I made a mistake on. That field, we left him in there too long. That was almost like bare dirt, and you can see that we've got a lot of biological forgiveness there, because it's really popping back. What do they say? Make your mistakes in spring, and you'll look like a genius. Make your mistakes in the summer, you look like an idiot. So thankfully this one I did in the spring.

31:47 This is the same thing. This is a non-irrigated field, summer annuals. You can see there's some sorghum Sudan. The brown top millet is just thick as thieves in here. This seed laid there for 97 days with no moisture. And the next picture I'm going to show you: same blend that's irrigated almost the same day, and we've got stuff six, seven feet. I'm six foot tall, so that's seven, eight feet. And then you can see what we laid down in the next picture shows we had to drag.

32:17 The bucket of the tractor to put our polled in because you couldn't walk through it but again barely talls a four-wheeler but we had rain and then it just shot up and went to seed and we had some great volunteer M the next year because that plant I don't know the biology Keith you can explain it shot up went to maturity put seed on those cleated and it really just started adding the seed back to the bank so just really cool same time little bit of moisture makes all the difference and no two years like sometimes the wheels come off actually was that was a load of a dozen water buffalo heers in 90° day in the middle of nowhere in Missouri so thankfully I had bought extra tires and two floor jacks and nobody stopped to help imagine that then I had to find a shop to take out the rim and sometimes you get too much rain this was a year ago in March this is where we were running the 7 Acres we had to let the animals go because it was a flood.

33:20 And this is too little rain. Similar pasture just down the way one cool thing I wanted to see in this you may or may not be able to see at all the cowbirds. They have really symbiotically shown up and they love the water buffalo and they love them because they pick the flies but there is cover crop planted in here but it's mainly just less desirable plants but the Buffalo you know did very well off of it. But you can see how the covers that year just really struggled that was that 97 day drop.

33:50 This is an experiment you might not be able to tell that is organic yellow corn planted into cheat fescue. We grow Mushroom iselia in the manufacturing plant here and they had some corn that had a few bugs and things and they couldn't use it so I saved it over winter and we drilled it in at 90 pounds an acre I don't know what the population count would be but it's coming up with all that green competition we grazed this fairly short and I thought I had another picture I guess I don't but I was just thrilled to see that coming up so and some of it's actually up about 18 in but others is like this about a foot tall but it's kind of fun and this is what drought can look like here this is actually a really good pasture year ago when two years ago when we were really dry that had been resting for about 65 70 days but we least had something to for them to eat.

34:46 Oh there's the other picture of the Corn sorry about that so yeah you can see we got some of the foreground some of the background it's kind of fun I mean I didn't have to buy the Seed so let's go not waste it. Turkeys sure enjoyed it they I think picked up a lot of our seed and Keith wanted me to touch on results and I was really tickled with this I just found this we took and weighed yesterday got 90 water buffalos and they were in the earlier picture they were weaned last they we May 3rd we carry our buffalo on mamas through winter but they weighed 470 pounds going in and in 30 what is that 36 38 days I can't reading my notes there because yeah 36 days they gained 2.71 PBS 103 lbs of gain and they came that was wean two days later thrown on grass and that was it we did it was hands off and I thought I was thrilled that they came off hard weaning and gained that kind of weight in a 36 Days.

35:51 And then I had one of these water buffalo bulls a small one he was a small one last year he came in out of winter at 800 lb and he gained 3.95 pounds a day I butchered him three weeks ago and we had an early spring up and I just went ahead and gambled and threw him out there and a couple others on some of this really early fall annules and our pastures and he gained almost four pounds a day in 42 days and that I know that's doable in beef cattle I don't know of any I've not seen anybody doing that with and I'm not bragging I'm just thrilled to see the water buffalo put that kind of weight on and that it's obviously the biologically rich soil pulling up those nutrients and all the forage.

36:35 So I think you should I think you should brag that would be impressive on some of the best cattle genetics let alone water buffalo so yeah good good for you yeah it was exciting I had to look twice at the scale like there's no way he did that but he did and actually the guy we had him butchered at he said he was probably the best cutting Buffalo that I've taken he was about 27 months old and like I said earlier they're a little slower maturing this is just nice panoramic view this is actually early last fall or late summer you can see some of the summer annuals there we didn't get the August now this area of the farm didn't get some of those August rains like the ranch is five miles long by two miles wide so this didn't get as much moisture but if you look close our summer annuals are in there and actually about a week after after this picture it really started popping so we fattened up some beef and buffalo calfs on that and they did exceptionally well and my talk but I said I took this the other day I have this little Herford.

42:33 Risk of hurting or damaging your perennial stand by going so heavy on the annuals. Now with K31 you can hardly kill that stuff. Not my experience. I mean it's pretty much atomic bomb proof. Not quite, but I mean yeah you can overgraze it and we've got a lot of cheat grass. But it's done well and I won't forget what you told me a couple years ago when you came out. You said let's go two or three years of these annuals, couple of times a year platinum. Let's get the biology woke up and then let's come back through and try to get some of our native warm seeds and grasses planted once you're getting the biology because those seeds obviously are more expensive, a little more finicky to get started and you got a little more forgiveness with these annuals to actually grease the wheel as it were.

43:30 I think that's what we're doing. So I'm going to help Drexel Atkinson. He got his recipe, so this fall we're going to try that on one of these pastures right here, probably the one you're looking at. We're going to come down and I'm just going to graze it to the nub and then I'm going to use those native warm season grasses. I don't have the luxury of a chemical burndown because we are certified organic and we're going to do an experiment. We'll see if we can't get some of these perennials there. And then like Drexel said in this one talk, I heard he goes well then I can stagger. I can have a fescue and a warm season perennial, so then I can kind of checkerboard around and that's kind of one of my goals to see if we can't do that.

44:07 I've got 7 acres up to 90 acres to 100 acre paddies that we split with polywire. So in my constant thinking process I'm like that'd be really kind of cool if I could kind of checkerboard once I get the biology really awakened to come back in and put those. I mean they're not here because they got overgrazed, poorly managed. I mean that's why Kentucky 31. I remember when they first came here and I got a lot of that, you ain't from around here are you boy? I'm not, but one of the old guys that works for me goes boy, this is K31. There you ain't going to change yet and you, no one else has done it either. I'm like so he's still alive and I have a goal to prove him wrong. But yeah I'm not worried. I haven't seen any downside.

44:57 Actually we're seeing some switchgrass come back. We're seeing some other, I like the hop clovers coming up, some of these other. I think the seed bank is kind of reawakening. Long rest periods I can't stress that enough. I mean when we're in our slump you know we're not going to try to get back there for 45 days or a little longer. Now in the spring I'm only doing about 22 day rotations because I'm actually understocked. I could actually use more mouths right now, but some years you have too few and some years you have too many.

45:28 I think that's a great point. I think you have awakened your biology and these other things, the hop clover and some of these other things that you're starting to reemerge, I think as a there's biological signals now within your system of we're ready for more diversity. So yeah I think it is time to start introducing some other species that will give you additional grazing at additional times of the year.

45:59 So yeah I think that's the year you came out and it was actually I'm standing on the back side of that fence in that field which sits right behind the house I live in. I found maybe two to three worms per shovel full. If I can get the shoveling ground now I haven't done this year but last fall I went down there I was finding 18 to 30 worms per shovel full. I mean and that's just another indicator like you said the biology is reawakening. The worm castings and then you just see, you know we had the Audubon Society out here and I think there was like 70 some odd species of birds and some species that she hadn't seen in other ranches in the area. And the butterflies and the bugs and the pollinators. I mean I was on a four-wheeler the other day ordering a part for another four-wheeler and the guy's like where are you at? I'm like why? He goes is that like because of a headset speaker? He goes I can barely hear you. It's like the bugs and the birds in the background are almost too loud and I'm like yes. I was thrilled that he couldn't hear me because of all the noise in the background.

47:02 Yeah that's pretty great. So you said something about you know how the soil has changed and you said that a lot of the organic matter in that area would be you know one to one and a half percent and now you're up to four on some of your ground and probably continuing to go up. I mean that's a huge feat. That's a huge achievement and you know good soil gets better and poor soil gets worse kind of a thing. So I think that will be the engine that continues to allow you to drive that change forward.

47:32 You the resilience to get in 97 days without rain. Yeah, you can survive well. And some of that organic matter had come up before we started this intensive plan but I've just seen the jumps, you know, it's not like a percent a year or anything but we're seeing bigger incremental jumps in the last two years. And I think like you said the compounding effects are just coming around. And one thing I noticed, you know, we do get gully washer rains and, you know, we're very hilly and topography very challenged. I have not noticed that dark runoff. We get some runoff but it's clear water runoff when we get it. So that alone makes me thrilled. I mean, that we're not seeing that topsoil here is such a precious commodity, not that it isn't anywhere, everywhere, but not to see it just run down the ditch is pretty exciting.

48:18 Yeah, well I want to make just a couple of comments here on a couple of the plant species that you talked about and then we've got some questions the audience has chipped in here. And so folks, feel free to continue to put questions in there. You know, you were talking about the plantain and, yeah, that would be a little disconcerting to wake up and find harvesting in your yard, right. But I've also heard that plantain and a lot of the plantain that we get comes from New Zealand where they're a heavily livestock grazing based system. Plantain will actually help reduce the methane emissions coming out of livestock as well. And so it's actually being mandated by part of the government and different programs because it does a lot of things. It's a natural anthelmintic, you know, dewormer. You know, you said it has the highest concentration of Omega-3s, but it also can, and maybe because of that, it's helping reduce those methane emissions. So interesting plantain is a wonderful thing to get going. And when we use chicory, have you tried chicory? We did in our first blend. We, our fall blend, we put in, but we got in so late that year because when the wheels got turning we got our seed ordered late. And my goal is to put that back in. So we did it in 50 acres and we had a pretty good expression. But my goal is to put more of it in more ground this fall.

49:43 Yeah, yeah, because chicory and plantain are both, you know, those really deep rooted forbs. They have such deep root systems they're really good at accumulating minerals because they can pull from depth, right. So those two are commonly used as interceded forbs. And then one other comment, you know, you mentioned brown top millet a number of times. And the reason that it's called brown top, you know, most of these millets when they mature, you know, that whole plant kind of dies and dries up. The whole plant is brown. Well, brown top millet is called brown top because when it matures the seed head turns brown because the seed is mature but the plant stays green. Ah, okay, gotcha. So that's why it's called brown top. And so it is, it's probably one of the better millets for extending the grazing period because even at seed maturity the plant still has a lot of green and a lot of palatability to it. So, and it and the further south you go the better it tends to work as well.

50:47 So, got a few questions from some folks here that are participating. Barry's asking, you showed the picture of that steer that gained 3.95 pounds a day at 800 pounds. Is that what it started at or did is that what it came out at? No, he started at 800 and then came out at four pounds a day times however many days. Yeah, I was like, I think I can't remember the numbers, but as I back here, yeah, he went in at 800. So I mean, I think that's where I, you know, I was hoping to get PR Plus on. I was close on these water buffalo weaners, but you know, coming off weaning and, and buffalo don't stress wean like cattle do. So I didn't have, it wasn't too about that slump post-wean. And I did not castrate. So there was no castration. And that is a mixed heifer and bull group too at 2.7 pounds a day. So that's not just straight bulls.

51:38 Either, is that pretty common that you, because I know you mentioned feeder bulls and not feeder steers, do you typically feed those out to market weight as bulls? It depends on who's the market. The different sources that sell them into these ethnic markets, some want them all intact, some, and few want steers. And I just steered some last year just to kind of get a comparison and versus gain. And I did get more gain on the steer side than the bull side. But some of those ethnic markets they want those animals intact. And Jordan would prefer that too. But I thought we'd just challenge a little bit side by side and see what we'd find.

52:18 Sure, well Cheryl is asking, you know, she's fascinated as most of us are that you're raising water buffalo in the southern Missouri. But that's pretty cool. Anybody else in your area doing this? And then what is what does your market look like, you know, who's eating these critters? I know not enough people, but where is your market right? Well, the.

52:41 There are a few small groups in the area and more like Arkansas and then further south. I don't think there's a lot much further north than us because if you don't have shelter we do bring our buffalo in. We as a dairy they had a large loafing and corrals. I can bring them in now to the extreme cold weather. We have gotten along the buffalo and I, we've really learned from each other in the team. One of the first buffalo breeders I talked to, his dad was the second one to bring animals and he said be for like checkers buffalo water buffalo like chess, so you got to think and so you're not going to force them, you're not going to push them, you got to work with them. But we've got a symbiosis working.

53:23 Our primary customer base at this point I have been selling live fat animals to different growers. One's in Ohio, he sells to like the Cleveland and some of those bigger metropolitan areas up there. There's a gentleman in North Carolina that sells into some of that mid-Atlantic part of the East Coast. There's a gentleman down by Tex Arcana, he's a longtime breeder and he sells into the Dallas Market and also into the New York City Market. So your Cambodian, Thai, those are your biggest ethnic groups that actually want buffalo and are aware of it. Unfortunately there's not any within 300 miles of Kkonq, Missouri.

54:04 We finally now have an exotic abattoir that will slaughter for us, but jumping into the frozen meat delivery business, I was part of US Wellness Meats, they've got a well-oiled machine but that was learned through a lot of hard knocks. So we haven't jumped off into that yet. But I'd love to see, so if you know anybody looking for water buffalo, Keith has my numbers, please reach out. I'm always looking for buyers because it's been a challenge previously when the milk buffalo water buffalo thing was going. Your heifers could be sold at a premium if you had them really calmed down, tame down, you know, and they'll tame down like dogs really quite easily. But the milk buffalo market's kind of dried up, no pun intended. And now even the heifers are going into the meat side, so we're going to have to work harder at moving into either the retail customer base or Jordan's always on the cutting edge. We've even played around with the freeze-dried water buffalo dog treat. And I've done some experiments with the guy that I know that does freeze drying and it will freeze dry but it's a little coarser. It takes a double grind, especially when the animal gets older, to get that, you know, that water to move out of the meat. But we've the proof of concept is there, but we just haven't got the wheels all on that truck yet.

55:32 Okay, good couple other questions here. Cheryl's also just asking about when you do these plantings, the interseeding, whether it's warm season or cool season, you shoot for a certain number of species, are you looking at how many different plant families you have in there? What's kind of your thought process of building that diversity package?

55:51 Well, that's why I leaned on that great counselor piece and I went to Keith and Davis and I wanted diversity. I wanted to try to expand the diversity because, you know, you talk about monoculture corn, we are very monoculture fescue here. And you'll hear in fescue country, dilution is a solution, you know, trying to get some legumes in there to offset that fescue and the beefords. Jordan bought my group of South Pole and Herefords and they're all very fescue tolerant. And the cattle that were here were, but a lot of these buffalo came in from we don't even know where buyers were bringing them in when Jordan was building the herd. And we have had some significant struggles with fescue foot, you know, with a lot of docked tails out there in the buffalo. But it's very disheartening when you see those hooves start to fall off and you got to destroy an animal because it's just not going to work. But we've carried enough calves through these cows eating on fescue. Our young, we've only had one young animal that was born here show fescue. So, you know, Fred Penza exposed the mother that worked, but my goal is dilution. And then literally with the help of you and Davis, you guys came up with, you know, the different families, let's plant some things from the different family groups, let's get some diversity. You guys gave me some great insight with, you know, where we are in climate zone and soil type that would probably give us some success. And I would say it's been a great success, so I owe that back to you guys.

57:23 Well, thank you. And you know, Cheryl, I would just say as much diversity as makes sense. Don't throw something in there just so you can make another tick mark on your diversity score if it's not going to have a chance of performing and doing something. So one last question here, Michael, and then we'll turn the day back to everybody else, but Barry's asking and this is a

57:44 A great question you mentioned Harry B and that there are some potential toxicity issues particularly with light-skinned animals like sheep, photosensitivity issues you said you did not have those issues. To just elaborate on that a little bit more, did you worry about having those? How strong was the vet component and what they were grazing? Why do you think you didn't have the issues?

58:11 Well as you said, as I've sent pictures and Davis has said, I mean we only put three pounds per acre right. I mean we've just had a great expression of that vetch. So in some areas I think we had three pound pound breaker express itself almost like we did 30 PBS breaker in some poor soils. But I had light-skinned hair sheep, I had light-skinned Brahma kind of cross cattle in there and you can't really see in this picture we have some very fair-skinned water buffalo. And I just, I read about it and I thought we had enough biodiversity and all these animals had been strictly unforged. We hadn't had anybody with a, I always think about if they can't tolerate it, is their gut not accommodating to all forage or are you trying to take an animal that has been creep fed and then force fed a diet that is going to be hard to handle. I don't have signs behind it but that my experience it's like taking a you know if I move to another country it's going to take me a while for my digestive system to adapt to that local diet. But I think there's diversity in the fact that I have animals that are well adapted to turn forage. But I watched them really close for the first three days, the first week and a half, 10 days, especially the sheep. I saw no sunburning, no photosensitivity, no hiding in the shade, couldn't go out you know the sunlight. And after I saw that I just went for it and we didn't look back and had no problems.

59:39 Right and I think that's exactly right. The diversity and getting them accustomed to it and used to it is a big part of not having those issues that other people might potentially have.

59:57 Well and even like what is it when your sorghum sits in you know it freezes off, what is that acid? Yeah and first year I had not had a lot of experience before I came here. We planted it you know we had a very early hard frost. We were doing that seven acre move and I really had to move them through there. And I spoke with a friend of mine in Illinois who's planted a lot of sorghum sudan grass and of course his animals are 100% grass from the time they hit the ground to the time they hit the locker. And you know he had very heavy stands and he said he had not seen any exposure because he had multigenerational grass-fed animals. And he goes plus he threw a goat out ahead of it and if it didn't die in six hours it was fine with throw. So but right now a goat's so expensive you hate to do that you know. But I mean they did well and they did very well. And after the first day you know we watched them close, we checked them every couple hours and there was no bloat, no issues. And so we didn't have 100% stand you know they had a lot to graze off of.

1:00:54 Yeah so it's like anything you know it's all about the management and a good manager can utilize some of those things that a poor manager would run into issues with. So it's no different than any other facet of life. So yeah don't be afraid to ask questions. I mean I called you up, I called in, I called guys I know the grad before because you know somebody's got some experience. And if you keep that Rolodex it's not like what you know it's who you know. And then they can give you that confidence and pull you off the edge of the cliff.

1:01:22 Yeah having that panel of experts and consult, that's great advice. And I think I want to just leave people with this, your last slide here too. Don't be afraid to look different than the crowd. I think that's great advice because there's just so much that can be gained by trying new things. And you know thank you for all of you that are watching live and the thousands that will be watching this on YouTube later. You know to be inspired to try some new things. Don't be afraid to try different things. Not everything's going to work, no, but you know all the things that you don't try will never work. So don't be afraid to give it a shot.

1:02:00 Next week join us again next week. Our guest will be actually licking, a few of you that are watching this may have been to our workshop that we had here in Bladen last week with Christine Jones. Ashley was one of the speakers on our panel. Ashley and her family are raising seed stock bulls and actually they're right in our backyard. They're in Webster County, Nebraska here. But they're going, they're raised exclusively on forages, no grain, no pampering. They're really the right kind of cattle for grazing out on cover crops and the right kind of cattle for making a living and not being pampered. So tune in to listen to Ashley talk about how they're developing bulls for that particular segment of integrating livestock into your operation. So hope to see you back next week for that. And Michael, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and sharing your wisdom and knowledge.

1:02:55 Thanks for the opportunity and I again Kudos to the green cover, keep it up. Okay thanks, thanks for joining everybody we'll see you later.