Grass is root of cattle company’s success

MARION, Ill. — Randy Settle says he’s a grass farmer.

With 500 head of Black and Red Angus, he’s always seemingly moving his herd from field to field across his 4,000-acre ranch, allowing them to munch on 40 percent of the grass before changing fields.

“The cattle are just so much healthier on grass. I just really hate seeing them in a feedlot,” Settle said.

His acreage is planted with tall fescue, legumes and clover, all good forage for livestock, so much so that he never had to provide supplemental feed last winter to his herd. But the nutritive value of grass isn’t the only reason he’s got so much of it.

His land once was the site of an AMAX Coal Co. strip mine, one of the biggest in operation in its day. All that acreage now is covered with reclaimed soil or manmade strip pit lakes.

Settle at first grain farmed the land, but quit that amid frustrations with constant erosion problems because of the shallow topsoils.

“If we got a lot of water, we could produce a crop. But once they reclaimed this ground, you don’t have the hard pan like they used to have. It is so fragile. I no-till it always and covered with cover crops to hold it in place. It just erodes so badly. Finally, I decided we have to put in grass,” he recalled.

Working The Land

Settle Cattle Co. off Angelville Church Road now is a cow-calf operation. It’s a large one, with plans for more, considering that a typical southern Illinois herd is 30 to 35 animals.

His place is the one with the reused road guardrails for fencing around the corral, paddocks and catch pens. You’ll also see more horses than four-wheelers.

“I’m kind of old fashioned in a lot of ways,” he said.

The cows have a stress-free affinity with the horses, and the cover crops not only provide forage, they also help rebuild the gravelly soils and improve water retention.

“We still have eroded areas. It’s constant work to straighten it all out,” he said.

The four-wheelers mostly are used for checking fences.

Calving now is in a single season, in April, instead of two, a schedule that allows the calves all summer to get strong before winter and prevents the closed herd’s 40 bulls from having to breed in the hot of August.

Settle uses the corral area to bring in the calves for vaccinations and fly tagging. Raising them on the grass has resulted in a more compact, consistent sized animal at sale time.

“Everyone has to find a niche that works for them. What we’re doing seems to work for us,” Settle said.