From the Barns: The voice for grazing

The rain finally visited us here in late September with 2 inches over a three-day period. It turned things greener in a hurry. I know cattle can make compensatory gain after lean diets turned wholesome and our grass showed the same ability. We actually had to mow the yard again and the fescue stockpile grass is growing. It looks like we may have a hard freeze, so the reed canary grass that we have left, which isn’t much, will be hard hit and become far less desirable.

I am really happy to report on our last grazing group to be organized and have an inaugural meeting. I joined other hardy graziers at Dietrich Ranch near Leaf River on Oct. 5 for a very informative discussion and tour. Dan Dietrich hosted us with a good look at his operation, which included cow/calf, water systems, a large group of custom grazed sheep and an outstanding group of 80 grass-fed “beeves,” several of which looked ready to be harvested. It did get too dark to see his “bawlers,” calves that were just added to the herd.

Discussion was flowing from topic to topic and everyone had a chance to see some very good grazing. I took a few minutes to demonstrate a drone which I have been flying to check on cattle here at home at River Oak in Macomb. Two things were strongly apparent as I look back at the evening — two and a half hours — of nothing but grazing talk.

Dan has a full-time working ranch that truly portrays best practices used to turn marginal ground into highly productive forage used intensely by several different classes of beef and other species, sheep. And, as he moves forward, he has endless possibilities to become more efficient and more profitable. For example, he has the expertise to try multi-species grazing. Dan has an operation that portrays how to practice regenerative agriculture, building soil health with grazing livestock, keeping soil nutrients in place and preventing erosion. Just plain climate-smart agriculture.

So, we now have Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition-sponsored grazing groups in western Illinois, southern Illinois, eastern Illinois and northern Illinois. As the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition grows rapidly as the voice for grazing in our state, you will be hearing much more and be offered opportunities to learn valuable best practices to help you become a better grazier or consider adding grazing to your operation as a new profitable enterprise.

Illinois has a new grazing coordinator, Christian Lovell, hired by the ILGLC to spur growth in Illinois grazing as outlined by the Roadmap for Expanding Regenerative Grazing in Illinois. Christian begins work on Oct. 17 and I hope all graziers in our state have an opportunity to meet him soon.

We have harvested our corn crop and were pleasantly surprised with yield and 18% moisture and some of the cows are already munching on the residue. Decisions are many to be made before making the successful transition to the winter stockpile.

Stay safe and sane in the lots, barns and fields!