Regenerative system includes cattle grazing with virtual fencing

STOCKTON, Ill. — Greg Thoren is using a virtual fencing system to graze cattle in various areas of his farm as part of his regenerative agriculture plan for his operation.

The Jo Daviess County farmer has been using the GPS-enabled neckbands for almost a year.

“I have about 200 neckbands on now,” Thoren said, which are put on cows, as well as fall calves.

The virtual fence provides opportunities for grazing different areas of the farm beyond pastures even including ditches along the road.

“When the cattle hit the boundary, there’s a tone and then it will shock them,” Thoren said. “If they are out of the boundary, the collar will shut off and won’t keep shocking them because the cattle won’t know where to go.”

“The neat part about the neckbands is when the cattle are in a group and one of them beeps, all the cattle turn around because they don’t know if it is theirs or not,” he said during a Nutrient Stewardship Field Day, organized by the Jo Daviess County Farm Bureau.

In addition to the grazing benefits, the virtual fencing system is also impacting the health of the cattle herd.

“Greg moves the cows routinely, so we can do a good parasite control program in the adult animals without using a dewormer,” said Bob Melcher, a retired veterinarian.

“We monitor fecal samples every year to get counts of how many worm eggs are excreted by the adult cows,” he said. “The parasite population is low enough in those cows that it does not justify economically to deworm the cows.”

Thoren is deworming the first calf heifers, the second calf cows and all the calves.

“We still have a parasite load and it will affect the youngest animals the most,” Melcher said.

“This lets us get away from one investment and we still have very healthy cattle,” he said.

“One thing that has grown over the last two years is a coccidiosis problem and we’ve seen some clinical cases and we’re starting to see an increase in the fecal samples,” he added. “It has been a minimal problem, but it has gotten a little worse this year compared to last year.”

The veterinarian expects this is related to the water.

“I think this is building up because they are contaminating their own water supply and reinfecting themselves,” he said.

So, instead of always using the creek, Thoren installed a watering system that is catching spring water to supply water to drinkers.

“I have nine of these waters on this farm and another set of four on a different farm,” he said. “I probably won’t have cattle on more than one, maybe two drinkers at any one time.”

These systems require little maintenance and they have been installed on farms that Thoren rents.

“We’ve taken care of this land like it is our own,” he said. “And we’re doing this for the next generation — getting it set up for them.”

Without using insecticides, Melcher said, it is almost impossible to get complete fly control.

“Greg is using fly predators, but I don’t think they work as well when we’re doing rotational grazing,” he said. “If you’re going to use fly predators, you need to get them out there early before the fly population builds, so you can keep the fly populations suppressed.”

It is important for cattlemen to observe their cattle to determine the kind of flies that are causing problems.

“Horn flies are on the top of the body of the animals and they live on the cow their whole life,” Melcher said. “They will suck 20 to 30 blood meals per day.”

Stable flies are found on cows’ legs.

“They bite and suck a blood meal, but they do not live on the cows,” Melcher said.

“You have to be careful about using larvicides because they will affect dung beetles,” he said. “Dung beetles are a part of Greg’s fertility program because they are taking manure down into the ground and making available to plants.”

Melcher discussed epigenetics which is how genes of animals are stimulated or suppressed based on the environment where they live.

“In this situation where cattle don’t go inside and they spend all their time in the pasture, you’ll see the cattle adapt to the environment,” he said.

“It does not change the genetic makeup of the animal, but it changes the expression of those genes and everything you do has a tradeoff, so if you do something long enough, the animals will adapt to that environment,” he added.

“It’s a total program, so we are trying to get the body size down a little bit, so the maintenance expense is less.”

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have a number of field plots that are evaluating regenerative practices.

“We have rotationally grazed pastures and sites that are regenerative where we’re not using tillage and we’re using cover crops and manure for the fertilizer source,” said Dennis Busch, research manager at Pioneer Farm at UW-Platteville.

“We also have business as usual sites where manure is injected, there are no cover crops, in the spring we use urea for additional fertilizer and they get a couple of tillage passes.”

These trials are showing, Busch said, the amount of erosion and phosphorus losses in the conventional plots are higher than in the regenerative plots.

“That is what we would expect, but the soil health system is not significantly different than our pasture system,” he said. “So, the advanced soil health is giving us water quality outcomes similar to the pasture.”

Busch will be doing data collection this fall on plots that are currently growing on Thoren’s farm.

“It looks like the regenerative systems that we are utilizing can produce some really significant outcomes in regard to water quality,” he said.