Keys to developing an adaptive grazing management system

RALEIGH, N.C. — Managing an adaptive grazing management system is a thinking person’s game.

“You have to think to do this,” said Johnny Rogers, coordinator of the Amazing Grazing Program at North Carolina State University, during a webinar organized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

“Carrying capacity is the maximum stocking rate that our land will support to get good performance out of our animals and maintain that grazing resource, good soil health and good water cycle,” said Rogers, who owns Rogers Cattle Company in Roxboro in north-central North Carolina.

Stocking rate is the number of animals that cattlemen put on their land.

“I find it beneficial to stock our land slightly below the carrying capacity because things happen,” Rogers said. “The challenge with carrying capacity is that it changes every couple of weeks.”

Part of finding the correct stocking rate, he said, is stocking the land with the most appropriate beef cattle enterprise.

“Make sure you have the right class and type of cattle that fits your operation and lifestyle,” said Rogers, who owns a Red Angus seedstock herd.

Cattlemen can use a variety of measures to find functional cows.

“You can look at average weaning weight which will give you a picture of milking ability and growth rate of calves,” Rogers said. “Pounds of wean per cow exposed is kind of the gold standard and it pulls in some of the reproductive performance of the cows.”

Another measurement is pounds of calf weaned per pound of female exposed.

“Not every size and not every cow weans the same weight of calves, so this ties in a little bit of efficiency,” Rogers said.

At North Carolina State, researchers weighed calves at weaning and calculated the adjusted 205-day weight and determined the percentage of the cow’s body weight that she weaned in her calf.

“As the cows get bigger, they wean a lower percentage of their body weight,” said Rogers about the study that included seven to eight herds and about 200 cows.

The average cow in the survey weighed 1,380 pounds.

“We talk about 1,200-pound cows, but there is a higher percentage of cows that weigh over 1,400 pounds than under 1,300 pounds in this survey,” Rogers said. “So, know how big your cows are because that affects your stocking rate that you are trying to marry with the carrying capacity.”

In North Carolina, cattlemen are challenged with mud in the winter.

“Our ground can be frozen, but it does not stay frozen like it does in many parts of the U.S.,” the researcher said.

One way to address this, Rogers said, is to unroll hay in the pasture.

“I think that spreads out the impact of the cattle, and to me the hay that is not eaten, there is carbon added back to your farm, so it is not really wasted,” he said.

“I will acknowledge that when it is raining a lot and you unroll hay, especially with younger cattle, they tend to want to just walk through the hay and look for something better,” the cattleman said. “But a brood cow will stop and start eating.”

Bale grazing is an option, where cattlemen place bales in the pasture weeks or maybe months ahead of winter.

“When you are grazing the cattle, you put up a temporary electric fence and as the cows eat the hay, you move the poly wire,” Rogers said.

“One of the advantages is that instead of taking round bales out every day to unroll, you place those ahead of time,” he said. “So, you don’t have the equipment traffic on your fields on a daily basis.”

Rogers’ favorite way to extend the grazing season is stockpiled forage.

“You can stockpile any type of forage, but tall fescue is very special because it is a tough grass that takes the freezing and thawing and holds its quality through the winter,” he said.

For cattlemen who have access to cropland, winter annuals are a great way to extend the grazing season.

“Those are very high-quality crops and the cattle will eat them pretty quick,” Rogers said. “We like to use temporary fence to get the most out of that resource.

“For every $1 that the cow consumes in her mouth, she will deposit about 85 cents of that somewhere on your farm,” he said. “So, the more we can keep the cattle out on the land and grazing, that helps the nutrient distribution on our farms.”

Little Timber Farm

Rachel Gray owns Little Timber Farm near Blackduck in northern Minnesota.

“We are fifth generation here and we started as a dairy farm,” said Gray during the webinar. “My mom and dad were dairy farmers until the early 2000s when they transitioned to beef.”

When Gray took over the operation in 2012, the cow/calf herd included about 180 head of cattle.

“Now we rotationally graze about 500 heifers and a few cow/calf pairs that belong to my son,” she said. “We have small cattle feedlot and we sell some freezer beef.”

In the winter, the Gray family custom calve for some of their customers that purchase heifers from Little Timber Farm.

“We calve about 150 heifers per year, so we bump up to about 700 head in the winter,” the cattlewoman said.

Planning is key for successful grazing at the farm that is located about 60 miles south of the Canadian border.

“If you are going to keep cattle out on pasture in the winter, you have to have a plan and we find a good plan starts in the summer,” Gray said.

“When we develop a winter plan, we find areas that need nutrients and monitor those pastures throughout the summer,” she said. “We use both unrolling hay and bale grazing in the winter.”

A lot of bedding is also provided for the cattle in the pastures.

“We get a lot of wind and we also get very cold,” the cattlewoman said. “November is great, December is nice and in January we are often dipping into 20 to 25 degrees below zero nights, so we want to make sure these cattle are nicely bedded.”

Gray uses portable windbreaks and the bedding pack is placed in front of them.

“We build the bedding pack throughout the winter, so the cattle always know to go to that area,” she explained.

“When we are done in the field for the winter, we pile the bedding pack and let it compost down,” she said. “We spread that out and sometimes we will put that on our corn ground.”

Making grazing plans is important, Gray said, and she always has a Plan B.

“The summer of 2021, we were burning up because it was the driest summer on record,” she recalled. “We had no hay crop, so we had some cake brought in.”

That provided enough feed until Aug. 20, when Gray shipped 600 head of her cattle six hours south so they could stay fed and Little Timber Farm could stay in business.

“That was the Plan B for that year,” she noted.

“The next winter we had snow so deep that we had a terrible time bale grazing,” she said. “All we could do was take equipment out and move snow, so we were breaking trail for most of the winter so the cattle could get to water.”

Gray uses the Pasture Map app daily as a planning tool for her cattle operation.

“I have our permanent waterers marked, it shows where the cattle are right now and I can also add where the hay bales are placed,” she said. “It is really nice because it keeps track of how many days the cattle have been out of a pasture.”