A nice spring

[cowman]

It sure has been a nice spring. Warm weather and got a nice shower the other day. Calves coming hard now and hardly a problem.
Just the other day my neighbor and me were chewing the fat over the pickup hood and we agreed that life can be pretty good. This is a great life...if we could just get paid to do it! Unfortunately the darned economics just aren't there anymore!
My son has this philosophy: If there was a profit in cattle when calves were worth $1.30/lb.(say $800?) and now you can only make $1.00/lb.($600) then the trick is to lower your costs $200?
Easier said than done... maybe?
Grassfarmer: Recently I attended a pasture workshop. The speaker said everyday a cow is out on grass/swaths she returns 37 cents to the land through manure and urine. Now an often quoted figure for wintering on swaths is 50 cents per day? So if you subtract 37 cents from 50 cents, you really are paying 13 cents/day to winter that cow? Makes swath grazing look pretty attractive...to say the least? Lately I have begun to think how swath grazing perrenial rye might work? You would eliminate your seeding costs 3 years out of say four as well as have some really early spring grazing?

[roly]

swath grazing how does that work is ther not a lot of waste
Roly

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, I've been thinking about this swathgrazing deal all winter as it looks such a cheap way to feed cows. However it does not feature in my grazing plan this year - I'd like someone to convince me why it should.
Here are my reasons for not going this route:
I have an all grass / no crop system and I don't want to get into cultivation expenses and chemical sprays both are bad for the soil and the micro-organisms that work in the soil.
I am concentrating now on maximising banked grass production as grazing this in the fall and more importantly April to late May the following spring is a cheaper feed than swathed cereals. Reducing feed costs in Late April is more adventageous than reducing feed costs in Nov-Dec when a ration of straw and very little hay or silage would do perfectly well. I'm starting a tractor every day to feed calves in winter anyway so feeding cows is no big deal.

Swathgrazing costs of under 50 cents a day compared to hay feeding do look impressive if looked at in isolation but in a holistic light don't suit my place as well.
If you are a traditional rancher growing a large acreage of hay and/or grain crops it would be an easy switch - just cut out some mechanical operations and let the cows do the work.
I just don't see it working for me just now. By going the high input swathgrazing route I could probably boost total annual production of forage on the farm but at what cost? I would be susceptable to high fuel costs, fertiliser costs, high machinery costs even if the work was done on a custom basis. I think buying in my feed (straw, silage or hay) is a better bet as it not only brings feed onto the place it brings on extra organic matter. It makes me a net importer of fertility but in a cheaper form that purchased fertiliser.
The fertility values you mention the cow
contributes back to the pasture under a swathgrazing system are impressive but will presumably be exactly the same as a cow grazing banked grass or being fed mechanically in winter. My cows are already fed out on pasture all winter anyway so there would be no change to my land from this system.
I think perennial rye grass would have serious limitations as a swath graze crop - first of all I imagine a dry August would leave you with a very low feed quality - it would just dry out like straw wouldn't it? Also I believe it is fairly susceptable to winter kill in Central Alberta and swathgrazing will expose the grass to that during the winter versus leaving it undisturbed under a blanket of snow.

A final thought on swathgrazing - it's getting a lot of publicity now after the good growing conditions of last year but what was the cost per day / yield through the drought of 2002/3? I've never seen any figures quoted for these crops that were sown after the moisture was gone for the year and the grasshoppers attacked the crop.

[blackjack]

...I swath grazed from Nov 1 till the end of Jan this past winter and was very happy with the results...

...roly... even though I have only swath grazed for one winter... personally I would not extend the grazing season any longer because of the chinooks on the west side of Alberta...the fields get soft and then the cows punch the feed into the ground...
...here in Canada we never really do know what kind of winter we might have...so I think its important a person lessen the odds by having a stack yard to pull feed from if necessary...

[kato]

We had planned on swath grazing some oats last fall, but the early frost put a damper on it. First it was too wet to cut the field, then it suddenly froze.

Turned out the nitrates were quite high, and the cows would have to be limited on how much they could have at once. We tried feeding hay in the morning, and then letting them out will full stomachs on a couple of swaths a day, but one morning went out and found the bulls (who else?) had gotten scrapping again and knocked down the electric fence. Cows were all over the field. After that we just said forget it, and kept them in the yard. It just wasn't worth the risk. Even the deer didn't eat that oats over the winter.

That field will be sown to corn this year, and we'll graze it. This has worked very well for us in the past. Talk about happy cows! They line up at the gate when it's time for a new paddock, and rush through as fast as they can go when you open it. You've got to stay out of their way, or you'll get mowed down.

Roly, you'll be in an area that gets a good snow cover, so you might want to check with the neighbours to see if they've tried it there. They probably don't grow corn, but I do know that they also don't have nearly the drought problems that other areas have.

[greybeard]

Regarding saving $200 a head, you may want to check out the advantage cattle services board. Lots of arguments over there on the folly of chasing performance.
I saw one recently arguing that there was more money in 550 # calves than 700# calves. As I remember it they said if an animal ate 3.5% of their body weight, you can feed 125 1200# cows with the same feed as 100 1450# cows. The 550 # calve are worth more per pound. So you have more money. If you do the math at today’s market it’s scary. They say 700# calves broke ranches that were paid for with 550# calves. But they do always get arguments.
It sounds like your son has already figured out he can feed cheaper and handle more buy backing up the calving date.
When is that big 50 number coming around for you Cowman? You will have to grow yourself one of those little pony tails or something. People get wild and crazy when those round numbers come up.

[greybeard]

Geez greybeard. Most of us are so darn busy making a living, and working harder each year to do it, that we don't have time to go 'strange' when we add another decade !!!!

[cswilson]

Kind of with grassfarmer on this one-we swath grazed years ago-heck we were even on T'V about it once-there hasn't been any dirt turned on this place for 15 years and I don't plan on starting again. It does work good if you are renovating grass and want something to seed on the broken up sod-the cows will break up clumps and pack the ground for the next year. Ourselves we just use cow...,rain and sunshine to keep our grass growing.