questions for grass farmers, ie grassfarmer

[gaucho]

What I meant by screwing mothering up was that...when cows get fed while they calve they become more interested in chasing the feed truck and or the silage wagon. A cow does not have peak nutritional demands till peak lactation which is 2-3 months after calving and so don't worry so much whether the grass has enogh punch to it.... Worry more that your cows have adequate BCS at calving and use that to fill in the differnce for energy shortfall till gree grass.
Secondly when you feed during calving you are bunching up animals and increasing the chances of dieases like scours. Its a pretty simple concept and just requires some thinking through. Just look at what buffaloe in National parks or in the wild.... they don't get fed their either and manage to breed back... the problem is too many guys are running beef cattle that have more gentics akin to dairy animals than beef. The other part of the equation for making it work is to have the right cows suited to a grass program and not that of a barley silage/ barley one. I look foward to your ideas.

Cheers
Gaucho

[grassfarmer]

To answer many of your questions, including some not posed to me i'll give you some of the basics I know about grass, most people probably know this but I see plenty that apparently don't have a clue.

First everyone involved in agriculture is directly or indirectly harvesting produce of soil nutrients, water and solar power, never forget that.

Second grass has a life cycle just like cows. Young grass starts to grow slowly in the spring because it's growing from energy stored in the roots. Once the plants get a bit bigger the leaf area becomes sufficient to capture enough solar rays through photosynthesis to grow and eventually recharge it's root reserves as well. After the plant is past the small leaf stage it gets into the "blaze of growth" stage where speed of growth increases dramatically. This stage passes too as the plant starts to form what will become a seed head. Once the seed heads are on growth really slows down and the energy is directed into ripening the seeds.
With the above in mind the most efficient way to harvest grass with cows is by grazing it just as it is getting to the end of the blaze of growth period. This maximises production, gives least setback to the plant and also ensures high feed value as the crop is still leafy.
If you graze a crop too early you set it back to the slow initial growth stage before you have benefitted from the blaze of growth. If you graze it once it has headed out it won't regrow quickly either. Thus my comment about wasting growth potential - optimum growth is achieved by having a good cover of leafy plants exposed to the sun.
On our place we use planned grazing to try and get every pasture grazed at the appropriate time for the purpose we have in mind for it. We graze much of the land twice a year, some once and one pasture three times (to grass fatten steers which requires a higher quality of grass, achieved through shorter rest periods/ younger grass)Sometimes we rest a pasture for a whole season to regenerate it.

We need to graze virtually the whole place in the fast growth period (usually May 10th to July 1-10th in my area)to prevent grass heading out. We find that being grazed once in this period means that the plants generally will regrow into leafy, spring quality pastures right into the fall rather than try to form seed heads. There are some plants that don't fit this profile or system.

When I talk of banking grass I mean grazing it at the correct stage during the fast growth period so that we will get a good quality leafy regrowth in sufficient quantity to either over winter or graze in the Fall/winter dormant season.

I like Sean's analogy of grazing being similar to a hay cut system - that is how I consider mine. My neighbours are essentially out of pasture now - the cows have grazed everything apart from a few tufts around the manure piles. June 1st to July 15th is not a long enough grazing period in my opinion to make cattle profitable. They have spent the summer making hay, silage or greenfeed and because they have a big pile of feed now they consider themselves to be in good shape despite the "drought ruining" their pastures. In contrast I have not cut an acre with a machine - Most of my place has most of the years production still growing on it - waiting to be harvested by the cows. The biggest difference I see between the two systems is I use cows to harvest the grass versus tractors, balers and diesel. As Grant Lastika says the industry has built a whole system of running cows around the LEAST efficient thing a cow does - eat mechanically harvested feed rather than build it around the MOST efficient thing a cow does - graze.

A few other comments: My pastures are burning up a lot less than continuos grazed ones, more leaf cover keeps them from drying out and hence allows better use of the available moisture.

Guys growing cereal crops that are being harvested now for silage have only had the land covered with solar capturing leafs for a little over 2 months of the year. That's a lot of solar power going to waste! Plus they incurred the cost of mechanical seeding and fertiliser.
Still I'm happy these guys like to grow crop - I've a silage team in just now cutting oats off a neighbours land for $15/ton to winter feed my backgrounding calves! With bare land around here at least $1500 an acre there is no way I would take on extra land to mechanically harvest grass or grain to feed my cattle.

[kpb]

I like grassfarmers comments but there are a few oft-repeated misconceptions in this thread.

First of all I'm getting tired about hearing how deer, elk, moose, wild buffalo and just about every other ruminant calves in the spring, looks after its young quite well and so on and so on. The point being that we should work more closely with mother nature and everything would be rosy. The fact is that deer, etc. generally have low conception rates and overall weaning rates of about 60% per animal exposed. Can any of you guys live on that for your cows?

The idea that feeding cows during calving season somehow has a negative impact upon calving is bizarre. Cows can easily be fed in a large field--ours is 85 acres--and the feed can be spread far and wide on that field. I believe in late calving too but let's not reach for reasons that are not sensible to justify it.

Finally, the notion that buying land to make feed is flawed is not borne out by history. I have had silage custom made on my land for close to 20 years and through many of those years it was the cheapest feed around. I have never not had feed, even during our worst droughts.

But more than that I have come to see that the value of the land is really in how it grows in value and increases our net worth. In reality it is not the cows that are going to grow your estate--it's the land and many of us, especially in Alberta, have prospered on the back of our land values rising. Does this relate to farming? Maybe not and maybe it means we have to be investors as well as ranchers but I'll tell you that I'm really glad that I bought land to make feed many years ago--land that has made much more money during the years that I've had the use of it than I ever will make from my cows. So when you're thinking about making feed on your own land, think about the investment merits of buying that land too.


kpb

[grassfarmer]

Kpb, that's a fair comment on buying land whether for hay or for pasture, but everybody's situation is different. I have actually pulled a fair bit of capital out of my property value with moving here and invested it where it earns a better rate of interest than real estate price increases, or ranching, would have generated. I have settled on an amount that I want invested in farm land ownership and am looking to expand through using other peoples acres from now on. That's my diversified investment stategy and I think the Prairies offer a great chance to make it work.

PS Further to your thread about fly repellent salt blocks - who makes them or where do you get them?

[kpb]

fair enough.

I'll look up the name and manufacturer of the blocks and get back to you tomorrow.

kpb

[smcgrath76]

I agree with kpb that land ownership has been a good investment historically.
My challenge as a young producer is that with current local purchase prices (and soon to be lease prices) I can't cash flow the interest payments. I don't see this as sustainable in the long run.

The leasing, stubble grazing, crop sharing and other unusual options that are out there are pretty astonishing at the moment and have really impacted our profitability (positively).

We use a couple of different "systems" in combination on our place, including an intensive rotational system with electric fence and portable reels, swath grazing, bale grazing, and some extensive rest rotation/deferred grazing. As well we have been working with some different approaches to water pumping, etc. that are extremely low cost and have noticable positive impacts on cattle distribution and forage utilization.

What we have noticed with improved grass management (often taking no extra time) is that we have more grass of higher quality, can restore stands of grass pretty fast, and for the most part have moisture to spare, when everyone seems to be dried out. Not only do we cash flow better on the same land base (more production), we are also more profitable and have significantly reduced our risk associated with weather.

As far as mothering and feeding cows...
My thoughts are any cow that doesn't mother her calf is fine, as long as she belongs to someone else.

[kpb]

we use Saltec sulphur blocks which have your basic blue block ingredients along with sulphur.

there is a bit of a controversy regarding the use of sulphur blocks as an insect deterent. I don't think there is any science that says sulphur in blocks stops flys and there are a few web pages around on both sides of the argument. All I know is that it works for me. The cows actually smell different after licking these blocks as the sulphur comes out in their hair and presumably deters the flys from landing on their backs, etc. Their hair coats definitely are better. Sulphur is used in the orchard industry as an insecticide so there is some science to it I guess.

Anyways it works for us and I would suggest anyone who is interested should pick up a couple of blocks and try it. We used to get ours from the Co-op but now get it privately. However, I was at Masterfeeds in Didsbuy this morning and asked them about it and the lady there had just sold a flat to a rancher (which sold her out) and was about to order more so it should be easy to get. It's kind of an orangey yellow in colour.

kpb

[grassfarmer]

Thanks for that kpb i'll look into these blocks as the flies are pretty thick up here just now. I did a google search the other day for fly repellent blocks and came to the sweetlix website - I hoped it wasn't those you were referring to! They are made and sold in the US and appear to be a complete mineral/salt block with an organophoshate component which kills all fly larvae before they hatch out of the manure. Feeding organophosphate to cows? I thing BS-man Bullard will have some more BSE cover ups to do in future if American ranchers are using this product!