What farms are most profitable?

[grassfarmer]

I'm interested in the species composition of your really rough (I'm assuming northern?)pasture. I have an area that is part tall timber, part slough, part willow bush with a multitude of woodland plants and grasses in there. It really is easy to see 40 different plant species growing among the trees. What always amazes me is that the cows totally drop salt and mineral consumption when they are in there. I think there is a lot more power in these "natural" pastures than we give credit for.
On the other hand another bunch are on timothy, quack, clover and limited alfalfa mix on fairly depleted former grain land - and I can't keep them going in salt or minerals. 60 pairs and 2 bulls drank 1100 imp gallons of water on this area yesterday. They would literally eat a salt block in 2 days. Is too much salt making them that thirsty or are they taking so much salt because they are drinking so much? Only good thing about this developing drought - it might kill that damn timothy off!

[kpb]

you know, grassfarmer, you have raised a very interesting point and one that I have pondered since I tried a little experiment a few years back.

My northern ranch is much as you have described--it's near Lac LaBiche and I confess I've never counted all the species on the land--it's a couple of thousand acres of bush, pasture, river flats and swamp. But here's what's interesting and brings me to your point.

I think it was in 1997 or whenever calf prices were really low I happened to be reading a book written by Gordon Hazard who has some very interesting ideas about ranching. One of the things he is interested in is in producing marketable cattle that do not require much work or input. He doesn't care about their color but he cares a lot about easy keeping. That's very important to me too given that I just turn the pairs out on rough pasture in the spring and check them rarely during the summer. He breeds for low input by getting rid of any cow that does not bring home a calf for any reason and by culling cows that show any inhererent weakness.

Anyways the calf prices at the time were horrible so I thought what the heck and I didn't put out any salt or mineral all summer. I know it's sacrilege to say this but I thought I'd cull out any animal that needed salt or mineral on their summer pasture.

I suspect you know the bottom line--there was no percentage difference in culling rate in the fall (preg checked) from previous years and no fall-off in number of calves brought home or weaning weight. This was on 320 pairs. I know it's not scientific.

The next year I did it again but also put no fly tags on the cows. About two weeks in I had a serious infestation of flys so went and got some salt blocks that contain an ingredient that inhibits insects (they don't land on the cow's back). It worked very well.

Since then I have never, in any year, fed minerals to the pairs. I also have not used a fly tag in some of the buggiest country you can imagine. My ranch employee does use the fly salt blocks which work well in insect control. If I didn't ranch in bug country I would not use salt blocks either.

I have not used salt blocks in the fall or winter since then but I do use mineral. Maybe sometime I'll have the nerve to drop it too in the winter and see what happens.

There's no science here but my gut feeling is that if your cows are exposed to a variety of edible plants to eat they likely do not need mineral or salt supplementation??? Before everyone thinks I'm mistreating these animals I can assure you that I am not and that the cows are fat and happy--some are old--and the number and weight of calves produced are very economical.

kpb

[grassfarmer]

Very interesting even if it flies in the face of the accepted "sound science". Like many things it's clear that the wild animals could manage their own salt and mineral intakes before man came along. I think as long as you have a decent size area and variety of species it will work. Are all my "tame" grass varieties really deficient in micro nutrients because they grow faster or are they deficient because they are grown on land that was severely depleted by growing crops? I'm reading a book by Bonsma just now that is getting into the soil fertility/ph versus grass nutrients/ cow health debate.

I questioned the idea of feeding salt when I came here because we never did it in Scotland on our very leached, acidic soils. Everyone insists you must feed salt here, so I have done. My guess is it's a bit like chocolate - I love it but I don't really need it! Cows certainly like salt but do they need it?
I have a friend here that has built up very run down soils on his place by adding manure, legumes and intensive grazing. He tissue tested some cattle this summer and found them to have very high sodium levels so he won't be feeding any more salt to them as too much salt won't be healthy for them, just like in people. Unfortunately he didn't tissue test the cattle 10 years ago so that's not really a scientific experiment either. One point he made was that salt doesn't cycle in the land, it accumulates there. So buying in salt blocks year after year will raise your salt levels in the soil - perhaps even to excess levels.

[crossfield_beef]

Honey farms are profitable. Much of the honey is exported to the US or Europe. Canada has a world wide image of being a pristeen country and the honey is in demand. Many of the honey operations are very large businesses.