January 1, 2003
Forage Systems Update
Vol 12, No. 1
The Missouri Grazing Experience:
Lessons Learned
Jim Gerrish
A note from Jim Gerrish:
The following article was prepared for the Heart of America Grazing
Conference held at Hannibal MO on January 23, 2003. At the time I
was asked to make this presentation, I had not yet decided when I
was leaving MU. As this is the last conference in Missouri that I
will be speaking at while still associated with MU-FSRC, I thought
it would also be an appropriate farewell column for this newsletter.
I have been asked to share what we have learned about grazing in Missouri over the last twenty years or so. I think we have come a long way in our understanding of managed grazing and what it can do for livestock producers throughout this region. Some of what we have learned came as a surprise to many of us while some was what we might have expected. We have learned aspects of basic science of grazing, we have learned the potential economic impact of managed grazing, and we have learned much about the social realities of change.
When I first became involved in grazing research, I had the perception that most of the benefit of rotational or controlled grazing came from managing individual plants in a pasture on a day-to-day basis. While that is still an important aspect of grazing management, by far and away, the greater benefit of managed grazing occurs at the landscape level and over extended periods of time. Grazing management is largely an issue of managing space and time effectively. Realizing that is a critical part of the learning curve. Just figuring out what you are really managing is half the battle.
Through the 1980's, we were largely doing Intensive Grazing Management (IGM). We were not yet as flexible in time management as we are today and we were still not seeing the big picture of grazing. By 1990, we were learning valuable lessons and about that time, I coined the phrase "Management-intensive Grazing" (MiG). Some people wonder why I am so hung up on the hyphen and why I always write ‘MiG' and never ‘MIG'. It has everything to do with placing the emphasis on intensifying management, not grazing. We are trying to control grazing animals and all the resources associated with grazing through our management. That is what MiG is about.
It is important to understand some of the basic objectives of our research and outreach program to understand why we ended up where we are today. While many early skeptics thought IGM or MiG was only about increasing beef production per acre, it has really always been about lowering production costs. We knew this and the innovative producers who have led the grazing revolution knew this. Profit is an equation with only two terms: income and expenses. In the 1980's, there was no such thing as premiums in the beef business. You just tried to avoid the discounts. There was very little a producer could do to change the price received for livestock products. From the beginning of MiG we were tackling the expense side of the equation.
Starting with the basic assumptions that winter feed cost and land costs are the most expensive part of being in the cattle business, we tackled those issues. Extending the grazing season to reduce winter feed costs and to increase land use efficiency, those were our objectives with MiG.
Managing Time and Space
Twenty years ago, there were not many people talking about year-around grazing and those were mostly crackpots and out-of-touch academics. It sounded nice in theory, but would never work on a real-world farm. As it turns out, the problem was we were not trying to manage our forage resources in the context of time and space. We had a bad habit of making hay and most farmers and ranchers were addicted to new paint and black smoke. We had to learn that the growing season and the grazing season are two different things. The ideas of stockpiling tall fescue and grazing it in the winter had been around for a long time but had not been fine-tuned to be workable as a full-winter feed resource.
Researchers continued to research and pioneer producers boldly stepped forward and bit by bit we began to learn how to grow a higher quality stockpile, how to ration it out, that maybe calving in February was not the best thing to do, and a host of other things. Then one day, we came to the realization that feeding a cow in the wintertime didn't have to be expensive if we calved her just a little later. Then we started to find we could grow stockpile that was good enough to keep a fall-calving cow ticking through the winter. We found we had made a major impact on winter feed costs. We actually began to understand. the term of "matching forage and animal resources". We were becoming better managers because we had a better understanding of our resources.
Then we started exploring other alternatives for winter feed for grazing animals. The crackpots were showing up again and they were grazing standing corn, of all things. If we were going to feed corn to cattle, why not let cows do the harvesting rather than a $120,000 combine. You can buy 200 cows for the same price as the combine and cows can have babies that combines never could. We were beginning to think like grass farmers. The revolution had begun.
Annual ryegrass in north Missouri? It could never survive the winters, skeptics said. But it has. Turnips and kale? Sheep might eat that, or yuppies maybe, but it won't work for cows. But it did. Exploration of alternatives is fully underway now. We no longer live under the specter of our addiction to new paint and black smoke to bale hay. Somebody, whether researcher or farmer, is always ready to try a new path. Of course, we still have our friends and neighbors who feed hay for 140 days, but maybe someday they'll join the revolution. Today we know we might only be able to grow grass for seven months, but we know we can graze for twelve. We learned that if we plan and if we manage, we can make it work.
I remember the day in July of 1991 when we were conducting a field training exercise in grazing system design for SCS personnel on my neighbor's pasture. It was a 190 acre unit with three ponds up near the road and no other sources of water anywhere else. All along the road near the ponds, the pasture was grazed down to less than two inches. As I walked away from those ponds toward the back of the unit, I came to the first ridge top about a thousand feet from the water sources and the pasture was ankle high. On the next ridge two thousand feet away, the grass was mid- calf high. Then the real stunner at the back of the pasture, native prairie grass waist high. All in the same unfenced pasture area. That was the day it really hit me how inefficiently most pastures were used. Overgrazing was destroying the pastures near water while a natural prairie existed a half-mile away because the cows were too lazy to walk that far. Land use efficiency moved way up my list as a priority issue.
For a farm or ranch to be profitable, every acre needs to carry its share of the load. I had seen the non-uniformity of grazing before, but had never had it brought home to me with such an impact as that July day in 1991. So we started looking at issues like travel distance to water and its effect on grazing distribution and manure deposition. Keeping animals within 800 feet of water became a standard recommendation for NRCS and extension specialists in many states. Water development is the most expensive part of starting most grazing cells, but it is also the most powerful tool in the toolbox. We can use fence to control where the animals can be, but water dictates where they want to be. That was a valuable lesson learned. Hopefully, no one still has the first publication I wrote on controlled grazing in 1984. In it I said, it was cheaper to bring cattle to water than it was to take water to the cattle. I recommended using lanes for water access because it was cheaper than running water lines. What we have since learned is, although lanes are cheaper, it is much more cost effective to take the water to the cattle.
I sometimes find research to be a very frustrating business. The very process of research design is to minimize variations in space and time. We use small plots and limit the duration of studies because we can't afford to run them any longer or we need to get the results published to make tenure. Most biological processes take time, especially if we are looking at response to management changes. Nothing happens very quickly in nature and all of the ramifications rarely come to light in a single season. While researchers try to minimize effects of time and space, farmers and ranchers are always trying to capitalize on variations in time and space. That is why we plant a particular forage on a particular site. That is why we calve when and where we do. There is an advantage to that location at that time of year. Often the most meaningful result of a research project are the unexplainable interactions. Our statistics are much too simple for something as complex as the real world. The first requirement for being a good scientist or a good grazier is being a good observer.
Intake and Residual
There are two basic rules of life and grazing that we have learned. 1) The more you eat, the fatter you get, and 2) Use it all up and you'll go broke. In grazing, its all about intake. If you want a steer to gain two pounds/day, he needs to consume a pretty specific amount of calories and protein. If he doesn't get it, he doesn't meet the target rate of gain. Whether we are managing for maintenance or production, it's all about intake.
We have done a good job of teaching producers how to rest a pasture and get it to a nice pretty height before turning the stock in. We know for most cool-season pastures, the most efficient grazing with maximum intake occurs when the pasture is six to ten inches tall. We have not done quite as good a job of teaching them when to get the stock out. We have found over the years, variation in grazing intake is about 25% correlated with pre-grazing forage mass but over 80% with post-grazing residual. Many graziers have been disappointed with animal performance in MiG systems. I believe most of this disappointment is due to restricted intake late in the grazing period. It doesn't matter if it is a 12-hour or a 5-day grazing period. As soon as forage mass drops below a critical level, intake is restricted. This is a lesson many of us still need to learn. Don't graze so short and don't take too long to get there.
Grazing to too short a residual affects a lot more besides intake. Just about every aspect of pasture condition and production is affected by post-grazing residual. Regrowth rate, root growth, soil temperature, organic matter, infiltration rate, water-holding capacity, and nutrient cycling are all affected by residual. More than anything else, I believe residual management is what separates the excellent graziers from all of the rest of us. What you leave behind is more important than what you take is a lesson still to be learned.
Grazing Sociology
A lesson that has been learned by many graziers is the value of grazing network to build your grazing philosophy. I have had the privilege of being associated with some of the foremost grazing thinkers in this state through participation in the Green Hills Farm Project. Since the late 1980's, this group has been meeting for pasture walks and seminars on a regular basis. So many good ideas and challenging thoughts have come from this group that I can't even begin to count them.
Similar groups exist in other states and I have enjoyed pasture walks and seminars with a number of other networks. While most of the naysayers in farming grasp there coffee cups and wrestle with problems they can never solve, the grazing networks grasp their futures and wrestle with the issues that make a difference on their farms and in their lives. If a support group like Green Hills Farm Project existed in every county throughout this region, there would be a whole lot less problems in agriculture and a whole lot more profitable farms. Spend your time with positive people and focus on dealing with the issues you can resolve and life gets a lot more enjoyable. That is a lesson we all can take home.
If you are wondering who the "we" are in this little story, "we" are the public servants in research, extension, and other agencies who have worked for you and with you, as well as all of the livestock producers and other land managers who have worked with us to make Missouri grasslands a healthier and more productive resource. We have all been in this together.
Another note from Jim Gerrish:
For those of you who would like to maintain contact with me after I leave Missouri, I will provide future contact information in the April 1, 2003 edition of Forage Systems Update. That information may only be temporary until we relocate to our new home. I will continue to do workshops and conferences around the country and so our paths may still cross from time to time. I feel very fortunate to have fallen in with the grazing crowd and met so many of you over the last 20 years. I really believe that graziers are the most optimistic segment of American agriculture today because grass-based agriculture is the best hope we have for economically and environmentally sustainable farms and ranches in this country. There are far too many people who have helped me over the years for me to individually thank so I am sending out a general thank you to all of you who have supported our research and outreach program over the years and over the many miles of this great country.
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