Grazing Cover Crops and Benefits for Livestock Operations - Gabe Brown

[Music] Thank You Brown and along with my son and wife we operate about a 5,000 acre operation near Bismarck North Dakota we run between 350 and 400 cow-calf pairs between 3 and 800 stocker cattle we do grass finish and have our own marketing label so we're marketing our own grass-finished beef we also raise sheep laying hands rollers out on pasture hogs will be added this year so I'm gonna go through this really fast because we're kind of crunched for time so these are my five keys to achieving a healthy soil least amount of mechanical disturbance possible Armour on the soil surface and that's critical in all environments keep that armor on the soil surface plant diversity diversity of species roots leaf sizes and shapes everything living wrote in the ground as long as possible and I used to think in our environment we're in a 16 inch moisture environment of that approximately 10 falls as rain the other six is from snow I used to think our last killing frost in the spring is about May 10th and our first one in the fall is about September 10th so I used to think that little hundred and twenty day window is all a longer I could grow some cover crops allow us to extend that growing season get a living root in the ground a lot longer than possible the fifth thing I think is is really the next level in soil health is livestock integration we've proven in our operation we do have 400 acres of crop ground that were not able to graze livestock on because of surrounding housing developments and no water etc we have an initial 1600 acres of cropland where we can graze livestock the soil health on those 400 acres without livestock will never get to the point where of that 1600 were able to graze livestock on so where we fit cover crops in our operation we use them to address our resource concerns and you cover crops in for what you don't have you know what is it that you don't have in your cropping system what resource concern can you address with cover crops and there's a myriad of them what we do on our operation is every particular field we have we ask ourselves first what resource concern am I going to address you know I'm going to talk down the road about one of the scenarios of needing more armor on the syrup surface but do you need more diversity if you're in a corn bean rotation I'll tell you you need more diversity because you've got a warm season grass the warm season broadleaf that's not enough diversity for really improving soil health but there's a myriad of them you can look at them there that's the first thing you need to ask yourself it one of the things if you're just getting into cover crops you need to find a supplier who knows about these resource concerns and has your best interest at heart I see what way too many times where a seed supplier sold a producer the wrong cover crop seed for that producers resource concern and so you have to vet these seed suppliers also the thing we do on our operation is we where do we have a production gap either something not growing where we can put a living rut or a nutritional gap in the case of livestock and what we've done this is just a crude chart it doesn't show all the species we use but we went in and mapped or charted our forages for instance the top one is cool-season native grasses the next one is warm season natives the blue bars there are when those forages are at their peak in our environment it's going to be different for every operation then you go down into some of the cool season grasses then at the bottom there I get into different cover crop species and combinations and all I want to show you here is we're trying to fill that forage gap throughout the entire year and this will be different on each person's operation but we can use these covers to fill those gaps fall seated buy annuals are one of the easiest ways for producer to fit cover crops into their particular operation we started growing triticale and hairy vetch which is a picture of back in the mid 90s it's a slam-dunk no-brainer for us on our operation we have at least you know three to four hundred acres in fall seated by annuals every year because they offer us a lot of options one of the options is we can calves out on them and we like to do that we use two calves in February and March now we calves from May 15th through the end of June we have two miles from the nearest Corral the cow has problems that's tough she'll only have problems once you know that's just the way it is but it's a way we can integrate cropland into our grazing system you know in the background there are some of our native pasture the foreground obviously where the cattle are at that's winter triticale hairy vetch you can see what they've already grazed and what they'll be moving on we rotate these cover crops throughout all 2,000 of our acres the animals are extremely healthy you know we just don't have issues I'm not going to say we don't lose calves but I'll guarantee you we lose a lot less now than we used to lose when we were calving in confinement they're just healthy our cows we're not afraid of them losing body condition score during the winter we still have the calves are still on the cows now you know and here we are you know in in mid-february our cows will lose some body condition score will wean these calves in March but then the cows go back out onto this winter triticale these fall biennials they swell up like ticks and put on a lot of weight before they calve and they're healthy we do not provide a bed and breakfast for our cows they're there to make us money and to convert solar energy into dollars that's what they're there for some people might call it abuse our cows they're made to grace they got four legs you know they need to walk to where the forage is now if we don't care about on that winter triticale vet we can run stockers on it too but this is where it depends on your resource concern in this particular field our resource concern was we didn't have enough armor on the soil surface we've got a lot of living biology now in our soil after 20 years of no-till and very diverse cash crops and cover crops we did earthworm counts this past spring in a 12 inch by 12 inch by 2 inch soil profile we were averaging over 60 okay that's a lot of earthworms because of that we need a lot of residue on the soil surface because they consume a lot and I'll show you how much coming up but if you want maximum gains on livestock you're never gonna let it get this mature you won't want it to that's is not conducive to maximum gain it is conducive to addressing our soil health concern of not enough farmer so what we do is we go into these these winter triticale by annuals and we'll use bat latches to move the cattle that's a solar-powered gate opener attached to that bungee cord gate takes us about an hour in the morning to roll up the previous days five or six paddocks however many moves we want to do then we'll we'll set up however many paddocks we need for that day and then we'll use bat latches and this next photo here they're that bat latch flew open and the heifers move themselves you know or whatever group of cattle we have on there now this particular group were not grass finishing so we're not concerned about the the grain in there that grain it's just you've got to get that crop to a thesis where it's starting to shoot a seed head in order for it to be terminated by the grazing cattle now these cattle are mostly knocking that down they're taken very little but that's okay that's what we want is that armored now remember this picture here and how green it is because I'll reference it a few slides later so when our cattle go off this here is what it looks like we got virtually a hundred percent ground cover and that's an inch or so thick that amount of organic material on top of the soil surface now what we'll do okay this is taking place in early July we grazed it you can if you want maximum gain on winter triticale you can move them on and off at several times if you really do your management and we've actually winter triticale vetch where we've moved him on and off five different times taking it through into early August and we're still grazing it this particular scenario because of that we wanted that armor we just grazed it once then we'll come in with what we call a biological primer and a biological primer my definition is it's a very diverse cover crop mix whose sole purpose is to enhance the life and the function of the soil so we'll go in then and we'll plant a very diverse mix this is just some of the cover crop species we planted in 2013 we actually planted over 70 different species don't pay any attention to the species that I plant they may or may not work on your area all I'm trying to impose on you here is notice I have some species from all four crop types okay cool season grasses broad leaves warm season grasses broad leaves and these are just a few of them now we'll plant these in combinations depending on the resource concern anywhere from normally I plant 15 to 25 different species in a mix we had one field last year we planted over 70 species on just because I wanted to try it but this is one of our species that then and one of our mixes and the first five species on there the sunflower through the cow peas those are all warm seasons they make up the vast majority of the mix as far as a number of plants per acre because we're planting this at a warm time of the year so we want a species that can handle the heat and all the species in here have a per diversity Drive soil health I'm a firm believer in that like I mentioned this morning on the panel how are our soils formed diversity diversity of plant species diversity of livestock this is what that particular mix looks like very easy to seed through the drill we don't worry about the different seed size just open that drill so the largest seed can flow through it there is us now remember I said to keep in mind how green that cover crop was when those heifers went off it this is just four days later it's dried up because it was our ready at a state where we knew once we grazed it it was just like passing a cropper Ola crossed it that's the amount of residue that I want to seed into because if I have that kind of residue I'm gonna keep my soil temps down and I'm gonna keep weed pressure down so I can do without any type of a herbicide pass there's no herbicide used here this is that's cow pee in the foreground radish up top emerging just four or five days later they jump out of the ground but look at that residue we have remember my resource concern was armor in this particular situation so we want armor on the surface this is what that seed looks like emerging and I always get asked the question okay you got large seed small seeds how's that small seed get out of the ground the large seed just breaks the transfer it notice the soil aggregation and all the earthworm casting that's what we want this photo was taken at the same time it took the last one and look at the earthworms at the soil surface feeding even though we have temperatures approaching a hundred degrees air temp those soil temperatures stay much cooler and that allows us cuts down on the evaporation and we're able to get drops off and growing we're also with that very diverse mixes we're maximizing solar energy collection because that's what us as producers are trying to do we're trying to capture through photosynthesis that sunlight if you plant a monoculture you only got one leaf size and shape out there you plant polycultures no matter what direction the angle the sun's lights that you're gonna be collecting solar energy we also use these cover crops certain species in them for animal health concerns we haven't used any por ons D warmers anything in over eight years okay we're all 100% all-natural plantain is an herb and we use it in the mixes because it has some natural parasite control and the cattle will seek it out at certain times if they if they need to now will you okay we got this very diverse warm season mix there's options for that too just like I talked about the options with the winter triticale veg combination this particular one here if we want maximum gain on grass finish cattle that's about ready to group to graze and we will graze grass-finished beef at times on these the primary component in that mix is brown midrib sorghum Sudan it's a c4 grass it'll have the highest amount of energy we'll get our highest gains on the livestock we do not run near as high stock density zhan this I should have mentioned the heifers we were we're typically at around 6 to 750,000 pounds of beef equivalent per acre when we're grazing this we're down there to 150 200 thousand but that's kind of an arbitrary number you know the the thing I want to get across to you is for grass finish we want to allow the livestock the ability to select for energy and they will select for energy first and they're only going to eat less than 25 percent of this just one bite we're going to be moving them anywhere from one to six times a day depending on on what we see fit we measure everything with Brix readings refractometers and we'll move cattle accordingly our Brix readings on this mix are usually in the 20s which is which is good we can get really good gains at least two and a quarter pounds plus on that it's about feeding the whole notice on all these mixes I'm showing you we always have flowering species in there to attract the pollinators this is phacelia phacelia works well if we see it in the fall cattle don't eat this they they may enable on it a little but it really attracts the pollinators how come I can get by with no insecticides or pesticides or that is because of the home we provide for all these species this photo here was actually taken in October and we've got flowering species in October in our mixes we provide the home for these pollinators look at what's happening in the bee business night now with colony collapse disorder you know I've got beekeepers knocking on my door I want to bring bees on our cover crops lady beetles they're one of our best predator insects they take care of a lot of pests and you got to provide a home from your planters corn and beans out there there's not much home for these predator insects so diversity diversity we always have some of our acres in covers to provide a home for these my son took this picture on a cool morning how many flies can fly through that maze of spider webs on a dewy morning dr. Lundgren told me this one you know as producers we want to kill something that seems you know there's always it's a weed it's a fungus it's a pest for every one pest species there are 1700 beneficial ones and we don't think of that when we go out and spray those past nature will take care of this this is really very simple if we allow nature to run its course and of course the one thing we're really trying to feed is that soil life because it's that soil life that converts that organic form into the inorganic or plant available form so this has become the biggest challenge on our operation with the amount of life we have in the soil to keep it fed so we need a living plant at all times okay so I grazed the winter triticale hairy vetch I planted a very diverse warm season cover we have the option of grass finishing or grazing stockers on there another option we have is to just let it go this photo was taken right before a killing Frost that photo is a few days later after a killing Frost notice the green species still in there a lot of these brassicas it takes 15 degree temps three nights in a row before they're they're terminated so we can actually grow plants a lot longer throughout the year than we thought possible this is how we convert most of our cover crops into dollars that's grazing cow-calf pairs on them during the winter and we do that that is really really cheap and our cost to produce a pound of beef because we don't have to mechanically harvest near as much forage anymore North Dakota State did summer really good work as far as the nutrient content of these forages they tested him in September and then tested them again in December and in December they still had the majority of them really good energy in them hairy vetch is a one that's that green one that calf there is eaten that will still run 18% crude protein in December that's why I grow it with corn so you know after we combine that corn off the cattle are out there grazing those corn stalks and they're digging down eating that that's balancing their protein needs meanwhile the vet supplied the nitrogen fix nitrogen for that corn throughout the growing season win-win situation millet I normally find millet doesn't run this high a crude protein that they found in their studies sorghum Sudan will hold its values a little bit better and we really like that in the mix especially a brown midrib variety we will graze our cattle you know when temperatures and snow it's pretty extreme snow is the main source of water for them in the winter we do on the cattle that the cows that have calves on them we allow them to walk back half mile to a mile usually to the nearest water source in a farmstead what-have-you most of them don't even bother they'll just stay out there and graze and they can graze some pretty extreme temperatures that's not musk ox that's cow-calf pairs 40 degrees below zero I felt a little sorry sitting in the pickup as my son walked out and took that photo but that's another another story but you know the cows really learned to adapt and they know when a storms coming obviously you know there's no wind protection out there so they need to walk back to a farmstead and they will they just know the storms come and they'll walk back we just haven't had much issues in saying that we have to give them access to some protection because if they get in a true whiteout blizzard they're going to start drifting and I don't want them under the housing developments under the decks and people's homes that's not a good thing we're located actually in city jurisdiction so I got a hundred thousand people next to me and and it can create some issues if we're not careful the economics of that so this is the economics in the case of grazing the winter tree Kaleigh hairy vetch and then running the grass-finished on there we still netted 333 dollars an acre you know that's not as much money as I can make on corn or some of my cash crops but I'd never make that much money on my corn or cash crops if I didn't do this now we're only growing these covers on about 10% of our acres every year where we're grazing season long all 2,000 acres of our cropland have cover crops either before along with or after a cash crop but only about 200 of those have full season covers on them this is my our cost in 2012 to produce a our 2013 excuse me to produce a 1200 pound grass-finished beef animal the days is the days they were in that that particular segment of production for example they were nursing a cow for 300 days the $535 cost that's the cost for us to run a cow a year may seem kind of high but but the reason it is is we've still got 90 or 100 days in there where we have to we have to feed some a the highest cost is that bale grazing down below when we're Bale graze in those yearling that adds significant but we can still finish a beef for a thousand little over a thousand dollars my times about up here we're no tilling then and two very hesitant old Taylor we don't use any trash whippers and that's what the corn crop look like no no fertilizers pesticides fungicides this is the leaf tissue analysis showing that every nutrient tested for was sufficient or above we didn't add anything these two here I want to show this bar graph because this is really important the red bar I want to show why livestock are important in a system the red bar is a field that's 30 years no-till the green bar is a field right next to it 20 years no-till in those 20 years both these fields had a lot of diversity a lot of different cash and cover crops the only difference is the lime green field had the cattle grazing on cover crops during the growing season the red bar did not on the far left is nitrogen 86 pounds versus 90 no significant difference the second bar there is inorganic phosphorus we went from 65 pounds to 239 pounds that's available phosphorus and then the third is potassium from 429 we jumped to 595 what that shows is that next level we can get to on our soil health if we put livestock into the mix this is my cost to produce to the bushel of corn and I talked about that this morning that was from 2012 this is what it's all about though in our operation it's about soil health and the amount of life we have in the soil converting sunlight into dollars if we have healthy soil we're going to have clean water clean air healthy plants animals and eventually people and that's what it's about to me with that there's my contact information feel free to contact me at any time you you

Channel: SARE Outreach

Views: 93,248

Rating: 4.9222221 out of 5

Keywords: Cover Crop, organic, sustainable ag, Cattle, Grazing, Soil Health, local food, grants, sustainable agriculture, research and education, on farm research, SARE, ag, Crop Livestock, Cover Crops, Soil Conservation, Forage, Soil, Soil Quality, Croplivestock System, Nutrient Management, Crop Diversification, USDA, farm, Crop, stewardship, research, Grass Fed, sustainable, Grazing Management, Crop Livestock System, Soil Management, agriculture, SARE Outreach, Cow Feed, farming, Cow Diet

Id: CzrKJo01-kE

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 28 2014