By John Hays, Understanding Ag, LLC
Winter feed costs are typically a significant part of the annual cost to carry cattle, especially here in the Midwestern United States. There was a point in time that I believed that the only way to feed cattle during midwestern winters was to feed harvested forages. We would spend our summers baling and putting up hay just so that we could feed that hay to our cattle all winter long. That’s just the way it was done and no one questioned it. It was a lot of work, required a lot of resources, and it often felt like constantly taking two steps back instead of any forward progression.
It wasn’t until I began studying and implementing adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing that I began to realize that maybe there are other options. Options that require us to be open-minded and to try new ideas. After proving to ourselves firsthand that it is possible to graze cattle year around here in the Midwest, we are now firm believers in AMP grazing and want to share our success with you.
We recently put a video on social media of our cattle grazing stockpile during the winter to demonstrate to others what is possible here in the Midwest and the advantages it can bring to a livestock enterprise. A commenter stated, “you could have baled that three times over the growing season and had way more tonnage”. Perhaps, but let’s look a little deeper.
The commenter seems to be focused solely on yield while having no concern for the economic or ecological impact it has on our business and natural resources. We’ve tried the “making hay off of it” approach to feed our cattle and eventually realized it was neither economically nor ecologically sustainable. We have learned that grazing year-round is not only possible here in the Midwest but also regenerative both ecologically and economically.
Economic Factors
By storing stockpiled feed on the pasture and letting the cattle harvest it themselves, the only expense we incur is the labor to move a polywire each day to allot more feed. Feeding stockpiled forage is much more economical from just this standpoint alone. What is the true cost per animal unit day (AUD) to feed hay versus feeding stockpiled forage when you have all the costs of equipment, repairs, supplies, labor, and opportunity wrapped up in the making of the hay? We can feed stockpiled forage for less than 1/3 the cost of feeding hay making it a huge economic advantage over feeding hay.
Nutritional Value
Of course, we must stockpile forages that will hold both nutritional value and biomass through the winter months. In the Midwest we are blessed with endophyte fescue as part of our sward, and it makes a wonderful stockpiled forage for winter grazing. Coming into winter, our fescue was giving brix readings of 13%. It’s hard to find that kind of quality in many of the forages typically harvested as hay. Forages such as alfalfa and orchard grass do not overwinter very well, so other plant species that will overwinter must be part of the sward in order to graze through the entire winter. This is easy to plan for with some intentional management.
Ecological Advantages
The economics get even better once we look at this from an ecological point of view. By feeding stockpiled forage the cattle are returning the majority of the nutrients they are consuming directly back onto the very ground it was grown on. What is the true cost to haul manure that has lost much of its fertility from being stored before applying it to the pasture? With proper AMP grazing throughout the year our mineral cycle is now functioning more as nature intends for it to, resulting in no need to apply expensive fertilizer to any of our pastures. This is yet one more significant economic and ecological advantage. On ground that is excessively hayed, ecosystem function is inhibited and we cannot maintain yields without adding fertility to compensate for the nutrients being exported.
Additionally, with the mineral cycle functioning as nature intends, the nutrient density of the forage improves resulting in reduced or eliminated need for supplementing mineral to the livestock. We no longer need to supplement expensive and often ineffective mineral. Yet another economic advantage you don’t get with haying the pasture.
Building Resilience
By using AMP grazing and adhering to the 6-3-4TM we are now building depth of soil aggregation to levels that we could never achieve by haying the ground. Well-aggregated soil in our pastures can support cattle very easily during the often wet conditions of a midwestern winter. The key to not pugging soil during wet times is simply a factor of having well-aggregated soil, proper stocking density, and the amount of time spent on a particular piece of ground. Soil with good aggregation is vital to not only a properly functioning mineral cycle but a properly functioning water cycle as well. Well-aggregated soil cycles minerals and infiltrates water at much higher rates than soil that lacks aggregation. With better water infiltration we keep much more of the moisture in the soil resulting in increased resiliency during dryer periods of the growing season which results in increased forage production during those dry periods. Remember, it doesn’t matter how much rain you get, it’s how much rain you keep, read about our Broken Water Cycle. This results in soil that is more resilient in both wet and dry soil conditions. Again, an economic advantage as well as an ecological advantage.
Increasing Biodiversity
We haven’t even talked about all the diversity of life that begins to thrive and flourish with AMP grazing. Biodiversity plays a critical role in a properly functioning ecosystem. Each species of plants, animals, insects, birds, and all the microbiology that exists on this earth is designed to work in harmony with each other as long as each one is in proper balance with the other. All this diversity in proper balance is exactly how nature is designed to function. We have seen a huge increase in plant, wildlife, insect, and bird species diversity on the land we manage since switching to AMP grazing. Where we once had less than five plant species growing just 5 years ago on hay ground, we now have over 30 different plant species growing with AMP grazing. None of these additional plant species were planted by us, they all come from the latent seed bank. This past year we documented over 40 different bird species (including many migratory species) occupying our land at various times. We never had close to this many birds with our haying and conventional grazing management. Our previous management was contributing to low diversity resulting in an improperly functioning ecosystem. More diversity offers many ecological benefits while the economic benefits are real as well with improved energy flow, water cycling, and mineral cycling that all this diversity promotes. Low diversity ecosystems will never function as well as where higher diversity exists. And to the point of this discussion, we will always have higher diversity in a properly managed AMP grazing system than we will in fields being hayed or simply rotational grazed on a routine basis. We have witnessed this change in our own operation.
Fewer Expenses, Increased Profitability
So even if we could get more tonnage by harvesting as hay, which simply is not achievable on an ongoing basis without added inputs, the economic and ecological benefits to AMP grazing and specifically winter stockpile grazing in this case hold the clear advantage. For our business to be successful long term, it’s not yield that matters, rather it is the ecological health of our natural resources and the economic health of our business that matters at the end of the day. Too many times, we see that chasing yield results in less profitability due to the inputs needed to achieve those yields.
In the last five years we have more than doubled annual dry matter (DM) forage production on our most productive pastures while completely eliminating applied fertility. There is also no longer a need to “reseed or renovate” tired worn-out pastures. Life is now in a constant state of regeneration on this land. We are seeing annual forage production exceed 6 tons DM forage per acre and we are able to winter graze stockpiled forage at over 225 animal unit days (AUD) per acre while still leaving enough forage behind to keep the system working properly. I’ll say it once again, we have accomplished these improvements without any applied fertility. Rather we are simply implementing the 6-3-4TM and AMP grazing. Our expenses are going down all the while our overall profitability is going up.
Challenge yourself to be curious and think out of the box and try new ideas. Many of the things that we think won’t work are simply due to our own closed-mindedness. So many times, it is our thinking that gets in our own way of success. Having switched from a conventional grazing/haying operation to an AMP grazing operation has resulted in so many positive economic and ecological benefits for us. I now know that we can graze cattle 365 days per year in the Midwestern United States and it is not necessary to feed hay at all if our stocking rate is in line with our carrying capacity. It is truly a joy to be in the cattle business when working in synchrony with nature.
How could grazing stockpiled forage in the winter increase profitability on your operation?
If you would like to further discuss any of these thoughts and ideas or how to begin implementing these strategies on your operation feel free to reach out to me directly at jhays@understandingag.com or (765) 721-3333.
Link to the YouTube video mentioned in the article: Quick winter pasture update with our Grass fed cows