By: UA’s Fernando Falomir
It is now fall, and winter is fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere.
Without a doubt, the best time to evaluate the quantity and quality of your stockpile is this time of year. Making the appropriate adjustments to your stocking rate and being set with the right number of animals for winter ahead of time could save you from costly mistakes. Simply put, if you cull early, you may be in a much better position later on. The way you manage your stockpile now could also affect how rapid spring growth will occur on your ranch. This could yield significant cost savings in animal performance, bale grazing, and supplementation.
How do you know if you are stocked properly? There are two main factors: one is forage quantity, the other is forage quality. Having endured several multiyear droughts, I can tell you that the quality aspect sometimes is more important than quantity, as we should continuously be managing for the best available nutrition for our livestock to remain profitable.
The best tool for determining stocking rate is not by clipping and weighing or guessing, and no, you do not need to send forage to a lab for analysis either. Although traditional methods for determining the total available dry matter (DM) can point you in the right direction, the best methods are less scientific and much more practical. The most important thing is experience and the intuition that we have gained from that experience. Yes, there is not app for this, and it requires intimate knowledge of your pastures. No technology available is ever going to replace the power of observation!
A mentor of mine once told me, Fernando, you are always going to make mistakes, and it’s all right. What is not acceptable is to make the same mistake more than once. So don’t be afraid to call your own shots, but please pay attention and look back at how this year progressed in regards to regrowth, as yesterday’s management decisions will affect how your pastures will respond tomorrow, and you have only today to make the appropriate changes.
For example, this year at our family ranch in Northern Mexico, just two hours south of the US border, we finally broke from a multiyear drought where we received a grand total of only 6” of precipitation for the past three years. In 2023, we only received ¾ of an inch.
This year, as is usual, when it does rain in the desert, it pours all at once. In early June, we received 6” in one week, which was followed by almost two months without any rain. Then we received two more precipitation events that brought us ¾” and 1” respectively in August and September. This gave us a total of just under 8” of total precipitation before the growing season came to an end. (More to come on the importance of healthy soils and functioning water cycle to make the most of every single drop of water will be discussed in a later post).
With all of the moisture that our ranch has received this year, although it may not seem like much for most of you, we consider it a very good forage-producing year. From experience, I have observed that our perennial grasses, under good management, can recover with as little as 4” of precipitation per year. Any less and I must quickly de-stock. But here is the catch, the rain distribution this year was extremely poor, and when we received that much water at once, it quickly saturated the soil. If you do not have well-aggregated soils, most of the rainfall will run off.
In those instances, you can also expect to see a decline in the quality of the forage that you grow. This happened one or two years ago in much of the western United States. Pregnancy rates fell dramatically. This was due to an abnormally wet spring. Why? Saturated soils, compaction, and lack of oxygen lead to poor microbial activity in the soil and thus lower nutrient availability. Healthy soil is living and needs oxygen for proper biogeochemical function. Therefore, the quality of the forage declined!
Some of the worst production years I’ve had are due to lack of nutrition, not so much lack of forage. Forage is easy to grow; what becomes hard is building the diversity in our pastures, which is needed to drive a functioning mineral cycle, thus sustaining healthier livestock production. Of course, making the right management decisions allows us to make the best use of that forage; thus, we always promote adaptive grazing at Understanding Ag.
Another thing to consider is that during times of drought, like most of the southwest and parts of northern Mexico have experienced the past few years, if you are not properly managing your stockpile, more than likely you will only make your pastures more prone to drought. This means that when it does rain next year, it will require a much longer period of time, and more total moisture amounts will be needed before your perennial grasses fully recover. This is especially true if you’ve removed too much soil armor and have depleted the root energy reserves. Always follow the six principles!
Now I am extremely grateful to see that most of my perennial grasses survived the drought and that, due to management, we have avoided overgrazing. Additionally, some annual grasses came in to fill the empty spaces between perennial grasses, which will help both armor the soil and provide a living root to feed the soil biology.
My experiences on my ranch show me another side to this story. Even though it was a bumper forage year, I can see that alkali sacaton and other deep-rooted warm-season perennials didn’t recover completely. Yes, most grasses went to seed, and it may look like they’ve fully recovered, but the total plant biomass is nowhere near what I usually see, and this was due to stress. In this case, it would be a mistake to want to increase my stocking rate, and here is why:
1) I have lower-quality forage due to the poor rain distribution and initial explosive growth rate, followed by a hot and dry summer. Grazing it all will come at a high cost, either in the form of loss of animal performance and/or supplement cost to compensate for the lower nutrient content of the forage.
One thing I must say is that I hate supplementing because it’s a crutch, and yes, it masks the genetic adaptability of the livestock (more to come on this touchy subject in a later article). In addition, it also increases overhead costs, labor, and wear and tear on my equipment.
2) In my presentations on adaptive grazing, I state that the one thing that most producers are missing in their pastures that will initiate succession and speed up the restoration process of our grasslands is organic material on the surface (armor). It doesn’t matter if it comes from increased trampling of plant residues, hay left from bale grazing, or manure. The key is to improve effective rainfall/infiltration.
During this bumper crop year, I have a once-in-a-four-year opportunity to finally have enough plant biomass to armor the soil and continue to improve the ecosystem processes. When faced with a similar situation of increased available total plant biomass, remember that, contrary to common belief, there is the alternate option to total grazing, and that is total trampling. The latter doesn’t include increased labor, high supplementation costs, or any significant risk. Harvest the most nutritious portion of your stockpile and use stock density to lay the remainder of the plant residues to contribute to soil armor, and next year you will grow more grass (forage).
Creating this armor will help buffer soil biology from extreme temperature swings and, when combined with strong root energy reserves going into winter or dormant season, will more than likely guarantee an earlier and more vigorous green up. It will also help hold moisture for a longer period of time. I’ve seen perennials break from dormancy and resume regrowth despite not having any winter moisture. Having extra forage will bring stability, peace of mind, and lower operating risk; you just never know when it will rain next!
Typically, we carry a stockpile that can last us a whole year or more, fully stocked. This allows me to retain animals for longer periods of time or actually play the market during times of drought. It helps bring stability and prevents me from having to liquidate high-value animals when everyone else is panicking.
Some of my best financial decisions occur during those times of opportunity. However, they can only occur if I have the grass to weather the drought. Two years ago, before everyone else had figured out we were in a drought, I was able to sell the ends of my herd, young developing animals, and older productive mothers, when prices were high. Six months later, I was buying back Corriente cattle at a discounted price of 50% lower than the price I received when I sold just before the drought. We all know how much a cow is worth today; this was a major power move. There are always opportunities out there, but we must be financially, ecologically, and emotionally prepared to take advantage of them.
So, how do you know if you are properly stocked? This is where adaptive grazing really shines. Simply by maintaining a record of pasture utilization and adaptively rotating cattle from pasture to pasture, you can detect the actual consumption rate much sooner than others. That alone is a very powerful tool regarding management decisions.
Always strive to leave grass behind and follow the 6-3-4. Monitor animal performance continuously, and don’t forget to observe! Ask yourself, are you allowing your perennial grasses to recover and continue to establish? How are my pastures going to respond if I take it all? What kind of vegetation are my cattle consuming, and during what times of the year? Remember, we are managing to have root energy reserves most of the year and our end goals have longer benefits than short-term gains. I don’t know about you, but I am in it for the long haul. Thinking along the lines of maximum productivity oftentimes does not translate to greater profitability. Finally, leftover grass is the cheapest insurance policy you can have for many good reasons.
If I left you thinking, and you want to learn more, please give us a call at Understanding Ag. We can help guide you through the decision-making process, which will allow you to improve your overall profitability and your quality of life. That’s what we are here for.