|
Think Creatively – Winter Grazing Strategies
 |
 |
|
Calving later in the spring
allows cattle to maintain condition while grazing on winter
grasses and forage. – Photo by Ron Daines |
 |
Fall and winter grazing helps range plants by allowing them to rest during
the growing season, and then be grazed while they are not trying to restock
energy to leaves and roots. Livestock tend to graze more shrubs in the winter,
so producers gain forage on shrubby rangelands, too. However, winter forage
often will not provide enough nutrition for third-trimester and lactating cows.
The solution, according to Mike Smith, a University of Wyoming researcher who
received a SARE grant to study calving options, is to calve later in the year
and avoid having third-trimester and lactating cows
in the winter.
“Late-season calving in most of the West saves anywhere from a few pounds
of hay every day if snow covers the ground to the ability to switch to a completely
forage-based operation because the cattle have lower nutritional demands and
can maintain their condition with dormant grasses,” Smith says. “Later
calving also means less labor during calving because most cows can calve alone
in warm weather.”
Smith found that combined hay and labor savings lowered the break-even price
to 50 cents a pound on 500-pound, May-calved and fall-weaned calves. That price,
he emphasized, was an example from just one ranch in a given year.
“Lower break-evens do better in good times and (help producers) stay
in the game in bad times,” he says.
Smith used his SARE-funded research to demonstrate the benefits of matching
a cow’s highest nutritional needs with the best nutrition offered from
forage to Wyoming ranchers Kelley O’Neill and Mike Crimmins. Keeping their
eyes on that prize helped O’Neill and Crimmins overcome several obstacles
and switch their herd to late-season calving.
O’Neill, a shareholder in the Kelley Land and Cattle Co. of Wyoming (KLCC-WY)
and Crimmins, ranch manager for 50,000 acres of private and public KLCC-WY land
south of Saratoga, moved their calving season from February and March to May
and June in 1994. They still wean during October and November and they retain
the calves in a feedlot so they can capture the highest seasonal fed cattle
market the next March and April.
Later calving meant adjusting their grazing on other public lands, too. The
May-born calves could not travel the 25 miles to KLCC-WY’s summer grazing
permit at just one month old. So O’Neill and Crimmins now move their late-gestation
cows to BLM lands in May, prior to calving, if each cow has calved for three
years without difficulties.
In California, annual grasses grow while it rains from November through April.
At the University of California Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center,
a demonstration ranch partly funded by SARE uses the same principle of matching
forage to nutritional needs to calve from early April through mid-May instead
of following the traditional fall-calving schedule. Annual grasses lose their
nutritional quality quickly – from 20 percent protein in March down to
about 6 percent in August and 4 percent in the fall – so California ranchers
who schedule fall calving are challenged to maintain cattle body condition.
By changing from fall calving to a combination of spring calving, summer breeding
and late-summer weaning, SARE project participants actually increased the cows’
body condition score prior to breeding instead of watching it deteriorate despite
feeding bales, blocks and bags of protein cubes. Spring calves were 60 pounds
lighter than their fall counterparts, but ranchers lowered their costs by not
feeding a lot of hay to the spring-calving cows. The spring calves caught up
to the fall calves by 11 months of age, suggesting that retained ownership after
weaning might be the most profitable strategy to manage this enterprise.
“A challenge is how to manage cash flow if you are switching a fall-calving
herd to spring calving since you will produce no income from the cows for a
year,” says Roger Ingram, a farm adviser for Placer and Nevada counties
in Auburn, Calif., who led the SARE project. Solutions to this temporary financial
dilemma include switching half of the cattle herd at a time so the herd generates
at least some income each year, and careful planning and budgeting.
Participants in Ingram’s California Grazing Academy, held at the research
site, realized higher cattle prices and better-growing grass, thanks to more
intensive grazing management. Participants used a high stocking density and
short grazing periods on both rangeland and irrigated pastures. After two years,
they increased grazing days by 64 percent while maintaining the same residual
matter in each pasture.
“We generally managed for 90 days of rest during slow growth –
from mid-May through February – and 30 days of rest during fast growth
from March through mid May,” says Ingram. “If we had slow growth
in March due to lack of rain, we stayed with our 90 days of rest until fast
growth finally occurred.”
Every May, they took a paddock walk to determine the number of grazing days
remaining before the next rains, and growth would start again in November.
Another potential benefit of calving with the grass is that late-calving cows
are usually cheaper to buy than February- and March-calving cows. Instead of
retaining heifers, Troy Stafford, a rancher from Riverton, Wyo., buys his neighbors’
late-calvers, usually for a little over slaughter price.
“Frequently, these cows breed late because they produce too much milk,
resulting in delayed cycling,” Stafford says. “Cows and heifers
are often culled because they are too good as mothers.”
In the end, it all comes back to establishing goals and designing strategies
to meet those goals.
“Sustainable ranching is not just later calving, but a change in mindset
from the past, a paradigm shift,” says Wyoming’s Mike Smith.
To learn more, visit:
 www.animalrangeextension.montana.edu/articles/NatResourc/winter_grazing.htm
for examples of Montana winter grazing
http://ceplacer.ucdavis.edu/Livestock/
for the California grazing academy and more
www.extension.usu.edu/files/publications/publication/AG-2003-07.pdf
to find out more about forage kochia
www.uwyo.edu/ces/PUBS/B-1076.htm
to learn the details about the KLCC-WY Co
Next Section
 Top
|
