THE RANCH

Disclaimer: this is the general idea of rotation and grazing on the ranch. Its is by no means the actual year in and around picture of what happens.

culling philosophy

We only preg check first calf heifers. They are typically short bred in the feed lot. We hope to start feeding mda this year for a cycled lot. We sell open heifers as finished gradable beeves.

We put a lot of time and effort into making a cow from a calf. Because we value our time and process, we do not have a strict open or age culling procedure. We will give a cow a second chance. The second time a cow is open, she will go into our hamburger program.

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grazing

We are not intensive grazers. Not even close. We are rest and rotation. This means we use a pasture and then leave it. Sometimes for over a year. We are always looking for ways to change our grazing cycles and hit a pasture at different times of year.

We started really changing our idea of timothy grazing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Timothy is an invasive species of cool season grass. It grows in the wetter, deeper soils and pushes out the native grasses. Timothy is only grazable early in the year before the grass goes to seed. After seeds set, it losses palatability. The only option after that is to swathe graze. But you have to get rains/snow before it is eaten. The limiting factor on swath grazing is how rough the country is. Timothy is invasive and not grown on hay fields but rather choking out pasture.

The idea was to create a rest and rotation pattern with early grazing pressure every other year. This was achieved with a single hot wire electric fence and herding. We spend quite a bit of time in the mountains making sure the cattle start and stay high early in the grazing season. When the cattle have gotten the good out of one side, they begin to pressure the fence. The cattle tell you when its time to move. 

We tried rest and rotation first in what we call the summer pasture. This would have been around 1997.  We built a single wire fence that basically cut the summer pasture in half. This allows us to place cattle higher in the mountain and keep them there. This pasture has about 5 miles of single wire fence.  

The next place we did this type of management was on the Anderson.  We build about 3 miles of single wire electric. The idea here was to force the cattle to graze the north side of a large pastures early. The north side is less well watered and steeper. Again, we utilized a single wire electric fence. Again, we saw great utilization and pasture health improvements.  

In the early 2000s we implemented this strategy in Dry Point. This is a large pasture adjacent to Big Elk Canyon. This pasture is a little different in that the early grazing of timothy is lower, on the eastern side. The same principles work here. We get to the grass early and then move on. This area needed about 2 miles of single wire electric. The last place we have built fences to specifically graze timothy is the Iron Pasture. We built a 3 wire electric fence and have great success grazing the timothy.  

Fun fact: it is called the iron pasture because this was the first fence build with iron posts. Many are still there.

Twin Buttes is another place with timothy. We have done a few things here to improve grazing. Last summer we fenced out Big Elk. This will force the cattle to stay on the timothy. We also have swath grazed this area with success.  As mentioned, timothy is wild. This means swath grazing is done in pastures that are very rough.

By changing our grazing strategy of timothy to early and hard we have accomplished many goals. We increased the herd improved the utilization and have let more native acres go to seed before grazing.  Early timothy grazing is a high-powered forage.