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- [00:09]
A
Hi, welcome to BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us and happy to have our crew here in the studio. Morning, Bob.
- [00:14]
B
Good morning.
- [00:15]
A
Morning, Philip.
- [00:16]
C
Good morning, guys.
- [00:17]
A
We're glad to have you guys with us. And, and Dustin and Todd are traveling today as well as Scott. So just the three of us. So we can cover a lot of ground.
- [00:26]
B
You can cover everything.
- [00:28]
A
So we appreciate you listening as, as always. We also appreciate those listener questions. And we've got a listener question that we're going to address today. In fact, two of them that we'll talk a little bit about cull cows, we'll talk a little bit about managing grasses and rotational grazing. How does that work with warm season grasses as well as maybe talk about how do we, how do we get cows bred back at this time of year, if that's one of our concerns. So before we get into those, wanted to ask you guys, sometimes things just go right or wrong. We had, we've had a basketball pole up at our house for the, probably the last 10 years. And we had previously had basketball poles that had succumbed to wind. So when I put this one up, it was not going to succumb to the wind. And I filled that pole with concrete. It is solid. Solid except for the very top, which has now blown off. Now, I am open to suggestions on how to get a pole with a backboard potentially hanging off of it out of the ground. Because when you put something in, you go, this is going to stay. There it is. And it is still solid and immovable. I don't know if you guys have had anything else like that go wrong. We've had a lot of storms here lately, Bob.
- [01:44]
B
Actually, mine's kind of similar in that we got a flagpole and succumbed to the wind. So I decided I need a new flagpole and it needs to be bigger, heavier, so it can handle. It can handle the wind a little bit better. So I dug my hole nice and deep and I'm trying to put the thing up, you know, and it's 30 some 40ft tall by the time you get the part that goes under the ground. So I couldn't get it up myself. So I put my wife up on top of the tall ladder to help me. And of course, then it hits her on the head and it was the flagpole.
- [02:19]
A
Hit her on the head?
- [02:20]
B
Yeah, a glancing blow.
- [02:24]
A
And the best part is she doesn't remember.
- [02:27]
B
Well, it obviously was my fault.
- [02:29]
C
You didn't have to go to the hospital.
- [02:30]
B
We didn't have to go to the hospital. It wasn't that bad, but, you know, but we did finally get the stupid thing up, and it's straight. And so we'll see. We now have a straight flagpole and a small lump on my wife's head.
- [02:43]
A
I would suggest filling that baby with concrete. Yeah, there you go, Philip.
- [02:48]
C
You know, I don't know. I'm trying to think what my latest oops is. I don't know the one. I guess one of the things I've been dealing with a little bit different situation than your guys'. But last fall, I don't know, I decided to. To try some different exercises, do some. And I messed up my knee somehow and still messed up. And it's. Yeah, it is taking. It's been almost.
- [03:15]
B
Welcome to getting older.
- [03:16]
C
And I am finally, finally to the point where it's just almost 100%. But, yeah, it was like, yeah, I didn't. I don't think I ever did anything really that bad, but something really screwed up in there. And, yeah,
- [03:34]
A
that is the joy of getting a little bit older. You find out some of those things that happened. Sometimes during the night, you sleep and you. What'd you do? You slept wrong.
- [03:42]
B
There you go.
- [03:44]
A
So appreciate some good listener questions today, and we had one that really is about. I've got some cows that are open, but I'd like to add some value to them before I sell them. And one of the great ways to add value is that they're no longer open now. We still want to sell them because they fit with my. They don't fit with my herd as far as calving goes. But how do I best do that if I've got multiple pastures and the cows are in those. The open cows are spread out among multiple pastures. Can I take a bull? Can I rotate them around? What are. What are the best ways to do that?
- [04:24]
B
Well, and this is a good question because it comes back to some of the times we give advice, but then there are other situations. So we like to control the breeding season so that we don't have calves born over 365 days. And one way to do that is to take bulls out of the pasture. All right, so that's. That's a general recommendation is to don't leave bulls in the pasture all year round. But for this situation, sometimes it's like put the bulls back in the pasture. You know, if you've got, you know, even just one bull per pasture type of a thing to cover those open cows, for one thing, it gives you a place to put the Bulls, the housing is easier and. But you do need one bull at least per pasture to cover any open cows that are there that don't fit my breeding season. But then I've got a preg check a couple of different times. I preg check the main herd and identify those open cows, maybe mark them in some way, you know, tag or something and then recheck those cows later on.
- [05:27]
C
Or the other thing you can do
- [05:28]
B
is just take all the open cows from different pastures. So if you've got multiple pastures, as this listener does, put them all into one pasture and manage them that way. And it may be a little bit different feeding, but definitely provide them with bulls. So there are some ways to do this. They all involve having a bull in there with them.
- [05:49]
A
So you're saying breeding the cows involves a bull and a cow.
- [05:52]
B
Yep.
- [05:53]
A
I see why you do the repro stuff here.
- [05:56]
B
That's right.
- [05:57]
A
So. So Philip, as we think about. Because the other, I mean general strategies for adding value to cold cows is pregnancy and weight because they're going to sell by the pound. So any ideas on weight adding to them at this time of year?
- [06:13]
C
Well, there's been so. So this time of year, fairly easy. I mean, let's say if you had a fall calving herd and you weaned calves off and you got some open cows, now you got lots of, you got lots of grass at least in some parts of the country. And so just keep those cows out on some green grass. If they're not pregnant, they're not lactating, they're going to gain weight on green grass pretty easily. So you put some, some weight on those cows and some fat on those cows and you pretty cheaply and then you can, so you can upgrade them when you take them to the sale barn and they'll bring a little higher dollar or higher price because they're a little fatter and a little better condition.
- [06:57]
B
Well, one of the things that makes me think of is sometimes because grass growth isn't uniform throughout the year this time of year, if I've got grass, at least in most of the United States, I've got actually almost too much grass. So I could leave the cows on it. And then honestly, in a few weeks as we get into mid summer, it'd be kind of nice to pull some of the grazing pressure off and we could honestly do it that way. Situation dependent.
- [07:21]
C
It also, it all, it almost works a little bit like having some stalker calves as part of your operation and being able to manage your grazing pressure. So you know If I got lots of grass, I keep those cows and add some more weight to them. If it's a dry year, I pull those cows off and get rid of them. And so then I'm minimizing my grazing pressure when I don't have as much forage resource out there.
- [07:47]
B
Well, just to step back a little bit, I really like this question because you know, the biggest part of income for a cow calf producer is calf sale, either at weaning or after background or something like that. But cold cows are not an insignificant portion of income. And putting a little bit of thought into the timing, putting some cheap gain on them, getting them pregnant, I think that's time well spent because yeah, even
- [08:15]
C
in fall weaned calves, you know, keeping those cows and adding a little weight on to them and selling them after the first of the year usually has a little bit higher price than if you, you're pulling those open cows out of the pasture and selling them there in the fall. Because that's usually when most everybody else is doing it. And so that, that cool cow market drops off there in the fall just like the feeder calf market does.
- [08:37]
A
So
- [08:40]
B
if they happen to be a little bit thin, a lot of times the efficiency of gain is not quite as good as stalker calves, but it's pretty good.
- [08:46]
C
It's pretty good. Yes.
- [08:47]
A
But I like what you guys are saying. Time it with where your grass is and do you have a surplus or not have a surplus? Because there are regions and we were talking, yeah, great grass now here, locally. True. Other parts of the country.
- [09:00]
B
Not true.
- [09:00]
A
Not true. In which case, if I'm trying to keep my herd there, I may just want to either dry lot them or ship them out. Does it make sense to dry lot some of those cows, Philip?
- [09:12]
C
Oh yeah, if you, it all depends on what you can get for feed or feed stuffs and the cost of gain on those cows. Like Bob said, thin, cool cows that don't have any other metabolic demands will gain weight pretty efficiently. So and it's not like I need a feedlot finishing diet to get them to gain weight. I can get them to gain weight on some harvested forages, some good quality harvested forages and some byproduct feedstuffs and they'll do, they'll do quite well. The other thing I thought, Bob, back to your, your comment about getting, getting them pregnant. What about breeding them for the opposite calving season? So if I've got some open cows in the fall that I've got for my pastures, what about I breed them in the in the fall and set them, set them up for fall calving the next year and sell them as pregnant cows.
- [10:11]
B
That actually spring works pretty good because a lot of times the timing, you know. So let's talk about a spring calving herd. They're going to preg check in early fall and for a fall calving herd typically we're going to turn bulls in, you know, mid November or something like that. So I've got a few weeks in there between the time I preg check and turning bulls in for a fall calving herd and that that might work pretty well. And again, kind of like what you said. So let's say I've turned bulls in with some open cows that are supposed to calve in the spring, but they're open and I turn them in, you know, mid November and just keep them in till, keep the bulls in until after the first of the year and sell those cows. Some of them, I may not be able to confirm that they're pregnant if they're shortbred, but they've been exposed to bulls. I can take them to the sale in January, February, whenever and, and also kind of and again thinking about my total winter feed bill for the herd and things like that, getting rid of those cows at some time. So it basically my answer is each producer needs to kind of think through their situation. But putting a little bit of thought into adding value to cull cows is probably time well spent.
- [11:26]
C
Yeah.
- [11:27]
A
Because it the numbers I've seen I don't know if you guys if this has changed over the last but 80 to 85% of income calves 15 to 20% of income. So I think that it's worth spending a little time on and if you can get some more value back out of them, great. Next topic we want to talk about is and there's a couple questions here embedded. So one, warm season grass grazing and what should I do? And two, what about rotating and the rotational grazing has been talked a lot about on a lot on cool season grasses. Does that same process procedure work on warm season grasses? And Philip, I'm going to go to you first.
- [12:13]
C
So the research is interesting. So like you said, on cool season forages like fescue, there's been a lot of rotational grazing or management intensive grazing research done and it improves forage production, it increases productivity per acre or the length of the grazing season or however you want to look at it from that, from the cow herd or stalker calf perspective and those studies done in smaller pastures at university research facilities and things like that. Show pretty consistent improvements. Same type of research done in native warm season grasses. Not the same result. No negative, not over the, over several studies. No negative impacts really, but no real benefits either. I mean your, your stocking rates don't really improve. Your forage productivity stays about the same. You don't get the same bump in productivity that you do in cool season grasses.
- [13:20]
B
Why?
- [13:20]
A
Why?
- [13:21]
C
I don't, I don't really know. I, I've had the thought of a couple of potential different reasons. I mean, I don't know that there's research that really shows why. But one, most of our cool season forages are in higher rainfall areas and most of our warm season native forages are in drier areas, just not the
- [13:42]
B
water to get more production.
- [13:43]
C
Yeah, so it may be an environment, environment limiting thing where that, that increased grazing pressure and rotation doesn't add a bump. And we're, I mean we're comparing this in continuous grazing. There have been some other systems that have looked at. I'm sorry, I'm jumping topics here back to. So my second point is that our introduced cool season forages like fescue brome, orchard grass, those respond well to nitrogen fertilization. And so rotational grazing moves that manure nitrogen distribution around the pasture better and provides that nutrients back to the grass better than continuous grazing where the cattle spend a lot of their time in the same area. Most of the summer warm season, native grasses don't respond well to fertilization, to nitrogen fertilization. We don't, in fact, we don't even really do it because the response is so low, that's not cost effective.
- [14:48]
A
Well, the other thing I wonder is you think about in broad strokes, warm season, cool season, a lot of times our cool season are maybe not a monoculture, but there's not the diversity of plant life as there is in a warm season pasture. And one of the things I've observed in the warm season pastures, they appear to be very selective grazers. I mean they are in the cool season pastures too. But there's only, when you only have one choice, doesn't matter how selective you are, you're going to go for it. But in the warm season, and that's where I've wondered, is there benefit on rotating them to kind of make them eat a little bit of everything and then move to a new fresh pasture and then the same.
- [15:30]
C
Yeah, and so that's some of the thought process too. And so, so that's the small pasture university research and there's been some research done, observational research where Some researchers have followed different ranches that have been using rotational grazing or management intensive grazing, whatever you want to call it, for long periods of time and then compare that to branches that are just across the road or, you know, pretty close in the same geography. And that have just been doing continuous grazing. And they see some benefits in forage productivity, soil health, some other things like that. And so some of the thought process is that in our native tall grass and prairie systems, we're generally working with larger pastures, larger ranches, and some of the rotation and things like that could be managing some of the heterogeneity where we don't have overgrazing, particularly because of different terrains and other things like that, where cattle want to spend more time in some places than others, or we don't have the water, distance to water is further. And so adding other water sources and stuff in a rotational grazing system improves grazing distribution. Exactly the reasons, I'm not sure, but from the observational research, there seems to be some benefits to it. But it, but right now it's hard to say. It's hard to give advice to a producer like, well, here's how you need to do it to get these benefits. Because so far, a prospective study of implementing that type of grazing hasn't shown much benefit.
- [17:11]
A
Well, on the cool season grasses, There's a cycle, 21 to 24 days that you think about, given that grass time, depending on how low you graze it, giving it time to regrow, come back, that you'd want to rest that pasture for that period of time. With the diversity and the difference in the type of grasses in the warm season pasture, does that rest cycle, and I know there's no research supporting, but does that rest, same rest cycle make sense or should it be longer or shorter for warm season grasses?
- [17:41]
C
Well, actually, the rest cycle depends on the growth rate of the forage. So even in cool season forages like fescue, the rest period needs to be short in the spring and longer in the heat of the summer. With warm season grasses, they don't really start growing much in the spring and most of our growth is happening in the warm part of the summer. And so I don't know that that rest period would need to change a whole lot for those. I mean, they have a very different physiology too. Those like fescue, you know, will put up seed heads early in the summer and hit that reproductive stage early. And so we're grazing it, rotating rather quickly to try to maintain it. Natives don't do that. They, they put up Go reproductive late in the summer. And so the benefit of quicker rotation in the spring, you know, may not be there, even though the grass is growing a little bit faster. Like I said, I don't have a good answer for that. I know there are differences in the way they respond based on the research that's been done, but having a good handle on, well, you need this much rest period this times a year. I don't think we really have that. It's. And that's why I think some of it is it's an art. Grazing management is. There's some science to it, but it's also an art of knowing how to read your grass and knowing when to rotate cows off, when to rotate them back on to different paddocks based on the, the plant growth is, is a big part of it.
- [19:10]
A
So we say it's an art. But I think there's some. I'll put this in the category of science. The thing that I run into trouble with personally is saying, oh well, it's an art. I'm just going to look and do this or that, but not always recording the decisions. And so having that record that you can look back on is actually helpful. And that veers it a little bit more towards the science side.
- [19:35]
C
Yeah, it does. And I say art in the fact that it's a learned process from trial and error. You know, we don't have a, a prescriptive calculation that you do this and
- [19:51]
B
it works and it's going to be rainfall, weather.
- [19:54]
C
Yes.
- [19:55]
B
Yeah, I. So we're certainly not saying that grazing management isn't important on choosing grasses. It's very important. It's a little bit harder to. And oftentimes again, we're, I'm under the assumption we've got larger pastures, less rainfall, so things like the cost of putting up fence is higher per animal, water development, you know, those types of things. There's real cost. So I would need to gain a benefit. Now one speaker that I listened to did talk about so on, on warm season grasses or native pastures, assuming that you have multiple pastures to possibly change the order that cattle go in them so that, you know, if I, if I've got a pasture that we put cattle on, you know, right at the beginning of the grazing season and then move them midway through the grazing season to another pasture next year, flip the order of those, does that make sense? I mean, it kind of does to me. Just because you're putting pressure on the forage beads, but maybe I'm wasting forage that way. I don't know.
- [20:58]
C
Well, so that's, that was a system developed quite a few years ago. Deferred rotation is what they called that system where you graze different pastures at different times of the summer so that you weren't grazing the same plants at the same physiological stage every year. And with warm season natives, there seems to be some benefits of that. So that you're not always grazing the same pastures at reproductive stage or things like that. Because there seems to be some benefit to those plants to go into that reproductive stage because they really put a lot of reserves down in the roots during that stage for the following year. Maybe that's helping to maintain some productivity. And some of the, like Brad said, some of the different species, their growth habit is a little bit different. And so by doing that, if you can multi species pasture, you're not always grazing the same species during those different times a year too. Because Indian grass, big bluestem, little bluestem switchgrass, they all have slightly different maturity patterns.
- [22:13]
B
So my question is I could see where that would be better for the grass and the grass ecosystem. But what if that means my cows are actually spending more time eating dormant? More dormant, more mature forage? What if it hurts my cow productivity?
- [22:27]
C
Yeah, so, so there, there, that's the trade off I think is how, how much do you lose in forage quality? And I think with stocker calves, I think that's a much bigger deal than it is with mature cows. Now on the flip side, calves are grazing some of that too. So what are you getting for Cathy? But mature cows are pretty darn resilient. Yeah, they may lose some body condition score during certain periods with your grazing a more mature forage. But if they're already bred and you're doing that in late summer, then they're gonna be okay and they'll probably regain that condition over through the fall when you take that calf off of them.
- [23:13]
A
Yeah, I think less, I agree, more of a concern in stocker calves. But I like the concept that you guys have forwarded, which is basically experiment with it and play a little bit and figure out, keep some records, figure out what works for your operation. And as you highlighted, Philip, some of the university research may not show a value on the warm season grasses, but it's really hard to replicate all of the systems that are out there. One of the real challenges, and you both highlighted it, water availability and fencing. Because sometimes they're not only large pastures, but they have serious geographic issues. Right. Hills or places that you can't get to easily or back and forth. So I think worth considering what might work on your operation. We appreciate those listener questions, and if you've got another listener question, we'd be happy to answer it. You can send us an email@bcisu.edu Sam.