20 Month Mark of Van Horn Regenerative Grazing Project

 This project is on 3,500 acres in far west Texas. 1,900 acres had been previously farmed under center pivot irrigation with the remaining 1,600 acres being native desert. The pivots were used for intensive grazing between 2003 and 2009 with the pivots planted in Bermuda and fertilized with anhydrous ammonia. In June of 2009 the place was leased with an option to purchase to a couple of brothers who planned to raise high quality Teff grass which couldn't compete with the Bermuda. By 2011  the lease passed on to a crop farmer who annually sprayed chemical to kill the Bermuda. In 2017 they gave up the lease, which was picked up by another crop farmer in 2018, who planted, then ran out of money to irrigate and abandoned the place.  

Late rains in 2019 brought on a bumper crop of tumbleweeds, at which time I was asked to see if I could graze them out in October of 2019. To graze it right would have required 1,000 calves for 4 to 5 months, but (not realizing dormant tumbleweeds can be 17% protein and 46% TDN) there weren't people interested.  I received 145 head of calves on November 3, averaging 435 pounds.As you can see in the picture below, it would have been impossible to just build temporary fences, so I rebooted their herd instinct and let them graze paths through the weedd. In January another 130 calves which were not weighed. The calves were shipped out on June 1,2020 with half of the first set averaging over 700 pounds, with no supplemental feeding. There were also 78 pregnant cows brought in on March 1st and shipped out on September 1st, then another 83 cows brought in on October 1st (of which 59 were shipped out in April. There were an additional 22 head of Corriente cows run seperate which were fed (on top of standing tumbleweeds) from October through June. 2020 saw an average rainfall of under 3", with no measurable precipitation between July of 2020 and the 24th of June 2021. Between June 24th, 2021 and July 15th, there was an average of 5" of rain across the entire property.  

As you can see from the above photograph, the tumbleweeds were dominant over the 11 abandoned pivots. With the low stocking rate, I was only able to get proper impact on parts of the pivots. As you can see, there is a big difference, mainly in the areas where I managed to get heavy enough impact by spraying year old tubleweeds with molasses.

The bare patches between the vegetation iswhere the tumbleweeds blew away. The vegetation is a combination of weeds, and grasses, mainly Bermuda, Japanese Millet, and Feathery Rhodes Grass. These are the areas which molasses was sprayed to make the tumbleweeds from 2019 paltable. The bare patches are where the tumbleweeds blew away.

Reading the ground to see how impact was distributed is easy in the above picture. Grasses and weeds are thickest where the most impact was. Lighter impact from grazing has a few weeds and no grass, while the areas the tumbleweeds blew away are bare. The lower picture is looking at another pasture, in an area the cattle tended to bed down together as a herd.

The next picture is on a flat in the 1,600 acre desert pasture in August of 2020. The tracks in this picture are the results of cattle walking back and forth between water and feed in a group.

This next picture is a wider view of the same flat on July 24,2021 after 5" of rain between June 24th and July 15th. In addition to several broadleaf weeds there is Bermuda, Feathery Rhodes Grass, Johnson Grass, and perinnial Rye.

The lack of cattle during the first 20 months of this project has left large piles of tumbleweeds. Now that it has greened up (and starting to rain again) I'm experimenting with wet burns. The next picture is of one the weed piles after receiving 0.4" of rain the night before. Too wet to burn in the morning, but by early afternoon dry enough to set on fire. As you can see in the bottom picture, there was enough moisture to keep it from burning to the ground, leaving ground cover, but taking enough so that the ground isn't completely protected from the sun. Last week I burned some dry piles, so next month will be able to compare the response difference between the two styles of burning.

The plan now is to wait until the tumbleweeds are mature and their protein levels drop to 20% and stock for the winter with between 600 and 1,000 calves, take them to 800 pounds then destock until the rains hit, and we see what the changes are.

Raising Funds to Produce Stockmanship/Regenerative Grazing Video

 With Amazon discontinuing production of disc formatted video at the end of May, I have the options

of spending funds to convert Stockmanship 101 to a streaming format, or produce a new and

improved video. After careful consideration I have decided to go with the latter. As YouTube and

other sites now allow full length feature films, Stockmanship 102 will be free for anyone to watch.

I will once again be teaming up with Andy Horton of Malpache Media for this project. Rather than

working with a small herd that blends in with the desert brush, we will be rebooting herd instinct in

1,000 calves on green Oklahoma grass. Between the contrast, improved drones and cameras, this

video will be much more definitive than Stockmanship 101, and will cover more of the

horsemanship as well as grazing strategies. Individuals donating to the project will receive their names

in the credits, while non profits and companies will also have their logos displayed with link to their

websites. For more information on how to help with this project, please visit out GoFund page.

Stocking Rates Vs Grazing Days, Recovery Rates and Necessary Impact

People have asked why I like to look at grazing days over stocking rates. By converting from the traditional stocking values of AUM' (to grazing days) it gives us a more precise measurement of how much we have actually grazed, and a better idea of how to plan for the future, especially on diverse rangelands where we need to be flexible with our grazing plans. For example, the project I've been working on for just over a year, is in an area where, under conventional management, the stocking rates are between 90 and 100 acres per cow. Fiuring the higher stocking rate of 90 acres per cow, this would rate the 3,500 acres I'm working with at 38.8 cows or 466.6 AUM's.By multiplying the number of cows it is rated for by 365, we come up with 14,162 "grazing days." Approximately 1,200 acres of this property is abandoned farmland which when I took over management was dormant tumbleweeds. While most people look at dormant tumbleweeds as something with no feed value, the reality, shown in the forage test below, is that they retain a fair amount of feed value even a year later.

The farm ground had contained center pivots, all but three fenced into quarter sections. 275 calves were cusotm grazed on five of these field for 151 days. Figuring a calf at 0.7 animal units, each day amounted to 192.5 grazing days for a total of 29,067 grazing days On March 1st, we brought in an additional 78 heavy cows and two bulls which were calved out, then the cows were sold on the 3rd of September. The 80 head for 125 days added an additional 10,000 grazing days for a total of 39,067 grazing days. The first of October, another 81 head of pregant cows were received. They browsed dormant tumbleweeds from 2020, as well as tumbleweeds left from 2019 which were sprayed with a 36% molasses for the remaining 92 days adding another 7,636 grazing days to the year, bringing the total to 46,703 grazing days. In addition there were 60 head of cows grazed on the dormant weeds for 45 days, before being supplemented with hay, adding another 2,700 grazing days for a total of 49,403 grazing days. While 3.448 times more than the local average grazing days, the numbers would have been much higher if the owner of the yearlings would have had the confidence to send more cattle. In order to graze and trample the 2019 tumbleweeds to make room for new plants, it would have required 1,000 calves for six months, which would have amounted to 126,000 grazing days (0.7 x 1,000= 700 grazing days per day, time 180 days.) In turn, this would have increased the amount of forage grown for the year, which couldn't grow through the previous year's crop of tumbleweeds. The fact that it was a drought year, makes it more interesting. Out of a 12 inch average rainfall, most of the property had well under 4 inches of rain, yet, by being flexible enough to graze different areas at optimum times, there was some stockpiled grass at the end of the year, as shown below. This picture also demonstrates the complexity of diversity and recovery rates.

This narrow view contains three different grasses which received roughly 3.8" of by the yellow color. The Tabosia is next in line, nearly a foot tall, but didn't develop a seed head. This is followed by Alkali Sacatone, which didn't have near enough time or moisture to to fully recover. Just out of this picture was a fourth species, volunteer Bermuda, which had only grown about a half an inch. This presents the conundrum(s) of when is the optimum time for the plants to be grazed, in terms of both being the most benefical to the plants, as well as nutritionally optimal for livestock. What is largley ignored, forgotten, or not realized by most holistic/regenerative grazers trying to mimic wild herds, is that those herds were not continuously in megaherds, grazing at ultra high densities. Other than when both water and feed were at the peak, the megaherds were disperesed into sub herds, which were grazing the plants which were at their highest nutritional levels at the time they were grazing an area. Also seldom mentioned is that bison were not the only large herds of herbivores on the great plains. There were also large herds of elk, antelope, and deer grazing across the same lands. Depending on the year, a piece of ground may have been grazed several times a year, with different plant species being grazed each time. Typical holistic/regenerative grazing programs, utilizing small temporaty fences and frequent moves (especially those which move daily, or several times daily) ignore the need of different plants at different times. Rebooting herd instinct, and using Instinctive Migratory Grazing (IMG) practices, grazers are able to adjust grazing patterns to take advantage of plant diversity which is optimum for both plants and animals. By adjusting in this way, you are allowed to run more cattle at a higher than "normal" density, determined by the cattle while providing more stockpiled grass, as explained by Riki Kremmers in this podcast.

The Conundrum Of Proper Timing (and why small paddocks can prevent it)

While we are constantly reminded of the need for grazing at the proper time, good plant diversity assures that we are seldom going to have proper timing for all of the plants. At any point during the growing season we will have plants ready to be grazed, yet there will also be plants which are either past the "proper" stage to graze, or not yet there. The photo below demonstrates this. Some grass isn't close to optimum, some is, and others are actually done growing for the time being. 

This area was over 90% bare ground before I grazed this pasture with 275 calves last April and May. This is one of the areas the herd bedded down in for the night, and along with the help of a 2" rain early July, this is the result. Once all of the grass has seeded out, it will be grazed again to take advantage of the seed. When the whole pasture has this kind of diversity, rather than grazing it once, I will be able to graze it at least twice during the growing season (hitting some grasses at the optimum time both passes.)

The following picture is another area in the same pasture where the calves bedded down, giving the ground a super fertilization of dung and urine. Once again, this area was over 90% bare ground.

The ground in the following two pictures were predominantly Russian Thistle. It was grazed three weeks in March with 70 pair in March, followed by 275 calves for five weeks in April/May, then by 40 calves in July. This pasture has roughly an inch and a half of moisture since the first graze. Once again areas in which cattle bedded down are already beginning to grow grass.

This picture speaks loudly about the natural seed bank. In 2006, this was basically bare ground, mesquite, and creosote. That spring the brush was grubbed out and it was planted in Bermuda. Four years later, a farmer tried growing Teff grass for two years, then it was in cotton until 2018 when it was abandoned. There are two more areas of about the same size in this pasture which are looking to be about the same.

The problem with fencing large acreages into small paddocks (especially when starting a grazing project) is that as different plants reach that point of optimal grazing, they may be in small areas scattered through half the paddocks.  Often different species may be located in certain terrain which spreads through all of the paddocks in a pattern which may not give a whole day's grazing in any one paddock...yet have a week or more if you could follow the terrain. This situation can reoccur several times during a grazing season, and (over the course of the grazing season) may amount to a month or more grazing which we miss. Leaving the pastures larger, rebooting herd instinct and practicing IMG allows us to go back and spot graze grasses, as well as forbs or other browse. 

When we merely mimic a herd by rotating them through fences, we improve the soil and plant diversity, yet we forget that in the course of a grazing season, herds of several different species would graze across the same areas, taking whatever the optimum plants were at that time. By reducing the number of interior fences, and herding or using IMG, we are able to better balance the nutritional needs of our livestock with the optimum time of grazing various plant species for soil health.

Political Partisan of Climate Science...Long Live The Science, The Science is Dead,

There seems to be a tendency today for people to ridicule others for not accepting "settled science," even though science is never "settled." If science was settled, vaccines would have never been invented, nuclear energy (nor solar energy)  would have been developed. There would be no flying machines, computers or cell phones. Yet today we seem to have "settled science" at opposite ends of the spectrum. There seems to be little to no thought given to the point that perhaps both scientific models are wrong (after all, if we can't forecast tomorrow's weather accurately, how can we predict the climate 30 years from now?)  There also seems to be little thought as to why (or even how) science is divided upon political ideologies.

The science of the "left" claims their science is settled and we only have 12 years until the end of the world. Endless studies, graphs and charts prove them to be right. Anyone denying their claims are only deniers of science. Long live the science...the science is dead...long live the science.

The science of the "right"espouses that most of the climate change we are seeing is simply cyclic in nature, that man as little to nothing to do with it. Their graphs, models and studies on historical climate trends show us in a certain point in the cycle. If you don't agree with them, you are denying science and fear mongering to create a one world government.   Long live the science, the science is dead, long live the science.

The arrogance abounds in both sides of this discussion. The "right" is seemingly oblivious to the fact we have subtracted from (as well as added to) so many things to the environment that it is either naive or arrogant to believe we haven't affected the climate. On the left side, the science revolves around greenhouse gases.

You cannot have an accurate model, nor reach a scientific conclusion unless all of the variables affecting the outcome are included in the research, yet this is what both sides of the climate discussion are doing. Those on the right are ignoring all of the things we have been doing for the last 200 years, and those on the left ignoring things which are beyond the parameters of atmospheric gasses.

At 2.9 acres per mile of two lane road, plus airports, military installations and parking lots, we are pushing 100,000,000 acres (in the USA alone) reflecting heat back into the atmosphere in addition to disrupting soil hydrology....ignored by both sides of the "settled science" of climate change. This is ignored by both sides of the discussion.

Also ignored by both sides of the discussion is urban expansion and the flood control projects. Millions of acres heat reflecting buildings replacing carbon sequestering plants of all kinds, along with the flood control projects, not only replacing oxygen producing plants, but assuring that the "excess" water goes into waterways and eventually into the ocean rather than into the soil in the natural water cycle.

While the left side of the argument acknowledges the carbon emitted by air travel they fail to take into account how the heat and turbulence produced at high altitudes may affect weather patterns. (over 30,000 commercial flights a day, and with the larger planes creating so much turbulence single engine aircraft must wait for 7 minutes for the turbulence to die down enough for a safe take off) 

Last on my list (which may not be complete) is degradation of soil, otherwise known as "desertification." Despite the fact roughly two thirds of the world's land being in some stage of desertification, neither side acknowledges this to be a contributing factor to climate change, the left side incredibly considers it to be a "symptom" of climate change.  At 98 F ground temperature in healthy grass is only 78 degrees while on bare ground it is 128 degrees (and even hotter on the fore mentioned roads and parking lots...)  The fact the left doesn't take this into consideration as a cause of climate change is absolutely mind boggling.

I accept the fact we are effecting the global climate.  However, when the "settled science" posited by left fails to take all of the different contributing factors into account, how accurate can they be? When they don't just make claims, but change from global warming to global cooling, then, when their predictions fail, change it to simply "climate change,"  how accurate can their science be?

Some will label anyone who questions the politics behind climate change as a "science denier" or "climate skeptic" when in reality many of us are only questioning the motives behind the politics.

How do you believe in a "climate summit" which looks at a "carbon credit" system which allows polluters to pay someone already sequestering carbon  (because it is more profitable for them) without actually doing anything to reduce their own pollution?

How to you take a governmental body seriously which proposes taxes on eating meat as a preventative method of climate change when it has been scientifically proven time and again that more animals grazing in the proper manner builds soils and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere?

 If the UN and other governmental bodies were serious about controlling climate change why do they invite celebrities to give hysteria inspiring speeches  with no solutions rather than listening to groups like Soil 4 Climate or any of the Holistic management organizations out there?

Finally, if the media were actually serious, wouldn't every media out let there is be clamoring to interview people who have regenerated grasslands or improved soils at a profit through carbon sequestration? People like Alan Savory, Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin and Alejandro Carillos and Seth Itzkan should be in high demand in the media, but instead they are basically relegated to preaching to the choir.

Fear and hysteria may garner votes and high ratings, but without giving actual solutions it accomplishes nothing but geopolitical and socioeconomic indecision and divisiveness. If you want to actually solve problems, look at ALL of the causes instead of only a few. Above all, give credit where credit is due and use the people with proven solutions to educate both the general public and those on the ground who can actually implement the solutions.

Climate skepticism is rooted in the incomplete science of climate change. It is amplified by the unfulfilled prophecies of  global cooling, global warming and submerged cities. It is amplified by fear mongering  government bodies. It is also exacerbated by well meaning believers in the partisan politics of climate change who have solutions, yet let their emotions over ride logic in discussing any science which doesn't align perfectly with  their view. Science is always in a state of flux. Noting should be totally ignored nor should any science be totally accepted without looking at all of the variables. To not do so is not scientific.

Perhaps it is best put forth by physicist Richard Feynman who said "We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain."

Working Cow Podcast Interviews Wyoming Rancher on IMG

Sometimes I realize that to some, IMG (Instinctive Migratory Grazing) sounds so far out in left field that they think I sound crazier than a pet coon. However listening to Clay Conroy's interview of east Wyoming Rancher, Riki Kremmers, it sounds pretty logical. You can listen to the interview here

Tall Grass Prairies?

Several months ago a well known stockmanship clinician mentioned being in Kansas and claiming the views were much like the first pioneers had. I resisted the urge to comment at the time, but as I have just finished working with the third ranch in "tall grass" country I can no longer resist that urge.

By all accounts, the grass was actually so tall a man on a horse couldn't see where he was going. Save for a few trees along stream banks, there were no trees, and even less brush. Compare that with what we have today. Even Big Blue stem grass is commonly under three foot tall. Draws close to creeks can be totally choked with trees as in this picture.

While forbes are part of a healthy ecosystem, they need to be balanced with a diverse amount of grasses. The point the tall grass country is in, with some areas entirely composed of weeds, and up to 40 or 50% of the mix in the "good grass" is a wake up call that the ecosystem is in decline, and will only degenerate faster unless we change our grazing methods. When you think of the pioneers coming through a sea of 5 to 7 foot tall grass, how can we think of what we have today as "tall grass prairie?

If the prairie was even in remotely the same condition as the pioneers saw it, you would have to have flags flying above your fences so you could know where it was. Instead conditions like the above picture are more common than not. The picture below is a fence line comparison between a client who has been practicing IMG for two years, so reversing these conditions isn't impossible.

As you can see, there is a distinct difference in not only the amount of grass from their neighbor on the left, but also in the height of the grass. Large parts of Kansas (as well as Nebraska and the Dakotas) are largely dependent upon dams and small streams to water their cattle. This means it is a perfect place to utilize IMG techniques so that cattle can migrate as a herd and create enough impact to improve soil health and the balance of our pastures while adding both height to these tall grass prairies without any added infrastructure . The picture below was taken at a school just outside of Council Grove, Kansas last week. All we did was point 1,300 to this draw when they came off of water (something which at this point, would be a one man job)

Because the nutritional value of the grass is declining at this time of year, the cattle tend to spread out, but are still grazing as a herd, selecting the highest value nutrition, which includes "inedible" weeds and grasses which conventional management tries to eradicate. These cows have been hitting Cord grass so hard the manager is sending in a sample to his boss to test it's nutritional value. 

While the cattle do spread out while following their grazing path, they also come to areas where, with no human guidance, they come into very tight groups such as this, which happened on the fourth day of the school.

The tall grass prairies need to be restored before they are completely destroyed, which judging by the amount of regression, and comparing it to the speed at which other areas have regressed when in this condition will be under thirty years, maybe in as little as twenty years. This can be reversed in five to ten years time using IMG methods to graze, without having to spend a dime in infrastructure costs, hiring full time herders, or even your current labor force needing to be in the cattle everyday.

For more information, visit migratorygrazing.com