Fundraising For Drone Based Video

Using the right grazing management can bring back your grass to where it was 100 years ago. This is made easier using stockmanship methods which allow you to follow grazing plans without using fences.

Several of the ranchers in this video use are using the stockmanship techniques I taught them in regenerating these ranches as it allows them to concentrate their herds where it is nearly impossible to build fence.

Currently trying to raise money to produce a professionally filmed, drone based, video of these techniques on the Circle Ranch in Hudspeth county, Texas. In order to make the information available to as many as possible, there will be versions in both English and Spanish. Both versions will be available for free in segments on YouTube, as well as for sale on Amazon in all available formats.




A $30 donation will get you a copy of the cd when it is finished! Corporate and non-profits partnering with me on this video will be able to get as many as they want in either version at cost plus shipping, plus be acknowledged in the credits of the video. (please contact me direct for information on partnering with me on the video)  https://www.gofundme.com/2et8s5as

Allowing 2,200 Head Of Cattle To Act As A Herd

A recent stockmanship school in Australia allowed me to get much of the footage in this video. The herd included 2,200 head of  branded Brahmas plus around 300 head of unbranded cattle. As participants in this school learned, instilling herd instinct is not a "recipe" you can describe. It is more a matter of changing how we handle cattle and allowing them to come together as a herd.

I need to give a special thanks to Rodger Savory and the folks at NQ Dry Tropics for making this video possible, as well as to my good friend Evelyn A Roper for the background music.

Calculating the cost/benefit of the Keyline Plow

Before visiting the link from the Circle Ranch on using the Keyline Plow, here are some things to think about in order to see the financial benefits as many people can see the benefits, but think it is too expensive. Yet these same people are busy making diversion dams and dirt tanks which help some, but basically are diverting water or holding it so it can water a few cow and evaporate.

The cost of sub soiling with the Keyline Plow runs $20 an acre, which does sound expensive, until you compare the results. $20,000 put into subsoiling 1,000 acres of ground with scattered grass and forbes will explode with the first one inch rain (remember, that 1,000 acres just received 27,154,000 gallons of water which would have run off). This explosion of grass and forbes will slow the water and make each subsequent rain be more effective.

Grazed properly this can amount to 7 to 9 days of feed for 1,000 cows, or 7,000 grazing days the first year. If one continues to graze properly, the feed will continue to improve for several years and continue to hold its feed value (not to mention the wildlife habitat it creates.) Now lets compare what that same $20,000 will bring with conventional uses.

Dirt Tanks- Will hold water for cattle without producing feed. They will also evaporate water (at a pan evaporation rate of 88” or 55 gallons per square foot) lose 2,395,800 per acre. Figuring the cost of water being .005 cents per gallon, one is basically throwing away $11,979 worth of water per every acre of water held in dirt tanks. If you have 100 acres of water in dirt tanks, you are basically throwing away $1,197,900 worth of water each year.

Diversion dams- These will create some feed growth but basically still divert billions of gallons of water off the ranch rather than into the ground. Many also have a tendency to wash out and need to be repaired after a few years.

Hay- At $230 A 1,000 pound cow eating 3.5% of her body weight will eat 35 pounds of hay a day. To feed 1,000 cows per day would take 17 bales per day. $20,000 will (almost) buy 87 bales of hay which would feed 1,000 cows five days.

This means that spending $20,000 to run a Keyline Plow in the proper areas your money produces nearly twice the actual benefit of hay. While it would be nearly impossible to calculate the true value of diversion dams, they are of minimal benefit as they are still diverting water off your ranch, rather than putting it into the ground. Dirt tanks have some benefit if you do not have pump-able water, but otherwise you are letting millions of dollars worth of water blow away in the wind.

Now that you have an idea of the cost/benefit ratio of the Keyline plow, take a look and see what they have done with it on the Circle Ranch in far west Texas!

Forage Improvement Results From Holistic Herding

Back in October of 2012 I began a project of  using low stress stockmanship to herd 460 cows through a 32000 acre grazing plan. During the course of this grazing season, I did a few experiments to see how much ( if any) increase in forage I could get in areas where cattle normally don't graze. One area was four miles from the water source for the 280 head I placed for one day. I placed approximately 180 head to graze up a draw to the top of a long ridge, and let them keep going back on their own. There was another area which was sub-soiled with the Yeoman Plow just before it was grazed.

All of these areas (and more) improved, some with dramatic results. You can see it for yourself in this video!

Releasing The Flerd

I have been asked why this particular combination  of animals, and why combine them at all. The reason behind these species is that they just happen to be on this ranch. There are also getting to be more ranches which deal in exotic species rather than cattle or other livestock normally raised on ranches. While the numbers are not high enough to get a lot of animal impact (especially when the pastures are 1,000 acres or larger.) The intent of this experiment is to show that flerds consisting of exotic animals (or a mix of exotic and "normal" livestock) can be herded through a holistic grazing plan. The animal impact will be a bit different as they will spread out more with each species in their own group, but will still have control on which pastures they will graze and when they will graze them.

This week the burros were trapped in a pen and added to the flerd. I put the burros in a pen by themselves and just sat there for a bit, Then I positioned myself so the burros would go past me. The first few times they went pretty fast. By the fourth or fifth time they figured out they weren't being chased and slowed down to a walk. I worked them around me a few times and when they got to the point I could stop them easily, I turned them out with the rest of the flerd.

By Friday everything in the pens was getting along fairly well. On Friday I turned the flerd out into a small trap of several hundred acres. I held the burros back and let them out of the pen last, rode past them to the longhorns in the lead, and turned them back to have everything grazing across the west side of the trap. Once I got them headed the way I wanted I went back and bumped the burros a little farther from the gate, stopped them and rode off. I had a bad video week (capped off by closing the lens cover  as I was letting them out) so I don't have any video this week. On Sunday I will be moving them around the trap, and turning them into an adjacent pasture on Monday. It will be interesting to see how far apart the various species stay from each other, and how putting them together and moving them as a group will work (or if I'll have to move each species as a separate group.) Hopefully I'll have some decent video next week, but in the meantime, enjoy these pictures.

 The above picture shows just how much the burros have settled down. When they were first turned in they refused to allow a lama or alpaca to get close to them.

This is definitely a mismatch, but this alpaca doesn't seem to notice the size difference.

     Here is the flerd after I turned them out. The burros had stopped just outside the gate and I moved them about fifty yards then stopped them. It will be interesting to see how well everything moves together when I turn them out in the pasture this week. Hopefully I'll get some usable video!

Flerding Experiment

The Circle Ranch has asked me to develop a multi species herd (called a flerd) out of some of the animals on the ranch.The plan is to create a flerd by combining horses, longhorn cattle, lamas, alpacas and BLM burros. 

The burros have not been handled, so the hardest part will be getting them into the pens. Last Tuesday I managed to get them from the Middle Pasture into a trap next to headquarters. To accomplish this I opened the gate I wanted them to go through and rode to the back of the pasture. As soon as I spotted the burros I stopped and stood there until they started moving away from me, then dropped out of site.  There was a stud horse and two geldings at the gate when the burros reached it. When the stud made a short charge at the burros, I was far enough out that I loped in the same direction as the burros and managed to stop them. After nearly an hour of applying and releasing pressure a single step at a time, the burros left and the horses followed them through the gate. I continued acclimating them to seeing a person horseback for a couple of hours. When I decided they had enough for the day, I released them to walk down a fence. Unfortunately, when they reached the county road (and a cattle guard) the stud horse made another run at them, chasing them across the cattle guard, and following them into the next trap. I waited until things calmed down and removed the stud horse and his compadres to another pasture where they will be out of the way.

In the meantime, the rest of the flerd is beginning to shape up. There are peculiar challenges with this project, mainly with the alpacas and lamas. The males of these two species fight for dominance on a daily basis, which makes it difficult to combine groups of these species with each other, let alone other species. Interestingly enough, it seems that the neutered alpacas and lamas will still fight for dominance. To get around this I have removed the most aggressive males. They still fight, but the fights are a lot shorter.

In order to keep the stress levels as low as possible, I work these animals around a pen, or through several pens. Then I place the animals on feed in a separate pen. I cannot stress stress enough on how much stress is created by calling animals to feed. When we create the "Pavlov's Dog" response in animals the more aggressive animals are always on feed first leaving those lower in the pecking order to fight over what is left. Cattle which are grazing as a herd and acting as a herd will begin eating then scattering out after being fed because of the stress. However, by placing stock on feed this extra stress is removed. As you will see in the video below, the varied species in this flerd are beginning to eat with each other in only six days. This is largely because they are being placed on feed rather than going through the stress of the horses driving the cattle off feed and the cattle driving off the lamas and alpacas.

Observe, Ask and Analyze

Much of what we assume we know is a result of how much we think (or don't think) about what we experience. All of what we do with livestock is based on what our past experiences have been. Until we change how we observe and think about why animals react to us the way we do, we cannot make any meaningful changes in how we do things.

Some reactions to my last post, http://cowherdmanagement.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-bison-chased-horses-cattle-chased.html are perfect examples. Several of them were up in arms. They threw out examples of individual bison leaving a herd to chase horses and even one which apparently broke into a pen to gore some horses. It would not be reasonable to assume the entire human race violent based on Charles Manson, Hitler and Stalin, so why do we do it with the animals we handle?

It doesn't matter if we are working with bison, elk, horse or (insert breed) of cattle, other than a few individuals, their overall temperament and behavior relies heavily upon how frequently and what methods are used in handling them. The problem lies in the fact that when an animal does something we don't like (such as charging a horse) people tend to look at the behavior as an independent action rather than as a reaction to what we have done. In our eyes we may have not done anything to warrant that (re) action. However we need to take into account how the animal(s) have been handled in the past that has instilled these behaviors into them. I've run across people who own ranches (as opposed to ranchers) who refuse to work cattle with horses because “horses make cattle wild” or that horses are “too unpredictable and hard to handle.” The simple fact is, as stockmen and horsemen, we need to not simply acknowledge that an animal or group of animals is unruly or mean. We need to observe when they are reacting in negative ways and be introspective as to our actions immediately prior to the negative behavior. In order to modify the behavior of our livestock, we must first observe and recognize their behavior to the point we recognize the negative behavior before it actually happens.

This philosophy of observing and analyzing goes far beyond just improving the behavior of our livestock. All too often the deterioration of our pastures is not noticed until it is a borderline disaster. We need to continually observe, and think about our observations.

The pasture I am in now appears to have healthy grass from a distance. However there are large areas that upon close observation have large amounts grass at the base which are gray and matted. This makes me ask myself which would be more beneficial; taking only a third of the grass as planned, or taking more grass while breaking up more of the dead plants?

Another observation I have made concerns water availability and predators. There is a theory that having more water points makes it harder on predators than having just a few “ambush” points. What I have observed is that there are more coyotes in the pastures which have a higher number of water points. Now that the observation has been made, we need to ask a question and analyze it. The question is “does fewer water points help predators by reducing ambush points, or does having more water points simply support more packs of coyotes?”

For our ranching operations to be as successful as possible, we need to observe, ask and analyze instead of simply reacting without analyzing.

For more on my services visit Migratorygrazing.com. If you like humor, be sure to check out my humor and cookbooks at 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Co.

Grazing Alkali Sacaton

 Normally sacaton grass is burned off and grazed early in the year as cattle "refuse" to eat it when it gets taller.  Just out of curiosity, I placed roughly half of the 420 cows into a sacaton draw. The results are pretty dramatic and show that cattle really like this grass when it is at a stage where there is green underneath the cured grass. Almost a perfect diet as they are getting roughage and protein in every bite.

As you can see in this picture, this grass appears as if it would be too dry and coarse for cattle to graze...

However as you can see by the following picture, that assumption is wrong

 Normally cattle will not graze alkali sacaton on their own at this stage. Yet these cattle, even though they have access to several kinds of gramma and bushy muley in this pasture, had to be pushed out of this area to utilize the rest of it.

From the standpoint of a recreational ranch trying to develop habitat, this is leaving cover for quail while at the same time, creating visibility for them to see approaching predators.

Herding A Bovine Potpourri

Some people have asked how herding cattle in this way is more efficient than controlling them with fences. For starters, you don't have to buy, build and maintain (or continually move) extra fencing,and you need fewer water points. Using this method on yearlings or dry cows (and receiving them all at once) is much, much, easier than receiving a Bovine Potpourri a little at a time. Despite the challenges, and necessary adjustments the program is still working, and improving.

One adjustment I've had to make is using more than one water point. It seems that these cattle have a tendency to jump in the five foot drinkers and stand there, then break the float on their way out. Once, I saw  a cow standing in a drinker with her calf next to her, nursing (something I have never seen before.) This forced us to designed and install a modification to the existing float guards which will hopefully take care of this problem. While having to work off of more than one water point makes it take longer to place cattle, it has been a learning experience. 

The second pasture in the rotation I  had five water points to work off of. The interesting thing was that, even though the cattle were mixed where they were grazing, they would return to the water point they came from. In the case of grazing associations, this could have some benefits if the herd instinct was instilled in each herd before going to summer pasture. The association rider could place the cattle on different water points, and keep the cattle separate within the same allotment. At the end of the grazing season it would be simple to gather each owner's cattle separately, and decrease the shrink involved with sorting several herds simultaneously (which would in return, increase profits a minimum of 3 to 5% ).

Despite the difficulties this particular project has, it is still working. Rather than spending money on labor building and maintaining (or moving) fences several times a week (or daily), one person spends three days placing cattle where they need in the pastures. Because of the social and physiological differences within this herd, and using multiple water points, placing within the pasture does take all day. If the water system was simplified to a single water point, and the cattle were all the same class, placement within the pasture would take four hours or less (for a total of 12 hours of labor per week.) 

Despite  the diversity of this group of cattle and using multiple water points, we are still getting the desired results of taking roughly a third of the forage and also getting animal impact distributed across the pasture, as shown in the following photograph.                           

 While they are spread out to fit feed density, the following picture shows roughly 100 head working as a herd. Notice how they are all grazing in the same direction. Once we make the next pasture move at the end of next week, we will be able to wean the bigger calves at a set of pens next to a water point. Once the cows have bawled off, I will start all of the cattle up a canyon in the direction of the next pasture in the grazing plan  and allow the cattle to sort themselves into two groups.

Open cattle, older calves, bulls and those in the first and second trimester of pregnancy will pick up and move out easily, while those cattle in their third trimester, calves under a month old and older thin cows with calves on them will take their time getting started. This will make it easier to instill the herd instinct into the cattle and (hopefully) keep the bulls away from the cows which are calving. (One problem with running bulls year round is that 12 to 24 hours before calving, cows change from producing progesterone to estrogen. This change in hormones causes cycling cows and bulls to seek out and ride cows beginning to calve, causing dystocia.)