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!

Low Stress Roping

When most people think of roping, they think of it as it is done in the arena. Run hard, throw a loop and jerk the animal around so another person can rope the heels and stretch an animal out as fast as they can. Cowboys often feel that this is the only, or at least the fastest way to get cattle doctored in the pasture. Just like low stress stockmanship, the original Vaquero style of roping appears to be slow, but is actually faster and more efficient in the long run.

A good example was one ranch I was on where we were having a scours/ pneumonia wreck.  Between two of us, we were doctoring up to 160 calves a day, or 80 to 90 calves apiece everyday. By using the old style big loop style that people consider to be "fancy," I was able to accomplish it without having to change horses at noon everyday. My cattle stayed calm and easy to handle. At the same time the other guy (who constantly cussed me for "packing a clothesline") not only had to change horses everyday at noon, but the cattle he was doctoring on would take off at a trot as soon as he rode into view.

There are several secrets to why big loop roping are low stress.

1. Variety of available loops. Rather than being limited to either a conventional run them down head or heel loop, a person will have four or five varieties of head and heel loops to fit different scenarios.
2. This variety of loops, combined with low stress handling methods allows a person to do the vast majority of their roping at a walk or trot. 
3. Allows ropers to handle cattle without constantly choking them because of the style of hondos used.

As you can see in the picture to the right, this style of hondo will give an animal a chance to breath when the rope is slackened.  While allowing an animal to have slack on the end of the rope may sound strange, in actuality is allows the animal to remain calm. This helps in two ways. If a person is doctoring cattle too large to wrestle to the ground, it allows you to trot a couple of circles around the animal (having them step over the rope with their front feet), basically heeling them so you can pull them over with minimal effort. If two people are doctoring, this allows the heeler to throw their loop and get the animal down for treatment with minimal stress on the cow and minimal effort on their horse. Combined, this method allows you to doctor more cattle on fewer horses while keeping your cattle from getting wild. 

Many people are reluctant to try the big loop style of roping because they are afraid of getting tangled up in the "extra" rope. The best way to learn is to practice on a roping dummy, then rope cattle using a breakaway hondo. If you do something wrong, instead of being tied to a cow, the hondo will release the rope. Once you get to the point of being able to stop your cattle with the breakaway hondo like in the video below, you are ready to start roping for real. Between the variety of loops and distance they can be thrown, you will be able to doctor more cattle in a day, with less effort than you ever thought possible.

  

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.

Low Stress Cattle Handling, Hype or Fact?

Like most of us, I am confused by the way the beef industry is trying to get the cattle industry to use low stress cattle handling methods. If my own first hand experience had not already taught me better, I would think that low stress stockmanship is just a worthless bottle of snake oil. We must remember that this isn't about forcing cattle to go where we want, but acting in a manner which makes cattle think it is their idea.

Twenty years ago, when I first saw an ad for a cattle handling seminar I laughed. At the time I was working under a manager who was a big fan of Bud Williams, and shortly after the ad came out, this man and the cowboss went to Bud's seminar. To me, this pair was pretty confused to begin with, but when they came back, they seemed to be worse off than before attending the seminar. It was fairly obvious that this so called low stress cattle handling was just a bunch of snake oil...Or was it? The following spring I was informed that I was going to be attending a seminar with one of the other hands. Was I irritated at having to go waste time attending? Yes. Was it a waste of time? Most definitely not!

To me, nearly all of what Bud Williams was teaching was very obvious, as I was already doing it. However to most of the people attending, it was hard to understand. Perhaps the most confusing thing for people to understand was putting cattle through a gate by working the gate on a “T” with the person in front putting the cattle through the gate and the people in the back doing no more than necessary to keep the cattle in the back, facing to the front. This concept is simple, and Bud shows video of doing this in several different situations, yet people kept asking questions of how to do it for over half an hour. By this point the realization set in that Bud knows what he is doing, but people have a hard time grasping the principles because they go against human nature. I was struck by the realization that there is such a thing as low stress cattle handling, but many, if not most people have a difficult time understanding it because so much of it goes against human nature.

Today, low stress cattle handling is sort of a buzzword at least with the main stream agriculture publications, and the NCBA. Unfortunately nearly every article is nearly a copy of the others. They have little real information, and virtually nothing new. Watching some of the videos produced will convince a person that low stress cattle handling is all hype and will not work in real life situations.

This is especially true when people giving demonstrations talk about “training a cow to drive.” You do not train a cow to drive. Where the cow goes is totally dependent upon what you are doing and how you are doing it. 99% of the time a cow runs across the pen it is because you lost position or put too much pressure on the cow. What is seldom (if ever) mentioned is when you see that cow thinking about making that move, moving away from the cow rather then putting pressure on it will straighten the cow's direction.

When watching demonstrations on low stress cattle handling, the movements are so subtle that spectators may miss the slight drop of a shoulder or turn of the body that takes the pressure ff a cow and changes her mind. More often than not, the person demonstrating does not mention that to the audience, so that the finer points of what one needs to do, and when are lost to the observers. The same thing holds true for handling cattle horseback. At times, simply changing the angle of your horse to the cow will calm the cow down and get the results you want without speeding up. Unfortunately, most of us have been taught to keep our horses parallel to the cow at all times.

This may work well in arena events where you are judged (and given “courage points”) for chousing cattle around the arena, but it is the last thing one wants to do when trying to keep your cattle calm and things flowing. There are times when simply moving one end of your horse, one step, will calm the animal you are working and allow it to turn without losing momentum. In the branding pen, that one step may give you a clear shot to rope a calf without it bounding through the rest of the calves and stirring them up. 

     

For more information, visit http://www.naturalcattlehandling.com

Getting Feedlot Cowboys On The Low Stress Bandwagon

There is no doubt that the industry leaders are interested in having low stress cattle handling method being the industry norm rather than the exception. I am no sycophantic elocutionist, all I can do is call things like I see them. Unless there is a direct benefit to the average pen rider , cowboy or ranch hand, they are not going to see the benefit in changing how they work cattle. In order to get the rank and file pen riders and ranch hands wanting to excel in low stress cattle handling we need to do two things. First we need to show that low stress cattle handling is more efficient. Second we need to give them a reason to learn and practice it.

The best way to do this is through a series of competitions in realistic low stress cattle handling to be sponsored by BQA, with a sizable reward (as in cash and prizes) for the winners. This contest would entail riding pens just as if they were riding pens at work, only would be pulling cattle marked with paint balls. A model for the competition wold be;

1. Twenty pens to be ridden by each contestant with fifty marked animals to be pulled.
2. Each contestant starts with two hundred points.
3. A point would be subtracted for each animal that breaks out of a walk.
4. Two points would be subtracted for causing animals other than the one being pulled to move faster than a walk.
5. Each contestant would have one marked animal wearing a heart monitor. The contestant raising the hear rate of this animal the least would have ten points added to their score and the second lowest raise of heart rate would receive five points added to their score.
6. If a rider does not pull all of his marked cattle, they will have two points deducted from their score.
7. Rider will also have two points deducted for every unmarked animal pulled.
8. In case of a tie score, the fastest time wins.

While this would not be a spectator sport, it would give pen riders a reason to get interested in low stress cattle handling. If you were to check the death loss and medical costs in any feedlot, you will find that those numbers correlate directly to how cattle are being handled. The less stress being put on cattle, the lower the death loss and antibiotic costs will be. The more stress put on the cattle the higher those numbers will be. The last feedlot I worked at, I asked the hospital crew to run the numbers on all of the pen riders for a year so I could compare them. Between the person who cause the less stress, and the person who caused the least amount of stress, the cost difference was over $250,000. With that kind of losses going on, it seems as if a little prize money as incentive would be a cheap way to get more cowboys on the low stress band wagon.

To learn about my own intensive program for teaching low stress cattle handling in feedlots, visit my website.

Heat Detection Made Easy

Most of us are still calving, but breeding season is just around the corner. If you are running an artificial breeding program, or thinking of starting one, you need to know the best, and easiest way to pen your breeders. Many operations not only make more work out of heat detection than necessary, but also work against themselves and the cattle in doing so. This is evident with all of the stories about how wild cattle are to pen when it is time to breed.

The fact is, that when handled properly, at the proper time, the cattle will almost pen themselves. To understand this, we must first understand the mental and physiological state of cattle when they cycle.

Two to three days before a cow is actually in heat, they become agitated and are starting to think about breeding. They will be in the groups of hot cows, butting heads and riding the cows which are actually hot, as well as others which are close to being in heat. The cows which are actually hot only have breeding on their mind. For the eight to twelve hours they are actually in heat they seldom graze or drink, and ignore their calf in search of a bull. This is the time you need to be penning them, when they are hot and wanting to breed. If you drive or ride through the cattle and mark down the numbers of the cows in heat, then pen them when it is time to breed, you are working against yourself. At this point the cow is tired and interested in relieving that tight bag, eating, drinking, and resting. This makes them harder to find, and because they are tired, it also makes them harder to handle. Penning cattle when they are hot and looking for a bull, or other cattle in heat makes them both easy to find, and pen. The first thing you need to do is to place your breeding pen(s) in an area which is either visible to your cattle, or in an area they will naturally flow to. The pens need to have three sections. One to hold your cattle being bred. A second area to hold hot cows waiting to be bred, and a pen to bring hot cattle into that is large enough to sort off the ones not quite in standing heat.
When you start that group of hot cattle across the pasture they will have a tendency to run off, and of course we have the tendency to try and keep them from doing that. As long as they are moving in the general direction of the pen, don't try to hold them up. They will travel for awhile, then stop and start riding each other again. For this reason you don't want to even try keeping up with them. If you try to slow them down, they will interpret this as being chased and they won't stop. Keep pushing them and it won't be long before they will become irritated and split up. Let them keep riding a couple of minutes after you do catch up. Position yourself so that when you start them, they are headed in the general direction of the pen again. Most of the time they will take off and run to the next group of cattle and start sniffing around. There are many times that this is the stimulus a “silent heat” needs to become visible. Once you are sure there are no more hot cows in that group, start them towards the breeding pens.
When these cattle see the pens, with cattle in them they will make a beeline for the pens. Because of their one track mind at a this point, they will want to get into the pens to see if they can get what they are looking for. As long as you are patient, they will work their way around the pen and actually find their way in the gate. The whole key to making this work is having the patience to let the cattle move at their own pace and letting them go where you want rather than trying to force them. Basically, unless you do something to make them mad and quit thinking about being bred, they will want to go to the breeding pen. One other mistake that people make while penning cattle using this method is trying to get the calf to go with the cow. The cow is not the least bit interested in her calf at this point. Even if left in the pasture, she will not let the calf nurse as she is interested only in breeding and will not think about her tight bag or the calf until she is out of standing heat. As soon as she is let out of the breeding pen she will meet up with the calf at the last spot the calf nursed, or the calf will follow on its own and meet it's mother when she is let out of the breeding box. The only time you need to take the calf with you is if you are in a three cycle breeding season (which will probably happen only on a registered operation.) By the third cycle you won't be finding hot groups, but individual hot cows. At this point your hot cow will stand out because of the number of bull calves mobbing the cow. In this situation the hot cow just wants to get away from the calves. With no company in the pen she will be likely to jump out if her calf shows up. For that reason, you will want to pen her calf with her. Penning while the cattle are actually hot also works better while breeding in a feedlot situation as well. The hot cattle will come off feed earlier than the rest of the cattle and start bulling. At this point it is not only easier to spot them, you will be only working the hot group and the rest of the cattle will be out of your way. It is fairly simple to sort the heifers in standing heat from the bullers at the gate. As you work your way down the alley these hot heifers will actually act as bait to draw the hots in your other pens to the gate. If you follow this procedure and allow the cattle to work themselves you will not only pen cattle easier, you will have higher conception rates from the lack of stress on the cattle. You will also have less stress on yourself and your crew.

The myth of “breed type disposition”

Herefords are thought of as being gentle, while Brahma, Limousine, and Saler, cattle are thought of by most cattlemen in this country as being harder to handle because of their disposition. The fact that they can be harder to handle has more to do with the frequency and methods used handling them than their actual disposition. Now that half of you are ready to tar and feather me, then run me off the cyber range, I have a couple of simple questions for you to ponder.

Why is it that the above mentioned breeds which many of us consider to have bad attitudes, considered to be gentle breeds in their country of origin? If Hereford cattle are so inherently gentle, then why are there areas with a lot of high headed Herefords that streak off across the pasture with a knot in their tail at the sight of a person on horseback?

I started wondering about those two questions over forty years ago. Twenty years ago I had the unique opportunity to halter break the show calves for a big registered outfit. Part of their show string was several Red Angus embryo transplant calves which were full brother/sister. One would think that the genetically inherent gentle nature of their breeding. Three of the calves were out of recip cows which were raised on the ranch. These mothers had been handled half right all of their lives and were fairly gentle. These three broke to lead fast and enjoyed the brushing and grooming. The recip cow for calf number four was a Hereford purchased from a neighboring ranch which culled her because she was too wild. Despite having identical genetics, she was harder to halter break, kept kicking when a person groomed her and ran away with the herdsman several times at the show. Long story short, she had been trained by her mother to be wild and obnoxious.

On the other end of the spectrum, several years ago I was sent a bunch of smooth mouth Santa Gertrudis cows for the winter. We were to calve them out and ship the mothers to the packers at weaning time. These cows came off a ranch where they gather mainly with helicopters. When they do use cowboys the man to cow ratio is usually around 1 to 20. When they came off the truck, half of them were hunting and ready to run over a man on foot, and would challenge a man on horseback. After working on settling them down a couple of hours we turned them out in a small trap.

When I started to gather the trap a few days later, all the cattle ran to the back corner and wadded up. Thinking it would be better to go out a gate and move them off the fence from the outside, I headed away from the cattle and towards a gate. Before making it to the gate,there was the screeching sound of breaking wire and the cattle were out and running out and running.

After only seven months of being handled with low stress methods, three of us penned over 500 of these cows, sorted the calves off the cows and shipped them. The cattle manager of the ranch owing the cows was amazed as he had never seen the cattle penned that easily or worked that quietly.

The moral of these examples is that how cattle are handled (and the frequency they are handled) affects the disposition and behavior of cattle as much as genetics.After working with tens of thousands of cattle, and watching people work them, it is easy to understand how there can be so much confusion on low stress cattle handling and understanding of cattle behavior. Our knowledge is only the sum of our actual experience combined with what we have learned through educational experiences. Until we observe cattle acting as a herd and without stress, our observations of cattle behavior will not be accurate as our base opinions are based upon faulty information.

For more information and clinics, visit http://www.naturalcattlehandling.com

Exports Hurting US Economy

Cattle publications (and too often formal educators) try to convince us that the cattle and beef industries are one and the same. They are not. One difference is in the import export market. While some registered cattle producers may market a few animals to foreign markets, it is not something which the average producer does. On the other hand, every producer of boxed beef is after the premium they can receive from exports to other countries.

While exports can be a good thing for the economy, what is often forgotten is that the economy begins at home. There is a point at which exports benefit a few while making the economy bad for the rest of the economy. This is currently demonstrated by hay exports.

Much of the country has been ravaged by both drought and wildfire. Hay prices are through the roof. Many are paying $300 a ton per hay with it being forecast in some areas to top the $400 mark by the first of February. On the surface this would seem to be a simple matter of supply and demand. Between the drought and fires the demand for hay is higher which would automatically drive up the cost of hay. However there is another factor affecting our hay supply which is driving the cost up. A record amount of hay is being exported to China, partially because it is actually cheaper to ship it to China than to points within the United States.

While economists view this as a good thing for the trade imbalance, it is detrimental to our overall economy. This is driving up the cost of both beef and dairy products for consumers who are suffering enough in this down economy. While it would seem logical that trade agreements and export laws would take our own economy into consideration before allowing either exports or imports. Unfortunately economists too often consider the balance sheets between our country and others without looking at the effects upon our own general population.

That is the difference between the cattle and beef industries. The beef industry can benefit by premiums, either in actual price, or lower shipping costs. The relationship between the cattle industry and beef industry is similar to that between mining companies which supply iron ore and steel manufacturers. As cattle producers we are providing the “beef ore” for packing companies to turn into beef.

We can not depend on them for our individual economic situation to be better, nor can we expect the government to protect our interests. As such, our only formula for success is to keep our outputs low enough that our inputs cover the costs with enough left over for a livable profit. We need to manage our forage so that we are planning ahead for the times of drought an/or low prices. We cannot avoid all outputs, but we need to manage them so that what outputs we do have benefit our output to input ratios. This includes everything from handling our cattle in a way which reduces shrink, to making our infrastructure less costly to maintain to how we manage our household purchases.

This last has been made a bit more simple by the internet. We can now purchase everything from vaccines and tools, to clothing, and even some foods and have it delivered without the expense of driving a couple of hundred miles to town. One such opportunity is provided by Country Outfitters. A few weeks back I was approached by them to do a product review in exchange for whatever I wanted to order. I browsed through their products and was surprised at their variety and prices. As it is winter, I chose the Carthart^® arctic lined coat. It had the quality you know is going to be there, including a long lasting brass zipper rather than the cheap plastic ones used by other manufacturers. The prices are comparable to what you find at stores in town, yet you don't have to make the trip. With calving season upon us Country Outfitters an be your own on ranch store if you find yourself in need of extra winter wear or a new hat to wear to the stock show.

Low Stress Cattle Handling/Horsemanship Clinics

You cannot substitute articles and videos on reduced stress cattle handling procedures for real time, hands on experience to become proficient at handling cattle. Few of these articles and videos address the differences involved between handling cattle on foot or on a horse. Fewer still describe how, by simply changing the angle of your horse's body in respect to the cow, you can control the cow's speed and direction.

For a person handling cattle horseback on a ranch, or riding pens in a feedlot, you cannot learn how to handle cattle in a reduced stress manner without including horsemanship. Low stress cattle handling is synonymous with good horsemanship, you can't have one without the other. While those teaching low stress cattle handling on foot concentrate on reading cattle and making small corrections to keep things going, many of those teaching it from horseback are still doing many of the same old things. Keeping a horse parallel to a cow, beating it to the fence and working, prey/predator relationship, and training cattle to drive.

The word natural is over used and often misconstrued. The way your cattle act right now is only their natural reaction to what you are doing. The key to low stress cattle handling is to do things in a manner which naturally gets cattle to doing what we want in a calm manner.

If we are driving a cow and keeping our horse parallel to the cow and decide we need to turn it, we start putting pressure on their eye to get them to turn away from us. When we do this we turn our horse towards the cow and they speed up and try go around us. We blame the cow for speeding up and trying to go around us, but we are the one who turned on that switch in the cow to get that reaction.

In the same situation if we are tracking the cow with a slight amount of lateral movement on our horse we can actually ask the cow to turn by taking pressure off the cow. We do this by asking our horse to speed up slightly while moving laterally away from the cow. When we do this, we are taking away both the instinct of the cow to speed up and to go around us. Instead the cow feels as if its opportunity to go around us is taken away. At this point, rather than being excited and wanting to get around us, the cow's reaction is to turn slowly (without stress) away from us and in the direction we want.

In order to take advantage of the above natural instinct of cattle, we need to develop our horsemanship to a higher level. At times we can slow a cow by simply changing the angle of our horse in relationship to a cow. Essentially, the better our horsemanship is, the more we can master low stress cattle handling. This isn't to say our horses have to be perfect, as there is no true perfection. However if we master our horsemanship enough we can take advantage of methods to handle cattle with lower amounts of stress, not only on the cattle, but on our horses and ultimately on ourselves. The easier you make things on the cow, the easier it is on your horse, and the easier it is on you.

The answer to the conundrum of how to learn both the horsemanship techniques and the lower stress reactions of cattle is to learn them both at the same time. After years of thought on the matter I have designed a clinic program which addresses both the horsemanship and low stress instincts of cattle. As learning all of this is intensive, hands on clinic sizes will be limited to a total of seven participants, including crew or owners of sponsoring ranches. To learn more of my methods and all these clinics cover visit my main website.

I am now accepting host ranches for 2012 clinics. If you are going to be running yearlings, coinciding a clinic when you receive cattle, they will be calm and easy to handle when you turn them out with no additional labor costs. If you are running an AI breeding program I can also include training on how and when to pen your cattle for minimum stress and optimum conception. If you would like to host a clinic, email me me and we will make arrangements.

The Myth of Regional Neccessity

Recently a person asked the question if  there is a part in Texas where there is much of the Vaquero tradition going on.Of course the conversation expanded from horses, to handling cattle in various parts of the country.One of the opinions expressed was that cattle in Texas, because of their breeding, big pastures and brush, are wilder than cattle in other parts of the country. Having worked on ranches from California east to Nebraska, and from the Montana/Canadian border, south to Texas I have come to the realization that the only reason cattle are wilder in one are that the other comes down to the way cattle are handled.

While it is true that the longer cattle go without seeing a person horseback, the stronger their flight response will be when they are gathered and worked. However part of the process of taking care of cattle is actually going through them from time to time. If you do this, and handle your cattle in a way they understand, your cattle will not be trotty and run off every time you gather them.
A big (Ok, VERY big) part of the problem people have in areas claiming they "have" to handle cattle in a hurry is that they are pushing cattle too hard on the way to the pens, then pressuring them too much when they get there. In the above picture five of us were moving over 600 pair to a summer pasture of around 5,000 acres. There were a few clearings, but most of the summer lease was just like in the picture. Rather than just ignore them all summer, I rode them once a week (twice if I was lucky). That fall the five of us went back in and gathered, driving them right back through the brush and accounted for every single head.

This brings us back to "regional necessity" of having big crews to handle one or two hundred head at a time. If that is really necessary, you should be looking closely at your herd management and the way you are handling your cattle. Bigger crews add to outputs, as does unnecessary shrink from cattle that are trotty to gather. I've been on ranches that were either still open range, or had pastures as big as fifty thousand acres with cattle that were easy to handle, just because people made a point of riding through them from time to time. It all boils down to the fact that if your cattle are trotty and run off, it is because of the way you manage and handle them.

Un-constitutionality of Federal Lands

The following videos are from a discussion surrounding the fact that most federally controlled lands are un-constitutional as per Section 8, clause 17 of the U.S.Constitution. Included in the discussion is how to get these lands returned to the individual states as well as reaching out and educating the public on this issue and agriculture in general.







 

Improve Forage & Hydrology By Grazing "Impossible" to Graze Locations

 While holistic grazing programs can improve the biodiversity and hydrology of a pasture the source of erosion usually begins on steep side hills. As these areas are often ignored by cattle, and are hard to fence, so they are left out of grazing plans as being "impossible" to graze. The fact is, it is not only possible to graze these areas, they are prime locations to improve both forage and hydrology of pastures.

While the cattle were being rotated through the pasture in the picture to the left, they were, for the most part, allowed to graze where they wanted. You can tell where they grazed by following the outline of the healthy yellow grass. As soon as the ground began to get too steep, or too rocky, the cattle would ignore it in their grazing pattern.

Upon closer inspection of these rocky areas, there is grass, but it is gray, matted and very unhealthy.

The picture above shows just how sparse and unhealthy this grass is. When it rains, there is not enough grass to slow water down and erosion begins. Notice in the above picture that some clumps of grass have no individual stalks of grass while others have just a few.  In the picture below, I conducted a short experiment the last time cattle were in this pasture. Taking roughly two hundred cows, I herded them up a side hill to graze on steep, rocky ground with the grass in a condition similar to the picture above.

The results of this are in the picture below. Notice the grass is healthier and had much more growth than in the picture above. This is the result of grazing the cattle through this area one time. By utilizing "impossible to graze" slopes such as this you are improving biodiversity, hydrology, and stocking rates. At the very least, utilizing these areas will allow you to run at full capacity (as prescribed by conventional) methods while giving each grazing area once every two years. Feel free to ask questions or make comments below.

Heat Detection Manual & Record Book

Probably the hardest part of any artificial insemination program is keeping the cattle calm while pulling cattle to be bred. There are a few simple techniques concerning when we pull the cattle and how we handle them which can make heat detection a simple part of our AI program. I have combined instructions on how to pull your breeders without stressing them or yourself out, with a handy record keeping book.

Rather than being formatted like most pocket books, the records keeping portion of this book is designed to help with the legibility of records by giving more room to write. In the case you are both detecting heat and breeding, this handy book allows you to write down the cow was pulled, cow identification number and the number of the bull she is bred to.

This handy manual and records book is available for only $8 (US Shipping included)! If you are a semen dealer, or seedstock producer, we can put your logo on the cover for a nominal charge.

Number of Copies

1 copy $8.00 2 Copies $10.00 3 copies $12.00

Technology And “OFS”

Between my eight year old son asking me “How did you do it back then Daddy,” and the #Agnerd hashtag on Twitter, I've been dwelling on the pros and cons of new technology. Looking at all of the technological advances within my lifetime, one may assume that I am nearing the century mark. Surprisingly enough, I haven't quite reach my 57th birthday. All of these advances have given me a severe case of OFS (Old Fart Syndrome) when I hear about new technology.

OFS comes from remembering when black and white television was the epitome of high tech household appliances. Until I was eleven years old, I had to pick up the receiver and tell the operator what number I wanted to call (My parents number was J-111). There were several other people on our “party line” so you had to wait until the neighbor was done talking before you could make your call. Cell phones with call waiting, call forwarding, conference calls, caller ID, voice mail, internet access or any of the other eighty odd thousand phone applications (we consider necessity) were science fiction.

Today is seems most people are not only dependent, but addicted to technology. OFS has me wondering where the balance is. Is all of this new technology making our jobs in the cattle industry more efficient, or is it just restructuring our workload in a way that alienates us from what we should be doing?

We have back tags which tell us that a cow has been in heat. Then we have ear tags which tell us that an animal is running a fever. We use portable electric fencing so we can control where our cattle graze. We use a siren to call them into feed, then once they are used to the siren, we use the Pavlov's Dog response to move them to fresh pasture. If we aren't calling them and baiting them with a feed truck, we fire up the four wheelers or helicopters so we can get the pasture move or gather done “faster.” OFS tells me a man on a horse is cheaper than a man in a helicopter and can handle the cattle cheaper and with less stress, but the techno addicts can't see that.

In the feedlot, we are using high tech antibiotics so we can mass treat cattle on arrival so we won't have to pull sick cattle in their first few days on feed (regardless of the fact over half wouldn't be getting sick in the first place). Then we use ear tags which tell us if cattle are running a fever or not by turning on a bright red light when cattle are running a fever. These high tech tools allow us to not just spend less time observing cattle but to hire less experienced labor as managers figure all the help has to do is pull the cattle by the tags rather than the symptoms.

Besides making us dependent on technology to keep our feedlot cattle healthy, it is adding to input costs rather than lowering them. Bud Williams has proven time after time that feedlots can reduce their antibiotic inputs, as well as morbidity and death losses by as much as 50% by simply changing the way cattle are handled. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply change the way we handle cattle than adding to input costs?

When it comes to education, rather than hands on experience, we take multiple choice tests on a computer hooked to the internet. It is actually possible to receive a diploma (through a university) in reduced stress cattle handling without ever seeing a cow up close and personnel. To make it even more interesting feedlots are making cattle handling videos and computerized classes available to teach their employees better cattle handling procedures.

Once again, OFS raises it's ugly head. Proper handling of cattle is largely an intuitive task. It becomes even more so when we put the cattle handler on the back of a horse. Thinking we are actually teaching people to become effective at reduced stress cattle handling is like having a pilot who has flown nothing but single engine planes a multiple choice test on the internet and turning them loose in a Stealth Bomber...It isn't going to work. The only way you can truly teach proper cattle handling is by a combination of instruction and closely watched hands on experience.

The amount of new technology we have, and the things we can do with it are pretty amazing. We do need learn to balance between the old and the new. We need to ask ourselves two simple questions to see if the new technology is actually beneficial, or if we are using it to satisfy our own techno-addiction.
1. Will it actually reduce input costs in the long run?
2. Is adding the the new technology the most cost effective way to achieve the end result?


If the answers to number one and two are yes, then perhaps the new technology would be something to use. If not, then we need to recognize that we are only feeding our own techno-addiction.

The Power of "I Can't"

"It doesn't matter if you say you can, or you say you can't, you're right."
Many years ago I read the above quote, and it stuck with me. I don't remember who the quote is attributed to, but the simple wisdom of it has stuck with me through the decades.This self fulfilling prophecy really applies when you are considering different management techniques.

In drought conditions like much of the southwest is currently under, ranchers are culling herds deep to save grass. When you mention following an intensive, rotational grazing program the first thing out of their mouth is usually "I can't." This is of course followed by a myriad or "reasons" as to why it will not work on their ranch. The "reasons" range from water systems to how rough their ranch is, or how much brush, to their kind of cattle.

This brings me to my own saying. The only difference between a really good reason, and a poor excuse, is if you are listening to,  or telling it.  The "reasons" you give after spouting off the phrase "I can't" are only the excuses you give for not trying methods which may keep you from reducing your herd in a drought. When the first reaction is "I can't" you are not thinking of the positive possibilities, but the things which will only hold you back.

Conversely,  a person who says or thinks "I can" when approached with a new method to improve their situation will find a way to get it done. Again, this is a self fulfilling prophecy. When you say "I can" you are going to learn all you can about the new method so you can implement it for your situation.

The most efficient and effective way to manage your grazing at anytime is by herding your cattle through a holistic, intensive rotational program. You may need to make some changes in your water system, but for the most part the changes are rather simple, and relatively inexpensive for the benefits received. It will allow you to utilize grass more effectively, and in many cases allow you to graze areas of your ranch that usually aren't grazed at all. When the rains do come, this method will promote faster growth of grass, especially in tsabosa flats where the grass has become gray and matted.

Training your cattle to graze as a tight knit herd is simple. It is all a matter of whether you say "I can" or "I can't." If you want to keep your cow numbers up in this combination of drought and high prices, it may benefit you to adopt the "I can" philosophy!

Adjusting Today's Prices

Nearly everyone is happy about record high cattle prices. A lot of investors are looking at cattle as a "good investment" right now. However when you really look at input costs, you are receiving less for calves today than you were in the late 1970's

In 1979, I worked for a rancher who sold his calves for $125cwt. At the time, a new four wheel drive pickup was about $10,000 and a "high paid" cowboy made $500 a month and beef. Day work was expensive at $50 a day. Hay was roughly $45 a ton and gas was well under $2 per gallon.

Today's calves are bringing roughly $58 per cwt more, less than a 50% increase. Many cowboys are now starting out at $1,500 a month, or three times higher. Day labor has doubled at $100 a day. That four wheel drive pickup now costs $40,000, or four times as much. Hay costs over a $100 a ton (more than double) and gas is getting close to $4 a gallon and in many places, diesel is already over $4 a gallon (again, doubled). This does not take into account not only higher land prices, but higher property taxes as well. This means, after figuring input costs, your cattle are actually worth less than they were in 1979. If cattle were even keeping up with labor costs, today's calves should be bringing $3.75 cwt.

I can think of a number of things that 90% of cattle operations today could do to lower input costs. Most of these ranches could do to increase stocking capacity and the total pounds of cattle shipped from their ranch while lowering input costs. What are you doing to increase the efficiency of your cattle operation without increasing your input costs?

Taking Cattle Through Gates

Last week I covered starting and moving your cattle in a way which instills herd instinct in your cattle. Taking cattle through gates can either be one of the easiest things we can do with our cattle or one of the most stressful things we can do to our cattle, and ourselves.

Too many people tend to wait to open the gate until all of the cattle have reached the gate. This results in the cattle being forcibly crowded up to the fence. This creates stress on the cattle as they do not like to be forced together. When we are moving pairs this assures that the cattle will not be paired once they are through the gate. If we can have the gate open before the cattle get there, it is a simple matter of pointing them towards the gate without stopping the motion.

If the motion does stop, the only two things we need to work on is keeping the everything pointing towards the gate, and getting the cattle at the front to go through without pushing from the back. When you do this properly all of the cattle will go together, strung out as a herd naturally moves. Once they start through, the lead may pick up speed and may even run and play a bit. As long as they are headed in the right direction there is nothing to worry about as they tend to slow down on their own.

The two hundred steers in the following video had only been on the place a week. The only other time I had moved them was taking them from the pens where they had been unloaded, to this pasture. Not only was this the first time they had been through this gate, the pup I was using is deaf, and I didn't have a shock collar. Needless to say she made a few mistakes (to put it mildly) but the steers still all made it through the gate, and acted as a herd once they went through.



Taking cattle through a gate in the middle of a fence is actually easier than taking them through a gate in a corner. Take the cattle to a point a hundred yards to either side of the gate and have them turn down the fence towards the gate. Ride along, or just in front of the lead animals. When you reach the gate, simply get in front of the lead animals and position yourself so that the lead will go around and by you. They will see the gate and go through easily.

Evaluating Our Management

It is that time of year again. No, I'm not talking about Christmas. It is the time of year that all of the trade publications are encouraging you to re-evaluate your management and pay your dues to the cattleman's associations. I think it is not only time to re-evaluate your cow herd management, but to also evaluate how these publications are suggesting we manage our cattle.

The sustainability of any cattle operation is dependent upon profitability. Nearly anything we do to increase income seems to involve putting money out to accomplish. As an industry, we have acquired a mindset which dictates we must spend money to save money. This is a mindset which we need to get away from. There are too much of what we are doing as an industry which are adding to operating expenses which we take for granted as being necessary could be changed.

The educational system doesn't help. Rather than giving advice as to reducing costs associated with calving January to March, they give advice on how much feed and nutrients cattle need during the third trimester during the holiday season (as in a recent article from the University of Ohio). A study just started this fall at of Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture is examining the difference between calving in September/October vs January/February.

If you have a ranch, or are managing one for someone else, you need to be thinking of two things, sustainability and profitability of the range land and cattle. If you are calving at a time of year that requires you to feed extra hay and supplement to your cattle during the extra trimester, you are cutting into the profitability of your cattle. If you are feeding your calves as well as feeding enough for your cattle to lactate and hold body condition, you are cutting into your profitability. You should be asking yourself why there are no studies being done on timing the third trimester so that cattle are calving on green grass rather than purchased feed and supplement.


Simple logic dictates that calving on grass is less expensive than paying for hay production and extra supplements. Just how much can you save? I have one friend who calved in June/July in western Colorado who didn't feed his cattle at all. I have another friend in Nebraska who changed to a late April/early June calving season and he now feeds 2/3 less hay. Both men weaned at an correspondingly later time, with nearly identical weights to winter calving. How much money would you be adding to your profit line if you could cut your hay bill by 2/3? Could you make even more money by selling the excess hay you have been feeding, or increase the size of your herd with the savings?

Another area in which advice given by universities and publications is pasture management. There are many articles out there which give the benefits of rotational grazing programs, but all of them require intensive labor and monetary investment in permanent and temporary fencing to control grazing. Can we really be more sustainable, or get more profit when we are spending more time and money to accomplish the same task of harvesting grass?

Then we have all of the articles on reduced stress cattle handling. There are two kinds of articles in this category. The first kind are the ones which appear as if they were written from a template. They contain all of the buzz phrases “slower is faster,” “flight zone,” “pressure and release,” then go on to explain the benefits. Yet they fail to really describe how to handle your cattle with less stress.

The other category is people who have no real understanding of how cattle work other than to train them by the Pavlov's Dog method. This method prescribes training your cattle to lead, which of course is accomplished by using feed. This may sound like a good method but it is much like gentling a horse by feeding it, without asking it to do anything. When you get them in the pens and start sorting or working them, like the horse, they may have no fear of you, but they don't have any respect either. The end result is still more stress on the cattle than needed.

Cattle are herd animals. Yet we have been trained over the years to think it is normal for our cattle to spread out across the pasture when we let them through the gate. We have been “educated” to believe we need fences to keep them where we want, and several people to move them. We have been educated on this so much that most people don't recognize actual herd behavior when they see it. In fact this lack of recognizing what a herd looks like is so bad, that I have had people inform me there was something wrong with cattle when I had them working as a herd. Next week I will begin describing not only how cattle act as a herd, but also how to re-establish herd behavior in your cattle.

The final thing I want to touch on this week is the current high market in live cattle. Your banker will be encouraging you to go into more debt for cattle because they are worth so much. Of course this is standard protocol when the market is going up. The problem is that the cattle market is cyclical, which is exacerbated by the global market and whatever flavor of the month USDA comes up with for meat imports. Prices were at or below breakeven for many producers until Canada had a case of mad cow disease. As soon as the access to Canadian cattle was closed, US prices went back up. Despite the current bear market on cattle, I would recommend you resist the temptation to acquire debt to build your herd. In fact, this may be the best time to liquidate your herd to someone who is following their banker's advice. Then you can lease your pastures to yearlings and sell your hay, or lease to pairs where you are guaranteed profitability. By carefully managing your finances, you will be solvent enough to rebuild your herd when the market drops again. When the others are going bankrupt, or getting out of the business because cattle aren't worth anything, you will be able to shift your income from leasing to selling cattle.

Until next week, have a Merry Christmas and think out of the box!