Video Teaser For Stockmanship 101...From Wild To Mild!

We just finished filming for my DV "Stockmanship 101 (rebooting herd instinct in cattle) yesterday. A last minute change in location meant starting out with cattle which were nearly feral. As promised, there was a major change in the behavior of the cattle. This teaser will give you an idea of just how much, as well as possibly give you a chuckle! Enjoy!

Improving The Value Of Your Ranch Without Increasing Taxes

IN many areas, property taxes on rangeland are based on set amounts per acre, rather than the actual value of the range. These two properties are taxed at the same per acre rate despite the fact that the one on the top is more valuable for either grazing or wildlife habitat.  

     These two pictures are from adjoining ranches, and only eight years previously, these two properties were in identical condition. This rangeland improvement was achieved without spiking, fertilizing, irrigation, or mechanical methods. Even more amazing is the fact is that for half the time of this improvement, there was a drought!

     In many instances this can be achieved with minimal adjustments to the infrastructure so that after the first year. With prices for leased pasture, one can possibly get paid to improve  range conditions, rather than spending money to make improvements. Overall costs associated with infrastructure and labor with this pasture improvement method can be reduced even farther by implementing the proper stockmanship methods to allow for controlled grazing without using small paddocks. 

     For more information, visit Natural Cattle Handling or email me.

Differences Between Conventional Cattle Placment and Placing to Graze As a Herd

 In conventional placing, we hold the cattle in one place until they are grazing in different directions. This means that, while the cattle are in the same area, they spread out which also spreads out the herd impact. In placing cattle for holistic, planned grazing, the object is to have the cattle mimic a herd. To do this the cattle need to be as close together as feed and terrain will allow, while grazing in the same direction to maximize herd impact and reduce selective grazing.

To do this we must first move the cattle with the least amount of stress as possible, then slow down the front of the herd until they start grazing and allow the rest of the cattle to catch up. While we can help the cattle in the back catch up, we need to let it all happen. Much of the time it will only take four or five grazing stops to have the cattle acting as a herd and grazing out together, and going to water together.

While on the Ganaderia Valle Colombia Ranch in Mexico we were working on several sets of cattle the first two days rather than concentrating on just one group. We started working on the cattle in this video on Wednesday, and by Friday they were beginning to come together as a herd. At the end of the video you will notice the cattle coming up and grazing towards the cattle at the lead and grazing as a herd.

In another few moves they will have all of the cattle grazing tightly together and be able to graze where they want, when they want, without building more fence while having their herd impact more concentrated than they do in their smaller pastures in the valley floor.

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 the Impossible

   Since my last post, we changed our grazing plan to include grazing Giant Sacaton, which most people think cattle will not eat. There is more about that  on the Circle Ranch website.                

     Other than a problem with the water that had the cattle spread out, searching for water,  the cattle have been generally staying in the areas I put them. There were roughly 25% that did not like the Sacaton, so I pushed them on the side of a "hill" and let them work it. This "hill" is one of those areas which are left out of grazing plans because they are "too steep to graze.

    The owners of these cattle are amazed that these cattle are grazing this high as they have similar country which goes unused because the cattle refuse to graze it. All it took to get them to graze it was to start them up the hill very loose and let them work their own way up. Rather than putting pressure on the back, ride down the side of the cattle so that the ones in the back pick up and move with no pressure from the back. The feed is there and it is good enough that the cattle stay high and keep working. This will improve the hydrology from the top down by producing more feed when the rains come.

     The cattle are also starting to act more as a herd. In the picture below, the cattle are leaving water on their own. Notice how they are trailing out in single file, following the first animal to leave, and going back to where they were previously placed. There are approximately 180 head strung out up that trail.

In the video below, you will see the cattle grazing in the Giant Sacaton.  As we are having calves born nearly  everyday, when I make a pasture move I leave the gate open just in case a calf was left behind. None of the cattle went back.

In the next couple of weeks I will be grazing some more areas that are "too steep" to graze. In the meantime I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. If you are still shopping for Christmas, there is time to order some of my books from Amazon in both paperback and kindle. They are available at 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Company

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.)

Why The Reluctance?

I have a conundrum which I would like solved. You can help by commenting on this post.

While it has been proven that low stress cattle handling techniques increases profitability in several ways:

1. Results in heavier shipping weights through less shrinkage during handling.
2. Saves money in labor as fewer people can handle more cattle.
3. Saves money in antibiotics as there are fewer calves.
4. Lower morbidity rates result in lower mortality rates increasing the number of animals shipped.

In spite of these (proven) benefits ranchers and feedlot managers do not seem to be interested investing a minimal amount of time and money for their crews to learn them. I would like comments on why you (or cattlemen you know) are reluctant to give low stress cattle handling a try, and what it would take to get you (or them) to give it a try.

I am also going to extend my low risk offer through the month of July. Pay my round trip gas to your ranch and I'll spend a week teaching you and your crew. If you think you have not learned anything at the end of the week, or that your cattle are not handling better I go home empty handed. If you decide your crew did learn and that your cattle are handling better, you owe me an additional $1,800. 

 If you would like to take me up on this offer, give me a call at

 I'm looking forward to your comments and suggestions. For more information 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.

Doing Away With "Predator/Prey" Thinking

When we hear about new methods, especially when they claim to result in things which run counter intuitive to what we have experienced, we are suspicious. I have to admit that the first time I heard of a low stress cattle handling seminar I thought it was one of the dumbest things I ever heard of. Like most people I felt I'm doing as good a job as can be done and didn't need the “education.” Looking back, I feel that while my reaction was normal, I really wasn't looking at the larger picture. That changed when I was forced to attend a Bud Williams seminar.

What I learned in Bud's seminar was not what one would expect. I was already doing the things he was teaching, and in fact doing some things he was not teaching. I was astounded at how, no matter how he he explained things, people would have a difficult time understanding the most simple concepts. The final day of the seminar, rather than go to lunch with everyone else, I stayed back to talk with Bud. We discussed some of the things I was doing which worked for me, and why people seem to have such a hard time understanding how cattle work. That was in 1992.

Since then I have been reading every article I can just to see how others are trying to teach people how to handle cattle, and writing a few articles myself. Bud liked my views enough he put a link to my main website at the top of his links page. After spending the last twenty years studying how people are trying to teach reduced stress cattle handing I have come to two conclusions.

First, you cannot learn to work cattle by sitting in a classroom or watching someone else demonstrate. Cattle are living, reacting creatures. In order to learn how to work with them you need to learn how to read them. You can only do this with closely supervised work sessions, which work best if you can look at video to see where you made your mistakes, and where you did things correctly.

Secondly, we must quit looking at everything as a prey/predator relationship. I recently read an article by Temple Grandin describing what she called “passive stalking” and how that can force cattle to come together as a herd. While it is true, when predators travel up the outside of a herd, that the herd moves forward, it is totally false that this is a predator specific relationship. In fact this reaction happens among individuals within a herd. This reaction is also common in humans as well as grazing animals, and has more to do with dominance and body language than the predator/prey relationship.

Most of us observe cattle by merely looking for what health problems there may be. Since I was a small child I have always enjoyed just watching cattle for the sake of watching them. What I discovered as a small boy was that when one of the more dominant animals are walking through the herd (whether it is in a pen, or a pasture) will occasionally drop it's head a bit and change it's posture to a slightly aggressive mode while walking past some of the other animals. The reaction of the other animal would be to start up and walk past the more dominant animal. This reaction is not restricted to grazing animals. Humans have this same reaction as well, and it is easy to put to the test.

Next time you are in a crowded environment such as a mall or WalMart, you can try it for yourself. When you see someone coming in your direction, slightly increase your walking speed, twist your shoulders towards the person while shifting your eyes towards them (without actually turning your head). As you approach your “target” person they will actually speed up to get past you.

This concept is probably hard for most people to fathom because it runs counter nearly everything we have been taught in how to work cattle. The fact is that most of what we have been taught is exactly the opposite of what our cattle need to be relaxed and at maximum production. The proof is revealed in one simple question; If cattle are a herd animal, then why do they spread out across the pasture?

By changing our handling methods to ones which cause less stress in our cattle, we are not training them to act as a herd, but removing the stress and allowing them to enjoy herd behavior as nature intended. For more information, visit my natural cattle handling website.

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.

Grazing Observations

This past week I had the opportunity to take a road trip through the drought ridden Texas Hill Country. This week I would like to share my observations and give some suggestions as to improving forage management. These suggestions will work in any part of the country.

Just by the fencing systems in place, it was easy to tell which places were practicing rotational grazing, and which ones were grazing continuously. While the rotational grazing systems were in slightly better condition than continuous grazing systems, a few things stuck out like a Charlois bull in an Angus cowherd.

First, livestock in both groups are practicing selective grazing. Areas of pastures in both groups would be eaten down to bare ground, while other areas would contain grass that was nearly two feet tall.

The second thing which stuck out like that Charolis bull really surprised me. I expected to see cattle scattered out with each animal grazing (selectively) in its own direction. I did not expect to see that behavior in sheep! I have long been chided with the comment "Are you raising cattle or sheep?" because of the way my cattle graze in a mob like sheep (used to) do.

The third thing that stuck out was that the animals were avoiding the taller grass and grazing the areas which were already grazed to the ground. This was true both in areas being grazed rotaionally as well as continuously. To acheive optimal re-growth, we need to make sure that grasses are not grazed down to the ground. This means we need to leave several inches of grass behind during the growing season to stimulate growth. Allowing selective grazing which takes all of the grass in one area while leaving other areas untouched is not only what causes over grazing, it is also less efficient utilization of forage.

Most stockmen (incorrectly) assume that selective grazing comes with the territory. Then there are those who will try to eliminate it  by strip grazing with temporary electric fence. While the latter will work, it increases labor inputs as well as fence maintenance inputs. However if we learn to take advantage of the natural instinct of grazing animals to act, and graze, as a herd, we will be able to eliminate selective grazing while adding no additional inputs on fencing.

The above observation of sheep grazing spread out like cattle is an indicator that they are being handled in the same way which has destroyed their instinct to graze as a herd. The hardest part of re-instilling this instinct is in accepting that we are to blame for it, and in changing our own methods of handling livestock. Depending on the class of livestock and how badly they have been handled over time, this instinct to graze as a herd can be established in under a week. For older herds which have always had a lot of stress when handled, it may take as long as six weeks. The benefits are well worth the effort with the elimination of selective grazing, elimination of extra fencing, higher gains from the reduction in stress as well as lower labor costs when it comes time for working cattle during branding, weaning or any other time. For more information on how cattle act as a herd, and how to get them started, visit my main website. If you would like to train your cattle to act as a herd, and would like help feel free to contact me.