IluvABbeef
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Still kicking myself for not posting this sooner. Oh well. Anyhow, I went on a tour to a custom grazing ranching operation a ways out from where I live several weeks ago. I got a personal tour since I was one of a couple potential employees to help out on this operation. Didn't get the job of course (it happens), but the tour was certainly quite interesting and illuminating, not to mention I learned quite a bit from it, the very things I wish to share here.
The owner, Steve Kenyon, showed me the plots that he has set out to graze around 3500 head of cattle this summer using managed intensive grazing on I think over 12 or probably even 20 sections of land (can't remember the exact number) that he has rented out to do such grazing on. Many, many miles of temporary and permanent fencing to check and fix. And, he only owns three pieces of equipment: a bale truck, trailer, and a quad. That's it.
Statistics aside, he showed me that he had bale grazed most of the stockers he purchased on his land that he owns during the winter (I don't think he did any swath grazing), and rolls bales out with his bale truck for the other heifers he has to custom graze in the summer. The interesting thing about his unrolling bales is that he doesn't do it in a sacrifice area of just dirt and crap, but unrolls it out on pasture when the grasses are just starting to come up. The unrolling of the bales does several things: 1) keeps the heifers happy and full, 2) trains them to the hotwire, and 3) "abuses" the pasture to the point where he's actually deliberately overgrazing that paddock along with the hay that he rolls out. If I can remember correctly, the reason that he "abuses" pastures/paddocks like this is so that it actually promotes grass growth and organic matter development. (He writes for the Canadian Cattlemen magazine too, so I'll have to find that article and share with you folks about this sort of spring-time pasture management he does.)
Unlike what I had been planning out for the farm at home, he actually doesn't fence off the wetland areas that only see lots of water during heavy rains and spring melt. He'll only fence off the larger more significant areas where water's going to be throughout the year and where it's prime wildlife habitat. But the areas that only see water come spring and have the marshy grasses and such, he says it's not worth it, especially since the animals are only in that location for a day or so before being moved on to another paddock, as rotational MIG grazing allows.
His use of dugouts as main water sources is nothing new I've heard of, but seeing what he uses as waterers was a bit surprising, to say the least. I believe he said he bought about three (or maybe four?) rock pickers--yes, you read right---cheap, to be used as waterers for cattle. All he had to do was install a weight and float and a float valve in the picker to monitor the water level (I think he used an old 1 gal. jug as the float for that), park the picker where he wanted and hook up the fittings and hoses to be able to pump water into it. He told me they work just as well as a stock tub/tank, and hold water just fine. Only problem is that he has to check the electric wires every so often because sometimes the wires connect to the picker and electrifies it if the animals get a little rough around that area in competition for water (which doesn't happen very often, he tells me), making it not a pleasant experience for the animals if they want a drink. He has the wires set up so that half the picker is outside of the animal's reach and the other half, filled with water, is there for the animals. The one he showed me was fed via solar-powered pump, but said that's the last one he has on his ranch. I asked why and he told me that they keep crapping out on him all the time, the parts to fix them are just too expensive to purchase, the whole system too complicated to fix and the wires in these pumps corrode too easily---the result of what you get with certain supplies that are made in China. So he told me the two systems that work the best for him are gas-powered and gravity-fed water systems. They work best because they're least-cost and much easier to maintain and repair if need be.
Gas-powered pump he showed me had two holding areas: a large water trough (the big circular ones that can water over 15 cows at a time), and a large 500 gal. water tank. The water tank is used to store water from the dugout and pump into the water trough as the animals drink. He powered up the gas pump to pump water into the water trough, and once it was full (the float valve in the tank acts just like it would in an automatic waterer, only he has a weight and float attached to further monitor this), the water is diverted to the big container and the pump continues to go until it is full...again, float valve monitors how much full the tank should get.
With the gravity-fed water system, basically all it involves is digging out a big hole (which we call the dugout), filling it with water, and siphoning the water down from the pile into a holding and/or stock waterer. In the hills and mountains, this is real easy to use. For those in more flatter country, making use of what is called "The Turkey Nest" is also best for gravity-fed systems. All this "turkey nest" is is just a pile of dirt (or in his case, clay) left over from digging out a dugout. Using the pile of dirt beside the dugout, he can hire someone to dig out a 5000 gal. depression into that pile of dirt. A gas-powered pump fills the nest from the dugout every few days, and gravity flow from siphoning water from the turkey nest to the stock tank or water trough keeps the cattle from becoming thirsty. Lining the nest with silage plastic helps prevent clay and other particles from being stirred up, but if a cow or deer or any animal with sharp hooves or claws that get into that area, unintentionally or not, then it's a fun job to repair all those holes made in the plastic.
You can read more about the gravity-fed watering systems he uses here: http://www.agcanada.com/canadiancattlem ... that-work/
Now I wasn't around when he was doing the actual MIG grazing part of his operation, since I had come a week or so before he started this, but I know he follows the same or similar set-up that Jim and Agmantoo do on here, among others. I believe what he does differently is that he sets up the paddocks with electric fencing before grazing starts, and leaves them throughout the season, rotating cattle that way, switching paddocks once every 4 hours to a few days, depending on the paddock size and the size of the herd in the various portions he manages. Don't quote me on this, since I'm not to sure on it, but I know we all know that everyone who does MIG has their own way of utilizing fencing systems. But one thing I've seen is that he doesn't lift up the wires to let the cattle through underneath like you do, Agman, but rather rolls up about 20 feet of the wire and calls the animals through.
He does have annual tours to his ranch around July , so I may have to get a hold of him again (this year or next, most likely next year, depending on how busy things get) and get a tour of his grazing operation--especially what he does during the grazing period--and see what else he does and learn from there. And I won't forget to share what I learned here a bit sooner either.
The owner, Steve Kenyon, showed me the plots that he has set out to graze around 3500 head of cattle this summer using managed intensive grazing on I think over 12 or probably even 20 sections of land (can't remember the exact number) that he has rented out to do such grazing on. Many, many miles of temporary and permanent fencing to check and fix. And, he only owns three pieces of equipment: a bale truck, trailer, and a quad. That's it.
Statistics aside, he showed me that he had bale grazed most of the stockers he purchased on his land that he owns during the winter (I don't think he did any swath grazing), and rolls bales out with his bale truck for the other heifers he has to custom graze in the summer. The interesting thing about his unrolling bales is that he doesn't do it in a sacrifice area of just dirt and crap, but unrolls it out on pasture when the grasses are just starting to come up. The unrolling of the bales does several things: 1) keeps the heifers happy and full, 2) trains them to the hotwire, and 3) "abuses" the pasture to the point where he's actually deliberately overgrazing that paddock along with the hay that he rolls out. If I can remember correctly, the reason that he "abuses" pastures/paddocks like this is so that it actually promotes grass growth and organic matter development. (He writes for the Canadian Cattlemen magazine too, so I'll have to find that article and share with you folks about this sort of spring-time pasture management he does.)
Unlike what I had been planning out for the farm at home, he actually doesn't fence off the wetland areas that only see lots of water during heavy rains and spring melt. He'll only fence off the larger more significant areas where water's going to be throughout the year and where it's prime wildlife habitat. But the areas that only see water come spring and have the marshy grasses and such, he says it's not worth it, especially since the animals are only in that location for a day or so before being moved on to another paddock, as rotational MIG grazing allows.
His use of dugouts as main water sources is nothing new I've heard of, but seeing what he uses as waterers was a bit surprising, to say the least. I believe he said he bought about three (or maybe four?) rock pickers--yes, you read right---cheap, to be used as waterers for cattle. All he had to do was install a weight and float and a float valve in the picker to monitor the water level (I think he used an old 1 gal. jug as the float for that), park the picker where he wanted and hook up the fittings and hoses to be able to pump water into it. He told me they work just as well as a stock tub/tank, and hold water just fine. Only problem is that he has to check the electric wires every so often because sometimes the wires connect to the picker and electrifies it if the animals get a little rough around that area in competition for water (which doesn't happen very often, he tells me), making it not a pleasant experience for the animals if they want a drink. He has the wires set up so that half the picker is outside of the animal's reach and the other half, filled with water, is there for the animals. The one he showed me was fed via solar-powered pump, but said that's the last one he has on his ranch. I asked why and he told me that they keep crapping out on him all the time, the parts to fix them are just too expensive to purchase, the whole system too complicated to fix and the wires in these pumps corrode too easily---the result of what you get with certain supplies that are made in China. So he told me the two systems that work the best for him are gas-powered and gravity-fed water systems. They work best because they're least-cost and much easier to maintain and repair if need be.
Gas-powered pump he showed me had two holding areas: a large water trough (the big circular ones that can water over 15 cows at a time), and a large 500 gal. water tank. The water tank is used to store water from the dugout and pump into the water trough as the animals drink. He powered up the gas pump to pump water into the water trough, and once it was full (the float valve in the tank acts just like it would in an automatic waterer, only he has a weight and float attached to further monitor this), the water is diverted to the big container and the pump continues to go until it is full...again, float valve monitors how much full the tank should get.
With the gravity-fed water system, basically all it involves is digging out a big hole (which we call the dugout), filling it with water, and siphoning the water down from the pile into a holding and/or stock waterer. In the hills and mountains, this is real easy to use. For those in more flatter country, making use of what is called "The Turkey Nest" is also best for gravity-fed systems. All this "turkey nest" is is just a pile of dirt (or in his case, clay) left over from digging out a dugout. Using the pile of dirt beside the dugout, he can hire someone to dig out a 5000 gal. depression into that pile of dirt. A gas-powered pump fills the nest from the dugout every few days, and gravity flow from siphoning water from the turkey nest to the stock tank or water trough keeps the cattle from becoming thirsty. Lining the nest with silage plastic helps prevent clay and other particles from being stirred up, but if a cow or deer or any animal with sharp hooves or claws that get into that area, unintentionally or not, then it's a fun job to repair all those holes made in the plastic.
You can read more about the gravity-fed watering systems he uses here: http://www.agcanada.com/canadiancattlem ... that-work/
Now I wasn't around when he was doing the actual MIG grazing part of his operation, since I had come a week or so before he started this, but I know he follows the same or similar set-up that Jim and Agmantoo do on here, among others. I believe what he does differently is that he sets up the paddocks with electric fencing before grazing starts, and leaves them throughout the season, rotating cattle that way, switching paddocks once every 4 hours to a few days, depending on the paddock size and the size of the herd in the various portions he manages. Don't quote me on this, since I'm not to sure on it, but I know we all know that everyone who does MIG has their own way of utilizing fencing systems. But one thing I've seen is that he doesn't lift up the wires to let the cattle through underneath like you do, Agman, but rather rolls up about 20 feet of the wire and calls the animals through.
He does have annual tours to his ranch around July , so I may have to get a hold of him again (this year or next, most likely next year, depending on how busy things get) and get a tour of his grazing operation--especially what he does during the grazing period--and see what else he does and learn from there. And I won't forget to share what I learned here a bit sooner either.
