I haven't soil tested in some time now. Probably before 2010 or so.
Why? Cost vs reward from the info gained.....economics.
The information gain would be used to grow vegetation to be consumed by amimals or be cut for hay to be fed to animals with any surplus hay to be sold. Dang, the thought of all that work makes me tired.
I can look out over my pastures that I used to manage heavily for hay purposes and pastures I tried to keep just one more animal on. What was the payout on that.....for the work involved....?
Well, I carried 30% more cows. Baled 110 to 140 acres of hay. Spent a lot of time on a tractor burning fuel and working on equipment. Spent time watching the weather looking for the right time to throw thousands of dollars worth of fertilizer out or find the perfect time to cut and bale the hay it was put on. Then came moving the hay to storage or making arrangements for someone to come get it....but couldn't come because the were going on vacation.
Think about the end game a bit. Are you better off doing all these things? Is what you end up getting paid to do these things actually worth the time, extra work, and monetary risk?
Let's take some east round numbers.
Say your able to run 100 cows under this senecio. Consensus seems to be $450 to $500 yearly carrying cost per cow. Average that to $47500. Let's even give you 100 525 lb calves to sell today and your going to get $1.50 a pound commission free.....$78750.00........ yea! I made $31000......oops. I forgot about the 100 rolls of hay sold at $10 over cost. Or a lot less......$32000...... whoop
But what if you could carry 70 cows and forget about the hay. Never mind, I don't need 18 tons of fertilizer. Major equipment problem is the batteries in the tractors because it hasn't been cranked in a month. Instead of using 900 gallons of tractor fuel a year you can get by on less than 300.
55,125 - 32,250 = 21,875. But your work load went from about 1560 hours to about 520 or less.
Think about that for a bit....