Stocking rate/ aums

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ZMT

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Okay so I understand stocking rate and aums, but I'm a little confused. I'm from montana where you get pretty good snow cover from November till early march or later, when calculating how many animals your land can support for a year do you include those winter months even though you feed hay and supplement all winter due to snow cover and low protein in grass or do you just calcualte it for those growing month in the spring, summer, and fall. I used our nrcs aum calculator to figure out how many heifers my parents could support on there 20 acres but I'm stumped because of this. Some answers if you can. Thanks!
 
I think there are too many unknowns. Such as, will you be buying hay? Just heifers, or grown cows/calves? Is the land lush pasture, bare dirt, mountain?
 
Well yes, you have to buy hay in the winter, and it's pasture grazing land on the plains 12-14" rain fall so it isnt lush till april or later and it's for heifers on 20 acres.
 
I figure animal units for the time period that I do not feed hay. It really doesnt matter if its 10 cows per acre or 1 cow per acre if you are hauling all the hay to them.
 
I base my stocking rate on year round use but I didn't want to jump out and offer that as I can graze that year round so I don't know anything about how snow factors in. I have to supplement a little in late summer but it's supplement and not feed. When we talk about stockers here pretty much everyone just assumes that they'll only be there when the grass is green.
You're really going to have to find someone local to get an accurate answer but I'm in the 12-14" inches of rain category here and I stock at ten acres per pair and that's comfortable most years so I would guess you could do about twice that on light heifers.
 
"Here" it takes 30 acres to support a cow/calf pair, aka AUM for a year. For summer pasture purposes, I figure roughly 10 acres per pair for a standard 150 summer grazing season.

This season, neighbors are running 66 pairs + bulls on my 840 acres of summer pasture. Usually only 60 cows but took a few more in this year. Pairs put in June 1, calves will be taken home in late Nov.

Cows will stay until late Dec if grass and weather allow. I leave it up to the neighbor when he decides it's no longer worth it. When real cold sets in, he has to drive about 10 miles to chop ice and starts caking. If the snow gets deep, pasture can be tough to get to and protection is limited.

My :2cents: about this area of western SD. The stocking rate of course varies a lot from one region and state to the next.
 

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