This is a great article by Walt Davis about grassfed beef and how NPR interprets various things from the grassfed beef industry to climate change:
Special thanks to our "guides" Henry and Marylu of North Dakota Badlands Horse! “Like” their Facebook page to learn more about them. They have some great posts on their page about using low-stress stockmanship to gather horses on the park.
When your ratio of money, feed, and cattle changes, you need to adjust your management to meet that change. Thursday afternoon a fire took out about 15 acres (out of 80 acres) of our pasture and browse.
Because we are in a severe drought with no signs of letting up (though it might rain today!), that meant we needed to adjust the other two values in our equation. This morning we loaded up 5 cows/calves and hauled them to the auction. We will continue to haul animals to the auction BEFORE we run out of feed and/or money. We can always buy more cattle when it starts to rain again (and it will . . . someday . . .), but we won’t spend ourselves out of feed or money just to try and keep some cattle around.
The gather, sort, and load just took 32 minutes of low-stress (on us and the cattle) stockmanship.
Richard and I stopped by the Brown Ranch near Bismarck, ND to visit with Paul Brown on our way home from the Baker, MT school. We met Paul when he attended our school in Arcola, SK last August. He’s also setting us up with a two day stockmanship school in Bismarck November 16-17.
Terry Gompert, Certified Holistic Instructor, talks to the students about knowing how fast grass grow-back is occurring.
Terry and the class examine the soil organic layer to determine past management practices. Having a 4” litter two layer is a good indication that the soil is growing, accumulating and will sustain plant growth in the future.
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Mark Brownlee – Owner, host and grazier. |
Terry Gompert, University of Nebraska, extension grazing specialist, Steve Hefner, Water Quality NRCS, Mark Brownlee, speaking, Doug Peterson, NRCS Missouri State Grassland Specialist, Curtis Gooch, NRCS Grassland Conservationist listen to the experiences of Mark.
Thanks to Doug Peterson, NRCS State Grassland Specialist, for posting a link to view Allan Savory’s presentation of saving soil and the world with grazing livestock. You can view the presentation here http://vimeo.com/8239427. It will be an hour well spent. There are always some things I don’t totally agree with, however most of what he says is correct.
I have been watching some webinars put on by Nebraska Extension and thought others might be interested. The url to enter for the first webinar is http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p63586080/
This webinar covers soil health and cover crop cocktail seedings. I will post others as they become available.
Several months ago Don Lucietta, assistant to Representative Roy Blunt, asked us if they could bring the Representative and an ag tour group to see our switchgrass field in August? We said sure, why not? Well, we didn’t hear much about it after that, though they did ask for some promotional information and photos about us a month or so ago for the printed packet of materials they handed out to the group.
Then, this morning things started happening! KOLR 10 TV station called and asked if they could come out earlier and interview us.
Here’s the link to their finished report which appeared on TV tonight!
And here’s the link to the Springfield News-Leader articles in the August 12 issue. We were front page, above the fold in the actual paper!
Richard was interviewed about our switchgrass field, our cattle business, and our low-stress livestock handling!
Click here for a good web page to monitor the drought conditions in your area or some other area that has an effect on your agricultural-based income.
A drought in your area calls for closer management of your resources through heavy culling, possible downsizing, and different pasture management to maintain the health of your pastures. Proper management of pastures in a drought can provide feed for some livestock and still keep the land and grasses healthy for when the rains return.
