Grazing in Michiana
In November 2008, my wife and I and another married couple took a trip west to Wichita Springs, Colo. for a bull auction. The agribusiness conducting the sale was the Pharo Cattle Co. Kit Pharo, the owner of the ranch, has been a long-time proponent of management intensive rotational grazing. Kit specializes in producing high quality genetics in several breeds of beef cattle specifically aimed at being suited to being efficient grazing animals.
The Pharo Cattle Co. sends out a weekly email dealing with issues related to rotational grazing, beef cow management and livestock market trends. For those interested, I am on that mailing list, and would be happy to share contact information.
That week-long trip was a memorable one, and an experience that I would love to repeat. Not having travelled a lot out west, rotational grazing was not the only beef production methodology that I was exposed to at the time. Traveling across the prairies of western Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, all the wide open, treeless, flat grasslands reminded me of just how big this world is, and of the fact that not everywhere is there the population density that we have here in northeastern Indiana. In talking to the locals out there, I found that a drive of 50-75 miles to the nearest town just to do business—go to the bank, post office and grocery store—is no uncommon occurrence.
Traveling across these desolate, deserted areas, it was amazing that in the early mornings or late evenings, one could see a dawn-to-dusk light for many miles across the prairie. Some of these lights were a lone set of ranch buildings, but some of them marked the "other" side of beef production out west—the dry lot.
Driving up close to one of these operations, one would find a fenced-in area, often occupying five to 10 acres or more. These lots were packed with cattle being finished on grain for beef production. It was interesting that many of the lots had been used for years without appearing to have been cleaned out, as the accumulated manure under foot often crept up the side of the fence for several feet.
I have pointed out before that it is amazing to me that counties relatively close together can have widely varying conservation concerns. As much as LaGrange County has in common with our immediate neighbors, our conservation priorities are still quite different from the other counties that surround us, due to variations in soil type, topography, drainage and hydrology, surface and groundwater issues and the like. Farming methods that work well in some places, for many reasons, often don't work in others.
Anyway, the "dry lot" system for finishing beef cattle seems to work well out west. When you approach the operations, the smell of accumulated manure is very strong. Out there, however, there is no one living nearby to be offended by it. Water quality, likewise, is of little concern, with the prairies having many feet of topsoil to filter contaminated runoff from getting into groundwater. In many of these areas, the groundwater is many hundreds of feet under the surface. Soil compaction is not critical, as the low annual precipitation in those areas makes much of the prairie land unsuitable for row crop production anyways. Thus, many of the concerns that we have here with this kind of livestock management are not critical out there.
Switching back to rotational grazing now for a moment, livestock densities are greatly affected by local conditions, just as they are here further east. With as little as 12-16 inches of average annual precipitation, water is scarce, and the growth of grazing forage is often sparse. Whereas here, Purdue University Extension tells us that we can reasonably expect to raise one or two animal units (an "animal unit" is 1,000 pounds of live animal weight) per acre of forage. Out there it takes many acres to raise one beef animal to market weight.
Since around 2007, many local producers have experimented with this dry lot management practice. It has been used particularly to raise cattle, both beef and replacement dairy animals. The advantage is that, in hauling feed in, one can produce a great number of animals on relatively limited acreage. This is of increasing concern, since every farmer should be well aware of the literal explosion of land values in northeastern Indiana in the last 10 years or so.
Here, however, we have problems that are not present further west. Instead of 16 inches of annual rainfall, we have around 40. Instead of topsoil measured in feet like they do on the prairies, we have inches of it instead. In LaGrange County, our glacially influenced soils tend to be on the light, sandy side, with very rapid permeability rates which allow water rapid access to aquifers in a relatively poorly filtered condition. And those groundwater resources are much closer to the surface than they are out west; I grew up on a rural property north of Wolcottville where our well water came from around 22 feet down. I know of many wells in our area that aren't even that deep.
Add to that the population densities, both human and animal, of our area compared to theirs, and the issues of soil compaction and air quality and odor, and we run into a bunch of problems with dry lots that the West does not experience.
I am aware of some dry lot operations in northeastern Indiana that are very successful. Typically, these farms require much harder surface concrete, a lot of bedding, infrastructure, equipment, buildings and labor in order to maintain clean, healthy conditions for the livestock. Under conditions here, it usually does not work to try to raise large numbers of livestock on limited acres on bare ground. I might mention that the "dry lots" that I have seen in northern Indiana are never dry.
The great advantage to the environment of using rotational grazing lies in covering the great majority of the surface of the ground with a dense mat of vegetative growth of forage. This reduces erosion and sedimentation, keeps the soil and the water in a healthier condition and improves farm productivity. One of the key features to maintaining a healthy rotational grazing operation is for the operator to know and understand his conditions—the soil, the water, the slopes—and to suit his livestock stocking densities appropriately. Too many, and you tend to mine your resources; too few, and you waste potential.
Livestock density is an important factor to consider keeping a farm healthy, happy and productive and the environment better for us all!