Grazing in Michiana
We've been having very normal January weather in northern Indiana. There have been two times in the last two or three weeks where the temperature went up to 60 to 65 degrees F and then within 12 to 24 hours later it was down below 20 degrees. With out-wintering cattle, one of the biggest challenges we face is the transition of the weather from warm and wet to cold and dry.
Normally, we have the rain as the cool air is coming in and then it transitions to snow. Many times the snow covers the ground before it can freeze. We deal with a lot of mud because of that, so it makes it quite challenging.
One of the benefits of having the cattle outdoors is that when we have transitions of weather like that, they stay very healthy and there is very little problem with pneumonia. The reason for that is that they're always in fresh air.
This past year, we installed a health monitoring system that reports to us 24 hours a day. It is an ear tag system. It tells us if any of the cows are getting sick or coming in heat. It is very helpful since all our cows have calves about the same time each year, and with that many fresh cows it can be challenging to keep tabs on all their health. During the last two major weather changes, there have been no major health problems.
I think one of the important things about out-wintering cattle is to be calving seasonally. We have calves in March, April, May and June, and then we don't have any the rest of the year. This creates a situation in which all our different groups of animals are old enough to be able to maintain body condition and grow through the cold winter weather. So, all our cows are in late lactation or dry in the winter.
There are two groups of heifers in our system. One group is the pregnant heifers, and the other group is the 8-10-month-old ones, so they do quite well. I don't miss having baby calves in the winter, and I'm glad we're using that system.
A very important part of having animals grouped seasonally is reproduction, because that's what maintains the seasonal structure of the herd. Seasonal calving in the spring matches the animals' greatest nutritional need with the pasture's greatest productivity. This helps keep costs lower and is very beneficial for the health of the cattle.
Windbreaks are one of the most important things that we can have on the farm for out-wintering. We can create those by planting trees and bushes. We can also create them with hay bales. I was just reading about windbreaks, and there's a lot of information about how to do it properly. We're fortunate to have some woods and trees that create windbreaks and the cattle seem to really like them because they're out of the wind when it's cold.
We also provide bedding for them to lie on in the pasture. We purchase some lower quality hay or straw that we unroll in the fields for them to lay on and eat a little bit of it and they make use of that. One of the drawbacks of that system is that when the ground is wet and doesn't freeze, then we have to reseed those fields every year.
We brought the heifers home in December and did a pregnancy check on them. Seventy-eight out of 79 of them were pregnant, and that's very good numbers. I thought the heifers did very well and came home in excellent body condition this year.
Grazing heifers is one of the easiest ways to learn about rotational grazing because they are very willing to work and do a good job of grazing. Grazing heifers is a good way to lower cost of raising them because they require no bedding and manure hauling, as they harvest their feed and haul their own manure.
There were 79 heifers and four bulls grazing on approximately 57 acres. We fed them pasture and provided them with trace mineral salt blocks. Next year we might look into using insecticide ear tags and see if that helps with the fly control for the heifers.
We have a friend that has worked with a beef herd, and they've been using insecticide ear tags. They use a four- or five-year rotation and it's a different type of insecticide tag each year, so the flies do not build up resistance to it. He said it really works well for pasture cattle.
In January, it is a good time to make plans for any frost seeding of clovers and reseeding of grasses that need to be done in the spring and to get those seeds ordered and on hand. Frost seeding clovers on pastures is a very good thing to do in February and March. Frost seeding clovers works very well. However, I've tried frost seeding grass seeds, but it doesn't seem to work as well.
We need to continually be thinking about how to manage the cattle and the pastures to have an efficient and profitable grazing system.
Editor's note: Mike Martin invites readers to send in grazing-related questions for him to answer in future columns. Readers should send their questions to: mikesue.martin@gmail.com.