MORE  COMMON  MISTAKES  NEW  GRAZIERS  MAKE

We have personally been through the drill of converting a conventional design dairy into a grass based, intensive rotation design dairy-- and some of the mistakes you are prone to make can be costly.    In order to prevent these mistakes in your farm, we offer these suggestions, some of which may be counter to local advice or your personal inclination-- but still necessary to learn.

Graziers do many things that are different from conventional practice, because they find them a better fit to compensate for the seasonal effects of grass management.    We are beginning a section called "Alternate Management Practices" in which you will find suggestions that will often confuse your more conventional neighbors.    Check it out and if you have such ideas of your own send them to us-- if we like them we might include them.

(1)   'GRASS' IS NOT A 'WEED'

This is the title of another article posted on the website.    The only point not made in the article that matters to you is this:  those trained to dairy in a "non grazing" way will not understand what you are doing and thus will not be good sources of advice on how to do it correctly.   Their preferences may often be to talk you out of being a grazier.    It is possible to be making a living inside agriculture and not be cognizant of what is developing in farming and animal husbandry practices that differ in philosophy from yours-- and this will start with the ignorance of the corn + soybeans + alfalfa farmers that there actually is such a thing as "grass genetics", or that "forage" corn is different from (maybe better for your cows) than "grain" corn.

(2)   PRODUCTION YIELDS ARE ADDITIVE

Most new dairymen, whether conventional or pasture-based, do not start out at the level of milk yields that dairymen with years of experience attain.     The cows you buy to start a herd will not be as "good" as the cows you breed, mostly because incoming cows were used to the environment they left, and have to relearn everything to adapt to you and their new environment.

Adaptation is a basic concept of Biology-- that living beings have to adjust their behavior and performance to the characteristic limitations and opportunities a new environment offers.    In conventional dairying, great effort is put into feeding the "same" feed every day, and in the "same" quantity.    Over time, a production oriented dairyman coaxes his cows to eat more feed, and to digest a feed mix that has an increasing energy density.    Thus the attained level of milk production per cow on that dairy grows as their feed growing, harvesting, storage and mixing skills increase.    But it will also reflect that new environment changing the genes of the animals to mimic what all those changes dictate for cows' functional capabilities.

You can buy cows from a conventional dairy that averages 104 pounds per day, turn them loose in unmanaged pasture, and see their production fall to 30 pounds per day.    This is the result of all the ways in which the environment changed for those cows.      So-- when buying cows-- do not assume that herd x's cows are better than herd y's because of a higher herd average (and thus justify a premium price paid)-- their production level is primarily the result of the management skill of that dairyman within his chosen production paradigm.

Of all the personal qualities of good dairymen, daily discipline in the flow of work has the most impact upon cow performance.    Regular milking times, regular removal of uneaten feed, daily rotation of grazing paddocks to provide a consistent volume of fresh feed, all of these support your level of production.    "The devil is in the details" is an apt description of dairying, and a conversion to grazing does not change your need to be a "manager" of what is a complex production process.   

(3)  SUCCESSFUL GRAZIERS ARE STILL BUSY DAIRYMEN

The worst reason to go into grazing is that you are "too lazy" or too disorganized to do a good job in conventional dairy farming, and tend to run out of feed, or harvest feed of lower nutrient density.    It is proven fact that a systematically rotated grass paddock will produce 40% more feed value than a continuously grazed pasture.     If you are not disciplined to do daily rotation you will also tend to run out of feed as a grazier, without the luxury of stored feed to cover for you, and damaging the production of those paddocks in future seasons.

[More concepts follow]

(4)   THE FEED COMPANY IS IN THE GRAIN BUSINESS

You will find there are many choices in feed companies that will be eager to have a new client and will promise to "fix you right up" with a ration that will immediately have your cows milking at 70 or 80 pounds per day.     If they actually succeed in that, you will likely fail financially.    Unless you are taking over an established successful grazing farm, the only way this is possible is if they spend all your milk check to "sell" you a given level of milk production-- generated by feeding a mix of grains that are common commodities within their basic grain trading businesses.

The major grain export companies-- Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Con Agra-- all own major feed company labels, and are contractually connected to local elevators across the country that are in the business of collecting local grain production and moving it to the various export depots.    The fact these elevators can also grind grain and bag feed is in many cases a side business that reflects a simple fact-- most grain farmers (except in the prairies) also feed some beef cattle or hogs or chickens, and a few have dairies.    So as their grain production buyer, a relationship also exists to sell them back processed feeds for their animals (as well as seeds to produce that grain).

Local cattle feeding is necessary as an outlet for the "damaged" grain that does not pass export standards.    The low test weight corn, the heat-damaged grain, the stuff that was stored too long in rat-infested bins, finds its way into cattle feed.     Simple stomach animals (like pigs) and short feeding life animals (like feedlot steers) can tolerate this stuff-- but dairy cows will suffer, either from uneven production or from digestive-related health problems.

 Compounding this is the control of conventional grain seed production by large chemical companies who manufacture the fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides the grain trade depends upon for their yields and trait characteristics to "feed" the export trade.      DuPont, Cyanamid, Monsanto, Dow, and one other major chemical company now hold seven patents on BioTech seed traits and own or control 70% of all corn and soybean seed production, plus 40% of alfalfa seed production.    The local elevator is their dealer for seed, fertilizer, and sprays.     These connections have trained them to believe that "grass" is a "weed"--  they do not make (or breed) products that are optimal fits for a "grass based" dairy.     So reread that article referenced in (1) to clarify this.

(5)   DAIRY PROFITS COME FROM FORAGE-- NOT GRAIN

This is NOT to suggest you can succeed in dairy without feeding grain.    Most modern cattle were bred and selected in part for their ability to use grain to produce milk (instead of weight gain).   This is a genetic selection effect that has to be understood in all its facets to avoid mistakes in both the feeding and the breeding design of your dairy.

New Zealand cattle-- the only "grass only" dairy genetic pool

Among genetically measured dairy breeding populations, the Kiwi Jerseys, Friesians, Ayrshires, Shorthorns and "Kiwicross" cattle are the only ones in which selection has occurred within an environment that does not feed suplemental grain.     All North American and most European dairy cattle are developed in the context of rations that are 45%-55% forages and 55%-45% grain-based supplements.     To deviate greatly from that feeding ration with "high genetic value" cattle is to ask for declining production, lost body condition and health, or failed reproduction.

Genetic selection-- how does the body ration nutrient energy?

Modern dairy publications present the impression that "genetics" is all about statistics, and in a cattle and semen marketing sense, it is.    Government agencies and breed associations both collect and collate statistics from milk testing and type classification to provide ranking data on the "genetic value" of breeding animals available to you either through auction or through AI.

But in a more basic sense, "genetics" is an aspect of Biology, and reminds us that the basic biological building block is the "gene".     What these statistics attempt to measure is the effect of how genes direct the cow's body to use her nutrient intake to turn her feed into frame growth, organ development, weight gain and condition, production and reproduction, while supporting health through an immune system and a pattern of safe behavior.

Modern genetic selection, being focused on maximizing milk yield, preferred genes that would sacrifice weight gain, then reproduciton, and eventually health, to produce more milk.    In order for body maintenance and reproduciton to still occur, cows had to be coaxed first to eat more (of which appetite is a genetic characteristic, linked to body capacity) and then to digest a greater nutrient energy density in the feed mix they ate.    Thus, maximum production was achieved in part through greater volumes of energy-dense grains.

Thus in your genetic selection for optimal production under grass management, you must be aware of genetic differences both in animals, and in the plants they eat.     To do one without the other is to fail at adapting genetics to the environment. 

Anyone entering into grazing is wise to recognize the transition periods for each of these things to occur.     Seeding fields to higher energy density forage choices (high energy grass varieties, nitrogen fixing legumes to feed the grasses, low lignin silage corn varieties and BMR sorghums, warm season annuals to even out forage production during the "summer slump" of the grass, fertilization of fields with gypsum lime to raise palatability and energy) needs to be your first effort.      Sire selection (either within breed or thru crossbreeding) that points you in the direction of a more equal nutrient rationing ability will produce heifers that stay healthier and breed faster than existing conventional genetics cows.     If you are buying cows, buy cows with more body capacity and less frame mass, with wider heads and open nostrils, and who exhibit an easy mobility and more physical vigor.      These will adapt better and more quickly to grazing.

The function of a "ruminant" is to process forage

The more grain that is fed, the less work the rumen is expected to do.    Over decades of increased grain feeding to ruminants, the required capacity of the rumen has shrunk.   Thus you see cows for which high production is claimed, who have virtually no depth or width of body or spring of rib.    This is a "sow" physique rather than a "cow" physique, in the minds of those who intend to make milk on a forage based grazing program.     Your mating selection process will need to be cognizant of this, and direct you to choose sires who will add, rather than subtract, body capacity where it is needed for full function of the rumen and abomasum that starts and completes the forage digestion process.

AI studs offer linear mating systems-- these are based on the preferred TMR physique that can utilize lots of grain and commodities without gaining weight-- the physique that selection makes tall, shallow, narrow, and slabby sided.     We strongly recommend you investigate (or switch to) the "aAa" breeding guide (Weeks Analysis) which is an independent thinking system that will systematically add back to your cow physiques all the ruminant dimensions that commercial grain trade feeding has lost us-- including a healthier overall physical functional balance.

 (6)   CREATE PADDOCK PLANT DENSITY-- SUPPORT IT BY ROTATION

The worst mistake a budding grazier makes is to buy seed from a traditional elevator.   You will get "horse and lawn" grasses, with limited nutrient capability and too great a tendency to go into summer dormancy and stay there the rest of the season.

The efforts of high energy grass plant breeders in Holland, Oregon, and elsewhere has been focused on three areas:  (a)  opportunity for high energy density,  (b)  maintaining high fiber digestibility,  (c)  delaying seed head maturity to match alfalfa budding,  (d)  maintain as much as possible a perennial plant survivability with increasing yield capability.

The result has been that the best new grasses are a superior forage to alfalfa, as a forage that will produce milk.    Nothing beats Dutch perennial ryegrass, for instance, for pounds of milk it will produce per acre-- in most trials up to twice the milk per acre that alfalfa generates.    Thus in your conversion to grazing, ryegrass (not to be confused with the "cereal rye" used as a green manure covercrop in the south) can be a key to competitive production.

Grass is still a crop-- thus it needs to be fertilized

Why did Grandpa's pastures only produce milk for about one month?    First, they were native grasses-- bred to cover the ground, not genetically selected for yield;  Second, Grandpa never rotated them, so what the cows left would go to seed (and the roots go dormant);   Third, the best grasses cows will overgraze, often pulling out or killing roots, so their populations decline, allowing the less desirable species (including woody plants) to take over;  Fourth, nobody ever thought it was necessary to fertilize a pasture.

In New Zealand, where grass dairies are the norm, paddocks typically receive about 150 units of nitrogen annually, broken up into 25-30 units per grazing pass (most paddocks in a rotated sequence will get five to six cow passes-- "cuttings"-- per season).    The more yield ability in the grass you seed, the greater the requirement IF you intend to harvest its full capbilility AND you wish the grass grown to have optimal nutrient density.  

The simplest way to fertilize grass is to plant a companion legume, as "nitrogen" is the key grass fertilizer, and legumes (clover, trefoil, or alfalfa) fix nitrogen in the root layer they draw from the air during their respiration process.     The cows' fresh manure as they pass over the paddock also has a fertilizing effect-- just delayed by the decomposition time.     

Rotation has three benefits-- all produce more milk

First, we rotate grass in order to have enough grass.    You only offer cows in a day what they will efficiently eat in a day.     Too big an area, and half of it will get left-- expecting them to clean that up the next day does not work, they just overgraze what they ate the first day (it actually works better to turn in other animals for cleanup duty, steers or heifers, something willing to eat a poorer quality feed).    Too small an area, and you don't produce as much milk, and you also run the risk of hoof destruction of plant crowns as well as overgrazing.

Shutting cows out of what they already ate, allows a quick regrowth of the grazed plants, in part because we do not let the cows graze the plant below the level at which the first leaf emerges on the stalk.    Plants grow by photosyntehsis, and that requires a leaf to collect sun energy.    Also keep in mind that if a plant is grazed too low, it could die, thus overgrazing kills roots supporting the plant's absorption of soil minerals.     This is the reason continuously grazed pastures turn into weed patches over time-- cows eat the tastiest grasses first.

The solution to overgrazing is always reseeding.    A grazing paddock does not always require tillage, you can annually overseed (by frost seeding or by drilling) to add a new variety of grass or to increase plant density.

The primary production reason to rotate grass, however, is to always provide vegetative grass to the milk cow.    The grass plant is uniquely high in both energy, protein and digestibility until it enters maturity, when it begins to form a seed head.    When seed heads emerge, the plant stalk lignifies (turns woody-- loses its digestibility) and the energy and protein content moves into the seed, out of the leaves and stalk, plus is stored in the roots.     Such grass is no longer able to make much milk, it has turned into stable bedding or mulch material.

Unless you live south of the Mason Dixon line, where warm season bermudagrass, african gama grass, and various improved fescues are the "norm" for grazing, you are dealing with cold season grass varieties-- the ryegrass, orchardgrass, brome, timothy, and tall fescues.    Or you may be using some annuals like Italian ryegrass, Teff, Triticale, everleaf forage oats, etc.   The key to remember is that cool season grasses start growing a month earlier than alfalfa, enter into a dormancy period when summer temps stay above 80F in the day (or 70F at night), then come back and persist a month longer into the fall than alfalfa.    So unlike alfalfa, which appears to produce feed all seaosn long, grass is big in the spring, big in the fall, and requires rationng through the summer.     This provides the second reason to interseed clovers with your grasses, as clover will keep growing in the summer heat, thus a mixed paddock (ryegrass plus clover on heavy organic soils, fescue or orchardgrass plus clover on lighter soils) will produce feed for the entire season.     

Thus paddock sizes need to be adjustable-- small in the spring, bigger in the summer, smaller in the fall.     Rotation can go faster in the spring, ie, grass might regrow in nine days while nights stay cool and there is lots of moisture, might take 32 days in the summer, when it has turned hot and dry.     You need a flexible (movable posts, rollup wire) mode of breaking paddocks to deal with this easily.

(7)  COWS ARE DRINKERS-- IT TAKES WATER TO MAKE MILK

Our experience with cows in barns is a belief that cows like shade.   And they do-- if you offer a cow shade on a hot summer day, you will find her lying down under the trees, not out grazing grass in the sun.      UNLESS-- and this is a big underthought factor in grazing-- you provide fresh cool water in the grazing paddock.    Then a hungry cow will keep grazing-- because you did not make her tire and overheat herself walking back to the barn for a cooling drink.

Yes, black cows absorb more heat than red cows-- yes, a big frame cow may suffer more in the heat than a small frame cow.    But the real reasons relate to the environmental effect-- you could help that cow adapt to that heat, by solving the issue at hand (rising body temps).    In the end "water access" is more milk productive than "shade", and the more a cow drinks, it helps as an aid to her appetite-- the more she will then eat.

Genetics plays a factor here.    Cows with narrow heads and slit nostrils, with slabby sided narrow bodies, are poor graziers.    The narrow head and slit nostril restricts her air intake, the narrow body is a less effective surface for expelling internal [rumen] heat.     If you breed for cows with wide heads, open nostrils, wide chests, well sprung ribs, you will find cows that do better at heat resistance and heat dissipation.    They can eat and breathe at the same time-- they can drink and breathe at the same time.   Their wide chests allow for their lungs to fully distend, thus both water and air intake can help cool their bodies.    They will graze better in the heat.    This is a better (more focused) trait selection for grazing than the blanket advice to milk "smaller" cows. 

A narrow cow can be either big or small, she can still lack the capacity and balance to be a good cow.     The better job you do at propogating grass, the less the "size" of your cows matters, but the proportional body capacity and shape always matters.

(8)   SEASONAL REPRODUCTION HAS ADVANTAGES

One of the more difficult parts of a conventional to grazing transition is our tendency in confined cow herds to breed all year long.     This is not an optimal strategy in grazing.    This is part of why genetic selection in grazing emphasizes cow fertility more than the level of trait enphasis fertility carries in all the sire ranking models used for promoting Ai sires.

Grass grows strongest in the spring and the fall.    "Purist" New Zealand style graziers would want you to breed all cows to calve in the spring (which has the added advantage that all cows will be dry for six weeks in the winter-- you can go skiing).    This for most dairymen, however, taxes facility capacity, and may not optimize milk market price patterns.

The true reason for seasonal fertility is, you want a cow to calve when you have abundant feed and the feed is of high quality.    Thus, lush spring grass, and resurging fall grass, offers that nutrient support to the cow at her time of peak physical stress.     Spring and Fall have the added advantages of being neither too hot nor too cold-- thus you avoid heat stroke, as well as frostbit teats on cows (and frostbit ears on calves).   

Most milk markets in the USA prefer year round production, and for those graziers who enter into organic production, there is usually a contractual requirement.    Many milk markets seem to pay more for fall milk than spring milk, usually those connected to school milk bottling.   Plus if you have hired help and mortgage payments,  a milk check every month is easier to manage.

But having all your heifers in two groups (spring and fall) allows for simpler heifer rearing and feeding designs, and gives you times when calving pens, calf hutches, and feeding supplies can be cleaned out, sterilized, rebuilt, and those chores eliminated from the daily schedule.

Reproduction is simpler if you do not have to watch for heats 365 days per year.   Heats are easier to see when lots of cows are cycling in the same group at the same time (vets call this the "dormitory effect").      With a two season window, a cow that fails to conceive in the spring group can be retained to add to the fall group, and vice versa-- rather than to string out calving and breeding into an all year long process again.    Chronically low fertility cows can be culled as now, but with the added knowledge that by breeding for higher fertility, your replacements will be less likely to cause you the same expense and aggravation in the future.    Breeding all year long tends to keep us retaining cows with poor fertility genetics.

(9)   THERE IS NO SINGLE 'IDEAL' GRAZING BREED

Experts like to tell people with Holsteins switching to grazing to switch breeds as well.   And it is true, the Holstein breed currently has some issues with cow fertility, metabolic health traits, and mobility.    But these all relate to "genetic" (ie, heritable, thus transmissable) traits you can fix with good mating.

I love my Jerseys.    But I see all breeds, as well as crossbreeds, being successful under good grazing management.    The variety within each breed's genetic pool, allows you to breed for a more successful adaptation to a grazing environment-- you just have to take the steps in sire selection and mating to accomplish it.    Often this means the "ranking" bulls in your breed may not be what you need to optimize your success(there is no advantage to breeding in more genetic milk yield potential than your management is going to harvest-- the tradeoff will be higher vet and repro costs than you were anticipating).    Your seleciton will initially need to be as focused on building the physical shape, metabolism, and stamina that best fits your environment.

Breeds do differ in their averages for desired traits.   For example, Shorthorns and Dutch Belteds seem to be the "best" breeds when rebreeding in summer heat-- followed by Jerseys and the traditional Ayrshires.     Brown Swiss, Holsteins and Guernseys fall in behind.    The Euro Red breeds (individual sires of which now pollute Ayshire pedigrees) actually seem to be a negative influence on cow fertility-- In New Zealand, where there is lots of data, their Jerseys were the best, Kiwicrosses next, Friesians next, followed by Ayrshires, in fact Euro Red breeds were behind all the native adapted breeds included (the inclusion of Euro Red blood in their Ayrshires helped pull the breed trend downward there as well).

Thus, even in crossbreeding, due to the influence of data coming from conventional large herd dairies (where Euro Reds are touted as useful in crosses on Holsteins), not applicable to the management preferences in a seasonal grazing operation, we have to be careful in considering the source of any data we use to make decisions.

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I am going to stop now with these nine ideas.   But if you have points to add from your experience, send me an email at " This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " and if I agree with them I will add them to this article.