Grazing for Profit Conference

Today I had the opportunity to attend the 10th Annual Grazing for Profit Conference hosted by the Roane County Soil Conservation District. It was an excellent conference, and I learned several new things. If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of these conferences I strongly recommend it. The speakers today were Dr. Gordon Hazard, Greg Brand, Dr. Bridget McIntosh, and Gordon Jones. Here are a few of the highlights I found interesting:

"What we are doing in the cattle business is selling grass. It's just wrapped up in steer hide"
This is a very true statement. In our area the majority of cattle feed is grass.With the rising costs of feed, more and more people are turning to grass because of its cost efficiency.

"We cattle farmers are the biggest users of solar energy in the U.S. Grass is our solar panel."
Grass uses sunlight to grow and produce food. Once we understand this, we can manage our "solar panels" to be more efficient. If our grass is growing more efficiently, we can grow our cattle more efficiently.

The spring turnout after winter hay feeding can be beneficial or detrimental to the total amount of grass produced over the growing season. If you graze early grass too much, you can cut total grass production by up to 50% over the entire growing period.

The old rule for rotational grazing was take 1/2 leave 1/2. As we learn and become more efficient we have found that taking 1/3 and leaving 2/3 can lead to higher production.

A 1% increase in soil organic matter will provide .5 more acre-inches of water. This is a huge increase, especially during the dryer times of the year.

A three day rotation is an excellent goal to shoot for. It is a good balance between reaping the benefits of rotational grazing while still being managable for the average farmer.

100 cows on 1 acre for 11 days will provide enough nitrogen for any crop. 5-10 days will provide enough nitrogen for average pasture.

Manage your pastures for the good grasses and the bad will take care of itself. This is good to a point. The idea behind it is that if you manage the good grasses they will out grow the bad grasses.

No till drill feed corn mixed with other summer annuals to provide extra summer grazing.

Increasing BCS at calving time from a 4 to 6 will increase heat cycle time by as much as 40 days. This is critical for getting cattle bred back quickly.

Most forages in TN are borderline low in copper and selenium.

70% of feed and minerals in the beef industry are used just for maintenance and not for production.

The more milk a cow produces, the more nutrients are required to maintain BCS; however, more milk does not always mean a larger or more efficiently growing calf.

Forage efficient cows are not tall, shallow, narrow, frail, or fine.

These was just the highlights. I will try to get some more in depth articles on these in the future. If there is a specific one you would like to see discussed let me know.