If you don't plan to winter graze,

If You Don’t Plan to Winter Graze, You Won’t

By Troy Bishopp, Madison Co. SWCD grazing advocate

It’s no big secret that feed costs are up.  The question is what can you do about it?  How about taking action to utilize every resource available on your farm and surrounding land.

You’re going to have to resist the phrases “I can’t do that” or “that won’t work here”.  Right now, is the time to plan for extending the grazing/wintering season as much as possible with your animals.  There is NO time to lose.

In my neighborhood, farmers are telling me it costs from 1.50 to 2.25 per day to maintain non-lactating animals going into the fall and winter season.  I just had a planning meeting with one grazing farm that will maintain 50 head this winter.  At $1.50/day/head that’s $75/day in feed costs.  If that doesn’t shake you up just a little, than you can stop reading.  So as the price of corn silage inches up to 50 bucks a ton and good hay moves up daily, what was our planning strategy today?

We did an entire farm walk that included neighboring resources.  The grassy hay fields (60acres) farthest from the farmstead were growing slow due to the delayed 1^st cutting and many days of rain, along with a lack of fertility.  There was feed growing but not enough to make a worthwhile hay crop given the high cost of inputs to run around chasing a few round bales.  Why don’t we graze it?  But not just throw them out in the whole thing.  Lets ration out the feed an acre per day and get some concentration of nutrients, which will help next year’s crop and get them out of the barnyard area.  It just so happened that these fields were surrounded by heavy woods providing needed shelter and the hill was an east facing slope which would warm up the animals quickly from the morning sun.  This idea would take us from Oct. 1^st to Dec. 1^st.  This strategy saves 4500 dollars in feed costs while spreading valuable nutrients and reducing the labor of moving feed and cleaning up the barnyard.  It also gets the cows up on grass and away from the water courses which is important to the watershed.

“It snows here ya know”, bellowed the farmer.  I conceded that I knew that, somewhat gracefully.  So December is here, now what?  “How about bringing a share of those stockpiled round bales up to that corn field over there?  Huh!  Yea, you could make some use of that corn stover over there after harvest and the scrubby pasture, with the nice hedgerows next to it while having backup feed in case it gets really snowy, I explained.”

Hypothetically, this extra 30 days out here not using full feed may yield an additional savings of .50/day/head for a net of $750, plus self spreading nutrients.

Now we are at January 1^st.  Hmm.  I asked him to take me around the block and show me some fallow land.  “Do you get along with him?  How is your relationship with that landowner?  All good, I was informed.  Great!  Can you talk with them about grazing some cattle over there this winter?  “I can try, he said.”  The most important word of the day came out, CAN.  If there was a possibility to winter them far into January, it might provide even more savings, say another $ 750.00 perhaps.

A potential to save 6000 dollars by changing your mindset about stockpiling forage and looking for local opportunities, seems like a common sense approach to add value to your bottom line.  Last year I personally grazed cattle on stockpiled forage until January 15^th with 25 dry beef cows and got my hay feeding habit down to 130 days.  Even this small exercise saved me money and got nutrients away from my winter feeding area.  With the price of diesel, reduced manure hauling costs also added to my excitement for extending the grazing season.  It took planning, it took patience, and most of all it took perseverance to overcome the neighbor’s funny looks.

In the final analysis, farming is a business based on change, much of it cannot be controlled but adapted to.  As a conservationist my job is also changing.  I must constantly look for scenarios that benefit the local community by working towards an environmentally sensitive, profitable farming system which delivers high quality food to New Yorkers and beyond.  Making that call to your conservation professional may be a good first step to see all the possibilities that exist to achieve your goals.  Say yes to new ideas and call the best keep secret in conservation, your local NYS Soil and Water Conservation District for help in planning for change.