In ranching, and in life, sometimes one decision can have a major impact.
The 2024 Trust In Beef Sustainable Ranchers Tour hosts manage lands that encompass more than 70,000 acres of America’s rangeland. They are Environmental Stewardship Award winners and recipients of Leopold Conservation Awards. On their generational ranches, more than anyone, they know the power that one decision can have, both on their land and legacy and on their ranch business.
We tapped their expertise to share what one decision they made that has had the most impact on their land and their operation.
Meredith Ellis, G-C Ranch, Texas
A Change of Conservation Mindset
I don’t adhere to practices on our operation, but to overall soil health principles and in doing that it allows me to have the flexibility I need to respond to the frequent nuances of managing an ecosystem within the context of my given circumstances. This might mean overseeding a part of a paddock with legumes one year, applying higher stock density to a wheat field to prepare the ground for planting, or resting a portion of a field for an entire year. By not looking at practices “we have always done” and not even looking at field boundaries, it allows me to take into account the health of the ecosystem.
Shifting Herd Management
Focusing on maternal traits and calving efficiency rather than terminal traits has really helped our bottom line. We are selecting for a low maintenance smaller framed cow who is docile and an easy-keeper, who breeds back quickly and maintains a good body condition score. We breed and retain our own females meaning we are building upon generation after generation of cows that are suited to our landscape and management style. By focusing on our mommas we are seeing a more uniform and healthier calf crop. A quicker calving window means we are able to get rotating more quickly and efficiently, and we have heavier and healthier calves when we sell.
Nick Jorgensen, Jorgensen Land & Cattle, South Dakota
Grazing Cover Crops
The introduction of cover crop grazing, both in growing season and fall dormant grazing has yielded a significant difference in feed saving costs but also overall soil health.
Invest in Infrastructure
Because we have invested in fencing infrastructure (both physical and virtual), we can utilize crop crops and rotational grazing and receive the benefits therein.
Clay Burtrum, Burtrum Cattle Co., Oklahoma
Rotational Grazing as Key
Rotational grazing has always been a part of our conservation, along with resting pastures during the growing season. We have been cutting cedars to improve land and grazing areas to maximize our rotation.
Data, Data, Data
At Burtrum Cattle, we measure everything from pounds of gain to how much feed, mineral and even miles we drive on a given day. This data allows us to better utilize resources, including the land, the cattle, the labor and industry expertise.
Homer Buell, Shovel Dot Ranch, Nebraska
Look at the Land
While managing our cattle is important, it is even more important that we monitor how we are affecting everything in our ecosystem — the grasses, the wildlife, the soil, and the water. With our grazing manager software, in the early years we had to input information on pasture sizes, carrying capacity using demand days, forage growth curves, rainfall, and also information about the cattle groups, such as numbers, weight, stage of lactation. From this information, we developed a grazing plan. As we went through the year actual moves were recorded so a record was established and effects on the grass could be monitored over time. Another practice to add to our grass management was establishing GPS coordinates where we monitored plant composition, plant height, density and ground cover to help us further understand the effect of our grazing.
Factor in Profitability
In 1990, we did a Standard performance analysis, which had a big effect on our ranch. This analysis took cattle performance and combined it with cost to give numbers that could be used to compare to other cow calf herds to see how you were doing. The numbers were very important, but what it really taught us was that any performance numbers were of little importance without combining the cost side. This thought-process had to carry over into everything we did, not just the cow-calf phase, but also our backgrounding and yearling operations for both raised and purchased livestock. This led us to doing managerial accounting.
Jerry Doan, BlackLeg Ranch, North Dakota
Diversify Cover Crops
We plant 25 different species of cover crops to build soil health, propagate the wildlife and cut winter feed costs as we graze the cover crops in the winter. Utilizing winter grazing in the Northern Plains will save us $200 to $300 dollars per cow in savings. They have also improved our soil biology immensely and increased biodiversity by serving as a food source for wildlife species.
Match Calving with Climate
Moving our calving to May and June allows us to calf in the hills and avoid most weather events. That shift has had the biggest economic impact on the ranch.
Visit www.trustinbeef.com to stay updated on plans for the 2025 Sustainable Ranchers Tour and make your plans to attend.
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