Nalivka: Ranchers Know Cattle Must “Match the Ranch”
My old friend Doc Hatfield (God bless him) who created Oregon Country Beef in 1986, a successful branded beef program, often made the comment that cattle have to “match the ranch.” Doc wasn’t trying to make a prophetic statement. He was expressing a fact and one that ranchers know and have known for decades. The ranches where I spent many hours horseback in Nevada ran cows that match the desert grazing and out necessity covered a lot of ground to efficiently utilize the forage. At the same time, those cows were often smaller framed, and they did not require as many “groceries” for maintenance and to be healthy. That is not to say that there are not larger breeds that do well and graze efficiently.
We all know cows raised on lush pastures would not work in that environment. By the same token, those desert cows wouldn’t do well if turned out to graze lush pastures. Cattlemen have known this for decades. There are many ranches that have been owned by the same family for a century and their cows are distant offspring from those that grazed the same ranges on the same ranch decades earlier.
I recently read an article describing research from University of California at Davis that had been published in the journal, Applied Animal Behavior Science. It was entitled “Understanding cattle grazing personalities may foster sustainable rangelands.” It discussed research that entailed how understanding the personality of cows can be a tool to manage grazing on rangelands. One statement was “thinking about the topography of your rangeland and your herd of cows can benefit both the animals and the sustainability of the land.” Hmm – that sounds like Doc’s statement that cows have to match the ranch. I am not necessarily being critical of the author, but I would venture to say that ranchers know this. It did not take a doctoral thesis to discover that fact. How about asking a few ranchers why their ranch is successful. I would venture to say that part of their answer would be that they have the best cows for utilizing the forage and they have healthy calves.
It is true that the behavior of cattle is an important aspect to their performance on the ranch, in the feedlot, and probably grazing. There is recent research regarding feedlot performance and how cattle are handled at the ranch. Maybe I am too sensitive to the topic, but I just don’t think this research that ties animal behavior to grazing efficiency is a hot topic sought by ranchers. They wouldn’t be successful if they didn’t already know about matching the cows to the ranch.
