00:00
Okay. Okay, I'm with Tom Prowitz today and let's start with your background. Did you grow up on a farm family? I did not. I grew up, my parents had a trucking company in the oil business and yeah, I grew up in town, a small town and my, but both my parents came from farming backgrounds.
00:38
So I had, you know, both my grandparents were farmers and I had a lot of relatives who were farmers. That was really my passion. Definitely not the trucking and not the oil field, although I've done a lot of trucking and a lot of oil field.
00:54
And so really, it was actually when I was out at work one time, a fellow was talking about telling me about this holistic management course that he had went to. And so I got together with a gal whose parents had half section of land that they had rented out.
01:18
And my partner at the time and I, we took holistic management in January 2000. And we went from there, I guess, you know, every path is very convoluted and that's what my path has been. But my passion, surprisingly, has turned into be grass.
01:40
I dream about growing grass in my sleep and I don't know how that happened, but it just did. Yeah, so and I guess custom grazed for a number of years. We actually at one point we had rented 5,500 acres and we ran 3,000 yearlings and then from there I went to Ranch Manage for for a while and a few different places and then yeah and then I went back to the oil field for a bit and actually I just started a five-year contract with a a Hutterite colony that is very yeah that's very unique they're it's called Pine Haven Hutterite colony near Witaskin Alberta and they have a very unique situation where they so they have cow calf and they they raise right from conception right to the plate they have their own packing plant on site,
02:58
it's state-of-the-art. They do like 1,700 beefs a year that they sell, that they market themselves under what the heck is it called, Prairie Rancher's Beef. That's their own line. Like I said, the packing plant is a state-of-the-art.
03:15
It's absolutely amazing. Just that they're missing the grass management part and that's what they brought me on for. And the funny thing is, John told me I have to commit and I can't quit for three years and I said okay, but you can't fire me for three years.
03:33
So I'll be stuck there for a little bit. So I'm pretty excited because I've been looking for something like this since 2021 and here it just happened. Some guy at the colony heard me on a podcast and then read my book and next thing you know, last October I got a phone call and here I am.
03:54
Sounds exciting. It is. I'm pretty excited. It's just you know how things happen and you don't know just some some destiny. Something has guided you and this is where I'm at. So I'm pretty excited. So what about your farm itself?
04:08
What kind of animals and acreage grasses? Okay, I don't have a farm. Oh, okay. And you know what we, like I said, I custom grazed for a number of years and we rented. We hardly, you know, we had 373 acres.
04:31
That was it. We rented 5,500 acres and then when I transitioned back to the oil patch for a bit, you know, gave up all the contracts and renew them. So my gig is at the Hutteray colony and they have cattle and they have sheep.
04:55
Not very many of them. then of course they have the hogs and the chickens and the dairy, but those are confinement. So you can graze without owning any of the animals? You just custom graze for them?
05:09
No, it's all their own animals. I'm just like a consultant for them. Oh, okay. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, so basically my job for them is to get their grazing under control. And when I say that, I mean the graze period and the recovery period and get some grass growing.
05:32
Well, being in Alberta, I know there's a short grazing period. So how do you extend things through the winter? Well, the first thing that I like to do is, which I've written about numerous articles and in my book about grazing the sweet spot.
05:55
So, my goal, like right now, we have an early spring and I'm chomping at the bit to get as many animals out as possible to get the grass clipped so that it can stay vegetative because my goal every year is to have high quality, high volume forage come November.
06:19
And if you do not get out early and you don't keep that grass clipped, you're not going to get there. And your fall grazing, fall, winter grazing, fall and winter grazing is created right now. And if you slip up right now, you're not going to have high quality, high volume forage in the fall and winter.
06:48
But one cool thing, you know, Hutterites are great farmers and so there's this phase that, yes, you can graze perennial pastures. Just that there's a lot of conditions that make it very difficult in terms of snow and ice and that sort of thing.
07:15
But something that I have found that is very economical and doesn't come with the, I guess the risks, I'm going to say the risks of perennial pastures is swath grazing. Explain how that works. Swathgrazing?
07:38
Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, so, John, he's kind of the farming boss here. They've been messing, I'm saying messing, they've been dealing or experimenting with polycultures for for about, I think he said about 10 years.
08:01
And the cool thing about being here and having access to that knowledge base is I can say, okay, this is what we need. Can you do this? And I remember in a meeting, he said, Oh, yeah, we can do that all day long.
08:21
And I said, Oh, cool. So we're planning on, they've been using polycultures for their silage, because their their meat program is no grain right through to finish. So they've been using the forge silage.
08:43
And that's all the that's all that they're feeding. And it's a polyculture that they grow. So they're already doing it. growing a crop, all that we have to do now is put it into the swath and graze it in the swath, but there's two keys that generally gets missed and it's not only missed by producers in general.
09:05
It's missed by researchers who are looking at doing research on swath grazing and the two keys that I have found anyways is you have to plant the crop early just as if you're planting a bit for grain and the other key is you have to swath it early and when I say that you always want to have oats in the mix and there's lots of research done that has been done at the University of Michigan looking at putting peas and oats together for different things and every one of their trials that they have done,
09:51
they use the oats in a very early milk stage as the indicator on when to cut that crop. And so those are two very key things and if you don't do those two things either you're not going to have the volume that you're looking for or you're not going to have the quality and so if you do those two things you're going to have good volume and you're going to have good quality and it's my contention that this will rival corn grazing every day of the week.
10:38
Okay, so you shall see out like we'll know next March you're talking about from birth to the processing to finish so uh talk about the weaning you have uh you call the wave talk about that okay well the wave is not actually uh weaning the wave it yeah the wave is not weaning it is uh moving these newborn um newborns uh so that you can um move on grass because you know once you once you start look you know going down the road of low cost i guess everyone's calling it regen ag now uh but i used to call it uh low cost uh ranching you're you know you're going to move your your lambing and your calving so that you're doing it on grass and there's this belief um that you can't move these uh newborns so then what happens is these animals get parked for,
11:49
you know, that period of time of definitely during the first cycle, you know, so what we're talking three or four weeks, they get parked in one area and that gets hammered and then it also gets fouled so there's lots of, you know, more chance of sickness in terms of scours in the newborns.
12:14
But if a person can learn how to move these, you know, move the herd or the flock very gently, you can just, you can be clipping the grass and having all these newborns on fresh ground. So not only are you looking after the animal health, you're looking after the grass health.
12:39
But the wave, I actually have a video on my YouTube channel that demonstrates the wave. It's all the techniques that, you know, that low stress animal handlers know about, you know, Bud Williams, you know, the zigzag, that sort of thing.
13:01
I know that I really like Whit Hibbert. I don't know, has he ever written first some of his articles, he explains it so well on he just has a great way of explaining it. He has done a great job explaining how to do the zigzag back and forth.
13:28
And basically, that's all I'm doing in the wave. But it is just a very slow version. And actually, the reason that I call it a wave is because when I started doing this in my mind, it was like, was like a ripple in water, like in a pond.
13:51
So if you throw a pebble, the wave, you know, that little ripple from the pebble goes out into the pond and as it goes it gets weaker and weaker. And so my thinking is when you come into the herd, come to the back to start your zigzag and what I'm trying to create is just a little ripple.
14:18
And when I say that, I mean I come up to the first, well let's just talk about cows, but it works the same way with sheep. I'll come up to the first cow and as soon as she starts, I'll just have enough pressure so she starts to get up and I'll stop my horse.
14:37
I might even back up my horse a bit so she can get up, she can stretch and then she's going to start looking for a calf. And then I go on to the next cow and I do the same thing. And just that energy of her getting up creates a little bit of energy going past her into the next, the next row of cows.
15:01
And so I'm trying to create that just a very gentle ripple of energy. And eventually that gentle ripple gets all the way to the front. And those cows get up. And I should preface this with saying that I leave the gate open because I don't want them jamming up at the gate.
15:23
So I open up the gate to start with and then I go to the back of the herd and to create this gentle ripple. And by the time it gets to the front, those cows get up and they just, they get their calf and they gently walk through the gate into the next paddock.
15:41
So it doesn't take any special training to make them move as a herd. You just start from the back. And then like you said, with a start, a slow ripple. Yes. You know, when you just said that and you said that it doesn't take any special training, you're right, it doesn't take special training.
16:07
It takes observation and intention. And so one person can do that. Yeah, the video that I have on my YouTube channel, that's I did, and it wasn't the perfect move because I had to come out on a roadway.
16:29
Usually when I have these newborn calves, I just like to go straight across from one paddock to another. Anyways, I explained it in the video, but I had to come out on the road, go down the road a little bit and then into a paddock.
16:40
I did that all by myself. There's 325 pair in there. Great. Okay let's go back to the sweet spot. How do you know what the sweet spot is and when you get there? Oh we're covering a lot this morning. Okay the sweet spot is a point just before your grass goes into phase three or reproductive phase.
17:18
Okay and on a paddock level, what that is, there will be about 15 to 20 percent of your forage is in phase three. The rest is still in phase two or stage two. I say I'm saying phase but I should be staying saying stage.
17:44
It's in stage. uh two and that takes some that takes some um experience i find that it takes two to three years to learn that um alienation called it the grass eye yeah and the thing about the grass eye i actually don't trust my my eye that well um i always resort to my grazing chart i use my grazing chart the way it should be used as a planning tool not as a recording tool and talking about what i find smart chart what what do you have on it what do you measure on that well i'll tell you what uh it's been my experience hardly anybody uses the grazing chart as a planning tool from what i've seen and i don't know why uh because i've been doing this for 25 years and i still can't do i feel i can't do my job very well without the grazing chart as a planning tool and so then i don't know um i don't know why people don't use the grazing chart as a planning tool because to me it's critical if you are if you want to have if you want to get to this there's this level that i've experienced um in the amount of forage that we can produce i do not believe you can get there without a grazing chart but so now i've said that i'm also wondering if we have a tendency of making it too complicated and want to record,
19:49
because there's lots of things that you can record on your grazing chart. But that's not where you need to start. You need to keep it simple to start with. And then once you get a handle on it, then you can start adding all these other records, start recording all these other things on your grazing chart.
20:11
So basically, the start of the grazing chart is, this is like grade four math. You just calculate your grazing plan when you, let's say you have 15 paddocks, okay? So you calculate, I'm going to be here for every paddock, you're going to be, let's say, two days.
20:34
And you go through your grazing plan, and then you're going to start your second rotation. You just count the days from when you left paddock one, to... when you come back in. And that's your recovery period.
20:51
So if you're a recovery period, let's say your recovery period is you need 42 days of recovery period. All you have to do is count the days from when you left Paduk Wan until the day that you go back in.
21:07
And if the number of days between those two dates is 40, 42 days, that's all you need to do. It's great for math. What advice do you have for someone who wants to get started in your particular environment?
21:26
What would they do first? Oh. You just sent me these questions ahead of time so I know how to answer. Ah. You know what? I really don't know. There is so much information. And like the one guy that I work with at Pine Haven there, Peter, he was saying there's so much to know and it gets confusing.
22:13
And there is a lot of information. And people have different attitudes and different ideas about things just like me. I talk about the sweet spot. And that's very important to me. But I don't hear anybody else really talking about it.
22:35
So I'm just another Joe Blow saying something that, oh, what's that all about? And just another thing to confuse. So I know what we did. the holistic management course. I would actually suggest taking the Rancho for Profit course first.
22:56
Both are fantastic courses. And I know that's what we did. We also took a marketing course. And then, you've really stumped me here. Okay, you know what I'm gonna say? I'm gonna come down and I'm gonna say you need to develop a minimum of 13 paddocks.
23:22
And you need to get started. So you start with the fencing then? Yeah, and you need it's mathematically impossible to respect the graze period and the recovery period with fewer than 13 paddocks. Any other parting words?
23:46
that's how we're supposed to talk about the tipping point we can let's go back to that then the tipping point yeah because that's what i got prepared for was to talk about the tipping point and you know what carolyn it's very funny because just literally 45 minutes ago i received a message from a fellow asking me what's the fastest way to get to the tipping point oh okay okay well let's take what the tipping point is and then what is the fastest way okay so the tipping point is a level of production where the system becomes self-propagating and by what by that i mean the system does not require any more inputs except management uh dr christine jones i'm sure you've heard of her and probably everyone listening to this has heard of her from australia she talks about when she talks about uh soil biology she talks about quorum that for soil biology to really take off there needs to be this quorum this uh level of this population density and i see that as the same thing as with the tipping point and that is about 175 stock days per acre that's what i have found or you want to put that in pounds per acre that's about 4200 pounds dry matter per acre over the over the course of the growing season and what i have found once you get to that point very quickly You can be to 300 plus stock days per acre But for some reason there once you have to hit that level and if you do not hit that level you're going to plateau below it and I know a lot of Ranchers that I've talked to they're they're doing much better than their neighbors Maybe three times better than their neighbors But they're still stuck at about a hundred stock days per acre So there's no way that they can realize this this other level this 300 plus stock days breaker Because they have not hit the tipping point of 175 stock days breaker an interesting thing I had asked Joel Joel Salton if he has noticed This this level this tipping point and he said yes he has noticed that and it's about the same level that I have found at 175 stock days per acre.
26:53
So how do you get there? How's the fastest way? Every situation is different. I know bale grazing, concentrated bale grazing. This is not rolling out bales. This is the concentrated bale grazing that buddy of mine Steve Kenyon talks about and writes about a lot.
27:14
That's a no-brainer. That will work in every situation. Well I shouldn't say every situation but you will get to the tipping point and beyond in one season doing that. The problem with it is you're limited on how much you can do in the year.
27:32
A few years ago Steve, what's that? Because you've got a short grazing period there. No it's the feeding period because animals, cows only eat so much in a day. Steve and I figured out that feeding 100 cows for 100 days with the concentrated bale grazing you can improve 13 acres a year.
28:04
So like I said you're limited. Now I've used fertilizer, ammonium sulfate, 200 pounds. On some pasture I had an agronomist suggest that and that has worked very well. Of course there's the one-time cost.
28:22
I'm doing a new project that I've wanted to do for about 10 years and that's thanks to the guys at the colony. There's one cell that just has so much bare ground. It's going to take a while to get there and so what we've done is we've seeded heavy seeded oats into those two of those paddocks, and lo and behold they have a roller crimper right on site.
28:55
So as soon as the oats is in the, what I would say the sweet spot, we're going to roller crimp it just to get ground cover down and see how that works. About I think it was 2003 I had a situation where it was a crop failure and all that came up with the weeds, all that came up were weeds, and I strip grazed that twice during the growing season and it was just phenomenal.
29:30
The next year they had a bumper hay crop on that 100 acres. The trick is you have to get some ground cover. You can't get to these this level that I'm talking about of 300-plus stock days per acre without adhering to the soil health principles.
29:52
And a big thing is soil cover. Just to finish up, you asked me how to get there. What's the quickest way? I will relate to that. In 2005, he wrote an article about an organic dairy farmer in Ireland.
30:26
And what that fellow talked about was he was having a lot of success with the organic dairy. And so, he was purchasing or taking over management of other dairies. And he said the first thing you have to do before you worry about any organics or any certification, you have to get a high level of grass production.
30:54
And he said you have to do whatever it takes to get there. And that's how I feel about the tipping point. And the more experience that I get, the more I believe that. It took me a long time. I probably realized I needed to do something that just my grass management, my grazing management was not getting me to where I wanted to go in 2005.
31:27
But it was not until 2009 that I started looking at fertilizer. At the ammonium sulfate. Because it was ingrained in my head from holistic management, fertilizer is bad. Fertilizers not now we're now where I'm at fertilizer is not bad Fertilizers a tool, but it should not be a crutch if that Does that make sense to you it does it does it's just another tool in our toolbox.
31:59
I don't want to be using it but Sometimes you have to yeah, and I think it's critical to get to the tipping point We have to get to that 175 stock days per acre and not get It's easy to get distracted by other things But in my mind the tipping point will solve so many issues for us When we can get to that ball you We're going to have good ground cover the water we're gonna have an awesome water cycle and our cattle our livestock are going to have fantastic nutrition and the soil biology is going to have awesome nutrition under the ground.
32:54
Okay thank you very much and his articles are always in the Stockman Grass Farmer so read that and watch the podcast. So thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. Cool take care.
