00:04
I'm talking today with David Will, who lives in Texas, and we're going to talk about Serengeti grazing. But why don't you give us some background on your ranch to begin with? I have a 65-acre ranch, 60 of it of which we graze.
00:22
I have about 10 head of cattle. Right now, we're building our herd. I just got started all over again four years ago with this ranch. The family ranch is selling. My other ranching experiences have gone away.
00:44
And so I'm starting all over at a new ranch. So that's where I'm headed. Okay. Tell us about suring grazing. It's also called high density zero rotational grazing or HDZR. Okay. How did you get involved with that?
01:10
I went to the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association meeting ages ago, and I heard this fellow, Mr. Cortez, and he kept saying that you should try this. I put 10 head on an acre and grazed them for 100 days, or actually, I think the first time I heard him, it was 90 days.
01:33
And then he kept getting longer and longer. And one time he came in, I think this was the second or third meeting, he said, we had one gentleman graze 65 head for 180 days on one acre. And I kept saying, this is crazy, it won't work.
01:50
And I know that a lot of people have said that to me, it's crazy, it won't work. That's impossible. And yet, I felt I had to try something. I couldn't just let this go by. And especially after the drought of 2011, in our state, it was devastating.
02:07
It was probably worse than any drought that we've had since the 1950s. And we had just absolutely no grass left. People were selling animals. People were killing animals because they couldn't feed them.
02:23
You know, they felt they were better dead than trying to pick them up and haul them to auction where they would get nothing for them. So it was a really terrible, terrible drought. I know that the rest of the nation had a drought in 2012, but ours was really bad in 2011.
02:42
So in 2012, I had no grass. This is the family farm. We just put in a well at the end of 2011, and I started putting pipe in the ground in order to start this Serengeti grazing. I didn't have what Mr.
03:02
Cortez recommended, which was a compost extractor where he made his own compost tea. And I knew that I could get five tons of compost to put on one acre, but I couldn't get it all at one time. So I would just have to work at putting it in little by little.
03:26
I was only coming on weekends to the family farm to work because I had another job. And so I would do this as I could. But I got a quarter of an acre irrigated and I started putting compost. I got mushroom compost, which is not too far from where our ranch is.
03:47
And I put that on that quarter acre. And we started irrigating it and we brought in the cattle, which was pretty easy because there was no other grass anyplace else. So we just brought out some alfalfa cubes and brought them in and that's where they had to graze.
04:05
And since that was pretty much the only green grass around, it wasn't too hard to get them encouraged to come in. We closed off the gates and we started grazing. And I kept coming back every weekend, putting a little more pipe in the ground, putting more compost down, and it started from there.
04:27
And you kept them on the same ground. You didn't move them out of that area? The same ground. We actually had the 25 head on one acre. Actually, it was a little larger than an acre. We had some area that they could relax in that was in the shades so they're out of the heat of the day.
04:47
So it was a little larger than one acre, but basically the Serengeti area was the one acre. And then as more and more manure and urine hit the ground, we started seeing more and more dung beetles come in.
05:05
Now this is sandy soil, and so it's very easy for the dung beetles to bury their manure, but it's, you know, the urine goes into the ground and disappears pretty fast in sandy soil. So there wasn't a whole lot of recapture with the Bermuda grass in that area.
05:26
So what are the factors that really make it work? Well, there's a lot of factors. One of the things that Sabino Cortez Jr., that's the gentleman, Mr. Cortez, that taught me this, he said the first thing you have to do is make sure that your animals are not under any kind of medication that would kill dung beetles.
05:51
And that includes the parasite cleanses that people put on the backs of their animals or the drenches that they give them or even shots they give them or parasite medications and feeds. Ear tags, that's right.
06:10
Anything that will kill a dung beetle. So you have to make sure that that's not present for at least six months before your animals go in there. Now we never did that because we're basically organic anyway.
06:23
I'm not certified organic, but we do organic practices. So it wasn't a problem putting the animals in there. We knew that the dung beetles would survive. I have had clients that we started the Serengeti grazing and they were, they said their animals were clean, but I found out that they had been under sidectin or some other type of parasite medication and it simply would not work.
06:50
They spent a lot of money putting in irrigation, they put a lot of compost down, spent all this money and then it wouldn't work because of a simple medication that kills dung beetles. So that's the number one thing.
07:03
You have to make sure that your animals are free of any medication that would kill dung beetles. And always beware because a lot of these medications say, oh, they won't kill dung beetles, but they definitely do.
07:14
Right. Okay. The number thing is the compost. And it doesn't have to be compost as in what most people think of as bark mulch with animal manures and that sort of thing. It can be like we were using mushroom compost.
07:32
We used chicken manure compost. I had one client that bought chicken manure with rice holes and mycorrhizal fungi injected into the compost mixture. That really kicked the grass into high gear. And in fact, the animals hardly wanted to leave the pasture.
07:53
Every time we try to rotate them a year later, they would want to come back to that pasture. They would not want to leave it and they would come back to it. So it does make a huge difference getting that soil prepared and compost is the number one way to do that.
08:10
And then I also add sea salt. I have found through my years of experience both in gardening, horticulture, agriculture, there's nothing better than sea salt as a supplement because that's all the minerals in the world.
08:26
And when you put sea salt down, you're ensuring that your animals that are eating that plant and the plant itself has all the minerals that are needed for it to grow healthy, fight off disease. And as we do that, we find that these animals, any problems that they had earlier just kind of disappear.
08:50
Any insects, any disease that's bothering them, that disappears. Now, it doesn't cause flies to disappear or other types of biting insects, but there are less and less every time for every day that the animals stay in that one acre because as the flies, parasites come around that would eat on the flies, they lay their eggs in the poop and the dung beetle buries it.
09:16
And so the parasites never develop. Unfortunately, we had a fly factory right down the road from us, so we were always getting flies, but they weren't being bred on. They were dying pretty quick. So everything was much, much, much better after the dung beetles started coming in.
09:38
But it was slow. You know, I tried a lot of different compost, not just the mushroom compost. As the one acre irrigation grew from a one quarter acre, I brought in other types of compost and tried those out.
09:54
And even just plain bark mulch, just anything that was organic to put on the ground to see what would work. And then I also noticed that areas outside of what we were putting in what we were irrigating, the shade areas, the dung beetles showed up in those areas and started burying the poop and toads.
10:15
So it was really working well, but it takes a while for that dung beetle population to build up. And the more you can do to get that happening faster is so much better for the cattle and the serenget grazing or high density zero rotation.
10:33
So how long was it someone expect for it to take when you start to finish? Well, because we had never used any kind of chemicals on our property. We didn't use herbicides or pesticides. We had lots of dung beetles already there, but they were subterranean.
11:06
And so when the cattle were rotated into that pasture, I would say two weeks we started noticing the manure starting to disappear. And then the dung beetles didn't come in until a month, six weeks later, the roller type dung beetles.
11:23
And once they came in, just the poop would hit the ground and literally within 10 minutes, it would be buried. Wow. Yeah. You said what kind you had sandy soil. Does this work in any kind of soils or?
11:41
It does work in any type of soil, but it's much easier in sandy soil for the dumbbeetles to bury the manure. Now, if you have clay, you're going to need to work on it, make sure that that soil is well aggregated long before those animals get in there.
11:58
And of course, anytime you're over-irrigating, clay is easy to compact. And every time you put an animal on wet soil, it's going to compact that soil and make it difficult for the dung beetles. So sandy loam is great.
12:12
Any type of soil that is well aggregated will work. If you've got a hard pan, you're going to have to spend some time getting that prepared before you put the animals in to make sure that soil is well aggregated.
12:24
If you can pour water on it and it disappears quickly, you know that you've got a pretty good soil. You know, I know you have Bahea and Bermuda grass. Do other grasses work just as well? I have not found anything better than Bermuda grass and Bahea grass.
12:46
In fact, we're in a slight drought right now in our area, and the Bermuda grass grows well when you've got lots of fertilizer going into the ground, but you can't just water Bermuda grass and expect to get it nice and thick.
13:01
You've got to have animals that are putting out a lot of manure. And the only way to do that is high concentrations. And of course, most rotational, good rotational grazing will do that whether they're in highly concentrated groups, mob grazing or big grazing.
13:19
And then you rotate them out and the dung beetles will follow that herd. This is where you put them in and they're going to stay there. You want them to stay there for at least 90 days, if possible, get through the drought so that the rest of the grass on your property can recover.
13:37
But it's not all as easy as it sounds if you haven't prepared your soil correctly to start with. But I'm curious with them staying in the same spot for so long, how high does the grass get? That's the interesting part.
13:56
If it gets too tall, you actually have to mow it. And I don't want it to grow more than two and a half inches at the most. Actually, during the 2012 recovery season for me, I had to mow it twice during the middle of the summer, the hottest part of the summer because it was growing too fast.
14:16
That's because the dung beetles were doing their job. The cattle were concentrated. And we were using some irrigation to make sure that the grass would grow. But I even had to back off the irrigation because the grass was growing too fast.
14:32
I didn't want to have to mow it. I wanted the cattle to mow it down for me. Right, right. Didn't have to work for them. They just have to work for me. Right. What about fencing? Any special things that need to be done with the fence?
14:46
Well, I did put in a five-strand barbed wire fence. We had had four wires in that field previously, and the cattle would go through it if they got hungry and wanted to go the other side. So I put in a five-strand barbed wire fence, and they seemed to object, but they weren't going through it.
15:11
And of course, there was very little grass on the other side when we began, so it wasn't too hard to keep them in. And then once they were in and they had all this delicious grass to eat, it wasn't too hard to keep them there, even though there was grass growing on the other side of the fence.
15:27
Well, aside from benefiting in a drought, what are other benefits of this type of grazing? I think it would benefit anyone, whether it's drought, even wet weather. If you've got a soil that can withstand a heavy rainfall and still drain, that's a good place to have them.
15:46
And if you've got land that may not drain as well, I'd rather have them where they're not walking in water all the time. Also is great for stalker situations. If you want to have a bunch of little stalker animals and you want to fatten them fast, I don't find it a whole lot better than grazing on good lush grass like that to put on weight.
16:12
In fact, we had one bull, a young bull that put on 600 pounds in that 190 days that I had him on that one acre. Wow. This is amazing growth. And people, when you start making statements like that, people go, that's crazy.
16:27
It just won't happen. It can't happen. And yet I've done it time and time again. How long have you been doing that? Well, we started in 2012. I started doing that in 2012 and we didn't use it every year.
16:44
2013, we had a good year, so I didn't use it. 2015, I think I started to use it, and then we got rain again. So I wasn't, I like to rotate my animals through my pastures. I want to make sure that the pastures stay in good shape.
17:00
And the best way to do that, of course, is to rotate them. So I didn't need to again for quite a while. And then family problems, I quit working at the family ranch. And so I did work with other clients with the high density zero rotation.
17:21
And I call it that because we didn't have a compost maker. And that was part of the Serengeti grazing. And I don't want to take anything away from what Mr. Cortez had done. I call it high density, zero rotation because that's what it is.
17:40
High density animals, zero rotation of the grazing. They're all there for as long as you want to keep them. And of course, we started in April. We could have started a little earlier, but I don't think I would want to start any earlier than that in my location.
17:59
And we basically went till the first good frost, which, you know, once you get a frost, it's time to move them on. I've tried ryegrass with other clients on my property, and ryegrass didn't work for us.
18:16
We do it in the winter time, and the animals just stomp on it too much for it to recover fast enough to work. A lot of people have called me from Pennsylvania and Ohio saying, that sounds great. Can I use ryegrass?
18:30
And I said, I don't know. I say what grasses you have up there. I don't know what would work best, but it's worth a try to put your animals in there and see what works best for you. I know that Bermuda grass and Bahea grass, stolons and rhizomes, and it's pretty hard to kill a grass with stolons and rhizomes because even though the animals step on it, it's coming back quickly.
18:56
How does it differ from just what we call high density or mob grazing? Well, the mob grazing and the high density grazing are part of a rotational system. That's what I like to do whenever I'm not high density zero rotation.
19:13
And of course, it's generally, unless you've got a really large herd and you're putting them into really small paddocks and moving them once or twice a day, this is still a pretty high density as far as numbers go.
19:29
But you're keeping them in that area for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and on. And when you get to 120 days, you know the animals are tired of being there. Animals like to move about a lot. They're just grazing animals.
19:47
They like to move. If we were to open up all the gates on our 200-acre ranch, they'd be in every one of them. And I had a hard time getting them all together. But with any type of mob grazing or mid grazing, you're really putting a higher density in a small area, but you're moving them on.
20:08
And hopefully the dung beetles will follow. Hopefully they continue to do what you want them to do and make your grass healthy. But I also found that if you've got a really healthy grass rotation, you're going to have to come back to those pastures you graze a lot sooner than later.
20:28
And so a large ranch may end up with so much grass that they actually cause it to go to seed well before it needs to go to seed, and you lose a lot of nutritive value. So you have to look at every ranch individually.
20:47
It depends a lot on whatever your ranch situation is. There's no magic formula. Do you see other grass species coming in? I don't see a whole lot. Once the Bermuda and the Bahagrass get really thick, it's crowding out every other grass species.
21:10
Now on the rest of the ranch, during that recovery period, we did have grass species come back that we hadn't seen in a long time. When you're only grazing one acre out of a 200 acre ranch, you get a lot of recovery period.
21:26
And we did that 20 days during the best growth period that the ranch could have. And so we did see a lot of species come back. And once we were back into good rotational grazing, we maintained a lot of those species for a long time.
21:44
And what about wildlife? How does it affect wildlife? Well, in the area that you're grazing, the wildlife aren't going to be there unless they're looking for nutrition. And of course, the armadillos will come in at night.
21:59
They love those dumbbeetles. They love the grubs. And they're going to find them. But other wildlife is going to be on the property that you're not grazing. And so it definitely improves. You know, we did see a lot more, we did see a lot more wildlife that came in from other ranches around us because that property was quiet.
22:23
There's nobody running around the property, moving cattle, you know, or just general ranching experiences. The fences weren't being broken. We didn't have anything to worry about. And so neither did wildlife.
22:38
And they moved in. Any final words of wisdom to pass on to other producers? I wish that everyone would try this at least once. The thing that I like most about it is when you've got a drought, one of the things that happens during a drought is people sell their cattle and the cattle that are sold get down to worthless.
23:03
You actually, it costs you more money to sell them than it would to keep them, even with the expense of putting in the irrigation system and buying the five tons per acre of compost. You can accumulate all that money back to you once you sell those cattle at a higher price, because we look at cattle prices now.
23:30
And I don't know about your area, but in my area, cattle prices are as high as they've ever been. And this is because we've had two years of drought. We've got people that sold their animals for next to nothing, people that have fed hay and sweet feed just to keep their cattle alive.
23:51
And when you look at the cost of feeding the sweet feed and feeding the hay, we were selling hay at $110 a bale, ridiculous prices. And yet people were paying it because they wanted to keep feeding their cattle.
24:08
And they thought they would recover that money. And of course, they have recovered a little bit of it, but think about how much more they could have recovered. Once you put in the irrigation system, you don't need to worry.
24:19
It's there forever. And so you can recover that cost very easily with that first L when the prices are much higher. And of course, years and years and years after that, you'll recover more and more. And if you're using stocker cattle and maybe not using the same acre every year, but rotating that acre around, I think you can really do a great job of putting money in your pocket.
24:46
And that's what it's all about for us ranchers, trying to be sustainable. And this is one of the easiest ways to sustain a herd when you can just put a little bit of compost in and put a little bit of irrigation in and keep those animals happy and grazing and fat.
25:08
That's what we want. Well, thanks for talking with me. And you can look for other articles from David in the Stockman Grass Farmer. So thanks again for talking with me. Thank you so much for inviting me.
25:24
Okay.
