Graze Grass; Don't Bale It,
Specialist Advises Cattlemen

By David Bowser

PLANO, Texas — Developing a pasture system that provides forages for harvest by livestock on a year-round basis can substantially reduce winter feeding costs in areas where the practice is applicable, says Dr. Larry A. Redmon, forage specialist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service in Overton.

That's one of the few ways stockmen can improve their bottom line, contends the East Texas specialist.

Improving the bottom line of a livestock operation requires increasing the value of sales or decreasing inputs costs, Redmon notes, "And beef cattle producers have little control over the selling price of their product.

"Therefore, the second method of improving the bottom line, reducing input costs, is usually the more viable approach to improving the economic condition of the production enterprise."

In Texas, winter feeding costs are greater than 20 percent of the overall annual cost of cow ownership, he says. Although use of hay or supplemental feed can be beneficial under certain conditions, most producers depend too heavily on these items for winter feeding programs.

Redmon recommends stockpiling grass in pastures and letting cattle harvest it.

Using a mixture of warm and cool season grasses, cattle can graze pastures 12 months a year, lowering the costs of winter feeding.

The grasses will vary, he says, depending upon location. What does well around San Antonio may not work near Dallas or in the Texas Panhandle; he says grasses must be selected that have a chance to survive in the environment where they're planted.

"Don't plan to feed any hay," he says, "but always have a plan to feed hay if you have to."

Redmon says producers are dependent on warm season perennial grasses in the south.

"That's okay to an extent," he says. "Usually, if we get some rain and we add some fertilizer, growing conditions are good. It's pretty hard to go wrong. About the only way you can go wrong is to have too many cattle on the place. That will vary each year."

But cutting it and baling grass increases costs.

"Hay is expensive," Redmon says. "It may be the most expensive way to winter a cow."

A 1000-pound round bale of bermuda grass will conservatively cost about $32.50 to $35 for the producer to roll.

"Take that investment and expand it to how much it will take to feed a cow, and it is a really expensive way to feed," Redmon says.

He says he knows people in Arkansas who had $44 tied up in bales last year. Another man in East Texas figured he had $75 invested in each bale.

"We need to reduce our dependence on equipment, on sack feed, on things we have to purchase off-farm," Redmon admonishes. "Anything you purchase off the farm comes out of your pocket."

He was recently told that the fertilizer industry plans to shut down 20 percent of its capacity to produce nitrogen in the U.S. next year.

"What's that going to do to nitrogen fertilizer?" he asks. "I can only guess. I'm sure it won't be beneficial to the cow-calf producer."

Ranchers have got to get to the point where they can produce cattle at less cost.

"We can't do much about the price we're selling them for," Redmon reiterates.

A producer who does a really good job of managing can own a cow for about $250 a year as opposed to those who are paying $500 or $600 a year.

"There's $300 that you could be recovering," he says. "We don't want to do anything to diminish the value of our sales, but usually as managers we have the biggest impact on reducing our input costs."

A lot of producers have a lot of equipment and cannot justify owning any of it, he quips.

"We've got to try to become good grass managers so we can feed these cattle as close to 12 months a year as we can out of the pasture," Redmon says. "It's much, much more efficient and less costly to let the animal do the harvesting."

There is a difference in nutrient requirements for different classes of beef cattle, he admits, and each program has to be tailored to the class and type of cattle being grazed.

"Our spring calving cattle have a lower requirement than fall calving cattle or winter stockers," Redmon says. "We'll probably use an annual rye grass, not a rye-rye grass mix. It costs so much money to get that rye in there that you really need to have some cattle that can take advantage of that additional nutrition in the fall and winter."

He suggests reserving rye-rye grass, wheat-rye grass, or oat-rye grass mixtures for fall calvers.

"We'll probably limit graze those cows and let the calves have creep access to it," Redmon says.

For spring calving cows, ranchers can have rye grass that will produce a good level of forage from February through March and into April and May.

"It provides a lot of grazing," he says. "Good nutrition."

Redmon has developed a protocol with bermuda grass in North and East Texas, but ranchers have to be careful. It may not work if the producer starts too early.

"If you accumulate growth from May until frost, the bermuda grass is not going to be very good at all," he cautions. "There are a lot of negative things that happen with the age of these warm season perennial grasses."

With age, crude protein and total digestible nutrient levels go down.

"We have to start later in the year," Redmon says. "Bermuda grass has a really interesting way of growing. In the late spring, early summer, it has its highest peak of growth. That growth is going to be highest in crude protein and digestible energy levels."

There's a slump during the summer.

"We still grow grass, but the nutrient levels go down," he says. "Heat has a lot of negative effects on those grasses."

The summer slump is not too good, but as the nights start getting a little longer and temperatures start cooling down, there is more growth and the nutrient levels rise.

"It's not going to be as high," Redmon says. "We won't grow as much, but it's pretty good grass. The nutrient content of that grass will be awfully good."

He suggests starting to let the grass stockpile about four to six weeks before the first frost.

"What we're trying to do is capture that last little blush of growth, hold that and graze that in the fall and winter," he says.

The pasture that will be stockpiled should be grazed short initially.

"We want it to be short because we want to start young and not capture an old, mature plant," Redmon says. "We would like to capture a hay harvest out there.

Pull the cattle out, he says, apply about 75 pounds of nitrogen per acre and let the grass grow until it frosts.

Redmon warns, however, that his protocol is designed around one certain class of cattle, mature spring calving cows that are going into the fall in good condition.

"It's not for developing heifers," he insists. "It's not for first-calf heifers. It's not for stocker cattle. It's not for bulls. It's not for fall calving cows. It's for spring calving cows because of their nutrient requirement for this time of year."

All too often, Redmon warns, producers want to talk about yield off their hay meadows.

"Yield is not where it's at," he says. "If it's only four percent crude protein, it's not going to provide very good nutrition. It has to be based on the animal's requirement."

One of the keys is how the pasture is grazed.

"We can't just open the gate when it's time to go in on the stockpiled Bermuda grass," Redmon says. "What the cattle will do is go around and sample everything in the pasture. They'll tromp and waste a lot of it. We've gone to great lengths to produce this forage for a certain time of year, so we don't want to waste any of it."

Instead, Redmon suggests strip grazing or a rotational grazing system.

"A hot wire, if you've got a nice rectangular pasture, works real well," he says.

Redmon recommends giving the cattle a day or two days worth of forage and letting them take 60 to 65 percent of the grass in the pasture.

"It's pretty clean, but we're not forcing them to get right down to the soil surface," he notes.

As the forage is used up, advance the wire.

"Hopefully, about Christmas or New Year's Day, we've cleaned that pasture up and we're looking around the corner at this rye grass some time in February," Redmon says.

Such a system can reduce hay feeding from 150 or 180 days a year down to maybe 45 or 60.

"We figure it is worth about $30 per cow per winter for a 100-day grazing period," he says.

That will vary, he admits, depending upon the situation.

He doesn't recommend grazing the stockpiled bermuda grass into late January.

"I want to cut it off around Christmas or New Year's Day," Redmon says.

In the studies he's done, Redmon says there is no significant difference between cattle that are supplemented and cattle grazing only bermuda grass.

"There was no significant difference in those animals' performance," Redmon says. "There was no significant difference in body condition, live weight change, intake or anything else."

He says the numbers suggest that a little supplementation is beneficial, but it doesn't appear to be cost-effective.

There is an Arkansas study, Redmon says, where one pasture was grazed and another was treated as a hay meadow.

"In October, they put a set of cattle in both these pastures and grazed those pastures," Redmon says. "On their stockpiled bermuda grass, they basically didn't get below about 12 percent crude protein going into January."

The total digestible nutrient values were also similar.

Stockpiling bermuda grass is not new, Redmon says. He cites studies from Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas.

"We've got a lot of anecdotal things from producers who have done it for many years," he says. "It's a very good concept that they like and have used to reduce the amount of feeding costs associated with a winter feeding program."

If a producer is going to use stockpiled grass, Redmon warns that he will have to learn to ignore bawling cattle.

"Don't even drive by for a day or two, because they'll stand by the gate with sad, droopy eyes," Redmon says. "You'll feel sorry for them so you'll back up with some cubes. But don't do that. These cattle are not going to die. They will breed back. They will eat that grass."