Cost
Effectiveness of Intensive Grazing
(and why conventional ranching isn’t cost effective)
Before you can make a judgment on whether or not
intensive grazing will fit into your plan, there are myths need to be
dispelled.
Myth number one is that it is too much work and
takes too much time away from “necessary“ chores. Other than water, the
two most important things on any ranch is forage and the cattle
themselves. I had a neighbor who only checked his cattle once a week,
and then only made a quick run through them with a pickup or four
wheeler. One day he discovered twenty dead calves out of seven hundred
and fifty. Too busy to spend time in his cattle, he mass treated at a
cost of $5 a head or a cost of $3,650 and lost an additional
fifteen calves before he started checking on his cattle daily. He lost
over $15,000 in calves plus the medicine all because he was too busy
with other projects to pay attention to the cattle. The cost of that
single three week wreck would have paid more than half a year of wages
for someone to be herding and taking care of herd health. .
Myth number two (perpetrated by environmentalists)
is that cattle damage forage for game and destroy bird habitat.
Properly done, intensive grazing will actually improve forage
conditions. If there is more forage, there is also more feed for deer
and other game, as well as cover for quail and other game bird species.
There is also a little publicized fact, that if your cattle are running
as a herd, game animals will seek protection from predators by running
into a large group of cattle.
Myth number three is that desert ranches need to
have cattle drinkers every mile. Ranches that double as hunting ranches
want them closer together in addition to having quail drinkers (which
only serve to water coyote and Javelina, which is why I call them
“predator drinkers“)
The fact is that having small drinkers fairly close together
forces us to scatter cattle which results in lower utilization of the
total feed we have. Cattle will hang in the bottoms or on the ridges,
overgrazing them while leaving the feed in between virtually untouched.
Studies have shown quail receive enough moisture from their diet and do
not require additional water. Deer, Bighorn sheep and other game
animals were here before any man made water supplies, so having
drinkers close together is not necessarily beneficial to game animals
and fowl.
Having to pump water to every drinker on the system
year round, which means we have to check the entire system for leaks
year round, increasing fuel bills as well as maintenance on vehicles.
Not only is it taking more time and costing more to have the entire
system running at once, we are pumping more water than wee need due to
evaporation loss. If your area has a 10” annual pan evaporation
you will lose approximately 6.2 gallons per square foot. As most
drinkers have at least ten square feet, you are losing 62 gallons per
year per drinker (not to mention loss from uncovered storage
tanks.) The annual pan evaporation in most areas of the southwest
will be higher than 10” a year.
By concentrating drinkers at storage tanks at
approximately two miles apart, you can graze all of your cattle as one
herd. This will allow you to either cover, or turn off all but one
drinker at all locations other than where your cattle are located. The
deer and other big game will still have enough water from the storage
tank and the only water you will need to check is where the cattle are
watering. The time and expense of driving over the entire system
several times a week has suddenly dropped down to just checking where
the cattle are has cut your weekly fuel expenses by more than half. If
you plan ahead, and have a trailer with a shovel and supplies needed to
fix a leak, valve or float, you may be able to do
away with even running a pickup other than when you put out salt or
mineral. Even then, the only place you will need to put it out, is the
one place where your cattle are located. As an added benefit, This wil
also reduce the total number of miles in most watering systems. Fewer
miles of pipeline in operation reduces the number of leaks you will
have, resulting less cost in leak repairs.
Once you have trained your cattle to act as a herd,
you are ready to implement an intensive grazing program where one
person can handle your entire herd. You will no longer be over grazing
some areas while leaving feed untouched in others. Not only will you be
able to achieve proper herd effect to improve forage, have fewer losses
to predators, lower not only overall expenses associated with
maintaining a water line, but also require less time and labor when it
comes time to work your cattle because they will all be in one place,
rather than being scattered all over the ranch. In addition, when you
herd your cattle, you no longer have strays. Which would you rather do,
spend money running all over the ranch ignoring your cattle, or improve
your ranch and cattle while spending less money?
If you want help in learing to herd your
cattle so they act as a herd, setting your ranch up to be able to herd
effiecently, or want help in learning to handle your cattle with less
stress, please visit the
Services
Page
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