Finishing cattle on grass is an art and science. Here’s where we swap stories about how to do it right.

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Sylvan Dale Receives Grant from Animal Welfare Approved

Sylvan Dale Ranch in Loveland, Colo. has been awarded funding to incorporate new breeding stock into the farm’s cattle herd. Animal Welfare Approved announced the 2012-2013 Good Husbandry Grants which help promote sustainable, forward thinking farming techniques and Sylvan Dale Ranch was among the 42 grants that have been awarded to farms and slaughter plants across the nation. The grants are intended to improve animal welfare and allow pasture-based farmers to increase productivity for their operations. This is the fifth year of the program. Read more

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America’s Funniest Calf Videos – 1

“It’s my first rodeo!”  This little calf, just hours old, puts on quite a show.  See the video here:

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The Cattle Chronicles: New born Calves

Calf - just born 2 84dpiMonday, April 15.

Springtime in the Rockies.  Hah!  We’re in the midst of the biggest snowstorm of the season, nine inches and counting.  We delayed our calving season this year on the theory that mamas calving in April and May (as opposed to our past practice of February-March) would fare better on the spring flush of grass and save us the expense of feeding hay in corrals.  Not to mention being a lot warmer.  Looks like Mother Nature has up and changed her season too.  Guess she thought we’d miss taking care of newborns in the freezing snow.

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The Cattle Chronicles: First Calf of 2013

Calf 2012 01 - mama 010 - 1 smallWednesday, April 10, 2013.

From Linda J:

One sign of spring:  After helping move our fifty-five yearlings across the highway and onto Red Ridge, David J, Promise and I went into the Big Valley where the first little calf was just hours old.  A sweet looking little red heifer with ridiculously long eyelashes, was lying in a little hollow in the dirt.  A very bitter wind was blowing, and as we left, I saw her mama actually lie down with her, to keep her warm. I’ve never seen a cow do that before.  She’s a good mama.  Mango, our cattle manager, was coming to walk them down to water and some better cover, but I hated to think of them out in that cold all night.

PS. From David J:  The calf is doing great at 4 days old.  Her mama, #010, has stashed her baby in the tall grass in a hollow close to the irrigation ditch.  Anytime you approach the calf, Mama comes running and mooing.  Don’t mess with her baby!

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Super Bugs in your Meat

Every few months, an outbreak of sickness and death caused by lethal strains of E. Coli  and other “super bugs” makes the headlines.  These bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics.  Why?  One reason, according to scientists, is that unlike grass-fed beef, low levels of antibiotics are being routinely fed to industrially-raised cattle to make them grow faster and protect them from diseases caused by their living conditions.  Thousands of animals are crowded together into massive feedlots for months at a time, where they stand in their own wastes and gorge on grains that upset their normal digestive systems.  The bacteria happily seize the opportunity to multiply and evolve into new strains resistant to the antibiotics.  And they aren’t choosy about their hosts– humans do quite nicely.

Someone must be doing something about this, right?  Think again.  According to David Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA doesn’t even know what antibiotics are being fed to our food animals.  Legislation authorizing the FDA to collect this data can’t get out of a Senate committee.  Too bad.  As Kessler says, the problem is rapidly becoming a matter of life and death.

David Jessup

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Livestock Improve Water Holding Capacity of Soil

Here at Sylvan Dale we are using cattle to help build up organic matter and carbon content of our soils.  The technique:  planned, rapid rotation grazing.  It turns out this also helps the soil conserve water.  Here’s a post from Dr. Roy Roath, CSU Professor Emeritus, describing a grazing experiment he conducted on range land in Northern Colorado:

In a program implemented north of Fort Collins in a ‘short grass prairie” receiving an average of 10-12 inches of annual precipitation; we implemented a grazing program designed explicitly to greatly increase water capture and retention. This requires a designed rotational grazing program to allow use, foster tillering and plant recruitment and management for growth and regrowth to full recovery in every pasture every year. In doing this we were able to increase forage on offer, leave greater residual cover and increase the diversity of the stand including greatly increasing the forb component. What we found is that the “short grass prairie” was really a mixed grass prairie suppressed by years of inappropriate grazing. We soon had major increases in cool season grasses and forbs and many tall warm season grasses that were not evident and not even thought to be a part of this ecosystem when we started. After five years in this program we had two dry streambeds that became streams that flowed 365 days a year and began to grow riparian vegetation the full length of their corridor. A critical part of this management strategy is to regain and manage cover on the primary terraces bordering the streambed. These are water storage areas and must have structure and cover to maintain the integrity to the stored water in the system. I can’t say that this works everywhere but I have enough experience in a variety of environments to know that one can vastly improve water capture and in doing so has a great probability of good things happening.

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Can Livestock Save the Planet?

The world has a water problem.  More and more of the landscape in temperate zones is turning into desert.  The planet is warming due to greenhouse gases.

Now along comes Allan Savory, the founder of holistic grazing management, claiming that herds of livestock can reverse these trends.  It sounds a little too good to be true, but Savory makes a convincing case.

My wife and I heard Allan Savory speak at the Quivira Coalition conference last October.  Now everyone can hear him speak at the TED Talks website.  It’s way worth twenty minutes of your time.  And his photos of transformed landscapes are stunning.

David J

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First “Pink Slime,” now Zilmax

Just when you thought mass-produced beef couldn’t get less appetizing (remember the “pink slime” hamburger controversy?), along comes Zilmax, a new growth drug being fed to feedlot cattle across the country.  According to author Christopher Leonard, Zilmax was originally developed to treat asthma in humans.  In feedlot-raised cattle, it produces faster muscle growth…and more profits.  It’s FDA approved, but according to Leonard, it makes steak tougher, less flavorful and less juicy than beef from untreated cattle.  Beef McNuggets anyone?  Read the full article from the San Jose Mercury News, and a longer article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Why Help Ranchers Improve Our Watershed?

In response to an article by Bobby Magill in the Ft. Collins Coloradoan about a new “Ecosystem Services” Conservation Effort in Larimer County, one reader questioned whether city dwellers should contribute funds to help farmers and ranchers reduce nutrient or sediment pollution that flows from their lands into the watershed.  Shouldn’t there be regulations that force landowners to assume these costs themselves? he asked.

A legitimate question.  Here is the answer prepared by the Steering Committee of the Colorado Conservation Exchange, the group promoting the ecosystem services concept.

There are hundreds of small livestock and horse operations in our watershed, and thousands of agricultural crop lands.  Individually, none of them releases significant pollution or sediment into lakes and streams.  Collectively, they hold the potential to improve water quality for all. Read more

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Carbon Ranching—Don’t Treat Soil Like Dirt!


By David Jessup

 

 

First I thought we were cattle ranchers. Then I learned we were grass ranchers (the cattle are merely a way to get the grass to the bank). Then at a 2010 Quivira Coalition conference, I found out we are really carbon ranchers, of all things.

Plants scrub the air of Carbon Dioxide during photosynthesis. Some of the carbon goes into the soil through the roots, where it gets stored in humus. Humus lasts a long time. It enriches the soil while removing excess CO2. Unfortunately, our chemical-heavy agricultural system is destroying it at a scary rate. “Don’t treat soil like dirt,” one speaker said.

Following the conference, Linda and I paid a visit to John Wick, a California rancher working with the Marin Carbon Project. He’s all hepped up about the potential of wrangling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it in soil humus. How? By spreading a thin layer of compost on his cattle pastures. He claims that a mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of agricultural soils in his state could absorb all the annual CO2 emissions from California vehicle traffic. Oh, and by the way, the increased soil carbon makes the grass grow taller and faster.

So you can improve your pastures and help save the planet at the same time? Sounds like a bargain.

We’re now trying to replicate some of his research here at Sylvan Dale Ranch. With some advice from John and carbon researcher Whendee Silver, a UC Berkeley professor, and some baseline soil samples taken by Rich Conant at Colorado State University, we spread compost on one side of our pasture in a checkerboard pattern to create a number of sample plots. CSU’s Center for Collaborative Conservation helped pay for some of the compost (it’s expensive!). We’ll mob-graze some of these plots with our cattle herd to see if trampling hooves and manure also enhance carbon storage. Then more soil samples. Results will be posted here as they come in (not soon, I might add – soil building is a long-term process).

In the meantime, I found some riveting internet sources on carbon ranching:

  • The Carbon Pilgrim. Courtney White, founder of the Quivira Coalition, writes eloquently about carbon ranching and explains the carbon cycle in a way that inspires the same goose-pimply feeling you get when contemplating the universe. White chronicles his trip to find out whether farming and ranching could play a significant role in reducing CO2 using carbon sequestration. A book is in the works.
  • The Soil Solution, a five-minute film on Youtube. Sustainable World Media visits with farmers, scientists, and educators who are exploring the connection of soil fertility to water quality, food security, and carbon sequestration.
  • Peter Donovan is an educator from eastern Oregon who has created a $10,000 prize for a farmer or rancher who can convert the most CO2 into soil carbon during a five year period. During his yellow school bus trip around America, he has managed to sign up fifty takers. Maybe we’ll add our ranch to the list. All in favor, say “Aye.”

Enjoy. This is good stuff.

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