 Hello there, my name is Tans Herman. I'm the NRCS Grazing Land Soil Health Specialist for South Dakota and we are here on the topic of drought, but I would make the case that disaster in many forms could require the use of having a contingency plan or disaster plan if you will. Drought is certainly one that we would see most commonly in the Northern Great Plains but we could have fire or hail or even flood that causes a loss of forage for grazing animals on rangeland and I'm here with a gentleman who has a very detailed plan and will happily walk us through the steps of how to get started in building a drought or contingency plan that accompanies then your regular grazing plan for when conditions are normal. And if you would introduce yourself to the group and who you're affiliated with and what we're looking at here. Yeah, my name is Brett Nix and I live in Murdov, South Dakota. It's about in the center of the state and I'm on the board of the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition. I've been asked to share what we do in this case of drought. We started in 2012 when we had a pretty major drought that we could see that we had a need to figure out what we were going to do, which animals we were going to sell, in what order, and how we were going to navigate through that. And so we were a little less calm then when we've been the last year or two about it simply because in that process to 2012 we did put together this drought plan here and we have dates on another sheet that is kind of our release dates or our target dates when we know that we're at a certain stage and we haven't had a adequate amount of moisture at that stage, then these are the animals that we're going to market at that time. So we've set up our ranch a little bit different and even since then we've set it up even more differently that we run different classes of cattle. We have our cow-calf operation. We have stocker operation, both heifers and steers. The steers is what we use to eat our spring flush to help keep that in control and to add value to them. We have a fat cow operation, which when we pull our open cows off, we'll run those and put weight on those. And so we have different classes of cattle so that when we get in a low moisture situation, we'll start to sell off those that have the least value to us on our ranch, the ones that we want to not necessarily keep any longer, that we could market easily. And so those are considerations that we've had when we set up this drought plan to start with. And so one of the questions that we asked ourselves was what will I sell and in what order will I sell it? And I guess another question that goes with that is, you know, what am I going to be selling anyway? And that might be co-cows, open cows, late cavers, you know, those type of things. Actually your steer calves, you know, you're going to be selling them anyway. And so they might fall in that category. Another question you'd ask is what what products do we have that are overvalued? And those could be, depending on your ranch, any number of things. For us, we consider a steer as always overvalued because we consider them one of our least valuable resources. A steer can only gain weight, whereas the heifer mate to that steer can gain weight, can get bread, can have a calf, can be sold as a bread animal, can go into your cow herd, and she can change tax brackets as well. And so there's, for your ranch, it's going to be different what animals you would consider is overvalued. What's mature? You know, what animals are getting toward the maturity process for us? Those older cows. Another question that we asked is what animals consume the most resources? Of course for that, you know, we'd be our bigger older cows. And so in 2012, that's kind of where we started with our bigger older cows that consume the most resources. And then we asked ourselves, well, which animals do we want to keep the most? You know, which ones are undervalued? Light calves, heifers, thinnerm cows. What animals can I add value to with the least amount of resources expended? So there I mean like a heifer, stalker heifer. You can add a lot of value to her and she doesn't consume as much resources. So that would be an animal that we would want to not sell first. We want to keep her till toward the end of our drought trigger dates. What's our critical dates? What are dates of convenience? When will we have animals in a place both by their location and by their maturity, you know, such as a cow that's just going to have a calf or a cow that's just had a calf might be one of the hardest ones to market. Especially for us because we cab out on grass in May and June. So those are harder animals for us to get in and market those animals at that time. So it would be different for your ranch if you cab earlier or if you cab in lots and you would be able to market that animal more easily. What animals can be sorted easily? What's close to my place? What can I get in and put on a truck easily? Can I make an opportunity out of this drought? And we did that in 2012. We've done that again this year and we actually started last year. Can I shorten up my breeding season? Can I sell some of my bigger harder doing cows, the ones that consumes the most resources? And so we did that and we still do that. Can I consolidate herds? Probably one of the most impactful things that we've done on our ranch is combing or combined our herds. And when we did that and then we now had our livestock eating in one place and the most impactful thing is that the rest of our ranch was recovering. So that's the most impactful thing about combing your herds into the least possible. And I always say, I'd like to run just one herd, but I haven't gotten there yet. You still just have other classes that you really don't want to combine together. Even though I think that I could do more there, but the problem is probably with my own thinking. And so when we put a plan together and we'll look at in a minute here, we have written dates and when we have a certain percentage of moisture that we're short on, then we'll start to market those animals. One of the things that we like to say is that earlier that we start to destock the more grass that we'll have left for the ones that we really want to keep the most. So the longer you wait to start your destocking process or if you want to try and buy hay to feed them longer, the worst case scenario you can end up with, if you spend your money on hay, it doesn't rain, you've eaten your grass, you've eaten your hay, you've spent your money, you still have your cattle. So now you have to sell pretty much everything. And so that's kind of where we wanted to keep out of that spot. And I think that's a good thing to look at. So the earlier you start, the better off you'll be. And so that's one of the things that we've looked at. I'll pull this over and this is kind of some of the things that we look at. What's our date for us on our ranch? It's going to be different across the country. It'll be different even in different parts of South Dakota. That from April 20th to May 1st is kind of a critical time period for us. By then, we know what moisture we've had. We kind of know what our rainfall has been, our snow impact has been by then. For us, we're still a month ahead of calving yet. So we could still sell bred animals. And our stockers are usually fairly close to our place yet then. If we want to sell steers, then we can. So I'll just stop for a minute and tell you kind of what we've done in 2020, 2021 and 2022. We started to come up short on moisture really in the fall of summer of 21 or 20 actually is when we started. So we cut our bulls down with our cows. Our breeding season in 2020, we cut them down to about 35 or 40 days on our cows and we cut them down to I believe 30 days on our heifers. And the idea was we wanted to produce them open cows. And one might say, well, wouldn't you rather breed them and sell a bred cow? Well, in some cases, that would be the way you would want to do it. But for us, that doesn't work as well. For us, a late bred cow is going to be calving in late June and July. That's not a product that anybody really wants to buy, especially if you're in a drought. So she's actually going to be worth more to us as a palm cow, as an open cow that time of the year. And so we can actually get her marketed fairly quickly. As soon as we can preg check, then we can sell her. So we can get her off our place pretty quickly and without any any added expense. So we did that. Our thought was that we wanted to we wanted to sell about 20% of our herd at that time to start de stocking. So we did that and it did produce about a 20% call in our herd. And so going into 21, you know, we'd already de stocked about 20% of our herd. We also decided because of lack of moisture at that over the winter and going into the spring of 21 that we're going to sell our our stockers steers earlier. And so we did that and we marketed our first group of steers around the 1st of June and our 2nd group of steers around the 1st of July. And so that was another one of the things. Oh, and in that year, in 2021, we actually sold our open cows. We didn't run a fat cow operation that that summer. We sold them about the time we would have went to grass with them. We sold them. So we got rid of those two enterprises early in the year. And so in 2021 last summer, we only put our bulls in with our cows for 30 days. We put our bulls in with our heifers for about 20 days or 21 days. And there again, we wanted to generate another another 20% that we could sell off our cow herd. And we accomplished that. We wanted to sell about 100 open cows and we ended up selling 102 off that. So it hit really close. And it did something else for us too is it's really been shortening up our our calving season. And so we like to move our cattle some even when we're calving. And so it made that it's it made that easier this last summer and it's going to make it even easier this next summer because we'll we'll have our animals all calved out and we calve at the same time our heifers and our cows and they all calve out on grass. And so we'll be ready to start moving them again more quickly because they'll all be calved out. And so in and we've already sold all of our steers, you know, this this spring this winter. So we've sold our fat cows, we sold our steers, we shortened up our breeding season, we sold two groups of open cows already that would be more than we normally would. And we're going to be sitting in about a 50% stocking rate, even though we'll still have most of the nucleus of our cow herd. So that's I think that's a note to make if you base your stocking rate solely on your cow and calf operation, then all you really have to sell is cows, whether they be bred or open or however you want to manage that. But so when you know when you want to eat some of that spring flush that that extra grass, and if you choose to do it with a different enterprise, whether it be your steers, as stockers, or or your heifer stockers. And I've been asked well, boy, doesn't that give you a lot of heartburn selling that many open cows? And that would be a legitimate question. And the answer is no, it doesn't because we don't do any heifer development. We just run stockers, our heifers, we put a bull in with them for this last year 21 days. And in 30 days, we'll preg check them, the one that are bred, we'll go into our cow herd, the ones that are not bred, we'll stay as stockers. And last year we sold them early, we'll sell them again early this summer. As soon as we get them preg checked, then we'll probably market the balance of our stockers. And so that that's kind of why it doesn't give us heartburn to sell open cows. They're just a resource or product that we sell off of our ranch. We focus more on our land and our grass than we actually do on what you'd call our genetics. Although we do, you know, we do pay attention to genetics, but we put more of our focus on our grass, you know, because you can, you can have grass without cows on it, but you can't have cows without grass. So you better be focusing on your grass. Do you recall when you made that mindset change, Brett? When the cows became, yes, they're an important tool, but they are not the sole priority? Yes, I could. It could be a longer conversation, but that's okay. I'm game. Okay. This, this all kind of started to come to our mind in about probably 2008, when the prices of all the products, and we were farming then about half farming and half livestock, and the price of the grains went sky high. And we thought, Oh wow, this is really going to be good. Guess what else went sky high? All the inputs. And so in 2008, 9, 10, when the, when the price of grains come back down, but the price of the inputs didn't come back down. And financially, we were bleeding and we had to figure out how we were going to stop the bleeding. We could see we were slipping each year financially. And so we brought a team of people together that we trusted, some banking institution and our family, my parents, who we were in business with them at that time. And we just crunched all the numbers and, and saw what the problems were. And then we decided at that point with my parents, they just, we talked it over and they decided that I think it would be better if, if just Laura and I took the operation over and we would lease the land from them and we had our own land as well. So we formed, we formed a partnership and put all the land in a partnership. And so we separated the land and livestock and we took over the, the ranch, we leased it from them. So they had a guaranteed income and, and, and they didn't have to shoulder the responsibility of where we were at that time. And so they actually moved to a more of a mentor role or that's me, that's the right, just an advisory position. And what didn't take very long before they really started to embrace that advisory position. And we leaned on them hard for, for advice, but they could give us advice and they knew they didn't have to bear the consequences, be it good or bad. And so, so at that point, Laura and I started making decisions. Well, we started asking ourselves some of these same questions about our ranch. You know, why do we do what we do? What do we want to see our lives look like? And that was a million dollar question for us. What do we want to see our lives look like? What do we want to see our ranch look like? And so we decided, we sat down and we wrote down some things that we wanted to see about our ranch and about our lives. And we were working way too many hours, two days a week, seven a lot of the time. And so, you know, one enterprise was rolling right into the next one, we wouldn't even get one thing finished up and we'd be rolling right into another thing. And this was almost a year around. And life just wasn't that much fun on the ranch. So we decided that we wanted to change that. So we just started looking through all of our numbers. And we had a pretty good set of records and so we started looking at them and saying, well, we can cut off, you know, financially, we could cut off 5 or 10 percent of each line item, you know, and we'd make some progress financially. But it really wouldn't stop the problem. So we decided, well, what if we started cutting out enterprises and we can take care, we can change things with big numbers, you know, to cut out a 60 or $80,000 fertilizer bill or $80,000 chemical bill, you know, those type of things. And so we had to figure out, well, how do we do that? Well, to get better change enterprises. So we decided at that point to plant all of our farm ground back to grass. And so we set out on that journey at that time. And we wanted to, our soil had become pretty much dead. And so we wanted to put life back in our soil so we decided we want to put cover crops on for a minimum of three years and longer on some of it. And so we started out on that journey, which is a whole other conversation. But you underwent significant change. Once you recognized we have a problem that we need to address. And you recognized your economics. And boy, that's critical piece. You made informed decisions with data and facts rather than I don't like farming anymore. I just want to be a rancher. It wasn't that it was these are all business decisions that you made. Yeah. And so we sat down and strategically made a plan. So how we were going to go through that process. And we knew that, you know, we're going to, we're going to try and finance it with the sell of machinery. And so we'd use that piece of machinery right up until we didn't need it anymore. And then we'd sell it. We'd put some fences in and put some water line to some tanks. And we eventually got all of our cropland fenced and got water on it. It was a, ended up being about a six, almost seven year project. You know, we thought we could do it in three. Well, we're mistaken. It just takes longer to get the biology back in your land, to get life back in your soil, and then to get each piece planted back without upsetting your your cart financially, economically, biologically. So there was a lot of pieces to the puzzle. We also didn't want to see ourselves get financially upside down during that time period. So that's why we were trying to finance it with, and we did get some help with some programs as well and some grass plantings. But most of the, most of the brown of the finance come from the sell machinery. And so, and the price of cattle was good at that time as well. So that helped make it make the transition work better. I presume you were growing the herd at the same time, because now you have more acres of grazing as it's coming on board and those stands are being established. You know, that's when we decided, you know, when we moved into 2012 in the drought, and so it kind of all fit together. And we decided that rather to grow our cow herd too big, too quickly, that we would run stockers, and then we would start these different enterprises. And we even had a fall herd too, for a period of time. So we were just trying to stock our place a little differently, rather than just build our cow herd up into big numbers. And so we thought, and of course, 2012, we could see, well, yes, this can be a lot more manageable to do it that way. And those animals provide you the liquidity that the straight cow cap herd doesn't necessarily offer, right? Or not as easily. Well, and you can add as much value to them as you think you need to, as you want to, as you have grass for. And so it gives you a lot of flexibility. So that's kind of how we got to where we are today. And I guess going forward from today, we're setting pretty well. We did get a couple, an inch and a half or so of rain last fall, that we got some regrowth. And we didn't go back and graze that regrowth for the most part. So it's still out there. And so, you know, and part of all this is that we've started to graze by principles, rather than just a system, our grazing plan, and such as that we don't want to be on the same spot the same time of the year. So, you know, we're trying to switch that around and go a different direction on our ranch each year. We don't want to take a second bite of grass after it has started to recover. And grass generally starts to recover in three to five days to spend on the time of year and that process. And so we're trying to move our cattle, you know, every, probably every three days would be our average, but three to five days. And so those are some of the principles that we're trying to, you know, we're trying to grow grass. We tend to try and eat the tops. And there's a lot of benefit in doing that. You're staying out of the root systems, the bottom where you seem to have more health problems, more parasite problems, those kind of things. So we're trying to eat the tops more. And that has some strategy to it as well because we get about 25% of our moisture and snow usually come sideways. So by growing grass, you know, we can try and catch that, capture all of that moisture, which for us, we're in a less than an 18 inch rainfall, you know, so that's over four inches of moisture for us on the average. And so if we can capture that four to five inches of moisture during the winter time and keep it out on our, on our landscape, then we've accomplished a lot there giving us a jump for spring. And just like we've grown some regrowth this last fall, and it didn't get a lot of snow to catch, but it caught a little bit there was. And so just another strategy. Do you want to go through in more detail these dates? Yeah, so we, we, we could a little bit and it's going to be, it's going to be different for, for, for everybody a little bit. You know, so you wouldn't want to pick my dates. It just might give you an idea of what to do for your own ranch in your own location. And as far as, you know, this date, April 20th to May 1st, it is kind of a critical time period because we know what our early moisture is. For us, we're still a month before calving, so we can have some opportunities there. Our stockers are usually close by. You know, we, we sometimes have grouped our animals according to ultrasound, you know, as far as, you know, first cycle, second cycle, we've had fall calves, you know, we've had open and co-groups. So we know by this that we can start to market some of these. And then, you know, we kind of picked July 4th for one of our dates. We know pretty much by then what our rainfall has been. We know how much forage that we're going to grow can work. We're at the end of our rainy season, if you will, if we have one of those. And, you know, if we're running stockers and we decided that we had enough moisture to go to grass with them, you know, they've usually put on their compensatory gain by then. So we've gotten, we've gotten that put on our stockers. And then, you know, the market's usually good then. So, so we can sell into a good market here. And then another critical date for us would be August 15th to 20th. And that's before our bull turnout. So that's going to be different for most people, I'll say, a lot of people. And so, you know, that, that's a date that if we decide that we want to sell some more animals before we turn bulls out, or if we want to shorten up our season, plus we're at the end of our growing season by then. So we know what we're going to have grass by this point. And we can assess our, our grass, our forage situation. If you make hay, you're going to have a good idea by then how much hay that you had or will have. And then, you know, you can sort animals maybe that you don't want to breed. And we have done a fair amount of that, that we picked out animals that were either, you know, big, big cows that consume a lot of resources or a cow that might have a bad quarter or just had a flaw of some sort. So you can actually pull them out and not breed them. And so you could, you could market those a lot sooner. And then, of course, with our bull exposure time, and we've used that pretty heavily, even in even the last two years. And then this is another critical date. We've gone by it already once, but we'll get there again. And so, you know, that's at the end of a fiscal year. We don't make many decisions based solely on the tax situation. But we usually keep our tax situation in mind. You know, some people said, well, don't ever make a decision based on taxes. It'll get you in trouble. Well, I understand that principle and it can. But you don't want to, you can also get yourself into trouble by not at least considering your tax situation as well. Assess your stockpile. By then, you know, you know, you know what your hay is, you know how much you have on hand, you know what your grass is like for winter grazing. And you can, at that point, you can fit your livestock to your resources. So, you know, those are just some of the dates that we really assess things. And we take a look at where we're at, you know, a couple of things that we've done that we've changed our enterprise mix. And so that allowed us to market animals off our ranch earlier in the year, or even just at different times of the year. And we, and stockers and yearlings, those are the easiest to manage through a drought, probably at the other end of the spectrum, registered cows are the hardest. And we do have some of those as well. And they're the hardest to market. You feel like you've got the most invested in those. They're the ones you don't want to sell. And so you go to a little more drastic measures to hold on to registered cows for obvious reasons. And so, you can de-stock animals. You can pay off debt. That's what you choose to do with it. You can stockpile that money. You can focus on other enterprises, such as hunting or doing custom work. Or you could take a vacation. I would throw that in there, even though we don't do a lot of that. But we do more than we used to. We're still working on that one. This is, yes, this is a lifestyle, but it is also a life. And quality of life is critical. Folks, if you're finding yourself at the end of your rope with these circumstances that you don't have any control over, Brad's walked you through a number of steps and dates here that are probably good for consideration on your own operation. He said it before and I'll repeat it. This is for their operation. It's important to take a look at your own circumstances in such a way. Don't just copy this. That's not the answer. No. And it would just probably might get you in trouble. Right. But my whole thought would be to get people to thinking. To get people to thinking about what your options are, what you could do, and just to stimulate that process of starting to think about what you could do. And even if you don't hit a homerun this year, there's next time. And so, but hopefully it'll give you some ideas too, as if your back is against the law, so to speak, that you can see, well, I could do that. I could sell that class of animal right now and help myself. So there are some things that you can still do. It's never too late to take a step forward. You mentioned a few of them, but Brett, could you list out some of the key individuals that helped you in developing the plan and coming up with alternatives? I'm sure you considered a lot more than we reviewed here. So who are some key partners that folks might want to bring into their team if they're not already part of it? Yeah. Well, of course, before the drought of 2012, which we really got into our draft plan, you know, we brought a team of financial people with our local bank, with FSA, who we had a land loan with, and we had build a good relationship with them. And I would suggest that one of the things that you do if you haven't already is build good relationships. They will serve you well all of your life. Build good relationships with people that were willing to be, they'll go the distance with you. They'll get in there. An individual at Farm Credit Services really helped us out and took all of our information and sent it to Omaha where their mainframe is. And they crunched our numbers and sent them back and said, well, basically here's what we see as far as your numbers and things. So give us more to work with. And then that individual also sat down with us and helped us work through some of this as far as getting into the drought part of it and getting a grazing plan started. And that really took place, let's say in 2012. And I was doing things with Ryan Willert here at our local office. And so he put me in touch with Mitch Faulkner, who was kind of a grazing plan guru. And so he worked some magic and basically said to me, I think we can put a plan together that will get you through this summer with your covered and tacked if you're willing to do one or two things. I said, well, absolutely. I should listen to him first. But no, he said, if you're willing to put your cows on to one group, most all your animals on your place, and we'll set up a plan where you move them about every two or three days. And I'm scratching my head thinking, well, that sounds great. I've got a water problem. I've got a fence problem. But I said, okay, we'll give it a try. And so he'd come with a learning curve, but it did get us through that whole summer with our main covered and tacked. And so it was just an aha moment. It was a life changer for our ranch when we did that, because it opened up a whole set of new doors for grazing, for seeing what we could do, seeing how impactful it was to the rest of our ranch when we stayed off of some places. And one of our sons, Christopher, he's actually started a fencing business through our transition from farming to strictly ranching, because we needed all these fences built. And so he is an offshoot start of fencing business. And we ended up getting all of our fences built eventually. But I remember him telling me in 2012, when he was going around building fences for other people and coming to our place and building some as we needed him to. And he'd say, dad, you're moving on a pasture with more grass in them than what most people are going into. And I remember that stuck with me. And it wasn't anything that we were trying to do, or we weren't trying to boast about it or anything like that. We were just staying with this plan that Mitch helped us put together through the NRCS. And so we didn't stay in each one of those till all the grass was gone. We've stayed on our plan. We wanted to be moved out of it by three days. And a lot of them were two-day moves. Most of them actually were two-day moves. And so we had some water constraints we had to work through. And I just won't start into all that. But, you know, you've got to get water established. We weren't able to quite do all that we could have. But we eventually, we could see what we needed to get done with getting water across our place. And so that was... I presume you had water infrastructure already in place, but when you really changed how you're going to graze the ranch, recognize need for additional water locations? Yeah. Okay. So a couple of things I'll kind of mention about that is somebody with, say, a 10,000 acre pasture, you know, some of this is going to look like a mountain to them. Well, today with with polywire and step-in posts, you can do a lot. You know, we can go out and set up a half a mile of polywire and posts in probably less, probably 30 minutes. You know, we can take it down in 20. You can do a lot with polywire and posts. It's just getting started and learning it and doing it. But it's not hard. So you can do a lot there. You know, we, my dad was always progressive when it come to grazing. And so we already had quite a few pastures splitting, splitting half and splitting quarters. So we had quite a bit to work with already. So I had kind of an advantage there. I'll just mention that because, you know, there isn't, you know, some, we're all in a different place. And I did have some things to work with them, thankful for. So we just have continued with that. But as far as water goes, one of the things that I did, because that was just a dry year, dams were low, we had some water development, but we still had pretty good dams in most of our pastures, but they just didn't have a lot of water in. And so I'd go in there with a tractor and loader and I'd just start making a dose and a ramp out into that dam. And I'd go clear back onto dry ground and start cutting the path. And I did that on a lot of dams that summer. And I just dosed out into there, maybe three, four feet deep. And then that just kind of rolled the water back away from my trench. And then when I got it about where I wanted it, I'd go in and grab that last bit of, at the end of my trench and pull it out of there. And the water would come rushing in and my cows learned to drink out of those all summer. Sure. So you saved yourself a bogging issue, probably. Right. Yep. I mean, and, and that, so that water ran into those trenches and so they could just go and drink off the edges and, and they didn't have to really dirty the water up by trying to wade out in it. And which, so that was something that we just kind of thought of, we'd try and it worked really well. And so we got, we, we got through that summer water wise that way. So we, we figured out we can water a lot more ahead that way and still salvage the quality of the water. And you had adequate water quality. It wasn't high and dissolved solids or something. No, he really wasn't much then. It was, it was good. That's certainly a consideration as we go into another dry season, depending on your location in the state and the likelihood of, of water that could be toxic. You know, certainly get that water collected and analyzed. I think the extension offices, if there's a regional center near where you are, where you are, they offer those services. Some conservation districts do as well. Just visit with your local NRCS or conservation district and, and they'll be able to point you towards those resources if they don't offer them right there on site. Yeah. And, and there's also a lot of programs out there right now to develop water, water development. You know, you could, you know, get a hold of some South Dakota grassland coalition members or the NRCS. And there's some programs out there to help with water development. And so if you can find the materials and, and if you're going to hire it down the contractors, I'm sure they're busy just like every time drought arrives. Yeah. So Brett, you mentioned that, that over the last 10 years, you've really developed a grazing rotation that typically has, has livestock occupying a paddock or pasture for two or three days. You know, unless there's something going on, you need a little bit more grazing. You're doing that with temporary fence at least in permanent water. Is that pretty accurate? I'd say we're doing the majority of it with permanent fence and permanent water. Okay. But we do use a lot of temporary fence if we want to split something up a little bit more. During the wintertime when we bellgrays, we use almost all temporary fence. And we'll like, if we're, if we're going to put up hay, we'll put it up, we'll just dump it out of the baler wrapped. And we've switched from netwraps, Ciceltwine just as a, in a side. Yep. And you don't have to take it off. And so, you know, we'll give them, depending on the number of animals there, we'll give them enough for one, two or three days, depending on our own schedule. I don't like to go, if I could do two day moves, it doesn't cramp my lifestyle much. And yet they, they clean it up really well. But some people have asked me, well, well, how do you make them clean it up? Mike, you know, just leave them longer. I mean, they'll, you can make them clean it all up if you want to, but we don't really want to. We like them to leave a little bit of residue out there, but just not excessive. We want the grass to be able to grow back through it again. You know, so, so, so we do use a lot of polywire in the wintertime for, for bell grazing. And the principle behind that for us has been, well, number one, we don't have to move it home. We don't have to feed it, you know, once you get it home in, you got to feed it. And, but the main thing is we're leaving the resources out there on the, on the field. And, and the cattle are eating it, and they're putting those resources back on the ground. Most of them. They don't take much with them when you move them home. That's right. Yeah. It goes in the front for the most part comes out the back too. Right. So then the red meat falls. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good key point. Now in a year like this with pay prices and freight costs the way they are, people purchasing hay, any kind of waste probably sounds like a bad idea. And maybe this isn't the time to start that, but you hit a normal cycle and, and all of a sudden your, your nutrient cycle, if you're grazing the hay that you put up on this ranch in the very same field that it was raised, you put that, that piece of land back in balance rather than just exporting 80 or 90% of all the forage that was grown there. Exactly. Even if it is to this, even if it is staying on the operation. And I'm, I'm getting that feeling from you and throughout our conversation is that, that this, this operation doesn't subsidize itself very often at least your, your keeping nutrients and animals and wildlife and water. Everything that, that is a resource here is utilized as such right here. Certainly you have to make money. So you sell some things, some things leave the ranch. Mostly that's livestock. Is that accurate? Yes. Yeah. And, well, I'm not against buying hay and bringing it in and bringing it on our place. And we try and bale graze it as much as we can. And we're putting those nutrients out on our land. And so, and, and how many dollars of nutrients is in a bale? Quite a bunch. It depends on the market. Yeah. And I know that there's been upper grade, northern grade planes, universities that put some dollars to that, given certain market values for NP and K. And boy, that adds up. It really does. That coupled with the livestock recycling that forage and putting it in manure and urine. Yeah, there's real value that becomes almost immediately plant available for the next growing crop. Yeah. Whether that's hay or even if you're doing this on crop residue. Right. And that, that was one of our, our goals back in 2000, you know, eight, nine, 10, you know, we were trying to sort through all this, was that we wanted our ranch to be better. We wanted to rebuild it, to regenerate it, to make it better than it had been. And I think we had, we had made, done some practices that had degraded it. Obviously, when we were farming, whether we did it conventionally with a, with a plow or whether we did it with no-till and putting chemicals and fertilizers out there, they all come with a downside. And, and so we wanted to get away from that. We wanted to start building our land back and leaving it better for ourselves, for the future. And we have found that our finances have been better all, all along the time that we've made these transitions that our finances gotten better. So we didn't, we'd hoped that it would go that way, but we didn't necessarily know whether it would or not. It was a risk. Yeah. But one that you were willing bigger goals. Exactly. Yep. Yep. Terms that come to mind are adaptive. Yeah. You know, soil health is built into a lot of the things you've been talking about with us and, and just ecological function. You mentioned about, you know, just grazing off the tops of the plants, you know, probably in the top 50% by height. Is that a fair? Well, you know, on a year that we have, you know, abundant rain and grass, you know, we'll take off, you know, sometimes less than that. Sometimes we'll take off 20 or 30%. If it's early in the year, we'll go through quickly, just take the tops off. It'll recover quickly. And you got basically what we call free grazing, you know, because you didn't really impact it negatively. And you probably got pretty much the same, maybe not quite the same amount of tonnage, but pretty close if you just go through it quickly. So there's different strategies, different times of year, different places. And, and there are times when we'll, we'll put, we'll leave them there a little longer for whatever reason. And, and resource objectives for every year. The key is, well, you can do a lot of different things. You just better let it recover. And by recover, I mean, fully that least plant, the least plant is usually the one they like the best. So that's the one they're going to eat the most. So it's going to be the least. And so when that least plant, you know, has fully recovered back to a several leaf stage, depending on the time of year again and what plant it is, you know, then, you know, when it's fully recovered, then we could go back onto it. For us in our area, we're finding out that, you know, we'll put a year recovery, sometimes even 18 months, if we're going to change our season of use, hard to change, do a true change of season to use without doing some longer recovery periods because of the season that you're trying to change. And once you start to work through that, you'll kind of scratch your head and go, huh, how do we get to that season? Then you figure out, ah, I'm going to have to give an 18 month rest period. And you know what, or recovery period, however you want to look at it. So, so we've done some of that as well. And I think we're going to probably do more of that going forward. I started in on this question and I didn't get to the, to the real question. Some folks might see that short of a occupation of livestock in a pasture two or three days or even up to a week might see that as a barrier. Is there still benefit if they can shorten their livestock duration on any given acre along with the recovery? You've mentioned the importance of the recovery. Maybe that's the take home message. But you know, for the guy that does have the 10,000 acre pasture, one cross fence, two cross fences with adequate water, that's progress, right? I would say so. Yes. Yes. Definitely. You know, we did a lot of that. You know, my dad started that, you know, 40 years ago or maybe longer. And we saw benefits from it substantially. But so I'd say yes, you have great benefit in just starting somewhere. And like say splitting a big pasture in half and then maybe splitting in half again. But if, you know, if you really want to get a tremendous impact, you have to let it, all those plants fully recover occasionally, at least in this country where we live. You know, that might not be. And that's even more critical when we're in drought periods. If it's raining every other day like it did in 2019, at least it felt like every other day, then recovery happens a lot more quickly than what we're seeing right now or even in 2000. Related question, but it moves on. If a person sees this video series and engages in a drought plan, puts it on paper and they end up selling fairly deep into the herd, whether it's this dry cycle or the next one. And then it rains. I just went to town and now the rains have come and what things are looking on the upswing. Some people might regret that decision to go to town with them in the short term at least. What opportunities do you see that have now presented themselves because that ranch is slightly less stocked? What values would you speak into that person? Yeah, I'd say that's a mindset thing as much as anything. You know, once you put a plan together, I do think you have to think to yourself, you know, with this plan, I'm going to protect myself, short term and long term. At some point it is going to start raining again, whatever it is. And so would you rather sell those animals and have it rain, or would you rather keep those animals and not have it rain? I mean, you really got it. You got to get right down to what's better for us. And so guess what? Most likely you've already expended more resources than you wanted to. So if it starts to rain and you've already de-stocked animals, well, you're just going to grow some grass and you're going to let your ranch recover. You're at no loss. But you do have to manage your finances. And so you want to be careful what you do with that money that you have, that you've incurred from selling into your factory, so to speak. You probably don't want to go buy a new boat with money you've sold from the nucleus of your cow herd, not unless you're going to start a fishing enterprise. Well, it could be. Yeah. Depending on where you live. So yeah, you do have to be disciplined either way. Look at it. And so now you're going to have grass. You've got some cash because you sold some of those animals. And so you set yourself in a position where you can get back in maybe a little quicker. And maybe you still have enough animals that you've got a game plan so you can rebuild your own numbers again. Or you could do a custom grazing situation for a period of time and bring in cash source that way. And so there's other ways of stocking your place, even if you sell into the nucleus of your herd. Or it might be an opportunity to start up some new enterprises. Maybe you want to get sheep. I could have really had some value. Yeah, I mean, good. Yeah. You know, 10 years ago, people, and maybe they still do, but people really would have laughed about the free range chicken idea or chicken on range. It's a thing. And so people are capitalizing on it. But again, what resources and time and infrastructure do you have available? And is there somebody that can run that enterprise if it requires more time than the main operators to do that? Yeah. You always want to get back to what your original questions that you asked yourself and what you wanted your life to look like, and your ranch to look like. And does this move whatever it is? Does this take me closer to my goals? Or does it move me further away from my goals? And we ask ourselves that question a lot, whether it's a purchase or whether it's a sale or whatever it is. Is this going to take me closer to where I want to be or further away from where I want to be? And so question I was going to ask. And then why? Why do I want that? Is it a need? Is it a want? You know, if it's a want, can I afford it? Yeah, sacrifice the long term goal. Yeah. Okay. All right. There's a lot of data here, not just in this video with Brett, but in all the videos that will be available here on the website. There are bound to be questions. And how do I go about that? Or I need more information, right? The Grassland Coalition in partnership with the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition and NRCS and other partners as well has developed South Dakota Mentor Network. And that is filled with folks who have volunteered under no duress that they'd be willing to take a phone call or maybe meet you over coffee or do a Zoom conference or something. Some way to interact with you to work through whatever concern or issue that you bring to the table. That is sorted by topic areas. So we get you pointed hopefully to a smaller group of people because there are quite a few of them in there. And the truth is that these folks really feel underutilized if the phone isn't ringing. And they want to see you succeed and not make the same failures or problems that they have. So certainly utilize that resource. One of the NRCS Area Range Management Specialists was named specifically, Mitch Faulkner, who is a key player in brett's adapting this ranch to more closely fit the ecosystem that they're in with their grazing management. Mitch is one of several that are stationed throughout the state. So if you find yourself in the in the Cato, clear up in the northeast part of the state and feel a little sheepish asking Mitch from Belfoose to drive to you, that's good. You should feel sheepish about that. We've got a specialist near you that that can come and visit your ranch, get boots on the ground, do some observations and measurements and then have a conversation with you about what your rotation should look like. Because as Brett mentioned and I agreed, each one of these plans needs to be unique. Your ranch isn't just like your neighbors. And so NRCS and partners are there to walk with you in making it fit your life, your goals, your livestock and your soils. Well said. This is our couple of our grazing charts that we've tried several different ones over the years since 2012. And we finally kind of customize our own. We took some others and cut them up and taped them together and and then had a had a place print them out. And so, you know, this is a year here and this is another year. This 2018 this 2019 and I look back over them. That's probably as much value for me is looking back at them and see what we did in a certain year. This these have all of our all of our pastures on them. And they've they've got every day of the year on them. And so, the color is when we started this, we didn't use any color, we just did it with a lead pencil. And we were running to problems because we still weren't running everything in one herd, which we still aren't. So, so we were overlapping a little bit sometimes running on on the same pasture with two or three different groups throughout the year and not catching it. And so, when we color coded each enterprise, whether it be cow calf, whether it be the stalker steers or the stalker heifers, if we have them split. And a lot of times we run them together. Or if it was a fat cow enterprise, which we usually run separate or, you know, one of the other groups that we have for some reason, we color coded them. And that way we knew each paddock, you know, if there had been something on it, what that item was, how long they were on it, and whether we could go back to it again. And we mark in my book how we left it. I guess another thing I would mention that comes to my mind is we try and go out twice a year and analyze our pastures. We'll do it in the spring. Well, I'll back up. We do it in the fall after we've had our first frost. And we'll go out and we'll see what kind of a stockpile that we have out. And we'll take measurements. I kind of have my own system of doing it with figuring out how much forage we have out there going. So we'll know what we have going into the next year. And then we'll do it again. Trying to think what day I usually do that in the spring after we know about where our growth is, probably around first part of June. And I'll go out and analyze the grass again to see where we're at again. And so that does two things. It gives us an idea of how much grass we have out there. But it also puts me out on my land, which is probably the most valuable thing. It puts me out there to see where we're at, to see what we've got, rather than just to look at it, drive them by. I actually stop, take measurements, tell whether it's good, fair, poor, excellent. And so I kind of have my charts that I know how much and I'll measure it by inches. And then I've kind of got figured out how much forage I got there in pounds by whether it's poor, fair, good, excellent. And so I didn't have to be precise. No, I kind of took it out of a book that I read and that principle. But then I tweaked it to match our environment and our grass and how much an inch or two or three or four would be at a certain level of quality as far as whether it's good, excellent, etc. And so that's kind of combined with our grazing chart. This may be a little bit more extensive than what some people want. There again, what kind of lifestyle do you want? Where do you want to put your resources? You may not want to do this. You may want to do it on a smaller scale. But there's a lot of YouTubes out there that talk about a lot of different grazing charts and how to do them. So I would be just being redundant to say what we do. We just kind of took a bunch of them and made it fit what we do. Listed down, I presume your pastures are in the same order on each year? They are. Yep. So that way, just looking at that change in season of use or turn in date for each pasture, doesn't matter what class of animal grazed it, it was used in June last year. So that means we're looking to get to August this year or maybe it's April, whatever. You're making a change on purpose because every plant grows differently. Right. The thing about it as I found out fairly early on is that you don't want to get yourself caught up in trying to make it a cut and dried, cross all your teeth, dot all your eyes, a perfect system. That just puts you into bondage. You want to stay a little bit loose with it. I mean, as far as if something's not working out quite the way that you think it should on paper, that's okay. As long as you get back to the principles of letting that pasture recover before you go back onto it. And honestly, I've gone back into them before they were fully recovered for one reason or another, whether I had to go through it to get to a certain place or whether I've discovered I had to market those animals. So I needed to come back to a certain place. And so I just keep in my mind, okay, I've been on that twice now and it wasn't recovered. Now I'm going to have to give that more time this next time around or else I'm going to start to degrade my land. And sometimes you do that, that happens. And just as long as you keep in mind that I've got to tend to that, I got to at some point let that recover. And one thing that we have learned that is pretty impactful is at some point we like stuff to recover to the point where it where it seeds out and really has a chance to express itself. And sometimes with these different seasons of use in a longer recovered period, we're allowing some of those grasses to express themselves like they never have probably in 50 or 60 years of just kind of continuous grazing. And so we've seen the most impact visually in some of the areas that we've just really let have a full recovery period that hasn't been getting and allowed to express itself and to go to seed and to go through those processes. Yes, that'd be true. I don't know all my grasses as well as I would like to. I'm still working on that. But forbs, there's no question that we're seeing a lot more forbs. And maybe part of that is that I'm recognizing them more, but I'm certainly seeing a lot more forbs than I've seen before by giving that longer recovery period. And of course, we've quit putting chemicals to them as well. We control what we need to more biologically. We release golf lies and stem wheels and some of those things on some of those plants that we want to control more. So yes, we have seen an increase. We're speaking about plant species diversity on the landscape. And that's one of the principles of soil health is that we maximize diversity wherever possible. Brett has spoken at some length about the diversity of classes of animals that they run through this ranch and changing season of use and maybe not using the chemical option, which might be the quick and easy fix. But is it the best thing long term for this operation? May or may not be depending on your on your particular situation. But in not using the chemical suite that's available to him, he's opened a door to diversity that might not have otherwise been there, particularly if you were going to do the whole field with the chemical application. Right. That's, that just would would stop that in its tracks is that now all broadleaves are wiped out. And maybe there's a place for that. Well, it's a tool in your toolbox. We haven't taken that tool out for several years, and we've been getting long, you know, real fine. Without that, just doing it with biology and some mechanical occasionally, we use some some mechanical use too, but we try and do most of it with livestock. And because it's it's forage for him to eat. So why destroy it when you can utilize it pretty much? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And some of the things I used to call weeds are some of the first things that my cattle go graze. I mean, they they have a different, you know, a different nutrient in them that's attractive to them. And they'll they'll go eat it first. This could be a mountain decline. But start start small. Maybe just look at your your growing season rotation and focus there. You know, put something on paper to guide your decision making, rather than just letting it be kind of the windshield survey that sometimes we're guilty of doing and really get out observe, build a plan, a grazing plan that also includes a contingency plan. If it's dry, if it hails, if something burns up, right? What goes to town first, what goes into the lots first, you know, we talked at link on the video series about, you know, that offsite sale is probably the answer that most will choose. But there are other alternatives out there that folks are well aware of. Right. Yeah. And, and that's a good point. It might not be drought, it might be a fire, and that can change your your world in a day. You know, it might be a be a fire. But if you've got a plan in place, that you might wake up the next morning in the day before you had a fire come to you after your place. And if you've got a plan and a plan put in place, you know, you can go to it and say, okay, you know, what do we let's start asking ourselves questions? What do we want to do? What are we going to sell? How are we going to manage this? We've got to destock in a hurry here. And so it gives you something to go back to to get to get yourself thinking about about how you're going to manage through this crisis, whatever it is, it might be a, it could be a long hard winter, where you didn't get that winter grazing, where you fed way more hay than you planned on it, where you couldn't get out grazing the spring near as quickly as you wanted to because it was cold and there was snow on the ground and the grass didn't grow. There's just all kinds of reasons why it's good to have some backup plans and what you're going to do if this happens or if that happens. What if a fire went through your hay yard? God forbid, you know, but these things can happen. And so good to have a plan. I'd say it takes away a good share of the emotion to it. And because you're just mentally in a different place in 2012, once we got this plan set up and and we got help with putting a grazing plan together, but we we destocked a lot of animals then as well. And when we were bringing animals in to sell them and they were on our list of the animals we were going to sell first and second and third. And we worked through, I think about four phases or five of our drought plan that year. And I've got those written as well. I've gotten every animal that every class of animal that we sold in 2012, I still have that information. I do go back and look at it every once in a while and see, okay, yeah, that's right. That's what we sold first and second. And this was our third sale. This was our fourth market, you know, that we sold these animals. And I remember one of them, one of our boys was helping us sort these animals. And and he was bringing in these certain cows that we picked out. And at that time, they were happened to be the real tall slab sided kind of hard doing cows that probably were milking too heavy. And he'd bring one in and I'd like I was working the gate. And I was looking her over saying, well, I kind of like her. And I'm not sure we want to sell her. He turned and rode off and yelled, put her in the pen. And I put her in the pen. And so we had fun with it. If you can imagine having some fun with it, you know, what we actually did, it wasn't near the strain on us that it would have been if we wouldn't have a plan put in place, because we knew we're going to be able to keep a bunch of good stuff that we wanted to keep. So so we were okay with selling some some some of these animals that we were we were willing to part with. You know, made it a lot easier. Right. Right. And I want to emphasize that that what what's worked for us won't necessarily work for somebody else. You know, but but if it can get you to thinking about what will work for you, then, you know, it's been a benefit.