 We live on a ranch south-central South Dakota on the northern edge of the sandhills We run about 200 pairs of cows We're kind of in to a rotational grazing program that we're move the cattle around from pasture to pasture We're in a soft grass country. We're on the northern edge sandhills We're not in the hard grass like they are up north and our rainfall is like anywhere from 13 to 17 inches normal It's quite a deal to grow up on a ranch like this that you drive over a hill and you just know the ground so well Doing the rotational grazing letting it rest It's a tool that 20 years ago. I never knew existed, you know this rotational grazing, you know the mob grazing and stuff We're very excited about it. I was so excited I Everybody I talked to it. I'd try to convince them that you need to look at this, you know, this is really great You know, you can eventually you can run more cattle on your land Your land likes to be better than it was when your season long grazing Your grasses are better Cattle's nutrition's needs are are met a lot better Like this year we faced a drought in June and July and we're still doing good We still got good grass out there where before they might be a little bit stressed by now You know if we to graze it all down and not let it rest We're at a point right now where we're going to come out of the pasture that we're in and Into the last cell that still has grass that hasn't been grazed this year And then after that then we're going to start rotating in the pastures that have been grazed once but have regrown So we still got reserves, you know, that hopefully will take us into December or January I guess the biggest thing that I noticed when I first started this was the amount of open Soil you could see right across the grass and looking down to seeing sand or dirt or something The thing I've noticed is you just don't see it as much anymore With the aftergrowth or what you leave the year before covers the soil up One of the amazing things that I seen was where we had water that during a big rain that come off of a neighbor's range Come on to my land and then it hit our soil and it went Probably a hundred yards and it was all dispersed So we were able to save that moisture into you know into our ground that would help our grass get better to it That's been the biggest focus that I looked at is trying to just get that ground litter to where Number one it'll stop the runoff Number two is it'll keep the soil from getting so hot and then evaporating what moisture you do have in there I think the fact that we went to a higher nutrition plane overall, you know year-round has helped our health of our cattle and Every year that we do this I think we're just going to see the grass improve to the point where I don't know whether to take them Look at more cattle or just stay with the amount of cattle we got and just keep them in better nutrition What I'd like to be able to see in ten years is when I drive out there is the you know This used to be no good grass, you know, maybe ten years, you know, maybe we can get it to where you know Just lush Might be like a pipe ring, but I'd like to get there It'd be nice to know that when they lay me in my grave that I left this land in better shape than when I got it