 animals into groups and feed based on those requirements. We'll talk a lot more about body condition and why that's important and Lisa kind of kicked this off last time just talking about evaluating that condition and how important that is to you know the production of that animal. So we need to really consider you know what shape your cows are in right now and what shape you want them in heading into the winter months. Obviously the timing of calving impacts that because it's going to dictate the nutrient requirements at different points throughout the feeding season. So we'll talk more about that and then of course each operation will have access to different types of supplements and all these other considerations with the supplement cost, the labor required to feed and then various types of equipment and things like that that are necessary that's all going to enter into the equation. And then after my presentation we'll talk more about the pasture management but you know oftentimes for livestock producers the animal is going to come first which is expected and necessary but we also have to consider you know the consequences of maybe long-term heavy grazing just on different negative aspects on our rangeland production which Dr. Meehan and Dr. Sedevic will do. Okay so there's a lot of lines on this graph but it's really not all that complicated it's basically just showing you the crude protein requirements on the left and the TDN or energy requirements on the right and so it's based on months since calving and so if we're looking out here at months 11 and 12 so that would be in late gestation you can see that those requirements are going to start to head up. So if we're in a typical spring calving operation we're probably here around the eight or nine months and so we're at mid gestation where the requirements are at their lowest and this is a really good time to increase condition on those cows but as you can see then it will really start to increase heading into late gestation and then if we get into that months one or two you can see that that's definitely the highest point of nutrient requirements in the production cycle and you can also see how much that weight and milk production play a role here in requirements and so looking at the bottom blue dotted line that's a 1200 pound cow producing 20 pounds of milk at peak lactation and that peak lactation will occur somewhere around 45 to 60 days after calving. If you look at the blue line with the longer dashed lines that is a 1200 pound cow at 30 pounds of peak milk so adding 10 pounds of milk increases that crude protein requirement but from about two and three quarters up to nearly three and a half pounds of crude protein so really can make a dramatic difference and again Lisa kind of mentioned you know making sure that your resources are able to support that milk production of those cows is really important. Looking over here at TDN on the right it follows a similar pattern you can see in the months going into late gestation the energy requirement is going to increase a little bit more than the protein requirement and so we need to be paying attention to that but again those requirements are going to be heading steadily up in late gestation then maximizing around two months after calving. Okay so body condition scoring I know it oftentimes feels like it feels like we beat this topic to death but I really feel as much as we do talk about it it's maybe not utilized as much as it could be in terms of actual records relating back to individual animals and then following those at different points throughout the production cycle really relate back to what's happening you know in terms of productivity. So it's basically just a really subjective way to evaluate the nutritional status of your cow herd. It is based on a visual evaluation maybe combined then with palpation and particularly for those who are just learning how to body condition score it's really valuable to have that palpation combined with the visual evaluation just to really get a feel for for what you're looking for. Scale goes from one to nine I'll talk I'll show you guys a few examples of some more common body condition scores that you would that you would come across we very seldom see a one or a nine although those do off they they can show up. So essentially body condition score will affect affect all these different factors here so calf survival and health and also subsequent reproductive performance and in fact body condition score at calving one of the most important factors related to reproductive performance that following year. So it's really a useful tool in helping us evaluate how successful our feeding programs are and we can also use it to kind of sort and feed cows more strategically and I'm pretty sure that Lisa shared this slide with you or something like it last week as well this is a really nice resource out of the University of Wyoming basically just kind of simplifying things into a three-step process so we're going to look at the last two ribs if they're easily visible we're going to have a body condition score less than a five if not it's if we're not seeing any ribs it's going to be greater than or equal to a five then we're looking at the spine if we can see it the body condition score is going to be less than a three and then we're looking at the shape between the hooks and the pins and I'll show you some examples here in the next slide so this is a unfortunate cow that lived in New Mexico that was fed to achieve these various condition scores and I like this because it is the same cow so you can really see the changes as opposed to looking at cows in different body condition scores so you can really see here just how angular she is with the body condition score of three you can see the visible spine and so a lot of times we think that body condition score is related only to fat cover and it actually also has to do with lean muscle tissue and so when cows start to become energy deficient or protein deficient they can mobilize muscle tissue or fat tissue depending on which nutrient is the most restricted and so you can see cows actually start to mobilize muscle or protein deposits as well as fat stores so you can see here that spine is very visible as she's losing muscle over that rib area in a very strong V shape in between the hooks and pins body condition score four a little bit better not as angular starting to round out in the hind quarter we can see those two visible ribs though but that shape between the hooks and pins is maybe not quite as angular and then just going on into that body condition score five that's our moderate condition that's the one that we're targeting most of the time we're not going to see those last two ribs not going to see a spine and everything's really really rounded out and we don't see a lot of angularity in the hooks and pins same thing with the condition score six and increasing on up definitely not going to see ribs or spine in those so when can we use this there's a lot of different times of the year that it can be valuable just depending on on how things are looking for you know your forage quality and your management options so late summer might be a good time to you know if conditions aren't looking good out on your rangeland or for forage production think about some early weaning maybe cows are just drawn down a little bit spend a harder year that's an option then at weaning obviously if you think back to that requirements slide we're going to be able to we have some time so we can set those cows up to have to cav in a good condition and now depending on time of weaning which we'll talk about here briefly I'm in a minute we could have that start of third trimester occurring before we actually wean and so just making sure you know if it's not at weaning time then prior to or at that beginning of late gestation is another good time and then at calving actually recording the body condition score at calving if you're out there recording other calving information anyway make another column for a body condition score and it's really interesting to look back on that preg check time and try to kind of correlate some of those body condition scores at calving um maybe with some of the the different reproductive issues we might see so you guys are probably all familiar with this this is our kind of our target um target b body condition score five for our mature cows um and again lisa showed some data um for the cows in various condition scores and there can be a little bit you do get a little bit of extra boost if they start to get up over that six but um in most situations you're going to be putting more into your freed resources than you're going to be getting out of the cows so um really just targeting that five and in some situations um you know such as that new mexico environment or maybe another um where where nutrients maybe aren't as available um in some of our production situations cows can become really efficient and can actually operate at a slightly lower body condition and still be reproductively efficient and so it's really going to depend on your individual situation but overall we kind of target that condition of five and then six for those first calf heifers just to give them a little bit more opportunity to recover after calving um they have obviously huge requirements for lactation and they're also still growing so that's just going to give them a better chance to rebreat so if we have evaluated our body condition score and we're thinking about um trying to get to that moderate condition at calving this is just an example of what you need to think of in terms of providing enough feed resources to reach a certain average daily gain and so if those cows are less than a condition score four and we want to hit a five at calving so let's assume there are three in that last trimester of gestation we're going to get anywhere from eighty to about a hundred pounds um of weight in calf and fetal tissues and so if we need to and then each body condition score is approximately 80 pounds of weight and so if they need to gain two body condition scores we're looking at a 80 pounds of calf and 160 pounds of body weight so they're going to need to gain a total of 240 pounds um if we're starting right before the beginning of late gestation that's nearly three pounds a day you can see the value in starting earlier in order to you know target a lower average daily gain and you can see here then moving down into the borderline or four condition score they would need to gain 80 pounds of calf 80 pounds of body weight for a total of 160 so again that average daily gain is just decreased based on that a little bit more desirable condition of a borderline score so the earlier you start the better off you're going to be so in addition to body condition scores you can use a manure consistency to evaluate the protein status of your cows on forage-based diets and this is based on some resources out of SDSU extension did a nice job of taking some pictures of some different manure patties here to take a look at but we start over on the left hand side this would be a cow that's deficient in protein probably less than that five percent which is definitely not adequate for cows at any stage of production don't want to be any less than about a seven percent in order to make sure that the microbes in the rumen have adequate protein to reproduce so if you're looking at this patty you're going to see those distinct rings it's it's really firm it's often stacked into a really tall pile and we're definitely going to need a protein supplement in order to make sure that cow is performing to her maximum looking at the picture in the middle you got adequate protein in the sample probably around somewhere between seven and nine percent folds are a little more flattened a lot of times you'll see that greater look in the middle of the manure patty and depending on the stage of production you still may need a supplement and so if that's for lactating cow still could be slightly deficient and so might need to just you know you combine the manure consistency with the the body condition score of the cow and and just some other indicators that I have the master just keeping an eye on on what those cows are doing finally the the picture on the far right we've got excess protein not a lot of structure here probably greater than 10 protein and we're not going to need a supplement probably in any situation here so again this is just something you could do walk out on the feed grounds take a look at some of the different manure piles around and see kind of as a whole what your cows are looking like and then use that in conjunction with like I said condition scores and other factors so this was a graph that I thought was kind of interesting published by the noble research institute this fall and this is just an average of native range crude protein content which is reflected by the green bars and then TDN or energy content reflected by the blue blue bars with the cow requirements represented by the gray lines and so if we're out here in November and December you can see that the energy requirements are met typically by native range and again this will vary somewhat depending on your production situation I think that 55% TDN might be a little bit high for some of our native range forages but probably in that 45 to 50% which would likely still meet those requirements at this stage of the year but you can see that protein is going to be slightly deficient in the November and December timeframe and so cows would benefit from a high protein lower energy supplement during this timeframe and then as you get into January February and March you can see that the the energy has continued to decline as far as what's available in the forage cow requirements are going up this is looking like around a march calving cow herd just based on when you see those those requirements peak and so in addition to energy deficiency we've also got a protein deficiency and so kind of the point that the author was making in this article was that you can maybe change supplements throughout the winter feeding season to be strategic depending on you know what the deficiency is that you're trying to meet and well it's valuable to have this type of general information obviously having a specific sample for your forages is going to be the most valuable so I've talked to a lot of extension agents around the state the last couple weeks and they're saying that there's sure seems to still be a lot of pairs out on pasture and that's not surprising just given kind of the open fall that we've had and good weather conditions and if you've got the forage that usually is a pretty good strategy but it's just important to really take a good hard look at you know what that forage availability is what's going to be the impact on that forage resource and then what other resources do you have in terms of supplement or other alternative feeds like I just showed you it's unlikely that we're going to be able to meet all the requirements for those lactating cows on native range on dormant forage in particular heifers that still have like I said before requirements for growth and so there's a lot of data looking at different waning dates and supplementation strategies and different combinations of of those two management strategies and kind of the data that I've seen out of mostly based out of Montana and Nebraska says that providing supplement a protein supplement can help as long as the cows aren't too thin already okay so if if we've got cows that are really thin you may need to consider a supplement combined with just get just pulling those calves off of there and removing that lactation requirement and we have a ton of opportunity across the state in terms of utilizing some maybe some cover crops or other high quality forages maybe to better meet the needs of those cows and so just looking at some of those options that would still allow you to to utilize a fall grazing opportunity but maybe not targeting a native range situation so the thing that enters into this is of course your calving dates and and making sure that you're giving that cow time to recover in terms of a body condition and so most of the time once you remove that lactation requirement those cows will start to turn around within a couple weeks to a month after taking the calf off and so just looking at that in terms of your weaning date compared to when that cow is going to be entering you know mid gestation or late or late gestation okay so since most of you are highly dependent on forage for most of your diets we just wanted to talk a little bit about how to optimize the forage supplies that you have on hand so we're going we're going to recommend sampling by a lot of forage so that's the same field same species harvested in that 48 hour time period and we really recommend you use a hay probe to do that grab samples either over represent or under represent the quality of the lot and so it's really important to get a good representative sample so that we can really help develop that ration accurately use a certified laboratory there's a lot of different labs out there that are all excellent at what they do the National Forage Testing Association has a list of certified labs so we recommend just go to that website and you can find the labs that are certified in a list or if you need assistance with that just let me know and I'd be happy to help you out conducting a hay inventory making sure you know what weights of bales you're dealing with obviously the count and then matching up each of those lots with their forage quality then we're going to go back to that livestock inventory based on age weight and the production class and then try and match that hay quality up with requirements and I'll talk a little bit more about this in the next few slides so there's some data here by a hybrid and thrift and they kind of established some guidelines for what free choice hay and take would be based on energy content of the forage with kind of the idea being that with lower quality forages that have a lower energy content you know these are going to be our dry winter forages mature hay they're going to have a lot more indigestible components and less of those really soluble energy and protein components and so there's just basically a physical fill limitation with some of these lower quality forages and so forage dry matter intake as a percent of body weight as you can see is the lowest for a dry cow with low quality forage at less than two percent of body weight and then as we move up into medium quality and then high quality forages those cows can increase consumption just based on higher energy levels higher digestibility so just having example down here at the bottom lactating cows can consume 30 around 31 pounds of a low quality forage that's based on that 2.2 percent of body weight for lactating cow or they can consume 37.8 pounds of the high quality forage at 2.7 percent of body weight and this does consume this does assume that protein requirements are met either by the forage itself or by supplementation and so if protein requirements are not met that intake will not be allowed to be expressed to this degree so these are just some guidelines again trying to just match your high quality with different production stages and classes so looking at a gestating cow in mid gestation those requirements are lowest as we talked about earlier this is just a different way of showing the requirements as we move into late gestation they go up and so down at the bottom I just have some rules of thumb that are pretty common out there and you can use 50 55 and 60 TDN for mid late and then lactation and then looking at protein requirements these do vary a little bit but we kind of use a rule of thumb of eight nine and ten for mid gestation late gestation lactation so this is again just a ballpark and a place to start you the the cow doesn't require percentages of nutrients they require pounds and so it's going to be a little bit variable just depending on your individual nutrient analysis but it is a good place to start to figure out where you might be short of maybe some higher quality forages or how you can use those most effectively so in this example here it's just showing the value of feeding by age group if that's possible we're feeding a 56 TDN 8% crude protein hay that's a decent quality hay if you look across here in the mature cow requirements it's going to exceed TDN requirements and slightly exceed true protein requirements but if we look down at the yearling heifer where we're trying to get a little bit of gain or the bread heifer where we're also trying to get some gain just going to be really challenging to meet those requirements with that same type of forage and managing all of those different production groups the same and so just with those you know still growing animals that have you know limited room and capacity limited places to store that much forage it's really important to try to maybe meet those needs with a more energy and protein dense diet maybe some different types of supplements or just higher quality forages so choosing the right type of supplement is really important and there are a lot of options out there particularly in North Dakota which we're very fortunate to have um so we do categorize supplements by protein and you know into protein and energy classifications but we see here some examples of some common protein supplements and of course we also have commercial options and then our energy supplements over here on the the right hand side and then we also have some co-product feeds and some forages of course that will kind of fall into both the protein and energy classification depending on you know what need you're trying to meet so just your strategy in using some of these supplements with different forages most of the time if we have that less than seven percent protein which I mentioned is the absolute bare minimum we need to make sure those room and microbes are performing effectively we're going to need some type of a protein supplement so that's going to be greater than or equal to a 20 protein I gave you some examples in that previous slide and the amazing thing about beef cattle is that they can take the nitrogen from crude protein and recycle that through their bloodstream and saliva and that will go back to the rumen and can be used as a protein source for rumen microbes and so that allows us to feed protein supplements fairly infrequently some research indicates up to just one time a week and so really reducing your labor and travel requirements and things like that so if a protein deficiency is kind of what you're facing there's a lot of options in terms of different types of supplements and how often you have to feed them if our protein is adequate and we've got a better quality forage may need to look at an energy supplement in general just because of the nature of energy supplements we're going to need to feed that on a daily basis and so it's also important to look at the different types of energy supplements and how they supply their energy so some of our co-product feeds soy hulls wheat mids distillers those supply energy through fiber versus our our feed grains that supply energy through starch and so you've probably heard kind of the rule of thumb when we start to supply starch at greater than 0.4 percent of body weight of the cows it can have some negative impacts on digestibility and forage intake now i know in some drought situations such as the one that we experienced in 17 i was working with some producers that actually wanted to use some of those starch containing supplements to help substitute for forage they were actually using this negative associative effect to reduce forage intake out on range and obviously the ability to do that will depend on the condition of your range and many times we recommend actually just getting them out of there and putting them on a completely different diet if possible just to reduce those possible impacts on range health do you get a few questions about non-protein nitrogen so these would be things like urea and bioret a lot of times used in our liquid supplements or tubs sometimes in cubes and you'll see urea as a as a percent of the crude protein supplied so it is definitely usable by the room and microbes we just have to be careful at the levels that we're using that so basically the urea once it enters the room and it's converted to ammonia and that ammonia is used with a bacteria along with an energy source and that produces additional proteins if that energy is deficient then that ammonia can enter the blood stream and so if we end up with a huge load of ammonia in the blood stream it just basically kind of overwhelms the system's ability to deal with that and cattle can suffer from ammonia toxicity or urea poisoning so we can end up with toxicity issues or just performance issues just have to really watch how we're using it with those forage-based diets so one rule of thumb is no more than 15% of the total crude protein in the diet so if we're supplying 8% crude protein no more than 15% of that 8% should be supplied by urea and really it does work best when we're dealing with our high-energy grain-based type diets so in a backgrounding situation or something like that and again just another kind of rule of thumb here for using that so everything will come down to cost eventually this is just an example of a feed cost calculator that I worked helped develop with the North Dakota Farm Business Management folks this is a really simple one it does include transportation costs which are important to figure in when you are trying to compare different feed options so you can plug in your bale weight your pounds per ton or your tons per load what the trucking costs are how many miles it has to go and you'll end up with a total cost per ton we then go down here enter in the nutrient content and the values of those different feed resources and get to dollars per pound of nutrient which is which is where we want to be when we're really looking at comparing those different options and you can see that some of the cells are different colors and so in this situation with between hay and wheat mids wheat mids is a better buy in terms of dollars per pound of energy it's also a better buy in terms of dollars per pound of crude protein and so it'll give you a green yellow or red color in the cell depending on how things are shaking out there and comparing those and it has lots of room for for different feed options that's just kind of a quick and dirty one University of Nebraska also has the feed cost calculator that has a lot of additional inputs that you can put in if you you know have the desire to do that it will include a category for waste so you can really calculate your feed needs based on your different production groups so it just has a lot more options and that's available on a UNL website need to quickly mention vitamins and minerals although energy and protein are the ones that we think about the most it's really important to remember that our forage based diets are likely not going to supply all of our vitamin and mineral requirements and while we might not see a lot of of outright repercussions in terms of you know reproductive performance or or calf weight or things like that a lot of times it's just sort of a general slipping in some of these things over time if those needs aren't met so these are these are some common situations that we encounter here in North Dakota and we do have a mineral program that focuses on a lot of forage analysis working with individual producers to conduct the mineral analysis of the forages they're working with throughout the production year to try and identify what some of these deficiencies might be and also identify potential antagonists such as sulfur and iron that can really tie up some of our trace minerals like copper and zinc so there's obviously a lot of different supplement options out there a lot of ways to deliver them just really important that you have a mineral in front of the cows particularly prior to calving because most of those trace minerals are not transferred through the milk and so as we get into late gestation those developing fetuses are going to be really dependent on that dam's ability to start to build up the calf's own stores of those minerals so vitamin a is one of the vitamins that we really want to think about and make sure that we're supplying I know again back in that really bad drought in 17 we had a lot of vitamin a deficiencies across the state and it basically was kind of manifesting as just calves that were failing to thrive and there were a lot of calves being treated and not responding to treatment and so vets were doing a lot of serum analysis and identifying that we had some major vitamin a challenges under good growing conditions cows can store three to four months of vitamin a but when we get in that drought situation poor quality forages that ability is really limited and so they could actually be deficient at this time point right now versus being able to kind of get through the major you know those early winter months january and february so these are some of the symptoms you might see related to a vitamin a deficiency most of the time those needs are met adequately if we have a good oral mineral supplement supplied there is also an injectable vitamin a there are some possible side effects just injection site challenges and things like that so definitely talk to your vet about their recommendations but it is an option if you haven't been able to get vitamin a into them orally would definitely consider doing that injection so talk a little bit about cold weather management this is just a chart that shows um the thermonutrile zone is that uh temperature range where cows perform really well um with no additional output of energy and so looking at the left hand side lct or lower critical temperature um so we kind of think about the 32 degrees or freezing um is is kind of our the value that we normally use in north dakota um we can go a little bit lower just because cows are tougher here because they're really adapted to this cold environment but you can see as it gets colder the maintenance requirement will go up and the energy required for production will be decreased even though feed intake is is also increasing and so we have to provide additional dietary energy to meet these requirements so that they can generate heat and keep themselves warm without losing condition so this is just basically what happens when we get past that lower critical temperature the metabolic rates are going to increase again in order just to increase that heat production and maintain maintain temperature that's been increased the need for energy so their appetite's going to be stimulated um that increased metabolism is going to increase the passage rate and decrease nutrient utilization of those various nutrients so um if we have poor quality forages um because of the high passage rate and decreased nutrient utilization it's really almost impossible for them to get anything out of those lower quality forages and so that's when we start to mainly think about things like um impaction and so basically what happens is that that the passage rate's going to decrease like I mentioned the room is going to stay full of undigested material and they're just not going to be able to physically consume enough um of those low quality forages to meet requirements and so um basically they call it starving to death with a full belly the other problem that you run into is of course when this happens water intake will also decrease and and really um the flow through that digestive tract is almost eliminated and so um you'll see you know maybe a distended abdomen weakness anorexia um and and those animals will likely die soon if that if that situation is not corrected so a couple ways to manage and cold weather um provide higher quality forages during those times that's the ideal um forages have a better hint better heat increment so it helps keep cattle warmer but we can get into situations where we just can't physically um provide them with enough forage so we might need to think about using more of an energy dense feed stuff um separating out those thin and young cows that may be um less able to withstand the effects of of that cold weather can be a good idea um for reducing their maintenance requirements by providing some type of wind breaks or shelter um or bedding um that that will really help reduce the amount of additional feed inputs you have to put out there and then feeding in late afternoon or evening um that's just a strategy that helps generate um more heat fermentation in the coldest part of the evening when it's the most valuable for them so beef cattle actually experience the a windshield and so this is just a chart that shows you the actual um temperature and then the wind speed and what and what the equivalent temperatures are experiencing so as you can see if we go across the top the actual temperature you find zero um if the winds are calm then the cattle are experiencing a zero degree temperature if we end up with a 20 mile per hour wind which is not uncommon in most parts of North Dakota um if you go down to 20 miles per hour um you can see that they're actually experiencing effective temperature of minus 39 so just an example here kind of a another rule of thumb I really like to throw those rules of thumb out there uh increasing TDN by 1% for every degree below the lower critical temperature so again just based on that windshield index of the minus 39 you would take 18 which is our lower critical temperature minus the minus 39 and they need 57 percent more energy which is the substantial amount of energy right um so here's just an example based on the current TDN requirements take it times the 1.57 work that through we're going to end up feeding around 3.6 percent of body weight which is very doable particularly in cold temperatures as I said passage rates will increase and intake will increase but you can get to a point in those extremely cold temperatures where again you may not be able to meet these additional requirements with forage so it's really important we know what the energy density of our forage is so that we can evaluate that so the last couple slides I just wanted to mention although most of the time we're focused on the cow it's really important to remember that the cow is never eating for herself she's always either pregnant nursing or pregnant and nursing and if she's not doing those things she's probably on a trailer headed to town so we are starting to look more and more as an industry about the effects of maternal nutrition on the health and performance of the offspring based on what they experienced during gestation so muscle and fat are two obviously very economically important issues that can be impacted by maternal nutrition and this is just a timeline that represents muscle fiber and fat cell development so if you look at mid gestation that's when the majority of muscle fibers are developing that's based up that secondary muscle fiber development is based on a scaffolding of primary muscle fibers that start to develop very early after conception and so if we experience a nutrient deficiency in the dams during mid gestation researchers have reported decreases in muscle fiber number and also muscle mass and so looking out into late gestation that's when we have a lot of muscle fiber growth and so a restriction at that time point can reduce that muscle growth and possibly impact birth weight although many times in beef cattle we don't actually see a reduction in birth weight and we just might see that the calf is not is not growing to its full potential or not growing as much as it's heard me you can also see that fat development really starts to tick up there in that in that last trimester prior to birth and so there can be impacts on fat cell development and marbling depots in that fetal tissue so it's kind of interesting just to think about important to note that beef cattle are born with all the muscle fibers that the muscle cells that they'll ever have and so the only way that they get bigger is through growth and so anything that might potentially impact that muscle fiber number is really something that can be really devastating to production of that offspring throughout its life so as I mentioned the the fat stores develop late in gestation that doesn't include brown adipose tissue or BET and brown adipose tissue and colostrum are both really important for providing that passive immunity to the calf which is born with essentially no immune system it does have an immune system but it's it's not functional until after birth and so that brown adipose tissue really helps the calf thermoregulate especially in really cold temperatures we obviously have it also supports immunity by providing a source of fuel for the organs that are very important for immune function i know lisa talked a little bit about the effective diet on the immunoglobulin content in the colostrum that can be affected by all these different factors here but again very important for immunity and this next slide is going to show you some different responses that researchers have seen when dams are restricted during that last 100 days or last trimester of gestation or even just that last month or so and in the interest of time i won't go through all the details of the studies but you can really see the different health consequences increase neonatal mortality increased scours increased death loss you know it appears that there's definitely an impact on the immune system and the ability of those animals to fight some of these diseases such as brd or even you know respond to the vaccine and so these are all based on just really not meeting the energy requirements of the cow in late gestation so again just some additional impacts beyond the cow herself so i guess in just terms of take home messages make sure you're getting a good inventory of the feeds and forages that you have available getting all those analyzed so that we can do a better job of balancing you know a targeted ration for you evaluating your body condition really paying attention to those first calf heifers maybe some thin cows and making sure you're monitoring throughout the winter the body condition is really only a point in time reflection and it's really a reflection of management the last several months and so we need to keep an eye on that to keep from from slipping as we again get closer and closer to calving sorting by needs if possible matching up your forage resources balancing your supplements to minimize cost and then of course don't forget about increasing cold weather a couple resources that are maybe of interest on our extension website preparing for calving season and then some alternative feeding strategies such as bale grazing we've got some information on that if you're interested in those you can just google those and there's my contact information cell phone and email if you have any questions or want to follow up on anything I'd be more than happy to visit with you and I will turn it back over to you Travis thank you Dr. Block a great amount of information so that I can decide of whether my system can sustain the ranch and hopefully our team that have joined us as well for our participants so thank you at this point we do not have a particular group of questions waiting for you and in the interest of time we're going to keep those motoring and so just a quick reminder to those that have joined us so the participants to put your questions in the after the q&a box for us to manage and we will get those presented as we move through them again we have the opportunity to be joined by Dr. Miranda Mehan who serves as our livestock environmental stewardship specialist and Dr. Kevin Sedevic our rangeland management specialist and also our interim director at the central grasslands research extension center and so we appreciate their assistance if I'm correct this will be um the great entertainment Miranda I remember just a quick story in our transition is that my father my grandfather is 92 my grandfather is 92 years old and for entertainment excitement they got dressed up and you know would go out on a Saturday night for for dancing and now for entertainment Dr. Kevin Sedevic is going to come in and out of the background and you know we're just excited people that you know that you know now not only do you not have to put your dress clothes on we just hope that people came fully clothed to our our participants for our webinar so Dr. Sedevic tag you're it thank you very much Travis and it is a pleasure to be here today the Travis said Dr. Mehan and myself will be tag teaming this presentation so one will come one will go it's up to you to see who's Kevin and who's Miranda um today is actually my daughter's 21st birthday and so I got a chance to go out to supper with her tonight at some great restaurant downtown and to give her her first drink while in reality it's her 1000s and first drink is my gut feeling um but that's beside the point so so we got a chance to go out for that and we came in here for this webinar and I do appreciate you coming in today in this evening to have an opportunity to listen to Dr. Block and Dr. Mehan and myself the topic that Miranda I picked today is grazing management for increased ranch resilience and in reality when we look at resiliency in our grasslands grazing management and proper health really creates a resilient grassland that takes away the highs and takes away the lows and so if you can do a management strategy even during times of drought we can keep those pastures functioning properly and so we could we don't lose that production potential our biggest issue on resiliency tends to be production because production drives care and capacity and stocking rate and so for producers that is probably the biggest thing that they see is this loss of feed base for those for those animals and so we'll kind of cover these different strategies we talk about uh grazing management and resiliency across across this presentation all right so we're going to start out with uh the reality not all grasses have been created equally and when you look at our grasslands across the northern plains including North Dakota what we want to see is a diverse plant community for our grazing animals and so some grasses tend to be more productive so grass tend to be less productive so grasses tend to be higher in quality now there's do not and if you're missed if you are the poor person who has a poor quality grass and a monoculture in your pasture that's that's what you have for resource and you have to deal with that and know how to manage those properly what we obviously look for is a is a is a diverse plant community to to create resiliency and and forage across those grasslands throughout the grazing season so we tend to look at growth patterns when these grasses peak when they grow the more diverse you have in terms of when they peak and then they peak longer in the grazing season the higher your production will be throughout that grazing period we also look at nutritional quality nutritional quality obviously is a function of livestock performance and then have an ample feed out in that pasture also that will impact that performance so we're going to we're going to start with with nutritional quality this evening and look at crude protein content and energy and dr block covered some of this in her presentation as it relates to protein and energy and what we want to show you um what we want to show you is basically the protein content of our grasses which is in your left uh figured to your left and to your right is the is the is the requirements for these lactating cows and in this graph we have smooth grown grass crested wheat grass uh Kentucky bluegrass which is our yellow yellow graph here our green grasses are is a composition of cool season native grasses and our blue graph is is a combination of warm season grasses and so obviously quality as early as it's immature the one thing that you'll look at when you get to about mid to late June your quality tends to run below 10 percent protein and it obviously then it also declines throughout the season when you have warm season grasses in your mix they tend to retain that quality longer in the grazing season given you a higher quality feed base late in the season one of the flaws we have in the Dakotas and the northern plains is is the invasive grasses that we tend to see more and more across our pastures uh Kentucky bluegrass our yellow bar here and smooth grown grass our lighter blue colored bar on the bottom and so those grasses can really have highs and lows depending on the environmental conditions this graph's a little misleading and it shows what I would call a higher quality bluegrass in a more moist environment when we get into a very dry year like we saw in 2020 nutritional quality of Kentucky bluegrass tends to run down to about two to three percent which we saw this year in July August and September and October and November and December for this year and so if you do have a monoculture or you're dominated by one or two species you resilient your resiliency in terms of forage quality can be very variable across those years if it's a wet year or a dry year what's interesting if you're looking at and Jana talked about some of this in terms of requirements one thing to look at is is just looking at the requirements of a lighter cow a 1200 pound cow which is your blue bar and a 1400 pound bar 1400 pound cow which is your red bar the quality tends to be higher for that 1200 pound cow but the the demand our requirements is less in terms of pounds this is a a cow that has a peak of 20 pounds of milk per day which is not the norm anymore it's hard to find a cow that's going to be even at 25 pounds of peak per day it's not uncommon to see these 30 pound peaks in our cows today so if you look at a at a 1200 pound cow 30 pound peaks you're looking at 12 and a half percent protein on that within that diet for that second month of lactation and it drops down to about 11 percent by that fourth month so you look over here to your left bar and you have a 1200 pound cow over here in bone cow that's a high milker you're not going to have requirements anymore to meet that requirement but that cow by july 1 or july 15 and so just the normal years like 2020 when we're dry requirements just not would not have been met in terms of protein value on these cows so just thinking about what your demand is on your cows that you have we talked about early weaning and you can see how dramatic it changes once you wean those calves off that damn side you're going from an eight percent to six percent much easier to meet the requirements on that cow not only in terms of intake but quality so we go to the next slide here we're going to look at energy energy supply that those cows the grasses provide and then the energy demand by those same set of cows 1200 pound or 400 pound cows at different milking levels the graph today on this side the blue bar is smooth bone grass we do have our cool season natives is that green bar our warm seasons is yellow bar and then that red bar is crested wheat grass what is nice to know is is on the average no matter what kind of year we have on an average our grasslands will achieve adequate energy for these cows unless you're getting into these these high demand high milk producing cows where you're looking at 60 percent now you can see we drop below 60 by about anywhere from august 1 to september 1 for some of these cows and so the really rule of thumb that I go by is if your grass is green and lush you're probably going to meet the requirements of those cows for protein energy if your grass is brown it's gotten cured out it's mature more than like you're not meeting her requirements in terms of protein or energy 2020 we we already reached those stages of development by about early to mid july and so a lot of our performance would have been seen particularly on that female side because of the drought conditions that we experienced in 2020 we're going to swap off to dr mehan so in addition to knowing what grasses you have it's really important to know what you have for forage production so you can set that baseline and determine um that forage supply versus that forage demand of that animal that you're grazing when in the world of grazing management when we talk about forage supply we talk we're talking about carrying capacity of that pasture which is a calculation based off of the amount of grass that's produced but how much of that grass is available for your for consumption by by livestock as we know some of it's wasted and we also want to leave some behind to ensure that that rangeland stays healthy or that pasture stays healthy so carrying capacity is defined as the maximum stocking rate possible that maintains and improves vegetation and rangeland resources and it's really critical that we understand what our carrying capacity is to effectively manage our grazing resources it's going to fluctuate we all know that um in 2020 our carrying capacity is lower because of the drought we experienced or 2017 and when we have a wet year it could be a little higher but it gives you it gives you a baseline for making those management decisions when you do go through a year like that so if you need assistance um calculate making those calculations contact your local extension agent um contact your nrc at local nrc s office for assistance or kevin or myself will be more than happy to come out and help you go through that process the other side of that is that forage demand side which we refer to as stocking rate stocking rate is defined as a specific number of specific kind and class of animals that are grazing an area for a specific period of time and stocking rate really is the most important management decision we make in a rain in our grazing systems and ideally i was going to have a poll here um but if you want to put in the chat box it is um what's curious is to when is the last time those of you that have livestock have assessed or adjusted your stocking rate oh and maybe you guys can't put stuff in the chat never mind we'll move on and ask at the end so when we talk about stocking rate um it's really important as kevin alluded to those those animals have different demands depending on what stage of production they're in and their size and so when we talk about an animal unit month which is what we express stocking rates in that's the amount of forage livestock will consume in a one-month period of time and that's the standard that we often refer to so that one AUM is based off of the requirements of a one one thousand pound cow with a six-month or younger calf by our side and so if you had here we have that one thousand pound cow a calf at one um and that's what we call that an animal unit equivalent and then if you had a fourteen hundred pound cow with a calf it'd be one point two nine or if you had sheep for instance it would be zero point two so what the type of animal type of livestock you're grazing in the stage of production is really going to impact the requirements which dana discussed in depth with us and so as we calculate our stocking rate we're going to look at that number of animals we have um take that times that animal unit equivalent and that gives you the number of animal units you're grazing and then the the number of months you're grazing and that gives you your AUMs or your stocking rate you can also express this as grazing days or animal unit days um however you prefer to calculate it but it gives you an estimate as to where you are and then you can compare that to what you have for available forage now as we look at trends in the beef industry um if you haven't if you're not adjusting your stocking rate or reviewing it um an example from in 1975 the average us beef cow weighed just over a thousand pounds um compared to 2009 where we're closer to that fourteen hundred pounds and so if you just were using a historic stocking rate for a past year and you had 150 cows and you grazed for a four month period so from June to October you would have six would have been grazing 600 animal unit months in 1975 however in 2009 you would be grazing 774 animal unit months so that's an additional 174 animal unit months that you're grazing and so it's really important that as we make changes to our herd and the genetics and our animals we're adjusting our stocking rates to to reflect that um because we know that average calisthenics has increased however forage production has not increased on our range lands i mean we have there's ways we can increase it a little bit um through good management but overall it's it's a fairly consistent thing and i'm going to hand it back over to kevin to talk about what we need to consider looking into 2021 hello again so i assume it's no secret to most of you that 2020 was was probably one of what was a probably one of our severe drought years at least during the summer and fall period we many of us experienced drought conditions or dry conditions and this just shows you the US drought monitor for North Dakota on November 17th and you can see about 40% of our state was in a d2 drought um and almost 90% of our state was in some type of a drought condition um what's which probably more worried to me is that this drought has gotten worse throughout the fall if you go back to august of thursday september and october november um that d2 is actually expanded and i'm i'm actually a little bit surprised that parts of the state are not in a d3 especially the far northwest part of the state and so we're looking at going into the fall and and next spring with very dry conditions that most of our producers are going to have to deal with and i took the end on station maps and grabbed a few locations to give you a feel for where we were at in terms of departures from normal for the 2020 uh growing season and if you if you look at probably our driest area was the north west at a 41% of normal um of precip in that region most most of this area sat around the 50 to 60 percent of normal because we get a little farther east you see 75 percent by the devil's lake area you get up into cavalier county or pennant county you're 84 percent the only part of the state that was not dry and you can see here this is where we're actually by my edgley we're our ellendale actually we're at 95 percent and i percent by wapitum and the southwest not quite as bad as this is the central part of the kato region and so you can see we we we could have kind of suffered this drop condition i think it actually these numbers actually look worse as you look into the fall period and if there's anybody on here from other parts of the country we actually aren't suffering as bad as other parts of the country as you can see you get into wyoming in colorado in new mexico arizona they're an extremely severe drought into these d3d4 levels and so in terms of you just think about the cattle markets and the supply of feed out in the country right now this is going to have some kind of impact on on available feed for this spring in particular in these areas we have a lot of cattle so what it is i wanted to look at what what happened different in 2020 compared to 2019 in terms of fall moisture and really a lot of producers really didn't suffer in 2020 due to drought until we really got into the months of late july and into august and the reason for that was because of subsoil moisture that we received in 20 in 2019 in that fall period so i took i took four locations and looked at precipitation in august september and october of 2019 which is the red bar and then that same time period in 2020 so i have strater williston bowman and maynot and last fall we ranged from 168 to 287 above normal precip in the months of august september and october so we had tremendous carryover in fall moisture that reached into the spring that really saved us in 2020 and that's why we really didn't see a lot of panic in terms of drought like we saw in 2017 now let's look at this fall you look at those same locations in 2020 streeters at 58 percent of normal williston is at 15 percent of normal for that time period if you think that that it's not dry in willison area and it's not going to have an impact on next year's growth you're kidding yourself we're going to see some impacts in much of this region because of what happened this fall the positive thing that will happen is you probably will not see a sweet clover bloom in western north dakota because of these dry conditions so if you look at at predicting ford production we tell producers we can do a really good job of predicting production parameters early in the growing season in north dakota we really grow most of our ford production based on precipitation from april to june if you're in eastern montana and eastern wyoming you're looking at april may is your critical months of precipitation in the dakotas you're looking at may and june if you tend to be heavy in warm seasons grasses which most of us are not you're looking at june and july and so you can predict really well and really quick on if you're going to have a good year a bad year based on on precipitation in the months of may and june in north dakota so this graph shows you growth curves so this is western weak grass which is your typical growth curve of a cool season grass the green bar is a warm season grass so this example is blue grama grass and for those who live in the katoa region where we're dominated by blue grass this is kentucky bluegrass so you can see in that period from from mid-may or early may to july one roughly 90 percent of our growth of our cool season grasses have produced that biomass for that given year and it's about 80 percent of its overall growth occurs in that time period depending on fall moisture your warm season grass it's about 45 to 50 percent if you're if you're dominated by bluegrass or brograss you're looking at about 85 95 to 100 percent of its growth occurring by july one so if you do not receive precipitation during this time period you'd better be planning on a lower producing year unless your pastures are in phenomenal condition great soil water holding capacity where you can be resilient in one year producers should plan fairly early in the game if you look at dry conditions carry over next spring there's also been a calculator that was developed it's called a forward prediction calculator that any issue developed i'm sure not to me i must have deleted this and so if you get a chat and i've actually worked on this data it allows you to to look at predictions of potential to get rainfall to achieve the requirements you need to produce normal forward production so if you get a chance to click on this link it allows you to at least look at calculating your probability of getting adequate rainfall to grow normal growth for that given year so i'm going to end up end up with my session here on i'm looking at 2021 in terms of drought strategies and so you're going to look at different scenarios and one that we may come into and if the nice thing about this falls it's been great great weather low precip no snow it's been great for us but not so not so good for our resources so if you look at going into next spring with the below normal precipitation levels or moisture you know what i would tell producers expect severe severe reductions in terms of forward production you're coming into a dry fall you have no subsoil you don't get any spring moisture i wouldn't be surprised if forward production levels are 50 percent or less if we have a dry spring next year and if those drought conditions continue into the summer months you'll also expect to see a reduction in terms of forge quality if we come into next year with a normal spring moisture and you can kind of get my feel right going with this because we're still dry this fall even if we get normal spring moisture i expect most of our producers unless their pastures are in really good range health they're going to have a reduction in forge production in 2021 it can be anywhere from 20 to 50 depending on how they impact of their grazing strategies in the fall of 2020 if they come into the fall period those pastures are overgrazed that bottom leaf that becomes your next spring's growth has been removed you're not only going to get a delay in terms of forge production but you're also going to lose much amount of biomass potential potential because of those dry conditions and again forge quality will also be impacted if those drought conditions continue on into the summer months so let's look at a wet spring let's say we get lucky next spring and and we get some good moisture because we're so stressed this year this would be the best case scenario but i would not expect us to produce above normal pre normal forward production even with the wet spring because of the dry conditions we're experiencing in 2020 unless your pastures are in really good condition and that's where resiliency plays a role in terms of good management those pastures will actually experience above normal production in the wet spring because those pastures have been kept in good shape and have been managed to achieve diversity across those pastures to maintain production in these wet periods hopefully we do have a good wet spring next year and so we have the opportunity at least to grow normal production at worst and so i'm going to turn the program back over to Miranda to kind of finish up our portion of this presentation i'm going to wrap things up with just a discussion of some of the management considerations and what we can do to help reduce the impacts of this fall drought and hopefully not have to go through another drought but considerations for that as well so the first thing is that timing of grazing this spring is going to be extremely important that turnout date we want to be making sure we're not turning our cows out and i preach this all time but before our grass has reached that grazing readiness stage and the reason for this is we want to make sure that we're reducing that amount of bare ground and increasing litter cover and that's going to help maintain what soil moisture there is and reduce evaporation also it's going to help increase our plant vigor and if we do graze to release what happens is we're going to reduce that plant area leaf area and when we reduce that plant leaf area it reduces the plant's ability to conduct photosynthesis photosynthesis which is required to replace the carbohydrates that are depleted during the winter and during the green up periods and so when this happens it reduces that plant's vigor and our plant we see thin stands we'll see a reduction in total forage production and in turn we'll also see increases in disease potential insect infestations and weed infestations in those pastures when we do when we graze too early we have the potential to reduce forage production by as much as 60 percent during the grazing season and this is going to reduce again our carrying capacity which decreases stocking rates and if we don't decrease those stocking rates or adjust them we're going to we could see a result in animal performance as well and so what does grazing readiness look like it's pretty simple to go out there and look at plant development and determine if your pastures are ready to be grazed so when we look at our domestic pastures or planted species such as our bromes and our press of wheat grass it's a three-leaf stage so we just count those leaves that are fully emerged one two and three three and then we look at our native rangelands we're looking at the three and a half leaf stage and so we have a half the sleeve isn't fully emerged yet and so that would be a half a leaf there considerations that goes back to Kevin's discussion of knowing what species you have out there when we're looking at those species our different species reach reach grazing readiness at different points in times so as we're looking at our grazing strategies and where can we start or and have we reduce the impact to those grasses potentially crested wheat grass is typically ready to graze early May our bromes mid-May and then we move into post-contract CRP lands a lot of those in North Dakota tend to be our intermediate and tall wheat grasses and reach grazing readiness in late May and then our native cool season species reach reach grazing readiness in early June as Kevin discussed however we know that if those pastures receive a little extra grazing pressure this summer are full because of drought conditions we may see a delay in plant development and this is an example from 2017 and 18 from Oliver County and in Oliver County western wheat grass was ready to graze on May 9th and at that three and a half leaf stage however with our drought in 17 that pasture that graze a little heavy and we seen a delay in plant development in in 2018 in which this plant wasn't even at it was only at the one and a half leaf stage on May 14th so a fairly significant delay in development so some recommendations to often optimize our range performance as we head into 2021 in the future is really that first and most important is turn out to pasture when they're ready to be grazed so that might not be something that you can do in all situations every ranch is different so there are a few ways that we can reduce that impact one of those is spring graze are domesticated or introduced species so crested wheat grass smooth brown grass pastures are those that are heavily infested by Kentucky bluegrass and maybe you'll have a negative impact on that Kentucky bluegrass and get some more natives in there um this probably isn't likely for a likely an option for a lot of you just with how dry or fall it was but if you're able to spring graze some winter grain grain crops such as our winter rye or winter triticali seed and early season spring crop which obviously you're going to have to assess what we have for available soil moisture in the spring before you make that investment and again same kind same thing goes for seeding a full season cover crop and having these other options will reduce that pressure to our pasture and range lands another option is feed more hay and you've seen what things look like in the rest of the country so plan now if you're going to if that's the option you think you're going to use and purchase those those hay supplies if you are in short supply if you go through that assessment the jannas and determine that you need more hay make those purchases ahead of time and plan for that if you are going to feed hay and you don't want to do it in a in a dry lot situation you know look at feeding it on pasture that's domesticated we don't want to do that on rangeland because it it has the potential to increase in introduce um noxious weeds are on hayland where those weeds are a little easier to control and most another very important thing is minimize repeated years of over grazing our rangelands are very resilient um they evolved with grazing and as a disturbance but if we continually abuse um we are going to see an impact so if you did overgraze a pasture in 2020 and make sure that you don't start grazing in that pasture this year let it recover before you you introduce animals into it again and most importantly develop a drought management strategy now if you haven't already as you heard from kevin the chances that we have a normal forage produce senior are are not high so let's prepare for that now and it'll make the decision making process easier when we get to that point um again if that precipitation is low in may well april through june or but specifically may through june start implementing that drought plan use the calculator that that forage prediction calculator see the potential for you to receive that the precipitation you need in the period and make those adjustments early and if you need help going through the calculator give your county agent a call they'll help you through it again those summer rains they're going to enhance those warm season grasses but they're not going to add much new growth to our cool season grasses however forage quality will increase well if the drought continues into fall we're going to see low quality feeds and plants becoming susceptible to low vigor very similar to what we've seen this fall and two years of drought is going to create changes in the plant community and forage production that is going to be dramatically reduced um so we're going to it's going to take more than grazing management alone to address that you're going to be need to think about things like de-stocking or adding more land which is not an option for a lot of us so de-stocking um are adi are looking at other more creative options for grazing limit your overuse to one to two pastures um and so if you do hit a pasture really hard allow deferment for the for the next grazing season which is hard to do for a lot of people but it's it's important if you want to keep that maintain the long-term resilience of that pasture increase plant vigor again by delaying that spring turnout we want to do that by monitoring grazing readiness of those key species in those pastures most important rule of grazing management stocking rates should not be greater than carrying capacity ever um if drought continues early adjustments of the stocking rate well need to occur due to that loss of forage production and if you need help going through those carrying capacity stocking rate numbers uh calculations we do have a grazing calculator app that you can use to assist you with those those calculations you just look up ndsu grazing calculator it's a free app um and your county agents are always a resource for you as well and with that i will turn it back over to travis thank you dr mehan and dr sedovic so uh to keep your discussion going and and uh we appreciate uh certainly the information that you went over uh just what's happening in my mind and and kind of thinking through this is i almost wonder and i will take your perspective on this is just a quick summary of whether we're in a perfect storm for kind of a negative may and my description in that uh kevin and miranda is that um that since we've had the seasonal fall uh and janna approached it and you know our extension agents said that we're grazing some of those cows well we're not grazing them all on cover crops and we're not grazing them all on corn stocks and so um what is your thoughts relative to kind of uh if uh if we're kind of doing some long term or even some short term uh negativity to our pastures or or what your approach is if you'd kindly address that or saying you know maybe we need to kind of save that and and uh and get the pasture recovering earlier that's a great question and we get that question a lot on as it relates to winter grazing our grasslands and rangelands so they're out right now grazing on our grasslands are not on crop residue they're not on cover crops uh western dakotas this is very common eastern montana eastern wyoming um and it's not that there's nothing wrong with grazing late in the season in terms of impacts on plant community as long as you do not overgraze that pasture it's important that you need to leave that bottom tiller on your cool season grass your cool season grasses never stop growing they're growing in january they're growing in february if you keep that bottom leaf that next spring's leaf intact you won't have a negative effect on the average you still want to have enough biomass there in structure to catch snow to capture moisture so if you graze it even close enough where you're not catching that snow that's moisture you're not going to capture and so there's a fine line of yes you can graze it um the requirements are lower for that cow so our intake is also reduced but you still can't overgraze it and it's important to really that message that you can overgraze your winter pastures don't do it or you're gonna have an impact i'd like to make the reminder and miranda just put that in the chat uh that we would like uh you to fill out the poll and survey that we do have and we have i believe seven questions on there now excuse me eight questions that we can talk about but also if you have any other particular questions that you would like to bring up we would welcome those and one of the things that i guess seems tougher uh this is to you uh dr jenna block and in fact i i see that you know your your cattle colleague slash namesake uh ross is is on here and luckily with uh um our the the technology is that a little bit of the halo actually from your or the the light from the your angel halo shines on your um head and so that's really great that that's working out nicely for you but my quick question um is that that we talk about saying hey we need to separate our young heifers and our old cows and um and commonly we don't have the facilities and or we're not willing to take the time which may be part of it um and so i guess what would be your selection and i i suppose maybe the better one is is our younger one or where would you make that call of saying if we were to put a remedial pen together what would be your selection criteria to put them in that pen well um i mean it's really gonna it's so variable depending on you know what what facilities people have and and um how they can manage that and um i mean we have a lot of those same challenges here in our place i mean just trying to find room for everything and trying to split things out like you should i mean i think it would really come down to just taking a really good look at at things and um you know going through and and doing those body condition scores and picking out some of those thin cows young cows um you know i have a lot of people that when we talk about you know really babying your thin cows they say well if that cow can't make it on the feed resources that i'm providing for her she probably doesn't belong on this place so that's a consideration there's people that don't care to baby those cows over the winter by providing additional feed and they just they think that you know maybe not if it's just one year but if that cow is consistently thin based on the management scenario that she's in maybe she just needs to go to town so maybe it is an opportunity to do some strategic culling um if the cows just aren't matching up with that environment but i mean when you've got your first calf heifers and that's kind of you know the future of your herd it if at all possible that's worthwhile to to put a little extra effort into them i guess was my thoughts thank you very much and when when we have those um you know the the heifers and we talked just a little bit and initially you did there on on on some of our genetic selection and this is going back and making pulling it together as a a two-part series that we talked about previously last week is that according to our poll that we have uh for our producers right now is that um 60 or 57 percent of our producers that responded had an increase in their average calving size and 30 percent of them um had those in the 30 percent of them had it staying the same not very many people have had a decrease um and and certainly that's something and and i guess uh miranda you touched on that of probably the importance of realizing that um are even a 12, 13, 1400 pound cow with calf at side uh isn't a 1.0 relative to animal units and i thought that was certainly interesting and and something we need to keep into consideration as we move forward um so it i think that that's a good spot and i appreciate uh janna that you saying well maybe some of that on the older standpoint is that we are challenging them uh but we want to maintain it as well and so uh thank you thank you miranda do you have anything to add there um just on on on some of those cows and kind of what what's the thought process that we potentially have uh relative to just our our cow maintenance on the range pasture there i mean i think the most you know the important thing is that you're balancing what you have there for available forage and not overgrazing um so because the the if you overgraze those cows start competing for forage resources and they're starts and you get to the point where they're spending more time looking for forage to eat than they are actually eating because of that overuse and over the long run we also see a shift and we see plant species that they're not going to eat come in um things like fringe sagewort pearly cup gumweed uh we see a shift to some of those shorter grasses why they they're still good quality they're not as high of high producing so we'll see a shift from in for example on a lomi ecological site we're going to see which is their dominant in North Dakota um we're going to see a shift from western wheatgrass dominated site more to a blue grama dominated site which is a lot lower producing when you look at how a plant this big versus a plant that can get that big um and so knowing what you have out there um and how you manage those resources is going to shift what you have out there and maybe they'll disappear like me well um it's a it's a special talent uh thank you miranda and i'm going to bring it back to uh to to dr janna there um and so that you can provide again she talked about some of those forage resources but i know that plenty of the thoughts in in your operation and the producers that you're working with uh is is protein driven particularly now as we move into december and so what are the as we kind of close some of this up is is what's your quick kind of take home in terms of um protein supplementation let's say that uh you know i i have uh 50 head of cows to keep it simple and um those are you know currently uh out on the the pasture with without probably enough protein and so what's your what's the quick or your your answers for for those producers that contact you and say hey i actually don't know where my cows are at relative to uh uh consumption of of crude protein right now well um we we have done a little bit of i mean miranda and kevin could probably address this even more um you know trying to do some sampling of standing forage um that is definitely challenging um what we do in our mineral program is recommend that people kind of um go out and observe the cows and what they're consuming and and try to um take a grab sample um of those species that are being grazed and and also making sure that you're representing just how much is being grazed so if they're if they're just clipping the tops off you just the tops off if they're taking it down to the ground you take it down to the ground and so trying to really represent what the cow is grazing i mean it's always kind of a guessing game and and the more data that we have the the more precise we can be some people aren't willing to go to those links and i completely understand that it's very time consuming and it requires a lot of commitment so um looking at those looking at the body condition scores understanding that this time of year we would likely benefit from a protein supplement particularly for the spring calving cows and evaluating you know kind of where they're hanging out looking at the manure piles and um just kind of seeing where things are at and um you know the the types of supplements that you can get are i mean there's there's just countless numbers of options and so it really depends on what you have available um a lot of people could use just alfalfa hay as a protein supplement um and just do that infrequently and so wouldn't have to be an everyday deal maybe just once or twice a week depending on how much they need um there's lots of fairly easy options to just improve that protein status um but i think you know back to your point we're always focused on protein um there's a lot of times where we really should be providing more of an energy-based supplement um i know during that drought there were a lot of people that were feeding cake and that's a plant-based cake product and the whole goal of a protein supplement and and what it accomplishes is it increases forage intake and digestibility so if they were trying to substitute for forage intake that was probably backfiring and so that's where it could have used more of that starch-based type supplement to offset that forage consumption so um there are some really good supplement decision tools um that are available that you can kind of evaluate like okay is the brass is the grass brown um is there enough of it okay what what's the body condition of the cows and you can walk through this process um it's just a supplement decision tree that would kind of give people an idea of of where to go and i can post that on our website if that would be helpful thank you very much uh jannah and just a quick uh evaluation of our our poll as well is that we asked uh when was the last time that you evaluated your stocking right of those that did uh 50 of them did that last year and 50 percent of them uh did it one to five years ago i know that when we do these hopefully we have the influencers and potentially uh you know more progressive stockmen but for all of those that are wishing to join us and watch us in the near future are able to pull us up make sure to uh to realize that uh i myself am surrounded by talented people here at ndsu and that we have not only uh talented presenters that have brought you information today uh but we also have extension agents across our uh state in our agricultural natural resources that are willing to help you relative to carrying capacity stocking right and also uh to to develop a management plan for you and so again we've got an exciting group of people and and they can also help us with body condition scores too jannah so that we can know which way we want to go there on the selection gate so i'm going to open up one last time uh if uh our presenters have anything otherwise i think that uh we're moving uh towards the end of our event okay good uh with that um i would like to thank our attendees and thank our presenters uh dr block and dr mehan and dr sethavik and our team at at north dakota state university extension for helping to facilitate and provide uh information on how you can sustain your ranch and so thank you very much and have a good evening thank you all and happy holidays and merry christmas and have a great new year