 And so I do appreciate you hopping on today. My topic is rejuvenating pastures and adding value to these perennial grass mixes. And I do wanna put a caveat in here that I'm gonna focus on rejuvenating pastures that are typically what I call seeded pastures and some of the methods that you would look at to make them either more productive, a thicker stand and some opportunities to make them more efficient in your grazing operation. I'm gonna break this up into a couple of different topics but we'll kind of cover those as we go through and there is natural breaks within the topic areas. If you do have a burning question, you sure can jump in and ask the question. Otherwise, we'll go to the slideshow presentation and hopefully this works good for us and we can see it all. So there's my title and it's really rejuvenating pastures and for those of you who have looked at the literature on rejuvenating pastures, it does make a difference if you're talking seeded pastures versus range land. And I'm gonna focus on at least the first two topic areas kind of cover seeded pastures. The grazing component really fits both on seeded pastures and native range. And so there is an overlap on that component if you're looking at those questions. My topics today, I'm gonna cover pasture mix options. So if you do have some soils, you're looking to plant a seed mix in whether it's loamy soils, clay soils, sodic soils, we'll kind of hit that topic up front. And of course your pasture mixes should really be based on your soil types and gives you the best option to get good success as well as soil health within that component. But they're gonna look at fertility and fertility is probably the number one option that most producers will use to rejuvenate a stand. This is not new to those people who live in Southern Minnesota or live in Eastern South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. The Northern Plains, especially in North Dakota, Western South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, we don't see a lot of fertility being put into these pastures, but it's something that should be looked at and it does make a huge difference. So we'll talk about why we fertilize, when you should fertilize, and how you should fertilize. Then we're gonna spend about half the time on grazing management. The reason these stands aren't very productive is something went bad. Normally it's a function of what you've been doing for grazing management strategies that has created either low bigger stands, bare soils increased, and that's usually a function of your management strategy. So I tell producers you really need to look at why your stand needs to be rejuvenated first. If it's a lack of fertility, that's an easy fix. If it's a, you have noxious weeds, you know, there's a reason why you got noxious weeds, but some cases we get noxious weeds because they're there. And so then looking at control on them is another option. So we'll spend a lot of time on grazing strategies for rejuvenating these stands. What is other rejuvenating methods I'm not gonna cover today, and that's looking at mechanical treatments, herbicides, and overseeing. Mechanical treatments on the average, I'm not a huge fan of, but they do work on, if you have a rhizominous pasture, like a smooth brome, or even a crested wheat, not a crested, a quackgrass stand, a light tillage, not like a light chisel will actually cause those roots to break and you get rhizominous action or a tillering effect. But other than that, a lot of these techniques are very physical in the soils and actually hurt your soil health versus enhance soil health. Herbicides are obviously an option if you have weed issues. Of course, if you have noxious weeds by law, you're supposed to control them. We're not gonna spend time on herbicides, that's a whole separate talk on weed ID and herbicide control. Then of course, overseeding is a method you'll see used on these stands that have a lot of bare ground, and it can work. You still have to fix why you have a lot of bare ground and overseeding is one of them options. So I'm gonna save those three at the end. If you have questions on those three, we can cover those at the very end, but I'm not gonna have them in the PowerPoint as a whole. So let's talk about pasture mixtures and options. And for those of you who have some specific soil types that you wanna seed a pasture on, or you have some pastures that, some soils that aren't growing very well and you wanna either fix them or reseed them, let's look at some options. And you're gonna really look at your soil type as your basis for what you're gonna seed on those options. I'm gonna focus on species, obviously for the Northern Plains, but we can sure talk about other areas that we get into drier climates or wetter climates. But we'll kind of go through those as options. I'm gonna give you some of the species that I really like that grow well on these soil types, but that doesn't mean that there's other ones that aren't available, especially in different areas. And so I did lump loamy and sandy and clay soils together. These grasses will fit well in all three areas, especially a sandy loam or clay loam. When you get into the heavier clays, you might have to look at some other options, especially if you have a clay pad in place or you have salts associated with those clay soils. That's a different type of soil types. I'm talking about generally these loams, sandy loams and clay loams. And in the Northern Plains, the grass I really like in precip zones of 16 inches or better is a grass called metal brome grass. Most of you are familiar with smooth brome grass. This isn't even related to it in terms of genus. It's a total different genus in species, but it has the same characteristics in terms of palatability and quality that smooth has. In fact, I think it's a little better. The beauty of metal brome is it is a bunch grass versus a sod forming grass. So it is not invasive, like we see with the smooth bromes. And so it's one of them grasses you can put in place. It'll stay there, especially if you mix it with an alfalfa. It makes a really nice grass on these loamy and sandy loamy soils. You can put them on the clay loams as well. The biggest thing is you have to have good water holding capacity. As metal brome does, you use water. That's why it's in the 16 inch precip zone or greater. I do think an option, especially if you're gonna, if you wanna look at a grazing hang options where hang might be your option. A metal brome alfalfa mix to me is probably the sweetest of our mixes in terms of livestock, especially cattle, sheep, horses, even to some level in the dairy industry, but they basically want pure alfalfa. But this is a picture here of an alfalfa metal brome grass mix. The beauty of the metal brome in this mix is that since it's a bunch grass, it will not take out your alfalfa in years five, six, and seven. In fact, we have a stand out here at Central Grassland Station that was seated in 1989. That is still two thirds metal brome, one third of alfalfa. And so it is a great grass to put in an alfalfa mix. As you go, as you get into soils that are a little bit more drier, for instance. So you get into a sandy loam or even a clay loam. You know, the intermediate wheat grass, pubescent wheat grass mix is one of the, is a really good option in this scenario. The difference between the wheat grasses and the bromes is that the wheat grasses tend to have more fiber and less palatability. And so for grazing grass, the metal brome tends to be a little better, but the wheat grasses tend to fit those little drier scenarios, also a little better. And so I look at these ones as well as you get in the Catoa region of North Dakota, Western North Dakota, the Western two thirds of South Dakota into Nebraska, Wyoming. You'll see intermediate pubescent wheat grass is used a lot in pastures. These fit well on the loamies and the clays. The heavier the soil, the better the wheat grasses will perform. And you can plant this in a precipitation zone of 13 inches or greater. So you'll see this anywhere from the Western Dakotas all the way into Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska. In fact, there's a couple of varieties of intermediate wheat grass that do very well in Nebraska. And so it's one of those species that fits well. The knock on it is it's not quite as palatable as the growing grasses. I also like to add a legume to the wheat grasses if it hangs an option for grazing purposes. I like to put in about one to two pounds of alfalfa or a clover or even a birch foot tree foil in the stand to add some natural fertility to that stand. With alfalfa, you have bloat issues. And so I like to keep it under 20% of the stand but it's a great option to put in there even with cattle on grazing these pastures. So it's getting to drier climates. We're getting to the Western Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming. Crestive wheatgrass is really one of your best options. And I know you got producers and you have conservation ecologists that don't like Crestive wheatgrass. It gets a bad knock because of some of its characteristics. But if you're looking for a grass to grow in that eight to 10 inch precip zone that can take grazing pressure better than any other grass it's got good production. It's really tough to beat Crestive wheatgrass in these scenarios. If you're sitting at that 11, 12 inch zone you could do a wheatgrass, Crestive wheatgrass mix to give you some more production from the intermediate wheatgrass. But when you get in these drier climates it's really one of your best options. And it grows well on all three soil types whether it's a sandy, clay, alomi. It does very well in those scenarios. When you look at Crestives there are three types of Crestids as well. I do like alfalfa with Crestid as well especially if you're gonna make a hay ground out of it it makes a really nice hay as well. So when you're picking your Crestids if you're looking for a grazing variety that's gonna get a little more soddy than your typical Crestid you wanna go with a fairway variety. It actually will with grazing pressure will fill in those gaps and becomes more of a sod versus a bunch grass like you typically see in Crestive wheatgrass. The flaw in the fairways is they tend to be less productive but they tend to have higher quality. So they fit well into that grazing scenario. If you're looking for a hay type I actually prefer the hybrids. That's a fairway standard hybrid. Tends to be the most productive of the Crestid wheat grasses and still gets a little bit risommarous effect to that bunch grass that you'll see with a fairway. The common ones that were seeded in the past were almost always standard varieties. These tend to get really wolfy on you. They're great quality when they're not mature. As they mature out they get wolfy and unpalatable. Intends to be the one that stands out there and when you see them in the pastures you'll see these tall wolfy Crestid wheatgrass out there that weren't grazed. And that's the standard variety. And so you can pick and choose from there if you're looking for grazing or a hay type. But for me the fairway fits the best for grazing in the hybrids for hay types. So let's talk a little bit about saline and sodic soils. Eastern Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa. We're gonna see a little more salts in some of these areas especially since we've been more of a wetter climate the last 25 years. This is a picture actually taken south of Carrington last week on a soybean field. But you can see the salts here are very high. And so we have a lot of producers that are dealing with these salty areas. And I know Naim's gonna cover this on Thursday in the next series of talks. But we're gonna say most of this talk for Thursday but I will talk about some species that you can look at to plant in these types of situations. So your best option is two grasses that really do well on saline and sodic soils. The one I like the best is the green wheatgrass. Most of you know it is AC salt lander. It's probably the most palatable of the wheat grasses on saline areas. You can use it for haying and grazing. It tolerates EC levels of 32 desiccimus per meter square. So it's a high tolerant plant. The trick on a lot of these is getting them established. Getting those seeds to actually germinate and survive. You need to almost be in your EC levels of around 12 to 16 to get them to at least germinate and start to grow. Once they grow, they can tolerate higher levels. And that comes down to a timing. You wanna seed them when your water levels the highest in terms of moving salts down the profile. So if you can get that upper couple inches lower, which usually occurs in the spring, you wanna seed in the spring, get them to germinate, get them to grow, then they'll tolerate that EC levels as it rises through the summer with evaporation. The other one that fits well is tall wheatgrass. Now tall wheatgrass was historically the common grass used for saline areas. Tall wheatgrass has a lot of flaws when it comes to livestock. It's not very palatable. It produces a lot of biomass and a lot of fiber. And it fits to me. If you're looking for a conservation grass in CRP plantings or in conservation plantings with an equip that are dealing with salt areas that will not be grazed, tall wheatgrass is your lowest input cheapest option to get some grass on those fields. If you do wanna hay it, it does do fine for hay, but it has to be put up at the boot stage. Once it goes to heading as you see in this picture, the quality goes down dramatically and you have to then grind it if you're gonna feed it to cows. So if you don't have the opportunity to create a total mixed ration to grind this grass, it's not gonna work very well in a feeding operation unless you put it up in the immature stage. The third grass that grows well on saline areas is Western wheatgrass. Now this is a native grass that in our experimental trials will handle EC levels up to 20 decisemons per meter square, per meter, so this is actually a pretty good grass that you can seed. We tend to seed it with slender wheatgrass, both of them tolerate those higher levels and it gives you a nice grass. This grass mixes more of a grazing mix and not a haying mix. And there's nothing wrong with mixing a green wheatgrass with Western wheatgrass and slender wheatgrass to give you some diversity in that stand for grazing animals. And so it's a cheaper variety. You can get Western wheatgrass at almost any dealer. It's not expensive and slender wheatgrass is actually even cheaper. So it's an affordable mix that you can put on these saline areas to give you some production for grazing purposes. So that's Western wheatgrass. You can always tell when you got Western wheatgrass that it has that blue hue to it so it looks like a bluegrass. Now there's parts of North Dakota where this is really common and they call them the bluehills because of the color. The last one I have in here is alkali sacatune. Most of you aren't familiar with alkali sacatune unless you're from Wyoming. But it's a grass that actually tolerates the highest levels of EC levels in the soil surface. It does not fit great in a grazing scenario. Fits well in a conservation scenario but it's one of those that will tolerate in our stands, we were able to get it to grow and survive once it was established up to 50 EC levels. So it is very tolerant of salt areas. You can buy this on the open market, it's a little pricey but it's one you can look at that you can use in grazing scenarios. You can actually mix it with your Western wheatgrass, slender wheatgrass stand if you can get it but it adds a little cost to it. But it will be the one that will tolerate where you got foxtail barley growing. This is the one that will grow really readily in those sites. So is there any questions we can have if anyone that were burning on seeding different grass mixes based on soil types if you take them now before I go over to fertility? I'll give you a 10 seconds to think about it. Otherwise I'll have Naeem record them in the chat box. Kevin, this is Naeem. I'm just gonna quickly ask about the Russian wild rye. Sure. So Russian wild rye is, it's one of the grasses that we use a lot for late season grazing and early season grazing. And it is somewhat salt tolerant, not the level of the wheat grasses but it's still below the wheat grasses. And if you have EC levels in that eight to 12 range, it would work. But the flaw on Russian wild rye is it tends to be pricey, tends to, you have to know what you're doing to seed that grass. It has to be seeded in a really firm seed bed, seeded shallow and packed to get success. And so for producers that, when they look at seeding that one, I don't really recommend it very often unless they know what they're doing and they're gonna graze it at certain times. Only in the spring or only in the fall, one or the other. Good question though. So I'm gonna move on to fertilizing seeded pastures. And like I said, this is probably the most common technique that we'll have producers that will use to produce more biomass on those stands and thicken them up. It's just one of those techniques that a lot of producers will use. The reason that we don't see it used, in my mind heavily in the Dakotas is because of cost. It's an input cost to add fertility, but year in and year out it will pay for itself once you get into a regular fertilizer program. And so I'm gonna show you just two slides that shows images of fertility. Now most of us have lawns. And so this is just a picture showing fertilized lawn on the upper part of the picture and unfertilized lawn on the bottom part of the picture. And you can see just the difference in greenness and how that stand thickens up from fertility. And so you say, why are you using a lawn? Well, a grass is a grass. You have an exotic grass, whether it's brown grass, blue grass, a fescue, orchard grass, they all respond the same to fertility. All these cool season grasses will respond positively to fertility. And the caveat is that all of our cool season exotic grasses actually need fertility to function at the high level. They use that nitrogen fertility in the soil and they go through what's called a slow cycle. And because they go through a slow cycle, they don't create enough fertility in the microbial population to keep that stand functioning at the high level. It actually goes backwards. A stand that gets to be about five to six years of age will start to reduce its biomass because of the slow cycle that occurs within that microbial population. So we add fertility for that microbial population to create that nitrogen burst to the soil profile. This is not recommended on native range. This will not react the same way with native grasses. Especially warm season grasses don't respond the same. So I do not recommend fertility on native range. It's only designed for exotic, cool season grasses for the most. Doesn't mean you can't fertilize, you know, a stand of Johnson grass or Bahaya grass or Bermuda grass down south. Those are also exotic, warm season grasses. But for the other planes, our cool seasons do really well with fertility. So here's another picture. This is actually, I believe it's a brome grass field down in Nebraska. And you can see the test strip to your left, control strip to your right. Those grasses tend to be greener and lusher and they fill in over time. The one thing you'll notice when you fertilize pastures is maturation also speeds up. If you tend to put up your hay on July one, for instance, if you fertilize those stands, you're gonna put them up about a week earlier. Increases their growth rate on the front side. But as you can see in just these two examples, how much you can get in terms of production. And I'll show you a couple of data slides as well. So I'm gonna look at fertilizing like I talked about. It works great on brome grass fields, metal brome, crested wheat grass, intermediate, divested wheat grass, the green wheat grass, orchard grass, Timothy, they all do well with a fertility program. And again, do not fertilize on native pasture. Fertilizer tends to increase production. And once you get into a program, you'll see about a two-fold increase in production once that stands functioning properly. You will also increase quality. The reason you increase quality is the number one fertilizer is nitrogen. Nitrogen is protein. You add nitrogen to the grass, you're gonna add protein to the grass as well. So what to fertilize? And if this is an established stand, there's really only one fertilizer mineral that will actually enhance production on these stands. If you're planning a new stand, you're gonna add probably nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. But for your biggest bang for your buck, nitrogen is your most limiting nutrient on planted seeded pastures. And so that's the only one I actually will add on top of my seeded pastures is nitrogen. The data on phosphorus and potassium is it doesn't pay for itself to add those two minerals in terms of biomass production. If you're seeding them, then you're gonna put them in the mix. But if you're gonna add an established stand, it's really only nitrogen. For the drier climates, and I list here, western North Dakota, this will be true of western Dakotas as a whole, even into Montana, Wyoming. You do about 40 to 60 pounds of actual nitrogen per acre on that first and second year of the stand. Once you get into a fertilizer program, you can actually go every other year once you've been going in the program. As we get eastern part of the Dakotas, we do about 60 to 80 pounds per acre. You get into Minnesota, you get into Iowa. You're looking at close to 100 pounds of nitrogen added for those stands. The more moisture you have, more fertility you're gonna add to it to get the bang on production. So when do I fertilize? If we're gonna fertilize, we should be fertilizing now. I tend to start my fertilizer programs in late April and you're good through mid-May. And I had questions on this on Tuesday. Can you fertilize in late May? Can you fertilize in June? And the answer is yes, it's just gonna be less effective on that year. And there's some little caveats we'll talk about when you get into later part of the fertility program. The one that I use the most, and it's usually the cheapest to get your hands on, is urea. It's a fertilizer you can buy, it's granular. You can top dress it on your soils or on your plant material and it gives you an easy access to get that fertility into your soils. Just a picture of what it looks like once you spread it on the fields. The biggest trick on these of course is moisture. You wanna do this when you're gonna have moisture to follow it so you can get them to break down and give them a soil profile. The caveat is it becomes volatile once we get above seven degrees Fahrenheit. So if you're fertilizing and it's eight degrees outside, you're gonna expect to see high volatilization of that nitrogen into the air. So you wanna time it during cooler times, that's why April's a good time. Usually you'll get some rain to follow it after that April time period and you'll get it incorporated into the profile. So if you are gonna fertilize in late May or into early June, the risk is heat. So if too much heat, your risk of losing that nitrogen to the air becomes a higher risk. And so that's really why if you do it later, make sure it's a cooler time period and moisture will follow. So I'm not a big fan of putting a lot of data up on these webinars, but I'm gonna just show you two slides. These are both from Minnesota. This is in fact an extra fertility on forage production. The first set of slides, the blue is actually with no fertilizer or control. The red is with 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre. This one here is the four experimental stations in Minnesota. This one's off five farms in Minnesota. And you can see you get about 100% increase in production and the four experimental stations after a three-year average. And on the five farms, they actually got about 125% increase in production with fertility. This is on a six-way mix of Abram, orchard grass, Timothy, wheatgrass stands that were seeded in Minnesota. And so you can see if you could easily pay for that fertility with the biomass you produce. You also thicken those stands with time so you actually get rid of some of that bare ground when you do this. This is a set of data from Minnesota as well that looked at increase in caring capacity through a fertilizer program. To your left is smooth brome. To your right is orchard grass. The blue again is no fertilizer. The red is 100% nitrogen per acre. And you can see on the smooth brome, we got about a almost a two and a half fold increase in caring capacity with a fertilizer program. With orchard grass, it was actually over 300% increase in production with a fertilizer program. So depending on the cost of urea at any given year, you can easily pay for that input cost. Especially today, we just bought some urea last week. We paid about 300 bucks a ton. So it comes to about 16 to 20 bucks an acre. To get a two-fold increase easily pays for that added input on your fertilizer. So this is something to think about in terms of return on your investment. So any questions on fertility before I go into grazing management? So Kevin again, this is Naeem. Two questions. You mentioned that for grazing, but for hay, like we should fertilize for both purposes, whether we want to hay or graze, correct? Correct. Okay. And then these grasses are mostly perennials. So first year, it won't be necessary, correct? You're talking about, if you planted them in the first year, you talk about fertilizing them next April? So when we put on a new seeding, you will fertilize that stand based on your soils. So I recommend testing your soils, see what you're lacking for fertility on those perennials seedings, and you'll seed that to start with. And I typically will use a starter mix if I know I'm going to fertilize it once it's established. So some producers will actually do a starter fertilizer. They will seed the stand and then top dress it once it comes up. And then they won't fertilize it again for probably three to five years. Once you get that started, it tends to have enough fertility in there for that stand to establish. For about, the data will show you nowhere from four to five years before they become nutrient efficient. So what are the soil levels for N and P? For example, you're looking at to apply a starter application. Sure, so it varies. So certain cool season grasses are nitrogen, what I call hogs. They use a lot of fertility. If you're looking at Timothy and orchard grass, you're looking at needing about a hundred pounds of nitrogen. If you're looking at the brol grasses, I usually start with about 50 pounds. They're not quite as heavy use of nitrogen. The wheatgrass is actually even a little lower. You can go down to about 40 pounds. And I'd have to do some looking on the actual for P and K as well. We tend to put some P and K on those starters. And I'd have to look that up to give you the exact number. But depending on what you're going to see it's anywhere from 40 to a hundred pounds if it's a wheatgrass versus an orchard grass. Okay. And there was a question in the chat box. It says especially in a team, I think it's a common team grass grazing scenario other than potential float. Why not put perennial legumes in for fertility? I guess that's a question come comment. Right. And I talked about that too. I think that's why I like putting alfalfa in a stand. It does add fertility to it. And so you can put a level of alfalfa or even a red clover if your father west or east. And then we will see some birdsfoot tree foil. I don't put sandfoil. If you're from Wyoming, Montana, you know, even a east, western South Dakota, I don't put sandfoil in a mix because it's not very competitive and it won't do very well. So we tend to put in more of the, that I call the grazing alfalfas in those scenarios. The trick is with alfalfa in there, you want to keep it about 30% or less of your stand due to bloat issues. A lot of people will think that you have alfalfa in a stand those cows are going to pick the alfalfa out and they don't alfalfa is not the preferred choice when it's with the grass. They will basically top the alfalfa and graze the grass. So you can easily tolerate about a third of your biomass being alfalfa in there. And that alfalfa stand will add fertility around that plant for about a foot to a foot and a half depending on that alfalfa type. So you do get that added benefit and then it reduces your input costs down the road if you have a legume in that stand. So with the hay type, I almost like to go 50-50 then they really fertility is usually not an issue at all. That's a great question. So I'm going to move on to grazing management and we'll spend the rest of the time on grazing management. I think grazing management is probably the number one reason why you need to rejuvenate your stand unless you're lacking fertility. Until there's ways you can graze those stands to make them more productive and more efficient. And so I've talked about all these grasses that I've talked about so far are all cool season grasses that have been seeded. And this also works on native range as well. And you want to think about disturbing these grasses to get more out of them is what you're talking about. So all your grasses are going to tiller, whether it's a bunch grass that's going to be in that clump is going to have some tiller development under those buds. And if it's a rhizomanias grass, it's going to produce new tillers off the roots or off the rhizomes. And all of your grasses also elongate. So if you graze a grass while it's actively growing and you graze above its growing point, that grass will elongate. It will continue to not grow, but actually stretch that leaf tissue out. And so if you graze it, it will basically replace itself if moisture is not a limiting factor. So we'll talk about some strategies to enhance that growth features to get more out of these pastures. So what you're basically going to do here is modify your grazing behavior of your animals to get more bang on how they behave and how they impact that growing grass. And so you do this by increasing the stock density. It's really the only way you can manipulate grazing behavior within a herd. So you want to get this behavior to change so you get more uniform use. You get this grazing effect to create tillers and to create cell elongation. And so you can do this with rotational grazing. It's probably the most common technique that you'll see used within any of the programs that are out there. Rotational grazing creates a grazing effect. It also recreates a recovery effect. If you're in drier climates, you'll also see a rest effect put in place. And it's a way that it's a strategy you can use to get that grass to grow more efficiently. It also gets intake more efficiently as well. So you do this through a function of stock density. And all stock density is, is a function of numbers. It's increasing numbers, irrelevant of time. So the picture to the bottom left is a heavy stocked pasture. That's actually a picture of a mob grazing scenario, which is, I'm not gonna have a mob grazing. And the one to your right, of course, is where the cows have free choice to really graze wherever they want. You've taken away that behavior option for you. Now it's them picking what they want. The time issue does play a role when you overgraze. So you've got the stock density impact. Talk about time is irrelevant. But if you also graze too long, then you get multiple bites and you do get negative impacts on health then with time. And so the question I usually get is, what's the proper stock density to impact this behavior? And of course it varies a lot depending where you're at. If you're down in Rapid City, South Dakota versus Vargo, North Dakota, you're gonna have a quite a bit difference in stock density because of moisture patterns. And so my rule is you need to have a high enough stock density to change their behavior on what they're gonna select and not select. You also have to be careful that you don't get it too heavy like this picture now you've got this behavior where they're biting and biting and biting and you don't wanna get multiple bites on the same plant. As you start to get two or three bites on a plant, now you take away that solar energy capture tissue in terms of plant leaf tissue and then it starts to affect root development and root growth. And so you wanna get this impact to get a one bite, no more than two bites and then move on to the next cell. And so that's where time plays more a role than anything else. And so when you wanna limit this cows free choice, this picture here, just those cows have access to whatever they want and you see a lot of old growth. If you look close enough, you'll see areas where it's been grazed short. These cows basically have a buffet to choose from and they're gonna always pick the greenest luscious part of that pasture. This is just a classic picture you see at the end of the grazing season where you have wolfy plants, you have over grazing in the same pasture that's poor distribution. The over grazing causes a negative effect in terms of production and the under grazing also causes a negative effect in terms of production. So you're not very efficient in using that pasture. You also wanna make sure you're not doing this. You don't wanna end up at the end of the year having your pasture so short you take away that solar energy sources to capture grass growth. There's nothing wrong with a heavy use one time effect but then you gotta give it enough time to recover so those roots do not start to die back. And so there's a fine line on getting too close or too long. So I'm gonna show you how this works. So when you look at traditional grazing management that the traditional is take half, leave half. You leave half of that for plant bigger. On the average, your cows actually consume about a quarter or half of what's left. So you get about 25% harvest efficiency and about 25% is lost through natural senescence, trapling, wildlife, whatever it is. You just don't lose, you don't get that to the cow and you fix your management by capturing more of this 25% and putting it into the upper part. So this is an example of with rotational grazing, you get more uniform use, you get more, better grazing efficiency. And in this case, we can get our harvest efficiency up to 35% through the cow and only 15% lost through senescence or trampling. The rule of thumb is for every 1% increase in the harvest efficiency, you get a 4% increase in stocking rate. So this 10% that I show you today is equivalent to 40% more cows on the same acres. That's how you enhance value to your pasture lands in terms of return per acre. So if we look at the data that one paper we published in 2010, the best we were able to do it in a research setting was a 42% harvest efficiency, which was an increase of about 70% in terms of carrying capacity or stocking rate on that land. So let's talk about rotational grazing and how this works. It's really the best tool we have to enhance harvest efficiency and growth efficiency. And my classic example is traditional grazing, season long grazing, cows are gonna graze wherever they want, tend to graze near the water sources, so you get this patch grazing near water and they're always gonna graze the nice green stuff. Whenever it rains, what happens to those areas that were grazed? They green up, so those cows go and graze those green areas again. And so you're trying to create this buffet effect. And my analogy to this is when I go eat at a buffet or if I go to pizza ranch and eat at a buffet, I really like the chicken thighs and I really like pizza. And so I go get pizza and chicken on my first time through and I get ice cream. When I go through the second time, I get more chicken, more pizza and more ice cream. The cows are no different. They're gonna pick what they like and they're gonna select that and so you tend to see this selection of certain grasses as well. So you get this poor distribution. When we start to put them into a rotation system, so in this example, I quadrupled my stock density, now my cows have less to select from. Now they're actually creating a behavior change where they're competing. It's like the same thing if you go to a buffet to eat, if you go there at five o'clock and everybody else is there to eat, now all of a sudden you get less to pick from and you start to diversify your food source at the buffet. I still take ice cream every time, but it's one of those things that I really like. The cows are gonna be very similar, but you can see here you get natural deferment on the front side. And then when the cows move through, you get rest. This is just a picture of buck brush, which a lot of us have buck brush in our pastures and you can actually train cattle to eat buck brush. You can see in this picture here when you graze those buck brush patches, they respond by suckering. And these are actually two suckers coming off this stand and these cows combine and they eat these suckers. So I've changed your behavior enough to eat a plant that normally would not like to eat, but they'll do it under a higher stock density. And this is a picture of a Cresta wheatgrass stand in western South Dakota. You can see where the fences are here. This producer's now moving these cows in. You can see how uniform they were on this pasture. They come into green, fresh grass and they'll graze that pasture more like of a herd of sheep versus cattle. They move more as a herd versus individuals. And then you get this impact of grazing. And so to rotate through these cells, you can see we're still got some deferment in the front side. Now we're gonna get recovery on the backside for those grasses to elongate, to regrow, to give you more growth on the backside. This is just a picture that shows when I talk about regrowth, once these grasses are grazed, you graze above the growing point, they will elongate and give you what I call free grass. I have another picture that really shows this. Here's your growing point on this grass. Growing point of a grass is normally between the bottom node and the second node. And that's where, if you graze above that second node, that grass will continue to elongate. So let's say we graze this grass, we're above the growing point, we give it some recovery, that grass will regrow in terms of cell elongation. The caveat to this is it does take moisture for this to happen. So if I'm sitting in Murdov, South Dakota, and we got dry in July and August, your regrowth, of course, is gonna be much slower. If you're in the Catoa of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, where moisture is not a limiting factor, this occurs extremely well when you get a lot more growth on those stands of grass. Hope that makes sense, but that's what you're trying to capture is more plant growth. So we started a trial at the grassland station two years ago, looking at different grazing intensities within a grazing system. So this grazing system is a four pasture system. One pasture is grazed heavy, about 60% degree disappearance. One is grazed at the take-off leave half for full use. One is grazed moderately at 20 or 40% use. And one is actually rested, like we'd see in Montana and Wyoming. The only reason we have a rested pasture in this here is for wildlife and pollinator purposes. But if you look at the bar here, what we produce on the heavy use pasture, we're getting that 60% use and we're getting recovery on this, we produce 60% more biomass in that cell through a graze, rest, a recovery graze event. Where we use take-off leave half, like you've seen a traditional season long pasture, we had about 20% increase in efficiency for the growth under our lighter stock pastures, it was only 6%. So that use factor during the growing season is critical to produce more elongation in growth within that cell. So you can see how important it is to get that use, especially during the growing season. We also looked at recovery. So in this example, this is our season long pasture where we had either had a control, we had no grazing. This was a six-week rotation. This was a four-week rotation. And this was a two-week rotation. With no grazing, we produced about 3,000 pounds of biomass. With a six-week rotation, in terms of elongation, we produced about 4,800 pounds. With a four-week rotation, we were at 5,700 pounds. And at a two-week rotation, we were at 5,400 pounds. So you can see how important it also is in terms of recovery and speed of recovery so that grass can actually regrow, then come back and capture it. So you can look at stock density in terms of intensity, as well as recovery on the backside. We tend to like the four-week rotation. It's about 30 days. Now, if you're living in the western part of North Dakota, you may have to look more at the six-week rotation versus the four-week rotation. If I was in Minnesota, if I was in Iowa, and you had enough recovery in there with just a two-week recovery, I think you can handle this for probably one or two years. The debate was, can we handle that over consistently year in and year out? Can we do a two-week rotation? Well, this is only one year of data. We'll do this for four years to see how they respond in time. But it does show you how you capture more grass in terms of growth efficiency with intensity of the stock density and the recovery time period. So in summary, we're gonna end up here a little bit, so we got a little bit of time for questions. You know, know your soils. Select the, based on your soils, where you're gonna dictate for what plant species you wanna seed for a new pasture. Fertility, to me, fertility is critical. If you have seeded crops and grasses, if you need to increase production and biomass and increase quality, nitrogen is the most limiting factor in the older planes. It's a great tool you can use. It does have an input cost to buy the fertility, but it's a great way to increase your carrying capacities on the same land base. It's also a great way to rejuvenate those stands that are really low and bigger because they're lacking fertility. And last, you know, I'm a big fan of rotational grazing. There's been a lot of talk in the scientific community on the role of rotational grazing versus season long grazing. Based on the data that I've been seeing on how these work, rotational grazing is a great way to enhance your efficiency of the grazing animal, as well as enhance plant growth within those stands. And from that, I got, should I have 15 minutes left to take any questions if we have any? And I'm going to rely on the aim if you see any questions in the chat box. Does that answer the chat box? Yeah, yeah. And you could also, go ahead. Two questions, one on fertilizing and then one on grazing. So we fertilize our pasture every year, but I kind of wonder, is that really good? Like, are you making, are you losing kind of that microbial activity by making those nutrients so accessible to the plant where it's just easier for them to grab that fertilizer versus letting kind of the microorganisms and stuff do the same thing? Like I'm wondering if sometimes or I know you mentioned getting into every other year or really testing to see where you're deficient, but we go back and forth here on whether you should be fertilizing that much or not just kind of looking at soil health. That's a great question. And you have valid points on soil health. What I'll tell you is that with exotic grasses because of the slow cycle, if you don't fertilize, you don't maximize your production. Now, if you have enough grass to feed your herd and you don't need to fertilize, then you're correct, then your microbial activity will change because when you fertilize your grasses, you're adding food to certain microbial invertebrates and certain other ones don't respond to it. So you're building up a certain population in your soil that responds to fertility and you're losing the rest out. So if you look at native range, for instance, we never fertilize native range because you have our greatest biomass of microbial population in terms of diversity and richness. And so fertilizer will shift that to only species that respond. And so with exotic grasses, Mattel producers, if you don't need to fertilize in terms of biomass production, your soil health will be better for it. However, a lot of producers struggle with biomass and to maximize your biomass, fertility gives you more production. And that's the only reason we add it is to get more biomass from that stand. So your point is actually correct. The trick is, if you're looking for a way to grow more grass, then we fertilize. That make sense? Thank you. Yes, thank you. And then on the grazing part, I wanted to make sure I understood correctly. So were you saying that during more of that kind of rain growing season, it's better to really come in there and with high density stock and really get it grazed pretty well. It'll actually grow more. And then as the season goes on and as your rain tapers, that's where you really need to be aware of how far you're grazing down that grass. Did I hear that correctly or maybe you can? You are correct. And I see you're from Montana. And so obviously water is your most limiting factor, but you're correct. Especially on the wetter years, you can actually graze it more uniform and a little harder and give it the recovery. You'll need a little longer recovery, but you're correct. Pebri. On the backside of the grazing season is where you wanna be critical to you don't overgraze it on that side. So, cause we, I would say we don't, we probably with our rotation keep it pretty consistent with the stocking density and then the amount of time that they stay in those pastures. But I'm wondering if we should really be considering, during May, June, leaving them in longer and grazing it down a little bit further while we get those rains. And then as we get into July, August, limit those days instead of just being more consistent with how long they're in each field. Like, do you actually get better regrowth when it's grazed down further in the, in that rainy season? Yes, absolutely. The more moisture you have, you can only stimulate tiller development and especially tiller development in that May, June period while it's actively growing and cell elongation stops after it produces a seed head. So that May, June period is the time period when you can maximize your potential for more biomass. And then you're absolutely correct. So you should be able, you should actually manipulate your stock densities and timing on wet years to focus more in that spring early summer period to get that impact. If that... Okay, yep, thank you. You're welcome. So Kevin, just to let you know, we could go longer than, you know, than ending it out around noon. This call is a schedule for two hours. So we have time if we have questions. Sure, if you have questions, we'll take questions. Yeah, we have a few in the chat box. And if you know, if you stop sharing, then you could also, yep. So, and I think we answered, you answered the first one probably. I don't, I'm not sure about the second one. So the second question is, what type of fertilization contributed? Do you think, oh, we covered that one on legumes, we did some trials on alfalfa in exotic grass stands. And we kind of tested how far that alfalfa impacts the other grasses. And you get an impact of about 12 to 14 inches, depending on the health of that legume stand. So you can use legumes to reduce your input costs in a stand. Leland asks, a regrowth period for after grazing has what effect on root management? And what is your recommendation on quantity of measure soil fertility? So on root development, of course, you need to have enough biomass or structure above ground to keep your roots healthy. The literature shows once you get to grazing at a 60% use, you start to see more root death in that stand. So we tend to not graze more than 60%, although where I'm at in the Catoe where I have more moisture, I can push that a little harder as long as I give it enough recovery. Those roots to recover, I think I'm fine. Where Leland's at, that's a little bit tricky in getting it used, it does vary by the stand. Like a Western wheatgrass will tolerant heavy use, heavy use better than a green needlegrass. And so if you have a bunch grass dominant, getting it 60% can be very detrimental on timing needed to recover. Versus if you're Western wheatgrass, slender dominant, you can be a little bit more forgiving than you'll see in those grasses. What is recommendation for quantifying measure soil fertility with improved grazing management? That's a great question, Leland. And I think it comes down to the value of the manure and urine in this scenario. If your stock density is high enough and you get fairly uniform use on these pastures with manure and urine in particular, urine's actually a quicker release for fertility. That will also help you get a bump to reduce your input costs. People will ask, well, can I go out and measure my soils? Can I see what I'm lacking for nitrogen? And the rule of thumb is the tests we use to look at available nitrogens, not the same way that the plant actually uses it. And so those tend to be a little bit wrong in interpretation. My rule of thumb is when I look at a grass and I look across the field, if it has a yellow hue to it, especially on your rich green grasses, like a brome grass in particular, even crested wheatgrass, if they're looking yellow, that tells me they're lacking nitrogen fertility. If they're rich and green, I have enough fertility in there that I don't want to get my growth on those grasses. That's just a visual way to look at it as well. So Kevin, I also have a question. So I've been trying to figure this out. Two different sites, you know, we planted this perennial salt tolerant mix. The idea was to just establish something. And that included tall wheatgrass, lender wheatgrass, green wheatgrass, Western wheatgrass, and Russian wild rye. And we just threw in one or two pounds of regular alfalfa seed. And alfalfa actually a farmer planted alfalfa there and it didn't germinate at all. Three years later, alfalfa started establishing. We are still wondering, did the seed remain dormant? Because we didn't really put a new seed. We didn't replant the alfalfa there. And obviously grasses complimented alfalfa too. So I'm just trying to, I have my own theory about it, that the seed remained dormant and then grass roots went deeper. They reduced evaporation and then the salt levels went down in the first six inches, say, and then the alfalfa seed started germinating. And after germinating, you know, the plants are more tolerant to salts. Sure. So is that the correct theory or? Well, I think what's happening is you are getting, you know, a perennial grass seed will stay viable for multiple years. And so when you put in an alfalfa grass seed mix, on average, we typically will say, you know, give yourself at least two years for good establishment, because there's still some germinating in the field. If you're planting natives, we usually budget about three years for those, all those plants to germinate and come up. And so your alfalfa is just sitting there surviving. And what's going to happen with time, some of those seeds will start to die and some will still hang on. And so you're going to get, as a salt drop, you're absolutely correct. Some of them, now alfalfa seeds, the colliding has broke, they're germinating, and then they're coming up. And that's a function of what you're talking about is moving the salts down. You still got a viable seed in the soil and then they're coming up. Thanks. I can see that there are two more questions here in the chat box. Lauren said, you did little comparison on lawn and you did little comparison on lawn and growing grass. With that thought in mind, if I understand correctly, if you want to stimulate a lawn growth, you should mow lower and more often in the spring. Same concept is in introduced pastures. That is true as long as you don't mow the longest growing point and water's not a limiting factor. And that's true of the spring and into the summertime period. And so there's a fine, when you get too low, it takes longer to recovery. Because if you get too low, you do get some root death. And so the concept's correct, but I don't want, when you talk about mowing low, don't mow too low, if that makes sense. And that's true of exotic grasses like a brome or intermediate wheatgrass. And when you graze that or you mow it, you want to mow above its growing point to get stimulated growth, if that makes sense. So hope I answered that. So Kevin, just out of curiosity, so then the lawn grass, the growing tip is lower than these other perennial grasses we are talking about. Would that be correct? So the growing point is above, wherever that's at, between the bottom two inner nodes. The struggle, if we have bluegrass, for instance, that growing point's actually at the bud, I mean, at the crown. And so then your new tissue elongation actually occurs on the end. So as that elongates your newest tissue, as it elongates out, your oldest tissue is at the tip. That's also the new tissue to start with. And as it elongates, it gets newer and newer. Does that make sense? Yeah, I was just trying to, the question, I was just trying to see that, if we wanted to see if somehow the lawn grass growing point is slightly lower, then even if we cut it lower, it seems that it seems to regrow better. I was just trying to. Yeah, and that works best with the rise of ominous grasses versus a bunch grass. When you mow it lower, what you're also doing is you're changing the carbon to nitrogen ratio in that grass. So what it does naturally though, because you changed the carbon that's available, now it has to produce more carbon and it does that by producing tillers. So that's how you thicken a stand in time as you create more tiller development to fill in the bare ground. It takes recovery. So a lawn you may mow every seven to 10 days. Native grasses you wanna give 30 days because they don't grow as fast. But that's important is to get that carbonation ratio changed to produce new tillers. So in time, you get a thicker stand. Elongation is within the year, tiller development is over years. Does that make sense? Shake your head so I can say, yeah, that sounds good. There's one more. Actually, there's more in the chat box, Kevin. Can you repeat that once more just on the thicker stand versus elongation? I'm sorry. Sure, so your grasses when they grow, they have about an eight to one ratio of carbon and nitrogen. So when you mow it or you graze it, you change that balance. It may actually be four to one after it's been consumed. So the plant has to respond by producing more carbon and it does that by tillering. And that tillering event may occur in June, but it may not actually pop out till July and then you'll see these tillers will start to develop later in the season. The more you do that and give it recovery, the more tillers you produce. So every grass is gonna produce X amount of tillers. On the average, your perennial grasses produce one to two tillers. If you look at the data of South Dakota State University, when they manipulated that grass while it's actively growing, those grasses will produce anywhere from five to six tillers versus one to two tillers. That's how you thicken it up. The caveat is not all tillers will survive. If it gets dry on you, it'll go from five to four to three. And in some dry years, you may have got no benefit at all. On wet years, when you capture that benefit, you try and get three or four of those tillers to actually survive. So the next year now, you went from one tiller to three tillers. And you keep doing that over time to get more tiller development in a thicker stand of grass. Gotcha, thank you. You're welcome. There's more in the chat box, Kevin. Okay, so for soil fertility perspective, precipitation over 17 inches, abundance, smooth grown grass growth, almost growing faster than you can stock. Is there an opportunity to intercede broadleaf annuals to balance the soil carbon nitrogen? I mean, the answer is yes. To intercede, and that's true of anything that includes overseeding, you have to have some bare ground to do that. So let's say you're in a grown grass stand like you're shown here. And grown grass stands can get really thick. So it's really hard to intercede or to get legumes or broadleafs established in a grown grass field. It works better on a wheatgrass field where you got some bare soil. But the caveat you're talking about is correct. You get that fast growth with the high stock that you graze that off and you get some opportunities there. And it's just some years are gonna be better than other years. Hope that helps, Leland. My pleasure. Kevin, I think this topic is so important, especially when we talk about saline sodic soils, that we should write up something, including the fertilization part too. Sure, I agree. Maybe it's a table like if your soil test says, for example, 40 pounds of available nitrogen, for example, per acre, if you're planting this grass, this is how much you should apply as a starter or things like that based on the grass type. Yeah, I agree with that. For me as a range ecologist, I look at on pastures, I look at the research, research says this in terms of how much fertility should put down. But I don't get the chance to look at what's the prescription. If my soil will say this, then how much should I add? And there's a great question on Montana. You know, should we actually fertilize in terms of soil health characteristics? We are not creating the most healthy soil by basically cheating the system. We're basically putting a bandaid on it. But with exotic grasses, it tends to give you more biomass. That's why we do it. So there's those who you talk about it. Here's why you do it. There's those who, here's the negative to it. We don't talk about the negative, but that was a great point to bring up that there's a negative for the soil health when you do that. Well, if there are no more questions, then we'll go ahead and do it. We'll go ahead and do it. We thank Kevin again. And we'll meet. On Thursday, that would be the sixth webinar of this series. And we'll talk about. Saline, sodic soils and how do we manage. And some of the, some of the points will overlap. What we discussed today. And that's the beauty of discussing these topics. And we'll see you guys on Thursday. 11 o'clock. By using the same link or if you wanted to call in same number. So with that, thank you again for joining the webinar. And hopefully see you guys on Thursday.