 We have our next pre-center, WJ, I'm just suggesting Sexton, he's a beef nutritionist, beef nutrition extensionist at MU and he's coming to you to talk about grazing wedge use in beef production systems. Please welcome Justin. Good morning. And so the title of my talk is related to grazing wedge use in beef production systems and the primary reason that it is related to beef is because that's what I do, but it certainly is applicable to multiple species of livestock and we'll talk a bit about that as we go forward. And so just I guess kind of the way to start is what is a grazing wedge? And so the grazing wedge is a concept that was kind of started in the grazing dairies specifically in the southwestern part of Missouri where we look at our forage inventory in a visual system and so the grazing wedge kind of what I would say is simply explained is that this is a visual illustration of a collection of pastures. And so I use this as an illustration and maybe it's not a great one because you might be looking say 58 pastures, this is way more than I need to kind of think about. But just stay with me and I'll show you some more applied examples here in a minute. But functionally what the grazing wedge does is we go out and we inventory our forage with something as simple as a yardstick or as complex as a sonar reader on the front of a four-wheeler. And so from a technology standpoint you can use a yardstick or a grazing stick in this case. You can use a rising plate meter either digital or manual or you can get a sonar amounted deal for the front of your four-wheeler. And Dr. Kallenbach, one of my colleagues is actually working on being able to take pictures using Google Earth to take forage inventory. And so the technology is fairly diverse I guess is the way I would say it. But the grazing wedge gives us a visual picture of our forage inventory. And so it's kind of a stoplight system in that once our pasture in this case turns red we've gotten to the point where that pasture from a quality standpoint is too mature. And if we keep our pasture in the green area then we have optimized forage quality. And then when we get it into the yellow that is the point where we have overgrazed it. And that's based off of measurements that we're taking as infrequently as once a month. Ideally what we would like to see is about every 10 to 14 days. And so a bit of background as it relates to this program is it's part of a sustainable agriculture research and education grant research and education specifically. And we have producer cooperators that collected a lot of this data and we've we've developed these producer groups that are centered around these producers that use their forage growth data as kind of indicator values throughout the grazing season. I'll show you that in a minute. And so the idea behind the grazing wedge is objective pasture management in that many people have implemented rotational grazing systems. But many times we rotate through those systems in a pattern that maybe is convenient but not best from a forage management standpoint. Do we always start with south facing slopes early in the season? Or do we start with the one that's closest to the barn? And so this allows us to look at pasture from a standpoint of growth and seasonal growth and try to best utilize it. We measure and monitor that over the over the the entire pasture season. But really what we found through this work with the with the producers is that first pass through the pasture sets it for the rest of the year. If you do a good job of pasture management in May, the rest of the year is very easy or specifically late April I should say. But once that reproductive plant portion has been taken off at the beginning, the pasture is kind of set for the rest of the year. And so if you want to think about that from an applied standpoint, what's the best pasture that you'll see all year long? It was largely cut as hay, right? Uniformly grazed in theory. And so that regrowth, we don't have any stems or reproductive tillers that we see later on in the season. So how do we set up a management system that addresses that goal at the end? The other thing is it helps us to address which forage should we use next and this I apologize doesn't show up real well with the amount of light. But one of the things to think about is if you go through and graze a system and let's say you have an eight pasture system, right? And so you've set up some sort of grazing system early in the spring, you'll go through and graze a pasture. And about mid May, it looks really good, right? It looks really good. It's been nothing but regrowth. And then you have some pasture that looks similar to this over here where you start to see reproductive or seed heads start to produce. And so you say, well, I need to go graze this because I haven't been there yet. Right? That's the next pasture to go to. And I haven't been there yet. But in reality, what I want, we've used the grazing wedge is to challenge producers to stay. This is the part of the farm that we should be making hay on because it's already too mature for the growing stock that we have in place. And this is ideal in terms of forage quality. And once forage goes bad or gets mature, goes to the red part on the grazing wedge, it's already mature. It'll take the cattle longer to get through this more mature material. And in the end, this stuff starts to get overgrown. And so from a management standpoint, that's part of the question that we try to address with the grazing wedge. And so when we started, this is Denny and Mary Beth Pokes grazing wedge that we started in 2010. And this was the 23rd of May. And this is kind of the visual image that when you when you take those forage quality measurement or those forage inventory measurements, you get a visual display of your pasture. And so these are each of their pastures that are labeled. And so what we see in a lot of beef enterprise systems is we we start to push a lot of forage ahead into the summer. Right. And so beef systems are inherently more tolerant of poorer quality forage. The biggest question that we get from beef producers is I need more forage. It's not forage quality that we run out of I need more forage this year probably more so than ever. And so the dare or the grazing wedge was actually started in the dairy system and the dairy system, they're highly aware of forage quality. And so one of the things that we set out to do was just try to see how this work with the beef production model. And one of the first things that we observed was that we see a lot of our beef producers maintain a lot more forage specifically at this 3500 pounds and of growth more so than our dairy who much like it to be under 3000 pounds more about 2750. And so to put that in a practical term, you want forage in a beef production system to be about the height of the eyeball on the cow. That's when her head's down, right when her head is down. Eyeball high is a good forage availability and quality guideline. And if you can see her nose when her head is down, you're in this yellow portion over here and over grazed. Okay. Good Lord put a grazing stick on every cow between the eyeball and the nose. Jim Garish is actually credited with that concept. But we're trying to put that on a visual perspective from a standpoint of how we can inventory our pastures. And so the critical points in a grazing wedge, this is the four H farms grazing wedge and in the towards the end of June this year. And what we want to do from a fertilizer and management standpoint is ideally we have a pasture that's being staged right along. Right. When we get to the point where our pastures are all flat. We have a forage shortage coming. And so this visual illustration that we we send out to these producers every two weeks or the producers submit every two weeks tells them that when they get to pasture five on a 21 day rotation, if it falls below this line, you need to start thinking about some sort of forage management system to meet the deficiency. Right. And so this year it was great to kind of look at we started it wasn't great. I'm not glad we had a drought. Okay, but it illustrated the appropriateness of this where we start to see we start to see these pasture levels turning flat. And we can start to make management decisions before hay prices get to $100 a ton. And so it helps us from an inventory management standpoint. And what we want to do is maintain forage quality here, and make sure we don't overgraze it on the other end. And so that's what we call the critical points. As we think about interpreting the grazing wedge, here's kind of how you can think about this is that when it's underneath the line, I'm setting myself up for a forage deficiency going forward. Right. If I can keep it above the line, I've got enough forage that it's right at the eyeball high of the cow. And this 1500 line, this is like thinking about how many bales a hay you have functionally, in that I can graze it down to 1500 pounds of dry matter. And everything above it is forage on the stump. And so it allows us to start calculating how much forage we have. I visited with our livestock specialist this morning. And this is something that we're going to go out and do right now. This is the ideal time to go out and measure your forage because it's not going to grow anymore. The amount of forage that you have right now is what you're going to have available. And so I can calculate how many days of forage I have out there and start to balance my supplementation needs going forward, whether that's a supplement or hay. Fundamental concept as it relates to the grazing wedge is let's graze at the 1400 pounds of dry matter per acre on the first pass. Okay, and so that is a very tight system. It is extremely tight from a from a forage height standpoint, but that sets our pasture up just like running a haybind across that field. And the regrowth is going to be vegetative for the rest of the summer. Okay, one of the things that we really struggle with is we have non uniform grazing equals non uniform regrowth. And you've observed this out in the pastures. I would assume is that around manure piles or urine spots, we see this tall forage that those cattle never come back to. And it's not because it's the manure pile per se, but late in the season, this is mature. And they've got other vegetative forage to eat the rest of the year. And so we want those cattle to be very aggressive. The first pass through when the forage is very good in the manure piles are generally fairly loose. And then we set up the season or set it up for the rest of the season. This is some of the forage quality that we've observed in these grazing wedge systems. And so I like to show this line. This is crude protein. And the crude protein requirement of the beef cows right about here. Okay, and so in terms of protein content, management under this system provides more than adequate protein to those cows. But maybe more importantly, what we looked at is what is the fiber content of that forage. And so from a from a productive standpoint, what I want you to think about is a high bar on this chart is bad. Okay, a high bar is fiber. And fiber is not highly digestible. And a low bar here is indigestibility. So best way to illustrate this is what we observed is something that we've told producers for a long time is if you want to maximize the harvest of indigestible forage make your hay in July. And the forage samples that we took under this system certify that is that the forage is not as digestible in July and August, and we produce a high amount of fiber. So focus excess forage harvest in April, May and June. And because we've used the grazing wedge, we know what our forage inventory is going forward as well as a from a growth rate standpoint. And so from a second past forage standpoint, we think about how can we best utilize the forage if I say, I want you to graze it to three inches tall, and you say that's pretty poor quality forage for lactating cow. And so what we want you to think about is well, is there some replacement heifers that could utilize that poor quality forage? Is there some dry cows that could utilize this poor quality forage to get it down to that 1400 pounds of dry matter? And so I like to show pictures of these are the groups of cattle or livestock that most people have standing around. We have some late gestation cattle. We have some early lactation cattle. We have some cattle that are ready to be weaned. And then we have a group of growing cattle or replacement heifers. And if you think about a prioritization standpoint in that how do we match our forage, grazing wedge to our cattle, is that something that is pregnant and getting ready to calf or lamb or kid, whatever it is, they have first priority of forage, they get the first bite. Okay, after that, it's the lactating animal. Because if she doesn't have adequate condition at calving, you'll never add condition to her unless you start carrying a feed bucket. And so we educated our producers such that we want these cows to get the green forage. And then if we have some red forage that we're not going to bail, these are the type of cattle that we want to use that on because they have lower nutrient requirements. So as you prioritize gestating cattle are first, early lactation cattle are second, these two groups are fairly flexible, depending on your production goals. And so that was part of our educational component was matching it to the forage supply. I like to show this in that if you bush hog pastures during the month of July, that's not a product of the month of July, it's a product of forage management in April and May. And that if if you're if you're cleaning up pastures in in May or in July, sorry, many times what has happened is that pasture got away from you in May. And if we can graze it appropriately, April and May really focus our forage management efforts using these tools, it minimizes the amount of fuel and time that we have to spend cleaning up grazing mistakes, so to speak. The other thing that this system allows us to do and I realize of one of them as a producer, no one likes keeping records. And it's like the number 20th thing that people like to do. And so by entering these yield numbers, you can actually determine we actually determine in the grazing wedge what the pasture yielded in grazeable forage. We look at it over time in terms of forage disappearance. And so this is Denny Pogue's pasture. 2012 they've harvested anywhere from two to three tons per acre off of those pastures. And that's based off of forage measurements that he's taken throughout the season every 14 to 21 days. And that allows us to see that five B and four C are maybe not as productive as 10 E. And so if I have to prioritize my fertilizer, or I'm going to apply manure or something along those lines, these are the two pastures that are perhaps most in need. Or I know that there's more water holding capacity maybe in 10 E maybe that's in the bottom. And so I'm going to put a higher level of nitrogen there because I know I get a response. And so this allows us to look at our pastures objectively and see actually which pastures green up earlier in the spring as well without keeping records just as an inventory management standpoint. Okay. And this may be a little small for those of you in the back. But at the end of the year, we also print out a summary report. And so this is he's has started taking taking measurements the 31st of March and took them all the way up to the 20th of October. And this is 2012. And this is estimated growth rate. So one of the things I like to visit with producers that we've shown from this data is we'll grow three cows worth of feed a day, the end of April and early May on one acre of ground in that the amount of feed that comes out early April and late April and early May, we can't stock for that. There's no way we can stock to consume that amount of forage in a short period of time. And so what we look at as we get down here into June and July, we're growing four pounds of feed per acre per day. And that's not a surprise. But normally we would see this in the 25 to 30 pound range, but this was 2012. And so it allows us to go back and say what was our pre grazing and post grazing cover? And what does that done to the long term growth rate or past your health? And can we maintain an average pasture cover around 2,300 pounds? And so it's a record keeping system that is a product of an inventory management. If we take those measurements, this is all generated for you. And you can look at your grazing season at the end of the year and see what kind of growth rates you received on each of these pastures. And the other thing that kind of indicates is what we call the key indicators. And this is where each of these producers who are kind of what I call our sentinel producers, they're posted on the internet. You can look and I've shown the website several times, but you can see where they're at relative to the state and what's going on. And so in this case we see that we have got beef stocker cattle on the pasture. The forage growth rates about 12 pounds an acre per day. And those stocker cattle are being fed seven and three-quarters of a pound of grain, or a pound of hay, sorry, and critical issues. They make notes and so you can kind of see what's going on throughout the state. And this one's weed control is working well, one and a quarter inches of rain yesterday, total rain since the end of April 1.75 inches. And so the producers are commenting on what they're seeing locally and allows us to kind of use those as a as a guideline to what's going out going on out in the state. And as you find it if you're interested in joining these groups it allows people to kind of say here's an indicator, may not be current for me, but it allows me to know what's going on relative to other locations. This is the one example that I think probably has the most value that we learned through working with producers is the fall inventory, in that there's nothing worse than realizing that you don't have enough hay about the middle of February. Because there's not a lot of hay being produced in the middle of February and everybody else has realized that same thing at about that time. And so from a cost standpoint as we went through the financial analysis of these operations is that how can I predict the amount of grazing days that I've got before I'm going to have to feed hay and then how much of that hay am I going to use kind of going forward. And so this is just a label of a bunch of pastures and this is the amount of dry matter that's available on the stump. And so this is the amount of forage, this is the amount of acres in each of those paddocks and then it calculates tons of feed available in each of those pastures. And so you take how many cows you've gotten, how many tons of feed, and then you can look at your hay supply and match our forage availability with our intake, hopefully. Such that you get to the point where as an inventory management tool inventory is one of the biggest challenges we face is that I don't want to spend more money than I have to because it's tied up in the hay, right, all year long until I need it again. But I certainly don't want to have to pay two times for the hay because I ran short at the worst possible time of year. And so we use this fall inventory in that as something I would have you take home today is if you're not interested in the grazing wedge at all throughout the growing season the fall inventory component is as useful as anything to plan your winter feed needs. And so our feed and forage budgeting is essentially our stocking rate which is pounds of cattle times a percent body weight intake and then the utilization rate is what percentage your forage is used. And during the growing season we're hoping that that's going to be somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent range in the dormant season it's a lot closer to 70 percent because they're going to they're going to utilize that we don't get a lot of regrowth. And then how long can I graze? You know if you if you think you've got 60 days of stockpiled forage on hand that tells you you know about when you're going to start feeding hay and and it just allows you to better manage your inventory and if you know that you have 60 days of stockpiled forage and I've shown you kind of what the quality results are under that management system we're encouraging producers to think about that stockpile as a supplement as opposed to a total diet intake. And so I explain that a bit in that people don't like buy and feed many times but what we haven't thought about stockpile is as supplemental feed I'm going to put hay out but I'm going to strip graze a certain amount of forage so that that is the supplemental feed and and I can strip graze that because one of the first things that the producers will tell me as it relates to stockpiles like Justin if I had 70 more acres to stockpile I'd have more cows and that's a that's a valid statement but what I encourage people to do from an inventory standpoint is let's think about stockpiling some forage or even just using our fall growth modes effectively by saying you know what I'm going to strip graze this off as a supplement I'm going to give you three days worth of supplemental grass and it supplements our poor quality forage so the the biggest thing I wanted you to take away with is the grazing wedge gives you an opportunity to look at how you manage your grass from an inventory standpoint what we've kind of found through our visiting with producers is they do this for about two maybe three years and after that they get a pretty visual assessment of that system and they don't go out and maybe measure as much as they would normally but they'll go out and do that one measurement in the fall and and so it's kind of a growing process to learn how the forage quality is best managed relative to yield so with that I'll take any questions yes sir you talked about mowing a pasture in in May could you hold off till June and bail it up you know where you say it gets away from you could you so so relative to forage management one of the things that we we look for is that we're all trying to capture as much sunshine as we can right our goal is to capture sunshine we have soil and we have a photosynthetic leaf and how do we capture sunshine and so one of the challenges with letting that forage grow and get further mature is it starts to shade itself right and so if you think about where does grass not grow well under trees and so when it sends up a reproductive tiller or seed head it starts to shade the lower leaves and and the dairy producers have have gone to that three leaf grazing system there's only three live leaves on a fescue plant the fourth one starts to die I will answer your question I'm just going through some background okay and and so one of the things we want to do is the sooner we can stop reproductive growth in that it shoots up one reproductive tiller okay one seed head and once that's cut off everything else is regrowth right and regrowth is our quality and so we're very aggressive at addressing that early on so that the sooner that we harvest it the sooner it can start regrowing we have more moisture and cooler temperatures if we wait until June to go in and and take that closer then what we have is we don't have a lot of water available for rapid recovery and it's hotter when you mow pasture in the spring okay if you go in and hay pasture in the spring early in the spring like within two days it's you don't have a leaf out there like that you've when you get it off there you see that leaf that sticks out it's very quick in terms of its regrowth what we're trying to avoid is the shading as much as anything and that as it gets go ahead yeah so bailages are best option or stock such that so one of the you know there's a there are a number of people that are what i call hay haters right they think hay is the bane of a pasture system and so one of the things we think about is on a fall calving system we keep those calves around to help us manage that excess inventory of forage and then we sell those calves in June and and that relieves the amount of stocking rate such that a cows can go through the summer that's one option if you can't make hay in May what i i bailage is our best option and where we can make it wet yeah you gotta have a wrapper yeah no you can not you you might try that but it won't be very successful well and and so from a yeah those are hard to try to do that as well but that's where you know maybe it's even a custom deal or manage your stocking rate stocking rate being the big one in that how do i match the forage that i have and most people you know stocking rate is the number one factor influencing the success of of a pasture system is that do you stock for 2012 stock stock for 2012 or do you stock for 2008 one of the wettest years that we've had and and the question is is it it depends and so how do i build flexibility into that system and what we found is many producers don't know how much forage they can grow under a management system this gives us the opportunity to look at that as a forage growth rate and then we can start to put an animal system on it that's well matched grazingbeefmissouri.edu