 Good afternoon and welcome, I'm Dr. Travis Hoffman, our NDSU Extension Sheep Specialist and we are having Phase 2 or Seminar 2 of our Preparing Your Ranch for Drought webinar series. A couple things to keep in mind is that these webinars are being recorded. In fact, our first of the series is up at www.ag.ndsu.edu.slashdrought. A quick reminder that we will be using the chat to discuss our ideas and so if you have some input that you would like to share with some of the panelists and participants, please put all panelists and participants. Another option is all panelists but we prefer that you share your thoughts with the whole team and we will be gathering the questions and then asking them live and please use the Q and A section of our webinar today. Just a quick reminder that our next webinar will be Thursday, February 25th on supplemental feeds and forage options and we are joined by two of our most talented people at NDSU Extension and so what we do know is that there has been some precipitation and weather that has crossed and certainly we're hopefully we're past some of our colder temperatures here but certainly there are places where we are drier than we prefer in the state of North Dakota and consequently through our group of our North Dakota State University Extension. We're going to be offering you discussion, insight and then some question and answer again on drought trigger dates and grazing strategies. So I'm welcoming Dr. Kevin Sedevic, our rangeland management specialist and Dr. Miranda Meehan, our livestock environmental stewardship specialist. Team the floor is yours. Charjohn. All right well good afternoon. Good afternoon. Welcome everybody. I'm going to start out with just a reminder of why we're here today and why we're visiting about drought and so just a recap of our drought outlook if you missed that discussion last week is currently 91% of North Dakota is experiencing some level of drought while 100% of the state is abnormally dry. This map here shows our current soil moisture and this is for most of you that probably aren't as familiar with centimeters is 0 to 40 inches and we are at less than most of the state is at 2% or less than where we are normally in a normal year and so that's one of our big concerns as we go in this growing season is we don't have soil moisture to make up for our deficit in winter precipitation and also if we are short and rain this spring we don't have that soil moisture to help us along and a perspective zooming out at the whole whole U.S. and where we're at in things is much of the western United States is experienced drought currently compared to past droughts 2017 where that was really restricted to the northern Great Plains and so it's going to be critical as we move forward in the 2021 growing season that we're making we have a plan and are able to make decisions early because we're not the only ones that are being faced with drought. So it's important to understand the value of looking at these drought trigger dates and I know I showed this at our weather number one looking at when our grasses grow and when moisture is critical to dry forage production. We showed this last week I want to reiterate this week that it's really important for producers to understand that we grow 80% of our grass in the month of May and June so moisture is critical at that time period and if we don't get moisture in that period of May-June we know we're going to have a deficiency deficiency in forage production that given year. The second driver really is fall moisture and when we think about 2020 we came into the winter months in extreme drought probably one of the worst droughts that I've seen in many years there's a fall moisture that fall milk moisture drives how you're going to when your grass is going to grow the next growing season and how much is going to grow in that month of May so that that tiller that occurs in that month of September, October is relied on for spring growth and so if we get into a dry period that we saw in 2020 we know that tiller in many cases actually dies off and so new growth has to occur from a tiller the following spring thus it does impact forage production in that month of May. So how do you know where you're at and what what you can expect for forage production this spring we have a few tools to help you with that. In 2019 there was a publication release many of the rangeland science or rangeland extension specialists within the northern great plans were part of this effort looking at critical dates or decision dates for making decisions related to drought in that we found that that April through June precipitation and more specifically May through June precipitation is critical for forage production within the northern part of the great plains specifically North Dakota, South Dakota and eastern Montana and so what we developed that NDSU was using those dates that are critical in North Dakota we developed a forage prediction calculator and it's an excel document you can find it access that at this link that appears on your screen is on our is on our growth webpage and I'm going to step through how that works the first page you can see it's in the excel there's a there's instructions of where you can find your climate data for your site we're looking at we want to pull the last 30 years of total precipitation and compare what we're experienced seeing to date for that for your location and so then that helps you determine your risks or potential for receiving the rain needed in that time frame and so from that then you can either if you have it use your own precipitation data but a lot of people don't and so if we can find the nearest climate station I pulled up an example from Bismarck from last year and so what I did is I pasted the climate data from we have the years the past 30 years we have April of May June then this is April and May together and then the last home is what you might not be able to see is April through June and then we have the average and the median for those time frames and then I put 2020 down here as a reference and so in 2020 Bismarck received in April they received 2.64 inches of precipitation which the average if we look at or the median for that April through June period is 5.5 or 5.59 and so what we can do then is we look at what's the potential for us to make receive that or receive the rain that we need in May through June which would be that 5.559 inches and so we look at that column of April or May and June added together and the highlighted ones are the number of times in the past 30 years that that's happened and so in the last 30 years in April or May and June together we we received more than 5.5 inches 12 out of 30 times so 40% of the time so not too bad of odds and we still have some time to make a decision and how we want to proceed as we look we get through May then we looking at that we there April and May total was 4.24 inches and so we would need 3.99 inches almost four inches in June alone to achieve average precipitation and average forage growth and looking at that column you see that there's only seven highlighted so seven times in the last 30 30 years in June we received almost four or 3.99 inches in Bismarck and so that's a 23% chance that you're going to receive enough rain in June to achieve normal forage production obviously we know there's other factors that play into this and so here's the summary for 2020 and using that calculator Bismarck received 60% of normal rain during that period that April through June period in 2020 however if you pull up the maps from GrassCast which is another forward prediction tool that it was developed by ARS and is housed at University of Nebraska-Lincoln the links in the bottom picture here for you anyone that's interested in looking that up and so this is the end of the 2020 growing season on the map here and it gives you a percent of normal or percent of forage production or if so the red is we have less we have 30% decrease in forage production compared to normal and we go all the blue which is a 30 additional or 30% more and so you look at the map for North Dakota it doesn't it's not all that bad even though a lot of our areas were short on for our precipitation because we had so much soil moisture in 2019 so that residual soil moisture really helped us out in terms of forage production in 2020 and here we have you can zoom in to a county county level so I zoomed in here to Burley County see Bismarck and so actually our our calculator aligned pretty well with what we've seen in the production estimate for Bismarck area which was that decrease of 30% of our more import production so these are just some tools to kind of help you gauge where you're at as you go through as we progress through that growing season another thing we really we need to think about as we prepare is water availability so this is from our 2017 drought and math of of just available water surface water at the peak of our drought or that which was July 31st you see that's a really big concern as a lot of branches do do do depend on surface water as a source for livestock water another thing as we continue is that we know as our surface water becomes depleted the concentrations of our salts or mineral component becomes higher increasing our risk for water quality issues so this is some data from 2017 in 2017 MDSU extension conducted 126 yield screenings of water samples of those 94 were submitted for addition laboratory analysis and 82 of them were found to be toxic the specific concern we see is high levels of total dissolved solids and high levels of sulfate and so as we move forward through the growing or into the growth grazing period we want to be careful and monitor our water quality throughout that period and there's some tools that we can use including TDS meters and sulfate test strips to do a screening and then and then see if additional laboratory analysis is needed and Dr. Scott and I will be discussing this further during a water quality concerns and issues further during our March 4th webinar the other thing is cyanobacteria poisoning and that potential we've seen a lot of an increase in cyanobacteria poisoning cases in 2020 we've seen several of them across the state and with our depleted surface waters that's going to increase the concentration of the nutrients in those waters and as stroke progresses these blooms really do well in hot dry conditions so if you've had issues with them in the past we really want to be watching those waters closely and the best way to screen for it is a visual assessment unfortunately um laboratory analysis is really expensive unless you're just sending it to a lab to see if the talk if the the species that could be toxic are present or not and and cyanobacteria blooms do progress quickly so in this photo I was at this location the day before no bloom next day we went out and this is what we've seen so it's really important that we're watching those water locations closely so what Miranda and I are going to do is we're going to go through a series of drought triggered dates we'll start with the April 15 to April 30 period and so if we begin to do a drought and we maintain these drought conditions during these triggered dates here's what you should be looking at to do to be prepared for these for management strategies and what you should look at in terms of of really things to watch for and how to manage your operation to some degree so Miranda talked about screening water quality and you're going to think about screening water quality whether it's a dugout whether it's your tanks whether it's a slew whatever you're using for water always think about the quality that water as we progress throughout the grazing season we look at at droughts falling into the month of April and because of what happened last fall we know we're going to probably have an expected delay in terms of grass growth in that month of May so already be prepared today to look at delayed pasture turnout as a function of not enough grass to be available for one and two of the grasses probably won't be ready in terms of phenological to to stand the grazing pressure on next something you should really be looking at today we'll talk about it in April as well but look for hay if you need to be purchasing hay if you're short in terms of some little feeds think of what you're going to use to feed that cow herd and try and lay them in at a price or a time period that's most economical I can just tell you now as we look at hay prices the next month or two I can see hay prices continue to go up so if you know you're going to have shortages in hay whether it's on the front side this spring or in the back side next fall look for opportunities to buy hay at a cheaper price right now and lastly evaluate your stand of quality winter cereals and alfalfa most of our producers rely on alfalfa as a forage base and with this open winter with limited snow and this this polar whatever it's called vortex we're going through right now I would not be surprised if we see some winter kill happening on or off alfa and as well as our winter cereals especially if you have winter wheat winter triticals probably a little better winter rye probably can take this but just know you're going to have to monitor your winter cereals as we get closer to the growing season and see how they did in terms of performance if you're going to use them for grazing or for haying. So just a reminder recap but I know we've talked about this a lot across the state of North Dakota is that grazing readiness and what does that look like as we're preparing to get to let animals out for to raise and so it's really simple is to look at that phenology of that grass plant or the stage of growth and simple as we're counting leaves on that plant and so for our introduced species specifically North Dakota we're thinking our bromes crested wheatgrass those planted species we're looking at that three leaf stage so three leaves are fully emerged and those plants are ready to be grazed that they're at a plant at a stage where they can they can handle that stress and recover from that stress. Our native species need to be a little bit further along at that three and a half leaf stage and that usually for those it's going to be late to May early in a traditional year early June. However as Kevin had mentioned we're going to see where we should expect a delay I know Kevin talked about this and gave some really good examples last week if you hadn't had a chance to watch that I recommend going back and he highlighted in some different years across in North Dakota in which we had dry falls and what happened in terms of forage production. So this is an example in 2017 we did a grazing ready net started a grazing readiness project monitoring it across the state so we could give people an idea a better idea of what what that looked like and how it varies across the state and things that influence that in all of our county which is in our southwest portion of this our south central southwest portion of the state 101 percent of normal fall moisture in 2016. So going into that 2017 growing season we were in a good spot and our western wheatgrass reached the three and a half leaf stage on May 9th so it's pretty early for western wheatgrass. However when we came into 2017 we had a drought in 2017 had a real dry fall and so we were at 40 percent or 42 percent of normal for moisture fall moisture in 2017 and some of our pastures they had they received extra pressure because of the because of the drought so between the extra stress on those pastures and that and that lack of fall moisture we see in a delay in grazing readiness and so at same spot in all of our county in 2018 our western wheatgrass was only at the one and a half leaf stage on May 14. So so what are your what are your options? We've shown this data now for two weeks in a row and I'm fairly comfortable and confident that we're going to come into 2021 grazing season with a delay in terms of range readiness as well as probably forage production. So what should you look at for options for grazing in that month of May? I mean most producers are going to be running out of hay they're going to try to feed cows we're going to have to do those cows in that month of May and so the one that we talked about right up front is you're going to be able to feed them either in a dry lot or in your calving pastures or even in in in the pastures themselves you're going to go on a pasture so you're going to have to provide some supplementation whether it's hay some form of food source to to fill their to fill their room ends up at that month of May. What if you have the opportunities to graze exotic grasses so if you have crested wheat grass if you have smooth brol grass even if you have some areas that are dominated with tucky blue grass these grasses reach grazing readiness is what I talked about earlier in fact crested wheat grass tends to be ready by about the end of April early May so look at these opportunities to graze these domestic grasses early and you're probably going to graze them a little longer. If you do have a crested wheat grass field or you have a brol grass field there are ways you can extend that grazing period by basically strip grazing these pastures or rotational graze these pastures most producers on the average will graze these as a season long spring pasture but even if you just split that into two cells with one hot wire you can rotate across that pasture to get you more efficiency in terms of harvest intake so my example usually is if I'm going to go out and graze by the first week of May I'm going to split it in half and I'm going to graze that first week on the pasture one I'm going to rotate into pasture two one week later I'm going to graze in there for two weeks and I'm going to come back to the first one and graze that fourth week it gives you time for recovery for that crested and you'll give you more production that's available for the producer to graze longer into the season it allows you to delay that turnout onto your native pastures the other thing you can look at are annual winners winter annuals for grazing in the spring now this is one of them tricky tricky tricky options because that means you seeded this winter cereal in 2020 and so if you haven't seeded in 2020 it's not going to be available for those producers but those who do have winter cereals in place whether it's a winter rye a winter triticale they're a really good option to look at in terms of grazing in that month of May may have you put those in place and the option you look at primarily is haying them but it may be an area you need to put your cows ahead of time and use it for grazing so I have an example here we did some work at Central Grasslands Research Extension Center in 2020 where we did graze a winter rye and winter triticale and we grazed Willow Creek winter wheat and we do strip graze these pastures it allows us to improve our harvest efficiency and carry us longer into that growing period and so this is just a picture showing some cows on a winter rye field what we saw last year in 2020 and we were actually quite dry last year on our soils and so the first column shows winter rye and you can see winter rye already produced about 1,200 pounds of biomass by May 8th about 2,500 pounds by May 22nd and just under two ton an acre by June 1 you go to the far right side of the of the graph you'll see we got winter triticale it grows very similar to winter rye doesn't give you quite the biomass of the winter rye but it's another very productive grass compared to the rye the caveat to winter triticale that tends to be higher in nutritional quality so the middle one we have Willow Creek winter wheat and I was under the assumption that winter wheat would grow as fast as winter rye and I was wrong it's a much slower growing winter cereal crop and so you can see we reached peak production here of 1,700 pounds on June 1 and so that winter wheat unless you really need to graze that in that month of May it's probably going to be a much better option for putting it up as hay in the mid to late June so Kevin touched on this a little bit that importance of making early decisions of knowing and purchasing hay and this is why we're having this this discussion is this is a map showing our major livestock producing areas which is the dark green areas on the map and then the light green areas on the map are minor livestock producing areas and then the red hatch or the overlay is the parts of the us that are experiencing drought and so currently approximately 45 percent of our cattle inventory in the U.S. are within an area that's experiencing drought so it's really going to be important as we move forward that you're making decisions and purchasing those supplemental feeds early so moving into May as if our drought continues we're going to expect at least a 20 to 40 percent reduction in forage production probably greater because of that dry fall but at minimum that 20 to 40 percent and so we want to start making those plans to implement stocking rate reductions and plan for a grazing shortage in the late summer so that is when we get to that point it's easier to make those decisions and implement your plan we also as we we want an inventory that carry over feed and determine if we if we still need to purchase supplemental feeder hay and and price that out and then Kevin already touched on this a little bit but now moving into some of those other grazing strategies we're going to look at grazing those tame pastures so that those planted pastures are post-contract CRP lands and then as we want to continue throughout this whole grazing period it's bringing that water quality so that we can we can strategize and we can graze those pastures that we we might have a shortage with water or we'll have water shortages issues we can graze those earlier but we also want to screen if there is a toxicity issue so that we can bring in supplemental water look at other other water watering strategies and move those cattle if we have to if the water is toxic so we looked at that April period for trigger dates and now we we're dry and April we come into May and we're still dry inside you're going to implement that strategy of grazing those domestic grass pastures whether it's bluegrass, bromagrass or crested wheat grass and look at what you have for options and that's what you're going to do in that month of May to carry you into that June period native pastures tend to be more ready for grazing. It's important to understand that that you know our grasses are fairly resilient in northern plains they can take a one-year hit pretty well it's these repeated years so there are producers who did suffer from drought in 2020 and if we get in 2021 and we're still dry and now you have pastures they're going to graze hard a second year it's very difficult for those pastures to withstand that resiliency so so try and minimize that overgrazing on the same pasture that you did in 2020 so look at what you have for pastures this comes to we call we call range sciences art and science of range management and this is really the art side you look at what you did in 2020 and you strategize what you had for pastures that you may have grazed a little lighter you may not graze at all and you bring those to the front of the table first and that's where you're going to start your grazing in 2020 in that month of May so you don't repeat that overuse on that pasture especially in the month of May when those grasses require and really really use those carbohydrates effectively to grow throughout the rest of the growing season definitely so let's go from May to June sorry we're going to sit here and talk about ourselves at times but so let's look at June we're going to go from May to June we have now these droughts carried us well into the month of June and I'm just going to say now and I hope I'm wrong but if we get into a dry period of that covers that month of May and June just expect that we're going to have a low producing year and you need to plan for the rest of that year what you're going to do in that month of June because we're not going to grow a whole lot more grass after that period even if it rains all it wants in the months of July and August so even in June you know based on the data that we've seen you can expect a 35 to 65 percent loss of forage production and that variability is really a function of what you did in 2020 and how healthy your grasses are coming into the next growing season so make the plans to to look at how you're going to reduce your stocking rates whether you're going to reduce a full reduction in stocking rate or you're going to reduce your grazing days on the back side evaluate your annual forages so so Carl Dr. Hoppe and I are going to talk about annual forage options next week and so look at what you're going to plan for annual forage options to give you another feed source or a feed base for the rest of the growing season and again look at your water and it's going to be really critical we get into June and we haven't had any rain I can almost guarantee you that most of our water sources that are in dugouts and ponds are going to have some toxicity or some health issues so screen them know what you have to deal with and look at the toxicities if we also get into some of our crops especially annual forages that we get into month of July in particular we can see potential nitrate toxicity levels and some of these forages especially forage oats tends to be the one that gets looked at the most but you may have to also look at testing your feeds to make sure you don't have nitrous nitric toxicity issues from that feed you're looking at feeding and again monitor your grazing utilization and we and we you know it's just important to understand even though we're resilient these grasses can't take these back to back years of heavy use so try and minimize the use of over 50 60 percent in back to back years or you're going to pay for that then and not only in the next year of 2022 but you're probably going to pay for that in 2023 and even 2024 if you're in the drier climates of eastern Montana and the western Dakotans so when we talk in range manager we often talk about that take half leave half rule and I ask people what that means and a lot of times people think it means taking half visually so half of what's growing out there but actually when we talk about take half leave half it's half of half of the plant by weight and so when we look at the structure of our plants that's going to look different for every plant we have or so knowing your grass species is so important as we move through these because that helps you better manage your resources and also it helps you better manage your livestock herd that's another conversation so when we look at our grasses the under on let me just use my arrow so over here we have so this is our 25 this is the 50 we want to leave behind for that grasses to maintain that grass bigger health so that we can keep a healthy plant there we usually as a rule of thumb we say 25 percent is available for livestock consumption the other 25 percent can be lost through trampling wildlife use senescence there are ways we can approve that I know Kevin's going to talk about that later through grazing management strategies but as a general rule of thumb if we're just starting with the grazing plan we want to use we estimate 25 percent this is an image I pull from University of Merasca Lincoln on the other side here and it shows our plant in as it goes vegetative stage through the reproductive stage and where the growing point is and so this is really where this this comes into play is we don't want to we can't raise that plant past that growing point and so when we graze earlier in the season that growing points lower but as that plant moves through the growing season that the growing point becomes elevated as that growing point becomes elevated we need to be careful at how heavy we're grazing these these plants because if we grow past that we're not going to get the regrowth and be able to capture that extra forage production and so that's where it becomes really important to be monitoring that utilization because we can capture extra growth in essence if we're able to get that regrowth on that plant and hopefully that'll help with our resilience as we're moving through this drought and so we have a tool here we call it the North Dakota grazing utilization stick to help monitor grazing utilization and you can purchase those on our website but on the side of it has a chart that shows that height to weight utilization and so it shows the differences so we have the percent height removed in the different species in the side there and that percent height varies depending on the species because of the structure of those different plants that some have greater greater weight toward or more leaves toward the base versus other species so for example we have our western wheat grass and and at 70 percent height removal we're at that 50 percent utilization whereas our Kentucky blue grass it's an 80 percent height removal that we're at that 50 percent utilization so another reason that it's very important to know what species we're working with out there so so we look at drought planning for a couple days we'll move into the month of July and hopefully we've gotten some rain in June at least to get us some growth in here we're getting the month of July and we're still in the drought you know you're going to expect at least 50 percent loss of production on these fields you know we're talking about in the last month talking about looking at stock rates you're going to probably look at many options of de-stocking whether it's whether it's early weaning whether it's looking at at age whether it's looking whatever you're going to look at de-stocking is going to be one of your elements you're going to have to put in strategy to get by this 2021 season look at those annual forges that you may have planted hopefully we've got enough moisture to get these annual forges up and start strategizing how you want to use those annual forges are you going to put them up for hay are you going to graze them most ranchers are always optimistic we may take a hay crop off hopefully some rain afterwards get some regrowth and then double use that annual forges for hay as well as residue grazing as I continue it as also in July we continue screening that water quality June and July are typically the months where we see the the most issues with water quality so I think we need to expect those and be screening that and as Kevin already mentioned is that awareness of that potential for nitrate toxicity especially in those annual annual cereals and and cover crop species or any for any of those maybe drought stress crops that you're considering using as a feed source and I know Kevin and Carl will be talking about both of those a little bit more next week and continue monitoring that utilization inventory and purchase feed so by the end of July most people have already harvested the majority of their hay and so you should have a good sense of where you're standing in terms of hay production and know where how much you will be short going into the fall and plan accordingly in August and we're going to expect a 70% reduction in forage production if our drought continues and so what we're going to see is that if we if the continues our plants are going to start to die early or synapse and die early what I remember is the 2002 drought I was out in western North Dakota forage sampling I was working for Kevin as a high schooler then and and we were looking at plants and trying to do some plant ID and everything was dead it all looked the same and it was it was a real challenge and that point that drought that year and that part of the state it just everything died off early and as that happens we're going to expect lower feed quality and we need to consider supplementation options and in terms protein and energy and then continue screening that water quality monitoring our grazing utilization so that we can we're not hitting those pastures too hard two years in a row so that we can improve that resilience give them time to recover because we don't know how long our drought could last all right so we're coming into our last month of our trigger dates play a role and I talked about earlier that one graph of growth curves that that month of September now as we really drive her what's going to happen in 2022 you're going to assess all of your annual forages in terms of what you have available in terms of hay production or in terms of grazing strategies on these annual forages inventory we talked about inventorying your harvest feeds you know for us at the Ratcheland station I talked to my manager we get to July one we put up most of our feed we look at our annuals we get to mid-July we're going to have a pretty good handle on how much hay we have how much hay we're going to need and so I'm going to start looking for for laying in hay already in that month of September for 2022 if I know I'm going to have a shortage so look at what you have in terms of inventory and and plant accordingly that's to make sure forages for winter pastures so as we get into the western Dakotas and in Montana Wyoming you know we see a lot of land that is actually set up for winter pasture we call stockpile grazing look at what you have available for winter pastures and then look outside of that traditional realm of what you have for stockpile grazing and we'll see what you have for residue grazing see what all your options are for feeding these cows classic example was 2020 we had a lot of different opportunities to feed residue crops like corn residue, oat residue, use those effectively in a drought period to get the most out of them it's going to reduce your costs that's going to be a great way to feed these animals at a cheaper rate again we're treating this on every one of our months water quality is going to be critical again and monitor degree of disappearance we get into that month of September we know we're going to run out of feed you got to remember if you start getting a little feed that means intake goes down if intake goes down livestock performance goes down and so you have to be able to withstand that on that cattle side can you withstand some loss of performance on that late period most producers cannot so monitor to see where you're at in terms of performance so let's look at these resident options on this is a picture I took on the grassland station from I believe December a couple months ago and we grazed a lot of corn residue in 2020 that's a great resource to use one thing you're going to find when grazing corn residue is you will have a deficiency in protein and so try and bring protein into the system to make that rumen function properly to use those low quality feeds more effectively through the animal itself so look at protein supplements you should have your calves off their side it's just tough to put a lot of input costs to to maintain a lactating cow and her cat in terms of mineral deficiencies when you're grazing on corn residue the calcium phosphorus levels tend to be an issue so always provide a good balanced diet that meets the minimum requirements as well as protein requirements this is a picture I took probably two weeks later with cows grazing on on oat residue and you can see in this example we took this oat stock for hay we got some fairly good regrowth from some lucky rains we got in august and so we had some green tissue this is a feed base that's very effective very good quality feed for cows and so you know it's a cheap way to get by with consuming these types of forge base and last is stored grain grasses especially get into such a part of North Dakota and South Dakota we see a lot of bromegrass fields that tend to be carried over you get into the western part you'll see even crested and brome you can use these effectively as a feed source just make sure you wind your calves off their side because it would require the protein quality of these grasses is really low and so just know it's a food source feed the rumen so they can they can effectively take that up and use it in the room and so I want to end with but the part of the series is looking at grazing strategies and let's give up last last week you know if you have a good grazing management strategy in place you should be able to withstand a one-year drought so when I talk about good grazing management that means you graze and some type of strategy where your grasses are healthy your soils are healthy and they come into the season with good carry over growth so you have a healthy environment for that those plants to live in and so installing a really good rotational grazing that creates deferment and recovery can create a plant community that with that's resilient in terms of drought scenarios you know when we saw in 2020 and we'll probably see this in 2021 if we see an extended drought you know you don't want to minimize your overuse so so producers are going to tend to over graze one or two of their pastures it's just going to happen because they run out of feed so minimize those to 20 percent don't over graze everything try and minimize that to some smaller percent of your total land base then you can defer that piece of property the next year so it gets recovery in the spring that critical period when your grasses start to come out of dormancy so play that game a little bit to see get the most out of that so you're not going to over graze it then plan for the next year for natural deferment to occur so you can keep those those grasses healthy um and overgrazing like I talked about earlier if you are going to over graze you know you have to expect some lower cali performances second strategy that you can look at using and this is an example one that we do at the grassland station is creating rotational grazing with heterogeneity in mind so we have multiple pastures but in those pasture systems one of those pastures may actually be rested or it may actually lightly grazed to create a natural storage base or a stored grass base for late in the season you can use it effectively if it's a normal growing a season you can come back and graze that in the fall but it's kind of like an emergency bank you know you have these cells in place and if I was living in Dickinson, North Dakota or Miles City, Montana I would have one of these pastures always set in place that I have to deal with those emergencies if I have a dry year so it gives you that flexibility it creates resiliency in your system it also creates resiliency in your grasses so it really works as a great option to save you in those dry years and it will carry you into that second year even more effectively and my third one here is we do a lot of producer will stockpile some pastures for late in the season and the beauty of those grap those pastures is they give you a nice forage base but with most people that don't realize is you can actually cheat and graze that pasture in the month of June when we get our rains the grasses are phenologically in the vegetative state and if you get rains after you graze it in June it will always regrow and in a really on a normal year you almost get a hundred percent recovery in a wet year you actually get more than a hundred percent recovery so if you read through here what I try to do is looking at taking that winter pasture bring it into the month of June as part of your grazing strategy graze it at about 20 to 30 percent usually no more than 30 percent that means you got more than one bite happening then you actually can can impact forage production for your winter time period and know that it's going to recovery when you get some of those rains in the month of June we all know where to get some rain in June hopefully and so they let recovery and give you some free grazing I call it about two weeks of free grazing if you bring them into the system and so we're gonna take home messages so just to wrap things up the most important thing and we're going to continue talking about this we've been talking about it since October Kevin and I with people is develop your drought management strategies now don't wait if precipitation is low and that may through mid June really you need to start implementing your drought plan we don't want to wait we want to make our decisions early because not just what's happening on your ranch is going to impact things but what's happening across the other states that are being impacted by drought is also going to influence your decisions summer rains that in June-July they're going to enhance that warm season grasses but they're not going to add much new growth through our cool seasons in North Dakota where cool seasons dominate so we're only going to see maybe a 20 percent increase in growth on those however we'll see that green up and we seen that this year we were pretty dry in spring and I know we had we gave a few drought talks and in July we started especially in that north central part of state we got we got some rain and things greened up and forage quality increased and we were in a pretty good spot fall drought is what you're going to have that low quality feed if we have a fall drought and those plants are going to become susceptible to low vigor because we're going to have that increased use they're going to longer we go the high potential for overuse and that's going to stress those plants out and if we raise them too much we might impact the pet it's the growth and development that next year so we want to be careful about impacting that that plant's ability to regrow in that following year. Kevin mentioned this a few times so that we have another year drought we're going to see we're going to see changes to that plant community our ecosystems are resilient they're adapted to drought but we don't see a two-year drought very often here and so we're going to see changes in our plant communities and forage production is going to be dramatically reduced if we have another year of drought and so if we have that two-year drought even if you're if you have a fantastic crazy management plan you're still going to have to make adjustments and de-stocking and adding more land are going to be required to make to minimize long-term damage and realistically you're probably going to have to de-stock because adding additional land isn't isn't simple in this area it's expensive and it's not a lot of it available unless you're able to use some of our our cropland resources for grazing limit that overuse to one or two pastures and those pastures that are overuse make sure that you're allowing them adequate time to rest recover so allow deferment for grazing that next season so as we repeat their increased plant bigger by delaying that spring turn up and like I said earlier I could almost guarantee you we're going to have a delay in terms of growth in the month of May monitor your grazing readiness for key species and we typically look at western wheatgrass is common throughout the state throughout both our states of the Dakotas Montana Wyoming you can use that species a very good one to look at in terms of when it reaches grazing readiness if you got crushed to wheatgrass you look at crushed to wheatgrass fields or grown grass fields stock rates should not be greater than the carrying capacity so on the average you're trying to stock based on what you can carry there's some years you're going to be stock higher in the carrying capacity like I said earlier you're going to defer those the next year to give them recovery time periods if drought continues early adjustments the stock rate will need it and again monitor use and some random we put together the grazing stick it's a great tool to use to monitor your utilization to see where you're at by the end of that season you can end just to wrap up um so we have this is just our second to the series next week we have Carl and Kevin talking about supplemental forward and feed options and it will continue on with water quality and then herd management and reduction strategies and wrap up with a piece on managing your stress during these during these times and I will hand it back over to Travis for questions and answer our Q&A session great thanks we do have some discussion and some questions for you and I expect more for those panelists that we do have and we have great participation to uh to join us and add some questions as well the first one team is uh if a body of water was affected uh by cyanobacteria last year will it be more susceptible this year or in the coming years yes once you have cyanobacteria so cyanobacteria is caused by excess nutrients specifically nitrogen and phosphorus within your water and unless you do take steps to mitigate the the amount of nutrients in that water body you're always going to be at risk of having a cyanobacteria bloom on that body on that water body and so we do have a publication on that it talks about some of the strategies you can implement to reduce the risk excluding livestock from that pumping and pumping water from it from that into a tank so that they're not they're not spending time in that water is one solution um also buffers are a great putting a buffer around that water body to help um access more nutrients from from entering that water body it is another good strategy to look at for long-term mitigation okay thank you Miranda um one that's maybe just a little bit more exact and you kind of touched on it but we'll uh we'll allow you to discuss it is with the dry conditions coming into the spring if i'm unable to hold off on turning them out to grass and you touched on that how will that affect the pasture if i grazed it for 14 days on a standard stocking rate and then left that and then came back 60 days later and that's a good question and i think that's probably more common than we think that it actually happens um people need to get cattle out and so if your if your strategy is to go out normal time period and you're going to graze for that 14-day period the one thing you need to remember is also that that the production at that time period is actually fairly short so you may not even get 14 days depending on how the animals you have and how long you want to graze that but you can do that and then you need at least at least the 60 days to recover that and when you do recover i'm not guaranteed here to get back to normal but you should get some regrowth and get some recovery and then you want to monitor that second time period you come through it that you don't over graze it on that second period so it's a strategy you can use just know your limitations that you're going to give up some biomass and you're going to probably have to look at grazing it later on for less as hard as you know what we do because you give up the biomass on the front side and i would say another consideration if you're doing that is strategizing if you can use a pasture that has a higher amount of khaki bluegrass then maybe some of your other pastures because that's going to start growing earlier and so it's going to have a greater resilience and be able to recover a little faster and that's also true of the agro-grass fields we have a lot of agro-grass invaded again all of these presentations are being recorded will and are available at www.ag.ndsu.edu slash drought one of the things Dr. Sedevic when you were talking of the heterogeneous pastures is what do you do there at the at the research center relative to the water for those is there a centralized water and you just kind of have it pied out or what's the management strategy on that sure so and i'm gonna say don't use my example as the way to do it but we do have a central water source and because we're doing experimental treatments in place everything's replicated four times so that's why it looks like it looks like so we got this pie shaped with central water so when you create your system you whenever you develop a system you always develop your system based on water first look at your water development and then look at your fencing and how you're gonna lay that out the heterogeneity was a concept we thought about trying to create more diversity across the landscape as well as creating opportunities for structures for birds and pollinators we're trying to fit this whole gamut of ecosystem functions while producing livestock in the operation the beauty that it does give us is it gives us flexibility and resiliency within the system so in 2021 if we do get in a severe drought i have a cell that was rested that i can graze in 2021 that has plenty of biomass on and i've already strategized for 2021 to have one left as well so i'm not worried at all in 2022 unless we just don't lean away at all i'm going to have forage in place because of the resiliency i built into the system to do that and in the northern plains especially getting to what i call the kato region where moisture tends to not be as limited as the western dakotas um that rest in most cases i would not actually have a full rest i would have it grazed lightly get some use out of it in that year but that experience designed to create that rest so that was a long answer for a question of the water the answer is yes there's a center water point for those pastures dr mehan where can people get uh the applicable grazing sticks to use or though something that we can make or the county extension offices can you please explain how we can move to that next step yeah so if you go on to our lisa put it is putting in the chat for us but if you go on to the ndsu website the extension website if you go under the livestock page and grazing it's the resources there and you actually there's a publication that goes with it that shows you how to use it and you order you can order one there there's a price that and then additional shipping and handling price that goes with that and because we were shipping them to canada and that got expensive but yes they're available there there's also a video to go with that show you how to use them dr sedvik talked about uh needing for supplemental hay and i know that'll be just one uh more week from now of saying hey if you're if you are behind uh at least evaluate your inventory um right now and then across the way uh as well but i'm sure that we will touch on some of the auctions or places that if we were to to purchase some products probably in next weeks uh as a transition with our supplemental feeds and and feed options and we also um i thank you maranda relative to uh the three state the the three leaf stages and and evaluating where those those uh grasses are when they come up them so are there any last questions uh for our audience and in fact again what we've uh been and is uh maranda if there's anything in particular that you just like to summarize and transition us into the next uh right now we are caught up on our questions uh for our drought webinar series on uh session two i think just a reminder of those it really comes back to those basics of grazing management and and keeping in mind you know that the grazing readiness and waiting to graze until your plants can handle that stress you know looking for water availability water quality and building that rest and recovery into that system and monitoring utilization and those are going to be the keys regardless of what type of grazing system you have if you don't have one in place the those are the things we need to think about as we're moving into 2021 and hopefully as we think about things long term we can look at those long term strategies for addressing water shortages and getting a grazing plan in place to increase our resilience go ahead kevin i was just gonna say you know i'm thinking about this you know we're coming to this spring dry and and i think when it comes to one of the biggest things we've produced in northern plains for our cowherd is hay and so if we're gonna be dry in the month of may you know i can almost guarantee we're gonna have a lower hay yield in 2021 we saw it actually in 2020 as well and so for me we already have the raster station we did lay in some about 150 bales last week preparing for this coming spring and we're gonna look at our strategies already this spring and early summer to be prepared to buy hay i was able to buy off alpha hay for 110 bucks a ton it will not be 110 bucks a ton when you get to the month of April May so if you know you're gonna be short of hay and i think the science definitely are there we're gonna have a lower hay yield crop um think about that today and not tomorrow other than i want to thank you all for participating today and we enjoyed the question to be sure enjoy got plenty to talk to you today thank you have a great day