 One of the first things I'd like to do is thank all our sponsors that helped us put together and provide input and money for today's event. I'm going to just read through the list. South Dakota Wheat Commission, Farm Credit Services of America, Wheat Growers, Mustang Seed, Monsanto, Prairie State Seeds, Next Level Ag, LLC, Millboard Seeds, La Crosse Seeds, Dakota Best Seed, Agronomy Plus, Farmers Eliacs, Mitchell, First Dakota National Bank, C&D Operations and Davis County Ampliment, Scott Supply, CropTech, Ducks Unlimited, Aurora County Conservation District, Davis County Conservation District, Hanson County Conservation District, South Dakota Noxel Association, SDSU Extension, USDA and NRCS, and Pioneer Hybrids of Dupont, so let's give them all a welcome round of applause. Corey Cronin, Casey Cronin, and we're seeing such a big value in bringing livestock into our farming operation because it was a few years ago we decided that wasn't the thing we should do and now we're going to excuse me if you guys can't see but you know that Casey and I are going to kind of tag team this but you know and see the date on the bottom 2007 so we've been grazing cover since 2007. The more we learn the more questions we have. We're trying to put sense to this in dollars-wise because that's what we really feel we have to do. You can say whatever you want to do but it still comes down to the amount to dollars. They said they said on the Leopold Award you guys and and you know besides Janet because she's a young one but just look at right here cut this in half and look at the age of these people right here. Everybody on our farm understands soil health what we need to do to make soil health and when we talk we talk a lot of carbon we talk a lot of soil health because soil health is a driving force and if a person doesn't think it is if we keep doing what we're doing the next ten years we're going to every year we see it so soil health is it is it really a driving force. Casey is going to or Corey Casey. No we've got about 775 cows cow calves that we have out every year we run on about 8,500 acres mostly along the river here on pastures and then we we take them back up to the farm in the winter time and that's where we do all our cover crop grazing corn stocks get out on the fields so this slide thought it was pretty interesting this is I I didn't ever understand that well why can't we just mow this pasture off what's the big deal with that I mean it's there it's growing well this pretty much explains it once I got used to that to where if you are leaving something you're gonna have a lot more to graze later on you know and I and I really appreciate what Casey and Corey are doing and not saying Bonnie wasn't there also but they're really understanding the the divide fences and the moving and different water systems and so but I mean that I just think that's something you guys you don't think about that but just think I mean that's and this is something that you know you can't put a value on this is Casey and Wiley you cannot put a value on what the what Casey's doing to build for the future because that's what we have to do you know but the one thing is is so there's three generations of building the last in legacy so on our farm we want everybody to understand what's going on we want to understand why we're doing this we're not doing that's just because it's it's doesn't cost as much whatever we understand and we're all building soil health you know one thing we talk about rain and everybody's gets everybody talks about well yeah you got this rain we got this rain and so you know 19 inches as our norm but so we these are our pivots down here so in in May June and July we had half as much rain as what we normally do in the last 30 years so you need the soil health you need to have the the good growth you need to capture every bit of water you can do and that's where our pivots come in because it used we used to be corn bean guys and we found out where that really isn't what we should do and then another thing and we will protect our resource we we farm we ranch up along this river and we are going to protect that resource so these are some of the rotations but this is the neatest thing about the rotations is anytime we can we come back with the cover we come back with the cover we come back with that cover it's a Grayson cover Casey so this is just kind of yeah there's a pointer okay his is green so we can tell each other apart we can do all here so this is one of the circles down on the river up above we planted peas on it combine the peas then went in with a with a six-way mix like it says there we luckily had the the pivot on it we watered it up and then we ran ran our cows on it for a couple weeks and then after that we turned in we fence line weaned our calves which we really like and they were what we turned the cows in there cows were on the others or calves were on the other side of it and the cows just went to eatin and everybody just kind of weaned themselves after that we harvested the lower circles the cows went down on that we put the calves in for a couple more weeks on that and got quite a bit of value on it calves did great on it really really excited to do some more of that so you know another thing in what Doug brought up and we'll get into it later too is the neat thing about Grayson covers I mean I usually figure a cow will take in 20% we're always going to leave part of our residue we're going to leave a third of our residue that's carbon that's protection for the ground we're never going to graze it in the ground we've got at least 10% but you guys there's snow here so they Casey what you probably kept the calves out of the feedlot for another two three weeks and then just touch once on on Grayson younger cattle how they how they adapt where the older great yeah so these calves well we went to a fence like we need system last year 2015 was the first year we did it and those calves they just seem to take off by themselves I mean they're out there on that grass they're doing what they're supposed to do rather than being in the lot and now we're calving out there well this is the second group of efforts that we have now and those cows they spend more time out grazing on fields and everything we get them up to the place then anything we've ever had they'll they'll go after that stuff you can pull your tractor weighing out that's where they want to be is out there I feel it attributes to the fence line we need and then get them out early on you know this Toby Stothe's from and you know it takes a while to click especially for me because I'm I'm old I'm gray haired I listen to it I don't believe it I don't believe it don't believe it the fourth time I say well you know there's something here but you know all you're doing is cycling your residue faster and you but you want to leave that third but you want to cycle that residue faster to make it available for next year's crop I'm going to talk some on carbon because carbon is a tremendously important thing to this whole system we have to harvest carbon we have to harvest carbon and what do you how you do that is you do it through plant management carbon the key ingredient to organic matter everybody talks about organic matter carbon is 57% organic matter 50% carbon so the only way we're going to harvest carbon is we're going to have things growing that are green we're going to take in the carbon from the air so and I I think that there's just not enough emphasis put on this because with us we've got a full system approached where our covers are harvest and carbon we don't want to we want to leave our residue so it's a it's a kind of a holistic reproach you know this is a nation that destroys it soil destroys itself so this is the way we were this is the way we were and but now I don't know so what's that grandpa telling his grandson he said I made a mistake it took me about 10 15 years of mining your organic matter but I made a mistake it's up to you to fix it it's up to you to fix it and this is the best way we can do it with covers I'm not saying only farming but as long as we think about the carbon it's just a win-win this is what we've done on our place not going to spend a lot of time this is grass soil sampled it was been grass put in after the 30s and so that's kind of what we've done on our place benefits of organic matter water-holding capacity is a huge one and then the I just you just can't emphasize what organic matter will do with what a percent of organic matter will do we've got to start a great deal of carbon once stored in the soils now stored in the atmosphere we need to retain this back into the soil as humus just have to do that so I'm not talking about building organic matter I'm talking about building soils on our full season cover this is a shovel full of soil Casey's holding the shovel but so what we're building soil so it's residue humus good job Casey organic matter top soil so you know and I never you know how things kind of slow I'm slow but I hang around doing back we went to Montana for a week great week geez just unreal but one thing he said he said when if you guys ever noticed when you walk along down in the in town and all of a sudden the sidewalks down in this and you say boy that sidewalk sunk that sidewalk didn't sink the organic matter is building soil so you're building soil so when you walk out in our fields even the ones that we there are grazed all the time with your with though if you manage it right it's just like walking on a really nice shag carpet you can feel that push well what you're doing right now is you're building humus you're building organic matter it's just a win-win situation you've got to feed these Doug talked on that you've got to feed these it so this is a mistake in 2006 we planted our first field of cover crop everything went 2007 it rained and boy that's a nice field but you know where the mistake was made we didn't pay any attention to the carbon I went in there with a very low carbon no carbon so all of a sudden I was paying it took me about three years after that to make up for that for so now anytime we talk about cover crop we want we want the carbon and nitrogen ratio to be up there carbon you know and then so these are just three different mixes I will get back to Casey someone said Casey and I are going to talk and he said yeah I feel sorry for Casey so cover crop and carbon and nitrogen this came from Ray Ward and this all makes sense the one thing you guys and this is where the NRCS has got to help help and they will when you start talking about a cover crop with the carbon and nitrogen ratio what you want I want a 24 to 30 a lot of people say well why are you even talking about that on cover crop I think you have to talk about that on cover crop but we have to find out what plants because if you get into the middle of August towards the end of August you can't plan a it's hard to get a high carbon it's hard to like a forage sorghum it's too late in the year so yet like an oats is a good one but also get mature so you have to understand how late you can go in this season with still your carbon and nitrogen ratio so this is where we want to be I want to be like it right up in here 26 to 1 because our soils are active enough I want to slow things down I want to slow things down when I did it the other time I was right down in here and we just speed up these are kids from Gettysburg FFA one's the teacher he just looks like oh the ones the teacher with the teacher want to raise your hand okay you guys find a find a chair there's chairs around you know these are two good books you guys and I really as especially this one any question you've got on how much carbon what you're going to do you can download this it's a PDF you can download that off the internet it's just a really good book okay Casey so so this is it's not we don't have all this but this is kind of the chunk of pasture we have most of it you know will never ever be farmed because it looks a lot like that it's pretty rough country thank goodness great great but no back to the the rotational stuff when I got back it was well I think we should probably move them well we don't really have a lot of help around so let's just open the gate they'll move themselves well after a couple weeks of that you got them turned in on everything yeah so what we've done as we've started cross fencing we're nowhere like Doug is but that's kind of the end goal is to try to break everything up it's going to be a lot easier because Cory and I run all the cows for us to handle them in smaller pastures like that water is going to present a challenge but we're working on that and that's then bringing them home Casey yeah and then this is where we bring home to we'll just trail across country bring home this is where we run on home now back to when I got home again when we started growing cover crops in 2007 we just turn them on everything we had around there so they go and they eat the green stuff first and then you know they're they're taking too much so now we're starting to cross fence that let them have certain things and then we're controlling how much carton how much we're leaving we're taking two thirds leading a third and that's our goal we're seeing a lot more benefit from that rather than just turn them out letting them graze let them pick and choose so you know what's new for 2016 and Casey I'll let you touch on this this is the heifer it can't quite see the top but it's the heifers yep so our first half heifers will bring them home and they'll run this was a full season right out back it's kind of a basically a 30-year lot is what it is so they'll graze this down and and we don't control this this is where we feed everything and then this is where they run but there's also the quarter out to the west of here that was planted we went back to cover crop the graze on that and then to the north of where that this is this important stocks and they've also ran on that now everything got covered up the gate stayed open for them because they didn't they once they got through all this we got covered up with snow now that we've belted off they've headed right back out to that cover and they're digging through it and hammering away on that again so really really like raising the covers up there you know this is something that I did so I talk about carbon talk about carbon look at this cover crop mix there's no carbon what I like is this price here turnips I'm you know I I think that we're going to go to a podge a turnip because the purple top it grows but I mean the cattle will kick it out easy and a podge you'll get more of a tuber on it more relief more of a grazer I love flax or mycorrhizae the four-inch peas I don't know if I'll do that again it's just because of the we have we have pulse crops in our rotation I don't know if I'll do that again but the reason I did this is this is 70 80 bushel stripper headed shell boring stripper headed winter wheat stubble so we had all kinds of carbon we had all kinds of carbon from that old straw so all I was trying to do is put some low carbon then another thing when that first flush of volunteer wheat came when I wanted to be able to take it out with cluthidum so you just take the grass out and you leave everything else alone this is what it was the four-inch peas had a great year my big worry was is what was going to happen now because with the cattle eat this in case y'all let you do this and they sure did we had it fenced out and they went out there there was a ride field that we planted that we're gonna go into our full season cover with this year next to this and they just they hit both too well but they camped out on this and moved them along through that before we got to a full season this is the cab okay down there where where we take our caps to and start backgrounding them we had a hundred and eleven acres to this this is kind of our feedlot area here it's more we had that picture but this was a five-way mix that was planted and our goal was to get out on it but we thought we had more time than what we did and snow hit we didn't just didn't get it done so it's a goal but to be able to at least for the calves that were keeping car replacements to keep them grazing on that as long as we can you know and other thing in case he already said this but our cattle really under are or I'm I'm the cowepnull but their cattle really understand electric fences I mean they respect him they really understand them and and the kids can move a fence in a hurry so in 2016 we're gonna have a full season graze this sounds really good on paper and it was that will work on paper but so we're gonna have a full season graze so this is our mix and there's a reason for everything in here what I was trying to do see the carbon and nitrogen ratio was 32 to 1 that was real important to me the buckwheat you know a lot of people if you got buckwheat if you have wheat next you got to have a two years off wheat otherwise they'll the wheat can be rejected if there's buckwheat in the export I don't know probably I like what it did enhances phosphorus the okra is going to go away the and then and then the turnips is going to be a be a podge of turnip kale I love kale a half a pound of kale goes a long ways they get they'll say green until November it gets tall and then but you'll see all these after the mycorrhizae association and I think that's really important and I'm not saying we're ever going to have it to where we cut out phosphorus all together but it's really what they'll do is it'll actually go out and it'll it'll go out it'll trade carbon and it'll go and it'll trade it for organic phosphorus but look at here the mycorrhizae so look at the root system 700 times more root system on a mycorrhizae plant and I just think this is something we just have to keep keeping the back of your mind I mean the you guys and I hope there's no seed dealers in here but if they do I hope you learn from what I say is don't ever be satisfied with the guy goes in and say this is what you need to plant you research it and you be able to you know enough what's going on where you're telling him what you want this is a we planted in test stubble we we took a cut in the teff off and then we always leave the second cut and come back and so the cattle graze this there's about a foot of snow so there's a foot of stubble left I mean they weren't on it very long or cover crop mix everything goes together July 10th we're going to get rid of the okra I like this the it's it kind of scares you and you look at the plan it's a shorter it's just shorter brown midrib but I like brown midrib because of the pressic acid it takes some of that thread away or pressic acid and then start field layout and I wanted to find out so there's a three-way mix node in and then the rest of this we put on we had 40 units of of we had about 80 units of in on this and a lot of people said you know it's it you shouldn't have to put fertilizer on covers and so we just wanted to see so this is a full season graze July 29th there's our in our non in strips there's a biomass the 14th so we did a Jason Miller came up in August 14th we did a biomass and then this is kind of what bothered me a little bit because within there's 7100 pounds of biomass and without in there's 7600 pounds of biomass but you know you stop and think about it the without the end the others the the undergrowth like the forage peas and the and the cow peas and everything they had more chance to grow because they didn't have the competition for sunlight so you know I thought well did we waste our in second biomass 11th 28th so I really recommend everybody you do a biomass if nothing else just to find out where you're at so we just took a yard square went out but you can see on our 12 way within look at the difference there that went away but look at here so 25 to 1 I said I wanted to be 26 27 but I was still happy 11% crude crude protein but this is something that we've got to get answered and I don't know how we're going to answer this right down here we had 8200 pounds of biomass less 960 pounds of protein or 144 pounds in so how are we going to get that back to next year's crop someone says don't worry about it but if you're if you're talking financially you have to be thinking about it so what we're doing is we're grazing it so you graze the top two-thirds you leave the bottom third that cycles through the cattle and so it should be more available we still Jason's we're going to work on this quite a bit next summer we're trying to get an answer to this on our farm so here's our here's a this is Ray Ward and one thing I like about sending down there and I know there's a lot of good labs but he'll actually give you a carbon-nitrogen ratio so I mean it just we felt really good about our mix so here we go so we had a yield biomass we're going to graze pounds had 80 840 thousand pounds 650 26 pounds a day if the temperatures right so we had 46 pounds of graze and that sounds easy that's a slam dunk so we had $147 that's charge yourselves we're in $147 into the cover crop mix so we're gonna we're it's gonna cost 75 cents a day 11% protein and here we go I mean we slam dunk $1.65 at 20 degrees to feed through the wagon so that's $172 an acre so let's just write that down because we've already made that I mean that's that we you know so I figured on 70 bushel spring we've which that field would have gone to at 475 we would have netted $76 an acre so you know we're kind of making headway plus we left a minute on the field there's a lot of benefit of what happened on the field Casey then we got into the winter and Mother Nature had a different plan for us we started out well I mean hindsight is 2020 could have went back brought him home from the river sooner and got on this quicker and you know we would have had all of that but it started snowing and between the snow and the deer the deer itself it took away one of the paddocks for us but it just we didn't get everything out of it that we thought plus it was cold so they were eating a lot more than what we participated in this is a picture after seven days of grazing one of the paddocks now you'd say well you didn't leave a third there well that snows a couple feet deep to there's a lot left but the cattle I was happy with them once we got them up there there was something never ever left it I mean it they got it's just out in the open on the flat there's not a lot of protection and they dug through it you want you know so we've got another one so we got to make sense of this we have to make sense of this so just like right now so you increase your feet as the temperature drops so this is 24 degrees we figured it was going to take 23 just about 24 pounds a day okay so now all of a sudden we are average temperature with the wind shield was minus three well we were on that so you take that so I take 31 pounds a day did they really need it we're not going to let our cattle go backwards our cattle didn't go backwards right Casey so so this is our average we had average temperature average wind speed wind shield but look at our max wind speed you know so I mean it was a it was just a tough winter you guys tough winter but another thing 36 inches of snow and everybody knows that Christmas what three-quarters inch of rain will do and so we were still grazing this so we had to keep working at it yeah so and we might have created a few monsters that by start of the feed but like you said we didn't want to let our cows slip like I said earlier some of them cows never ever left to come back into the feed but we were putting out through the wagon we're putting on a little silage and hay and then we feed pieces are protein this is just so they were given up to eat everywhere and then yeah so it says loss of $35 per acre is kind of what we figured but but there again I mean you got to look at it as you're kind of doing this for the future too so what is it going to do this year for our crop a few things like that it's hard to put a value on some of that go ahead case yeah we've got a lot of deer far to do it over I wouldn't record the deer or the snow but we had them my dad left his ranger in the tracks so he didn't figure he needed them in Arizona so we use that we probably would have wore out a set of snowshoes but they tore down our fence pretty much every day the cows stayed pretty good they didn't they still didn't like to step across it even though it was on the ground we battled it a little bit but these deer they'd sit there we started on started on the east end give them give them that chunk or there's five chunks and then we just worked our way started on the west end worked our way east and these deer you go out there to move fence and they just kind of hang they move off a little bit and then they just stayed on the stuff that the cows were not until we got to the to the end of it I mean they they have the goodie taken out of it so we definitely lost part of it to that the whole north side was it was tough for them cows to get there I mean it was it blew in I mean it was chest deep on me so but after after it settled a little bit those cows did go in there you know Casey then another thing too with this is your size of paddocks were you all right with it or would you do it different or what are you thinking gave everything enough space to get around and everything with that number of cows out there I thought I thought it worked out real well okay then we did do a bale raises here for the first time so this it's about 63 acres that it's kind of between the windbreak and the feed yard and the water and everything so it stays open to the cows every year so we just got to be used I mean every year I just got abused well what we did is we planted it back to grass we took our first cutting hay off of it this year we took the bales off and then we decided well let's let's go ahead and bail raise it so we took that where that took all the bales back out and we had that wrap on them but I I got to run the loader before we cut all the matter off put them on it so it worked very very well you can see how deep the snow is I was worried about them getting out around in there but and then just like Doug's today I was across that and there's a layer of ice underneath there that's at least a foot deep a thin layer of hay on it this year we'll probably rest it our bulls get a little anxious they're right along with highway 83 so get close to breeding time they like to venture out on their own so we're gonna bring them up and graze this with them just kind of as a just to clip it for two three weeks and then that'll rest for the end of the year and then we'll decide whether we want to bail raise it again this year or you're interested in this is just kind of a layout so this is the farm here this is where we bail grazed here this is our feed yard here this was corn stocks this is winter wheat so this will go back to a to a grazing cover this is gonna be our full season so just kind of the layout the thing that I've learned the most since I've gotten back even on the grass pastures is if you have a plan going into something you're a lot more likely to do it rather than just saying well maybe I should do this if you set yourself up with some some sort of a plan and you can go deviate from that whatever but have some type of plan in place I mean it's worked a lot for us because it's so easy to say well yeah let's go ahead and move them cows today or whatever you have if you know what direction you want to go with it it's a lot easier to stick to you know another thing I want to compliment Casey and Cori on because they came up with the plan before cows had come home and it was just wherever they wanted to go and they actually had it where they had a fence here they ran the corn stocks for a while we kept them off of here because this is winter wheat and but excuse me it is not this winter wheat down here but anyway so this is a full season graze but everything they had a plan on how they were going to raise them you know so and like you say this is planted back to rye I like rye but so this is corn stocks and the and the heifers ran they came to the fence they ran here and they ran here so what we'll do after corn stocks and we want to keep our carbon up we're big believers in carbon so what we'll do is we'll come back with oats we love oats we love oats so oats will come back and then and then we'll actually then come back with the cover after our oats so our heifers next year full season graze which that's just the way it works and then here and then this will be corn stocks so they run on and then another thing this is a this is a slough area of what we call it's where they feed fed for a lot of years and what we do now is we put a full season cover in there one thing too you guys on a full season cover when you do a biomass we did a biomass on this and we send it in and you clip it at the ground so all of a sudden you say where you are where are you there on nitrates that's something you've got to be very concerned about don't ask your neighbor if this is safe to graze find out find out a nitrate test and so what we were like we were just when what clipped all the way to the ground we're right at 1400 parts per million so that didn't really concern us because we knew we were only going to let them have two-thirds and then case you as far as will they ever go back to the old paddock once they graze the paddock and they move it will they go back they do I mean that's kind of a good telltale to when you need to when you need to move them to as if they do come back to the other one but no every time we moved it they seem to go after the new stuff now after we were all done we knew we've had so much under the snow that we let them have it for the whole thing for another week and they pretty much even we spanned out of the whole thing but they they love it up there I mean that's that's where they wanted to be this is just a picture that this is going to be next year's cover so we cut silage and are kind of our goal I don't know if we'll get away from it right Casey it's to maybe eliminate silage but I don't know if we will or not but we really like to plant rye back on we're in winter wheat country but we really manage our rye we don't let our rye get very big but it's unbelievable that what the root structure will be from rye you know and Doug talked a lot about Canada and the round you know and so we say we can't do this and but they're doing it but one thing I think and this is what we need to do I mean I'm not saying any of these but this is what we need to do they've got it they've got a number for their nutrient cycling and we need to do that as a farm we need to do that and we will find that out some guys say well what difference to make take half take half I think we really need to to understand what's going on you can tell your soils healthy by looking at it as great texture crumbles like Maurice chocolate cake it'll have a smell as a freshly dug potato so if you guys ever come to our farm the first thing we're going to do is we'll get some soil I'm not going to call dirt I'm going to call it soil I'm going to ask you to smell it because it will smell if you've got healthy soil yourself soil tell you our farm and ranch fields we should do everything we can to make this a better world you know we do not ask ourselves why we know the answer and the picture is worth a thousand words we've got a little clip here of the time lapse that we're going to show and it was kind of neat the NRCS they put a camera out when the cover crop was this tall and it's still out there right now but they're going to Josh is going this is in the middle of the like the third week in November so you can kind of see what we're up against but you can see on a normal year where we would have a pretty good graze even there we could handle we do Randy Helverson it was a contract with the NRCS and and and there are it on Dakota lakes the cameras are still there and the cameras still out there so it's going to be but you can see here now we're getting to the end I mean that's the cows are out there grazing right now and you'll be able to see the deer right see there's some deer but now this so you think well that's about enough snow so you can see what we were up against I mean so I feel really good about what happened because I don't you Casey still say by doing all this is this so is this a one year out of ten it probably is that's just like saying is it going to be dry next year why I'm not going to go plant my corn very heavy because it's going to be dry so we're going to go ahead with things and we're going to take the average so