Des Moines Register
08-06-06
More farmers choose to finish cattle on grass
Some Iowa farmers make switch to forage crops for cattle, eliminating need for
machinery that's expensive to own, maintain
By ANNE FITZGERALD
REGISTER AGRIBUSINESS WRITER
Maxwell, Ia. - Bruce Carney has found a way to cut farm energy costs: Raise
forage crops and let livestock harvest them.
Most of his 300-acre farm is pasture. Carney runs a 125-head cow herd on that
ground and another 90 acres of pasture that he rents. He raises 50 acres of corn,
some of which his cattle also graze.
As mainstream farmers look for ways to trim runaway fuel and energy costs,
some are looking at raising livestock without much equipment, instead letting
livestock harvest hay and grain. Carney sends half of his yearlings to an Eldora
feedlot for finishing, but he feeds half of the rest on his farm and retains the
others for his herd. Although Carney still finishes his cattle on grain, a growing
number of U.S. producers finish their cattle on grass.
"The grass-fed (beef) all the way to the finished product is still pretty small, but
it's a growing thing," said Joe Sellers, an Iowa State University Extension
livestock specialist based in Chariton. "The trend has been to try to grow
more acres of forage and to have the cattle harvest more and more of the grass
and to harvest less mechanically."
Whether the trend continues will depend in part on demand for row crops,
particularly corn, the primary feedstock for ethanol. Currently, the economics
favor forage, particularly in hillier parts of Iowa, Sellers said, but if corn prices go
high enough, that could entice farmers to break out grassland for corn
production. "It's really hard to predict," he said.
Carney, farms with his wife, Connie, and their 16-year-old son, Derek, in
northeastern Polk County. He owns a planter, a combine and other row crop
production equipment. His goal is to get rid of it.
"It's probably all going to be pasture," he said last week. "I like cows. Growing
grass is fun. I don't like dealing with the chemicals, and then you've got to market
the grain."
He and other farmers save money by not owning expensive equipment and by
not buying fuel for the machines or chemicals for row crops.
"I can make more off that grass than I can off that field of corn over there,"
Carney said as early-morning light cast a glow on his pastures of alfalfa, clover,
trefoil and grasses.
Carney participated in a recent field day on grass-fed beef at the Wayne County
farm of John Sellers. Both producers use paddock systems for rotational grazing
that include corn for grazing. Both spend a lot of time on foot or driving fourwheelers, monitoring grass growth and keeping tabs on undesirable species,
such as Canadian thistles. Both are scaling back on farm equipment.
Sellers is a leader in the push to use switchgrass and other grasses native to
Iowa as feedstock for the production of fuels and other industrial products made
from plant material, rather than petroleum. In 1994, Sellers decided to convert his
land to management-intensive grazing. He maintains 16 paddocks, rotating cattle
from one to another to give grazed grasses time to recover.
Sellers has sold his row crop equipment and hay conditioner, but bought a sickle
mower. He also uses chemicals, applying them selectively to kill thistle patches,
for instance. But for the most part, his operation is low on synthetic chemicals
and fossil fuels.
"I'm a lot healthier, and I'm closer to my cattle and the grass," Sellers told
participants in the July 29 field day, part of a series on grass-fed beef being
sponsored by Practical Farmers of Iowa.
This summer, it's been a challenge to keep the cattle on grass, however. "We
have been just dry as a bone," Sellers said.
The dryness in south-central Iowa has hit central Iowa, too. On July 18, 5inches
of rain fell overnight on Carney's farm. The week before that, nine-tenths of an
inch fell. But from mid-April to mid-July, there was little rainfall.
"The grass was almost nothing. The only thing I had in my pastures was
legumes," Carney said. He and other farmers who rely on pastures to feed
livestock have bought corn syrup, a co-product of ethanol manufacturing, this
summer to augment grass. Some have had to buy hay.
A dry summer highlights the benefits of rotational grazing, said Joe Sellers, the
ISU Extension specialist, whose territory covers 12 central and south-central
Iowa counties. "But that only works so far," he said. "If it doesn't rain, that's still a
problem."
John Sellers, his cousin, has run rural water lines into his pasturing system for
his cattle.
"Watering is always your No. 1 expense in setting up something like this," he
said. "The wiring, the fence, they're a consideration, but watering, that's the big
one."
PASTURE MANAGEMENT WORKSHOPS
Sponsored by a coalition of groups, these workshops will be held around the
state. Each workshop begins at 3:30 p.m. with a light lunch provided.
Grazin' Days are for farmers who have or want to develop rotational grazing
systems.
The remaining workshops and locations:
Aug. 22: Sam Schrock farm in Davis County
Aug. 23: Linda Grice farm in Keokuk County
Aug. 24: Jim and Loraine Stevens farm in Poweshiek County
Aug. 31: Gene Tinker farm in Clayton County
Co-sponsors of the workshops are the Iowa Beef Center, Iowa Farm Bureau
Federation, Iowa Forage and Grassland Council, Iowa State Extension, ISU's
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the USDA's Natural Resources
Conservation Service, PFI, and the Southern Iowa Forage and Livestock
Committee.
More information: Call Brian Peterson at (515) 323-2216 or Dan Morrical at (515)
294-2904, or visit www.iowabeefcenter.org.