On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, I am joined by Dr. Jeff Lehmkuhler, Extension Professor and Beef Specialist for the University of Kentucky, and we are going to discuss the basic principles of pasture health and regenerative agriculture. This episode hits on cattle intake, forage utilization, stocking densities, soil health, how regenerative agriculture can reduce inputs and carbon emissions. Join in and learn why these practices can make a difference without the politics to get in the way.
Dr. Jeffrey W. Lehmkuhler was raised in southern Indiana. He attended Purdue University and obtained his M.S. in silvopastoral systems and Ph.D. in beef cattle nutrition from the University of Missouri. Jeff continued his career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and was hired by the University of Kentucky in 2008 where he now holds the title of Extension Professor. His internationally recognized programming has spanned five countries and covered a diverse range of ruminant production from dairy steers to yaks. Jeff’s external funding exceeds $6M dollars and he authored more than 125 newsletter and popular press articles, 66 abstracts and journal articles, and 46 proceedings and extension publications. A key to his success has been forging relations with colleagues to work as a team. Jeff received the Agri-Communicator award in 2004, Southern Region ASAS Extension award in 2016 and M.D. Whiteker Excellence in Extension award in 2021. Jeff and his wife, Gwen, have three children.
If you would like to learn more about Dr. Lehmkuhler, visit: https://afs.ca.uky.edu/person/jeffrey-lehmkuhler
In complying with the letter and spirit of applicable laws and pursuing its own goals of diversity, the University of Maine System does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, familial status, ancestry, age, disability physical or mental, genetic information, or veterans or military status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The University provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities upon request. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Director of Equal Opportunity, 5713 Chadbourne Hall, Room 412, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5713, 207.581.1226, TTY 711 (Maine Relay System).
Chapters
On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, I am joined by Dr. Jeff Lehmkuhler, Extension Professor and Beef Specialist for the University of Kentucky, and we are going to discuss the basic principles of pasture health and regenerative agriculture. This episode hits on cattle intake, forage utilization, stocking densities, soil health, how regenerative agriculture can reduce inputs and carbon emissions. Join in and learn why these practices can make a difference without the politics to get in the way.
Dr. Jeffrey W. Lehmkuhler was raised in southern Indiana. He attended Purdue University and obtained his M.S. in silvopastoral systems and Ph.D. in beef cattle nutrition from the University of Missouri. Jeff continued his career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and was hired by the University of Kentucky in 2008 where he now holds the title of Extension Professor. His internationally recognized programming has spanned five countries and covered a diverse range of ruminant production from dairy steers to yaks. Jeff’s external funding exceeds $6M dollars and he authored more than 125 newsletter and popular press articles, 66 abstracts and journal articles, and 46 proceedings and extension publications. A key to his success has been forging relations with colleagues to work as a team. Jeff received the Agri-Communicator award in 2004, Southern Region ASAS Extension award in 2016 and M.D. Whiteker Excellence in Extension award in 2021. Jeff and his wife, Gwen, have three children.
If you would like to learn more about Dr. Lehmkuhler, visit: https://afs.ca.uky.edu/person/jeffrey-lehmkuhler
In complying with the letter and spirit of applicable laws and pursuing its own goals of diversity, the University of Maine System does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, familial status, ancestry, age, disability physical or mental, genetic information, or veterans or military status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The University provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities upon request. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Director of Equal Opportunity, 5713 Chadbourne Hall, Room 412, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5713, 207.581.1226, TTY 711 (Maine Relay System).
Creators & Guests
Host
Colt Knight
Colt grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia where they also operated a small family farm and show horse stable. During academic breaks and between schools, he worked in strip mines across the country. Colt earned his B.S. in Animal Science at the University of Kentucky, M.S. in Animal Science at Angelo State University, and his Ph.D. in Animal Science at the University of Arizona in 2006, 2012, and 2016, respectively. In the fall of 2016, he worked on a postdoc with Dr. Derek Bailey at New Mexico State University. Since 2017, Colt W. Knight works as an Assistant Professor of Extension for the University of Maine where he serves as the State Livestock Specialist. He teaches Introduction to Animal Science (AVS 145) and runs the Maine Grazing Behavior Lab. The core focus of the Grazing Behavior lab revolves around designing and manufacturing livestock tracking collars, engaging in applied grazing behavior research, and assisting other researchers with technology to interpret animal behavior. Dr. Knight’s research is broadly focused on selecting animals uniquely adapted to landscapes and promoting sustainable agriculture. Colt is the current chair for the Society of Range Management Livestock Foraging Behavior Committee, as well as, the North East Region Chair for the National Association of County Agricultural Agent’s Teaching and Educational Technology Committee. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Processes. Colt is actively engaged in outreach and has delivered over 150 seminars on livestock production since starting his career at the University of Maine.
Host
Glenda Pereira
As the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Dairy Specialist, Dr. Pereira conducts applied research and develops educational programs for dairy and livestock producers across the state of Maine and New England. While the Holstein breed is near and dear to her heart, Dr. Pereira admires the Normande breed and her favorite dairy products are sour cream and ice cream.
Host
Rachel White
Rachel is a Sustainable Agriculture and Livestock Educator based out of Hancock county. Her objectives include education, research, and programming about agriculture in Washington and Hancock counties and with small ruminants and poultry across the state. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Maine researching risk of parasite transmission from wildlife to small ruminants and risk reduction methods, including pastured poultry. Her social science work looks at farmer and veterinarian knowledge, attitude, and practice for small ruminant health management and the challenges they encounter with this topic. Rachel is also involved with the University’s One Health and the Environment NRT program. She is plans to include a One Health framework into her programming to address human-animal-environmental health challenges in Maine’s agricultural community. On her farm, Rachel has Finn sheep, laying chickens, seasonal broilers, pigeons, horses, and various fruits.
What is Maine Farmcast?
The Maine Farmcast features weekly conversations with experts from across the country sharing insights and advice for both new and seasoned farmers running operations of any size. Hosted by three livestock specialists from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the show brings you world-class expertise paired with practical advice about how to apply cutting-edge research to improve the efficiency and sustainability of your farming operation.
Colt Knight:
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I'm your host, Dr. Colton Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And I am joined with doctor Jeff Lehmkuhler. He is a extension professor and beef specialist for the University of Kentucky, and he is in Maine this week to help us record some video and audio resources on pasture health. And we thought we would like to take this opportunity to describe the basic principles around sustainable agriculture and regenerative agriculture.
Colt Knight:
Those terms are really just new buzzwords for the same basic principles of grazing management. And the purpose of grazing management is really pasture health. And these are principles that we've built over the last 100 years. But, I mean, realistically, grazers have been practicing these principles for millennia, almost. And when we got into the late 1800s, early 1900s, we started abusing these principles in overgrazing the western rangelands, and that's where, you know, it contributed to the Dust Bowl, and, Congress enacted the Taylor Grazing Act, which kinda restricted grazing and and monitored it more.
Colt Knight:
And a lot of good soil and plant folks got us out of the Dust Bowl, and ever since then, we have really been increasing our sustainable agriculture practices. And and I would say, today, more folks are practicing these principles than we've we've seen in a long time.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Colt, I think that's a really good point. You know, we think about the federal initiatives and, you know, the local soil conservation districts and the natural resource conservation services that are in states. And and those programs and and, agencies were there to help try to protect some of our soil and and from soil erosion, protect our water resources, and, you know, now we're moving into, you know, air air quality and and trying to protect air quality as well. And I like that, you know, it's regenerative agriculture. It's something that we maybe we think about in regards to degraded soil qualities.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And and the reason that we talk about regenerative is trying to improve, that degraded soil quality.
Colt Knight:
Yep. And when we're talking about, you know, that soil quality, pasture health, longevity, the sustainability, being able to keep those animals on that plot of land for the long haul. And there's really some basic principles that drive the entire entire thing. Right? So there's soil health.
Colt Knight:
There is the plant health. There's the plant diversity aspect, which really is keying back to soil health and longevity and everything. And we can break this down a whole bunch of different ways, but the way I like to use it look at it is from an animal agriculture perspective. So, the US Forest Service put out a guide a long time ago where they break our animals down into basic animal units. And the the principle behind an animal unit originally was, how much forage does a 1,000 pound cow and her calf need for a year, or a day, or a month?
Colt Knight:
You know, we call them animal units, animal unit months, animal unit years. And then, if we go and measure how much forage we have available, we can then predict how long and how many animals we can put on this pasture. Well, just because we have a 100,000 pounds of forage on the pasture, that doesn't mean we get to use 100,000 pounds. If we did that, we would kill it would kill all the plant life. The soil erosion would go through the roof, and you'd end up with with desertification.
Colt Knight:
Right? So how much can we take and protect the plants and the soil, but still grace our livestock? And I would say, in general, it's about half the biomass above ground. And that just sounds like a really round number, but the science behind that is if we remove, on most forage species, if we remove half of the biomass above ground, we don't damage any of the root structure of that plant, but if we take 60%, the root structure starts dying off, and if you take 70%, you kill 80 or 90% of the root structure underneath, And so those grasses physically can't survive without those roots.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Colt you know, that's a good, point. And the other thing, I think recently or maybe, you know, recent is hard to define. Right? Because it could be when the last 100 years is still recent. But, you know, in the in the last, decade or 2, we've learned more too about plants and particularly in Maine and even Kentucky where we have a lot of cool season grasses.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
The carbohydrate storage location is often in the base of the plant, the bottom inch and a half to 2 inches, particularly like orchard grass. A lot of people didn't when when the disc mower came out and or the disc binds, when that disc mower came out, you could really get those to cut hay down low. We had a lot of orchard grass that was cut with the disc mower down low, and the stand persistency just began to go away fast.
Colt Knight:
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
We didn't know really why, and then, you know, you'd learn that, oh, that bottom base of the plant is where the storage carbohydrates are for regrowth and new new leaves and promoting leaf elongation. And then other species, like you mentioned, their their storage maybe is in the root system. And so, you know, you continually take away that top mass and graze it, grows an inch, graze it back off, grows an inch, graze it back off because it's young, it's palatable, got a lot of soluble carbohydrates in it. But you're depleting the reserves of that plant, and you haven't left enough residual leaf for that ability to capture solar light and do photosynthesis, so it has to pull on those storage carbohydrates more and more.
Colt Knight:
And so as that root structure or those storages shrink, that leaves basically empty spots in the soil. So those roots aren't taking up that spot. Well, the old saying, nature abhors a vacuum. So what takes up that space? It's your weeds, your non forage species, or your invasives and things.
Colt Knight:
And so that's how your pasture turns from a beautiful orchard grass, timothy, or or natural forages to forbs and weeds. And then and, you know, overgrazing does the same thing. If we we got bare spots in there, what what takes up?
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And the other thing that that we, you know, have learned more about, particularly on our soul health folks, those roots, they exude carbohydrates and other, quote unquote nutrients that fungi and bacteria feed off of. And so as that root structure begins to be degraded, then you also are reducing the soil microbes that are in there and doing nutrient cycling. You know, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and And so as you deplete that root mass, you are also losing life in the soil.
Colt Knight:
You know, so soil health is really important. And not overgrazing is a way to maintain soil health. And then, plus, you know, the cattle are taking off that 50% biomass, but they're also defecating back on the soil, and that's putting nutrients back into the soil. And as long as we don't abuse those forages, it becomes a sustainable process. As long as we take care of that that pasture, it takes care of us, so to speak.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And and you mentioned animal units. Mhmm. So that 1,000 pound animal, and I you know, you you look through the literature, it's it's, like 900 pounds of dry matter per month.
Colt Knight:
It's it's about and depending on what part of the country you're in and type of cows you got, it's it's 25 pounds of dry matter per day. You know, some of the the older cows that were less efficient, we used to say 27 or 28, but I think most cows now are in that that 25 pounds per day of dry matter. So you multiply that by 30, and you get how much they eat a month, and then
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
you multiply it by 3.65, you get how much they're gonna eat in a year. And and so you can, you know, so we're looking somewhere 750, and then I I typically like to round up to compensate for the calf that's gonna be on the side. So that's usually why I'll round up to 30. And plus, when I'm talking to a group, I can do the math quick in my head. 30 pounds of dry matter a day times 30 days in a month, it's 900 pounds.
Colt Knight:
It's giving you a little buffer. Gives you a
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
little buffer.
Colt Knight:
You're not cutting it on the razor's edge.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. You're not doing it that way. And and so that animal unit month is a is a good number or a good thing to have to be able to do calculations for another term we throw out, carrying capacity. And carrying capacity really is that that stocking rate that allows the pasture system to be sustainable over the long run.
Colt Knight:
Yeah. And and sometimes people confuse stocking rate and stocking density. Stocking density is the number of animals per unit of land, and stocking rate is unit of animals per land per time. So you have to add that time in there to get your stocking rate. So if they're for a month or a year or or what have you.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So, Kote, that's an awesome point. Alright. So you read in popular press, I'm running 1,000,000 pounds of beef per acre. What is that? Yeah.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
That's that stocking density. Right? Yep. Because they don't tell you necessarily yeah.
Colt Knight:
Yep. And it's a pretty real distinction between those 2 because you can put 200 cows on an acre, but you can only keep them there for half a day or maybe even a couple hours.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Exactly. Because we we, you know, you have to provide the animal with that 25 to 30 pounds of dry matter per day.
Colt Knight:
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And if you don't, then they're not gonna have the nutrients they need to optimize their performance and production.
Colt Knight:
Yep. And so that brings us to we know how much they're gonna eat per day, and if we've measured our forage, we call it forage monitoring, there's a lot of different ways to do that. You can set up more scientific methods where you actually take clip samples and physically weigh the forage at a whole bunch of different random places. But, like, the NRCS provides what's called grazing sticks. So if you've got common forage stands like timothy, fescue, so on and so forth, you can actually just take the height of the forage.
Colt Knight:
And there are charts on that stick that say, if you've got x amount of inches, that's x amount of pounds of forage. And if you've got a pretty uniform field, you just go take some measurements and a bunch of different, it gets you really close.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
It it does. Really close. You know, we we usually use, like, a fescue or clover or fescue, orchardgrass mix. And, you know, you have to adjust for cover, right, stand density. But, if you've got a really good cover, you know, it might be 250 to 300 pounds of dry matter per acre per inch.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So if it's coming in at 10 inches, 250 pounds times 10 inches is 2500 pounds of dry matter per acre.
Colt Knight:
Yep. And so now that we know how much the cows are gonna eat, we know how much forage we have available, now we can plan our stocking rates. And, you know, it's pretty simple. If we've got 100 acres that produce 25,000 pounds of forage, that's 250,000 pounds of forage available. But we know if we remove more than half of that biomass, we start damaging pasture health.
Colt Knight:
So we wanna it's where the old adage take half, leave half comes from. And so you're like, well, that leaves us a 125,000 pounds of forage. Right? Not really because the animal is gonna trample, defecate, urinate. Wildlife are gonna come in there.
Colt Knight:
So you really only get half of that half. So you're really about 25% of the available forage that you can use for feed for that animal before we start seeing, damage in that pasture. Now there's some wiggle room on that calculation. We call that grazing efficiency, and there's a lot of different factors that that go into grazing efficiency. And one of those factors is how frequently we graze.
Colt Knight:
So we know that if we graze frequently, the plants don't recover as quickly. They need some recovery time. Right? So, if we've got more recovery time, we can maybe increase that grazing efficiency at 25% to 30%. But if they're going to be continuously grazing in there, we we can't we can't increase our stocking rates.
Colt Knight:
We gotta keep that relatively conservative.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Right. And I think if you look through the literature and and some of the the extension fact sheets and publications on managed grazings, you know, they may say that grazing efficiency in a continuously grazed system is 30 to 40%. In a really intensive rotation, it may be 60 to 70%.
Colt Knight:
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So that just gives you an idea of of, you know, the potential impact you can have within the system on forage utilization and grazing efficiencies. So you can have the ability to increase your carrying capacity, right? If you improve your grazing management, where you're getting less of that grass going, what I would call, you know, where it goes so mature that it senesces and dies. Because cattle tend to not select dead leaf tissue. They tend to select green tissue until there's nothing left, and then they'll go back and they'll get the
Colt Knight:
And and having green leafy forage, that's an Eastern United States concept. Good point. In the Western United States, we're grazing year 2 year old stands of forage because if we didn't stockpile that much the the frequency of droughts, there would be no forage more than half of the years.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
That's a good point. And that that range management is very different in that we well, it's 2 year old stand, and so it doesn't matter. The plant is wilted and dead. Right? So we're just gonna graze it into the dirt.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
But that doesn't work either, does it?
Colt Knight:
No. You you have to actually supplement protein. There's a couple reasons behind that. One, when those plants senesce to the point where there's, like, less than 8% protein available in there, the mama cows need that. There's somewhere between 6 8% protein that they they need, but they're ruminants, so they can convert all that dry forage into the what they need to grow.
Colt Knight:
But, when that drops below that 6 to 8%, we actually have to take them out protein supplements. And they call it cake out west. It's just wheat midds or or different things that are high in protein. Lick tubs that contain urea, which is a non protein nitrogen, like a pseudoprotein and things. So we actually have to supplement protein.
Colt Knight:
But it kinda tricks the animal. Right? So if if they eat protein, they think the forage is better quality, and they'll eat more of it. So if we supplement protein, they'll actually eat more of the lower quality forage. And, that's pretty handy to have that ability to to use that lower quality forage.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. And that that tricking is is, where the old adage is that, you have to feed the the rumen bugs before you feed the animal because like you mentioned, when when available protein in our forages falls below somewhere around that 6, 8% on a dry matter basis, we begin limiting rumen degradable protein and bacteria need peptide nitrogen and ammonia nitrogen for replication and reproducing themselves. And if you short the rumen of rumen available protein, then you begin hampering the microbes' ability to digest that forage. And so that's a classic response in a protein deficiency situation where you provide protein supplement and you see that positive increase in forage intake. Because now the bacteria are able to replicate at a faster rate, and they're able to produce the enzymes they need, the cellulose to break down cellulose.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So that's a really good point. I'm kind of getting off off task here a little bit, but the other flip side on that is, nitrogen, we don't think about it in your in your urea that you mentioned that we can feed to cattle. You know, think about what nitrogen cost is done from a fertilizer aspect. It has this same response in feed because it's pretty much the same process of making urea. So nitrogen costs for supplementing has gone up.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yep. So we wanna be as efficient with that as we possibly can.
Colt Knight:
And, you know, those those urea's that we're using as fertilizers or supplements, we don't make those in the United States. They're bringing those in from the Middle East, South America, Africa, so they're they're on a shipping container traveling across the ocean to get here. And then once they get here, they got to go to a shipping port, offloaded onto a barge, shipped down a river somewhere to a central point, and then they're put on trucks and hauled out to our fields. So when we can avoid using that kind of stuff, we really do lower the carbon footprint of the production cycle.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And that's part of the regenerative agricultural effort, right, is to improve, stand persistency, soil microbial activity to reduce the need for external nutrient inputs
Colt Knight:
Mhmm. And fertilizers. Yeah. And and I think when you you listen to social media and you watch videos online, a lot of folks talk about regenerative agriculture more in a more poetic way, but But a lot of times, they don't they don't get to the the the real science behind it, and that's that's kinda what we're doing here is discussing, you know, the the biological and physiological principles that that really back some of the claims of these, regenerative agriculture stances and things.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Because I think if you I've heard it from multiple in in multiple states and from multiple farms that we go on that you can see that one of the biggest not biggest challenges, but maybe issues is overgrazing. And it's you know, we we don't think about you mentioned that, you know, we have £25100 of dry matter per acre or whatever. But in our cool system, forage systems, it's not a consistent growth pattern. Right? No.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So you're going out there and you're looking at things in the springtime when we've got ideal temperatures, good soil moisture.
Colt Knight:
Most of our growth in that springtime, and it's gonna senesce in the summer, and then we get a little bit of kickback in the fall, but not as much as we did in the spring. Right?
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. And so we make that mistake of setting a stocking, rate based on spring forage production. Yep. And then we get in July August, and we've got putting greens out there for pastures. Yeah.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
If we're lucky.
Colt Knight:
Yeah. And so in Kentucky, you get to supplement some warm season forages in there to kinda help with that hump, but they don't grow that well here in Maine. So we end up sometimes supplementing in the summertime if if we need to.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. Especially if it turns dry. Right?
Colt Knight:
Yep. And that was one of the other things we were wanting to talk about is we produce just all this lots of forage in the spring and early summer, but what do we do to sustain us through the winter? And, you know, hay or haylage is a good way to do that.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And that's a that's a way if if we think about the system, you have all that flush growth in the spring. Right? We get about 60 to 65 percent of our annual production in those spring months, don't you? Mhmm. So if you set your stocking rates maybe where they should be to match up that July, August production, you're gonna have more forage than you need in the spring months.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
But you just harvest that as hay and provide that in the wintertime.
Colt Knight:
You know, the the mindset when I, got my graduate degrees out in the the western United States, and they deal with the drought more years than not. I remember my master's degree professor, he always told everyone, you set your stocking rates to the drought year. And then, you know, if you happen to have a good rain year and more forage available, then maybe you could add some stockers on there and utilize that. But you never get caught with your pants down if you're planning for that lower yield. So if you're planning for your summer stocking density for the whole year, you're able to harvest that forage and put it up as hay or haylage in the spring, but you can maintain your your cattle out on that pasture, you know, here at Maine for 3 quarters of the year and then then when you put them in the barn in the wintertime, you can feed them that hay or or or do some of that cool bale grazing stuff.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. Yeah. So we since you brought up that bale grazing component, we're part of a multistate project, in the kinda upper southeast, looking at bale grazing, and and it's it's something that has been adopted or or we've brought in. They do it in Canada. They do it over in the Dakotas and in that area.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
But the climate there is different. Right? In the wintertime, they they get frozen ground and snowpack, and and they also have more of a semi arid climate. We're very rarely do we get cold enough that we have frozen ground all the time through the winter. I mean, we we might go a week where we have some frozen ground and it thaws out, then we get another cold snap for a week and it freezes and it thaws out.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
But we also deal with a lot more rain and precipitation through the winter. And so you're taking and can kind of this the idea of bale grazing is you're going out there and you're setting out hay and and you space them out and and you might have a target of 2 ton of dry matter per acre that you're gonna feed. And you put that in rows and you space those bales out maybe 40 feet between each bale or 60 feet between each bale and you're using temporary electric fence and it's just like managed grazing. You give the cattle access to those 4 or 5 bales, takes them 3 or 4 days to clean it up, pick up that electric fence, and you move it forward to the next row. What that's doing, and we forget about it, is it's also allowing the animals to distribute those manure nutrients more uniformly over that area that you're feeding.
Colt Knight:
And you're preventing the impact factor of the animals and soil compaction. Soil compaction will destroy your pasture just as quick as as, overgrazing will.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And more importantly, we're limiting the tractor going out there every day or every other day with a bale on the front and the bale on the back. We try to get that hay set out when get it out when the pastures are dry to minimize that compaction. And and some of our farmers put out enough to go through nearly the entire winter. Others will put out enough where they can go about 4 weeks or so and then hope to get another dry spell and then put out another 3 or 4 weeks so that that hay that they've put up nice and kept dry in the barn, they don't want to see it out there getting rained on and and degradating. So they'll do it that way.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So you can manage getting that hay out to eliminate that soil compaction with your tractor.
Colt Knight:
Absolutely. So some of the other principles behind, you know, modern day regenerative agriculture, or we used to call it sustainable agriculture, You know, sometimes over time, the words lose meaning because people misuse them. But one of the things that we're doing in regenerative agriculture is we are reducing our inputs. You know, we're we are raising the cattle on the the forage we produce on the ground alone, and we're not supplementing them with things. But some of the other things is is, you know, we're not tilling soil and planting.
Colt Knight:
You know, that that's a big deal. Right? Is if you have to reseed every couple years, that's not a healthy pasture system. You are you are taking too many inputs, and you're having to put inputs back on.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And you run the risk of a of of a stand failure. Right? If you put and you go out and you are using an annual system and you plant those annuals, you're reliant on timely rain to get that stand up. And so there is some some concerns about that as well.
Colt Knight:
And there's sometimes you have to add those soil amendments, which are not only expensive, but they're adding to the carbon footprint of the the whole operation. So we're reducing some of these inputs that we practice these basic pasture management and health procedures, we don't have to add fertilizer. We don't have to reseed every couple years. We, you know, we don't have to till up the soil because there's no soil compaction.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Right. And we can we can also think about, you know, the the reducing the inputs. I'm gonna jump back to that bale grazing because what about buying in hay? Right? Because now you're bringing someone else's fertility.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
You have the n, p, and k that's in the hay, and you're feeding it through the animal, and they're depositing that nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium onto the pastures. And so you're getting some of those imported nutrients that away. And if you have a pasture that's kinda downgraded and you wanna renovate it, bale grazing can be done on that field or even just normal hay feeding in that field to get nutrients there. And then come in the springtime and maybe do some light disking and do your seeding if you want to use an annual crop then or if you want to renovate it to a different type of grass.
Colt Knight:
Which brings us to kind of the the final point we're gonna talk about here is what species should you have in your pastures, what's your better for the system, and how do we establish more of a native population? And and one of the things that I learned in range management is whenever you can have native forages that are just adapted to that environment, you're better off. Now most of us, though, we don't have that option. Right? We've already introduced our modern species, and you're not gonna without just putting some chemicals out there and just killing them dead and reseeding and naturally, you're never going to be able to fully convert that.
Colt Knight:
But what we can do is slowly introduce some biodiversity into those pastures.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
You're right. And I think when we look at that regenerative agriculture again coming back from a grazing standpoint, plant diversity is one of those things that we know can help because different plants take it take red clover as an example. It does have a tap root. And so that tap root can go down and maybe get a little bit lower into the soil profile than maybe something like bluegrass, which tends to be a little bit shallower rooted. So they can access those nutrients, bring it into the plant, the cattle graze it off, and then deposit those nutrients back on top of the soil surface where they can be incorporated again in the shallower, soil profile for the other plants to use.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
So that biodiversity and plant species is is important. And there are other things that we forget about, like forbs Mhmm. Chicory, plantain. Those types of forbs are tend to be pretty high palatability, high digestibility, good good nutrient content.
Colt Knight:
Yeah. And and for those of you that aren't familiar with the term forbs, that is our broad leaf plants. So our our grasses are, you know, they have a monoshoot that comes up and then the broad leaf plants we call forbs. The general public's gonna call them weeds, but not all forbs are weeds. Good point.
Colt Knight:
You know, a lot of forbs are excellent forage. And and out west, they really rely on those forbs because forbs are generally higher protein too a lot of times.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
Yeah. They'll they typically will run in the high teens on protein.
Colt Knight:
Yeah. And and the other thing is I spend a lot of time tracking cattle, western United States, eastern United States, South America, all over the place with my grazing behavior stuff that we do. And one of the things that we were really interested in is diet selection. And cattle really like a diverse diet. They don't eat just one thing all day long.
Colt Knight:
If if they have the ability, they will select a diverse diet.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
You know, Colt, I've seen that too in even my, silvopastoral work where we were doing rotational grazings and you'd come in there and that orchard grass and fescue would be just beautiful, 14, 18 inches But there'd be a walnut tree over there that had a limb that was down where they could go in and reach it, and they would walk right through that grass, go to that low lying limb, and strip all the leaves off. And mind you, it's got juglone in it that is somewhat toxic to animals. They went over there and they just grabbed all those leaves right away. So there's that, I think, novelty too in some of these selection behaviors.
Colt Knight:
Mhmm. Well, Jeff, we're we're running right at the the time mark that we've got here. So I think this was a good discussion on on the principles behind regenerative agriculture and sustainable agriculture as it relates to our wonderful ruminant animals. Ruminant animals definitely have an advantage over our other livestock species because of that, those microorganisms that live in their their four chambered stomachs or even our hind gut fermenters like horses and rabbits and things can turn cellulose, which is the plant wall constituent of of of those plants. It's the most abundant form of energy on the planet, and our ruminant animals can convert that into something that they can utilize.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
And provide us with high quality source of protein.
Colt Knight:
Yep. And and when you think about it, 85% of the land in the in that we use for pastures in this land are not suitable for crop production. So we couldn't raise corn or soybeans in there if we wanted to. But those ruminants can go graze the Rocky Mountains. They can they can graze the arid deserts.
Colt Knight:
They can graze the beautiful lush pastures in Savannah, Georgia, and and they can convert that to a high quality protein that we can utilize. And, you know, in the end, we gotta feed 9,000,000,000 people by the year 2040.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
That's a pretty big task.
Colt Knight:
Yeah. And so using these principles, we you know, and over the last half a century, we we've doubled beef production with half as many cows. I mean, so we are gaining tremendous efficiencies in all of our livestock species through the research and and practicing these sustainable practices. And I think a lot of times, the media likes to overlook all the the great leaps and bounds that we've made with with livestock efficiency.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
That's a good point. You know, technology has continued to rapidly progress our ability to improve efficiencies over time. And sometimes we wanna revert back to the way maybe we did it in the forties fifties, but, you know, realize that that also means we're losing efficiency and
Colt Knight:
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler:
The impact on carbon footprint could then go the other way if we're not careful.
Colt Knight:
But definitely, I think, increase. Alright, Dr. Lehmkuhler, It's great having you on another episode of the Maine Farmcast.
