Maine Farmcast

On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Dr. Glenda Pereira, Assistant Extension Professor and State Dairy Specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, has a conversation with Dr. Jaime Garzon about how to start a grazing plan. Dr. Jaime Garzon is an Assistant Extension Professor and Forage Educator at the UMaine Extension. His extension program seeks to develop and conduct educational outreach and applied research with emphasis on forage production and regenerative pasture management.

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Creators and 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.

Glenda Pereira:

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant extension professor within the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, as well as an assistant professor within the School of Food and Agriculture. On today's episode, we have a return guest, Dr. Jaime Garzon, our forage educator, where we will be discussing a grazing plan. So Jaime, as we started to record this episode, we were talking about some of the things that we need even to prepare in order to start a grazing plan.

Glenda Pereira:

So what were those things that you had mentioned?

Jaime Garzon:

Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm glad to be here again. Well, when we are talking the grazing plan, something that is important to relate is grazing plan is very similar to budgeting. So it they you are doing that is for is to know how much grass you are needing for the whole year and relate that with the with the number of animals that you have.

Jaime Garzon:

And it doesn't matter if it's cows or heifers or mares or goats. Each animal has a requirement of how much biomass it needs to eat just so you don't feel hungry. And because of that, you can relate that with the production of your grass and know how much grass you do need to produce across the whole year. So to start in, it is important to notice that you need to know your farm. You need to know how much area are you dedicating for pastures, for grazing.

Jaime Garzon:

Maybe you have some area that you would like to dedicate for conserved forages, for making hay, making silage, or haylage in the case, and know how much animal you have or do you want to have, what kind of animal should be because it's very different, the requirements, for a lactating cow or a goat or a sheep. Those are different. And what physiological state they are. Because, again, it's not the same to think how much food you will need to have for a milking cow or for a calf. So all those things, you need to have that writing down and starting the calculation and starting knowing and making all the measurements that you need.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. No, absolutely. Like you mentioned, it's really important for us to just have a general inventory, maybe a map of where everything is on the farm, and even what kind of forages and legumes we have within those, pastures and paddocks because those are gonna, vary, like you mentioned, to meet the needs of the animals that you're gonna be feeding. So absolutely. So a follow-up from that.

Glenda Pereira:

How do we take inventory? What are some measurement or tools that we have to help us, once we have everything written down in our grazing plan?

Jaime Garzon:

Well, with your animals, that is kind of easy because you all, of course, you want to know how much product your animals are producing. So you are producing milk or meat or wool. So because of that, I know that you have very clear how much animal you will have, how much animal you want to have the next years, and everything else. Even the proportion of calves, steers, heifers, or cows in a dairy production. But something to remember is you need to do the same thing with your forages, with your pastures.

Jaime Garzon:

And in this case, it is important, as you say, having a map. It's a very good way to know how much area you want to dedicate for those pastures, what species that you have because the productivity and the performance of orchard grass will be very different to the Kentucky bluegrass. So it is important that you recognise and even know, Okay, maybe this part of the farm is more hilly, hilly, is more dry, so I have ochaca grass here, but in this part it's more wet, so maybe I will have here red canary grass or fescue. All those forages will perform different. And to know how much they are producing, Duke has some methods that you can apply.

Jaime Garzon:

The first and the easiest one is going with the grazing stick. That is a tool that you can have by free from your NRCS office in your county. And that tool, just by walking and taking some measurements in the while you are walking, you can relate that of how much biomass those pastures are producing. Later, you want to relate that not only for the biomass but also with the dry matter that they are producing. That is very important because remember that the water content can change every hour in your pastures, depending if it's too that day was wet or was cloudy or maybe it was rain.

Jaime Garzon:

So the weight and the proportion of the grass of that biomass will be very different if you just account for the green matter. To calculate that dry matter, you always Well, that depends. You can maybe calculate that for that average, that approximately 40% of the grasses is dry matter, like in general, like a rule of thumb. But if you want to go further, you can even have the taste with a microwave or with a custard just to know how much dry matter you have. And with the dry matter, the good thing is a measure that will be constant in the year.

Jaime Garzon:

So actually that is something that you can relate with the intake that your animals will need.

Glenda Pereira:

Yep. And then so you mentioned the grazing stick. Another tool that farmers may, purchase online if they would like is, the pasture meter. So it's a tool that has Bluetooth capacity as well and it can download all the creates a nice Excel sheet for you with a bunch of data, creates a grazing wedge for you if you have your map set up. So that's another thing that folks can use as a pasture meter.

Jaime Garzon:

And even they are like the destructive method that is the most accurate, that is actually you have a frame, maybe we're 25 inches, something like that, Or maybe one foot per site. Just cut the grass on that on that small area, leaving, of course, the four inches that you need to leave always as a residue on your grass and dry that in the microwave. So you can relate that, the dry matter, in that small area later to the whole the whole acreage that you have.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. So, yeah, we we discussed writing down our our grazing plan, having a good inventory of what we have on the farm. We discussed methods to collect some of the data that we'll need. And then what was the third thing that you had mentioned?

Jaime Garzon:

In this case, now when you have the inventory, like your animals, and you have all the information with them, and you have all the information with your grass. So the third step is just to unify everything. And that is how you relate a pro like, again, they will change depending on the animal, depending on the size of your animal. But rule of thumb that is appropriate to use if you want to go more general is to calculate that approximately one animal, one livestock ruminant, it will eat approximately 3% of its life weight. So that could be less, that could be more depending on the physiology of the animal, but at least you want to provide that 3% of life weight.

Jaime Garzon:

And that will relate it to the dry matter that the animal will eat that day. So depending on how many animals you have, you need to multiply that by each animal on your herd, and you can compare that with the production with the biomass that your pasture is producing because you know how much biomass and dry matter you are producing. So you divide that, and with that you will know how much acreage those animals will need. Maybe you are producing less than the animals require, so maybe you need to increase the acreage that you have available, or maybe you need to sell some of your animals, or maybe you need to buy some some hay or some silage from the outside. And that is the good thing because if you know the numbers of animals that you are having at that moment and the same number that you will have in two or three months, you can make the same relation and know, Okay, maybe at this moment I don't have enough grass, enough pasture, maybe the next season, I can change that.

Jaime Garzon:

Or taking some actions just to figure that out for having enough feed for your animals.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. And, as you were mentioning some of this, in in addition to what you mentioned today, so, for folks who maybe, haven't taken a forage sample, forage sample could certainly help them understand the energy and protein content in their pastures, and a soil test. So we were talking the other day, and you said that, you know, forage management really starts with the soil. And correcting the soil to provide the appropriate nutrients that are necessary for the forages that we have in our fields. But obviously, that's before we start our grazing plan.

Glenda Pereira:

If folks are capacity to take a forage sample and to take a soil sample, they can start there. And so we'll have to have you back on to discuss those two topics. But was there anything else you wanted to mention regarding grazing plans?

Jaime Garzon:

Yes. In this case, now you mentioned it, it is important to notice that I think for having a good grazing plant, just to fulfill the requirements of your animals, you need to start thinking in the performance of your grass and that's why it's important to have the soil test because the nutrients and the characteristics of your soils will modify the performance of your grass. That means how much biomass your grass is producing, so how much dry matter. But remember that when we are talking about animal performance, animal productivity, we are talking first with dry matter because we want the animals to feel full. Because if they don't feel full, they will start breaking fences and you don't want that.

Jaime Garzon:

The second thing is just to fulfill energy. And the third thing is just to fulfill protein and the rest of nutrients. So all the recommendations that we are giving here today is just to fulfill dry matter, just to make the animal feel full and feel comfortable. If you want to go further, and that is something that you can that is recommendable if you are having, like, a specialized production, for example, dairy, that they are that's a lot of studies talking about that. So maybe in this case you want to go a little further, not only dry matter, but also energy and protein.

Jaime Garzon:

Those two things are very important because that will depend on how much your animal will perform. Many times happen that maybe you are providing your animals a lot of dry matter, but your animals are losing weight. And that usually happens when you are subgrazing. It's like the contrary of overgrazing. So in this case, you are providing a lot of dry matter, but with not much nutrients, and that's why your animals are losing weight.

Jaime Garzon:

So when that happens, you need to check, okay, maybe you need to start grazing before, earlier, that will happen. Usually, the measurement for that is with the seed heads or your pasture, you want to start grazing when the pasture starts to have seed heads. Not later because if you weigh more, the quality of that grass will drop.

Glenda Pereira:

Right.

Jaime Garzon:

And, of course, going with the protein, good thing here in Maine, that is not a big issue because here the grasses have a very good quality. But even with that, it's something that you will need to take care if you have a lot of quackgrass, smooth brown grass, or even sometimes the Kentucky bluegrass. That's why it's important to do the forage test as well just to check those nutrients in your grass.

Glenda Pereira:

Awesome. Yeah. So like I mentioned, we'll have to have you back for how you know, conduct a forage test and a soil test because they do, really matter when we're thinking about forages that we're feeding to our animals. So, thank you so much Jaime for, discussing, how to build your forage plan.

Jaime Garzon:

Thank you very much. Happy to be here again.

Glenda Pereira:

And for our listeners, if you have questions, comments, or, topics of interest for us to cover here on the Maine Farmcast, please reach out to us, by email, at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.