Agricultural News
Jim Gerrish: Insight Into Grazing Management and Cell Grazing
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:19:36 CST
Jim Gerrish is considered an innovator in grazing management today, but it didn't start that way. In growing up on a rowcrop farm, he didn't have any experience in raising cattle or in range management. When he started out in Missouri, he had a very conventional cow-calf operation that calved in February and March and they feed a lot of hay. It was at this point that he realized a key lesson.
"If you are in the cow-calf business, you should stock your ranch to your winter grazing capacity, not your summer grazing capacity," Gerrish said. "So, we changed from being strictly a cow-calf operation to being a mixed cow-calf and custom grazed enterprise, so we brought in a lot more stock April through July and early August to utilize the spring flush of growth and then when those animals left we stockpiled those acres for our winter cow feed."
Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays interviewed Jim Gerrish spoke at the recent Oklahoma No-Till Conference on Tuesday. Click or tap on the LISTENBAR below to listen to the full interview.
Gerrish custom grazed beef stockers, replacement heifers, dry beef cows and cow-calf pairs. He said they didn't get locked into believing that stockers was their only option and they found they could make more money on these other classes of cattle then if they were strictly grazing stockers. He said this allowed them to increase their stocking rate without a cash expense in purchasing livestock.
"To effectively manage pasture, you have to get that stocking rate in sync with what your carrying capacity actually is," Gerrish said.
To do that requires lot of planning to determine just how many animals your land can carry through the winter and how many acres that will take. In planning out feed resource requirements, Gerrish said he considered that winter made up one-third of the year.
Gerrish is a big advocate for the cell grazing concept. Since the late 1980's, he said they have been doing daily rotations. This came out of necessity because of the 1988 drought in Missouri. Gerrish said they started doing daily rotations as a way to stretch the feed supply and it worked so well that they continue to use the concept today. He calls the whole process management intensive grazing, because it's the management that is being intensified, not the grazing.
Eleven years ago, Gerrish moved to Idaho. In living in the west and grazing on public land, he is aware of the objections that environmentalists have with cattle on the land and the sustainability of grazing. He said they make some valid points but every problem that cattle have created on the public land is all related to cattle being in the same place for too long. If producers start managing the time of exposure on pasture or range, Gerrish said they can fix every problem that environmentalists have with grazing.
"It's all about managing time and that's what cell grazing does in shortening the period of time that animals are on given amount of land," Gerrish said.
Gerrish said producers use that strategy for an agronomic and livestock performance reasons, but it is also the most powerful tool producers have in showing the environmental benefit of grazing.
If producers are considering making the switch to cell grazing, Gerrish recommends they find someone in their local area that has already adopted the practice and work with them. He finds most people who are using the cell grazing concept are interested in helping others and sharing their knowledge.
To learn more about Jim Gerrish, click here.
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