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One hundred forty Red and Black Angus - x steers were turned out on the pasture on May 20 and 21. Their average weight was 715 lbs/hd. The original plan at turnout was to remove the cattle by early to mid-August. However, the severe drought which gripped a large portion of the U. S. altered these plans. The herd liquidation and early movement of yearlings off pasture as a result of the drought severly depressed the feeder cattle market much of the summer. As a result, selling the cattle in August would have resulted in a financial loss, not only because of the market conditions but also because the cattle lost weight through the month of July due to the poor pasture conditions and extremely high temperatures.

Fortunately, some rain arrived in August and September which allowed the cattle to recoup the lost weight and even possibly put on some additional gain. In addition, prices also improved over this time period. The steers were removed from the pasture and sold on October 4 and had an average weight of 896 lbs/hd.

The steers gained 1.32 lbs/hd daily while on pasture. Daily gains in previous years were greater than 1.5 lbs/hd. Gains exhibited this past year indicate the negative effects on performance of the severely harsh envrironmental conditions experienced during July.

While daily gains were below normal, 110 lbs/acre of live weight gain were produced. This is the greatest amount of production/acre which was ever achieved on this pasture and is evidence of the positive effect the managed grazing system had on promoting grass regrowth when the rains did occur.

It was calculated that there was a total of 511 AUMs harvested and 2.2 AUMs harvested/acre. Typical production for the area is suggested to be approximately 1.25 AUM/acre. The AUM production which was calculated to have occurred was probably not a reasonable estimation of actual forage availability because in July the amount of forage available was probably inadequate to allow the steers to eat to appetite and also some overgrazing may have occurred.

It's uncertain what effect, whether negative or positive, that the drought and managed grazing system had on the goal of increasing forage quantity and quality. None of the bluestem or switchgrass in the pasture was able to seed out. However, because of the extreme moisture deficiencies, these grasses never produced a seed head even in areas which were not grazed after the first of May.

The procedure of allotting the daily grazing area by moving the poly wire fence was extremely simple and effective. In previous years, lanes were created with electric fence to give the cattle access to the water tanks from the various pastures. Because the cattle would group up in these lanes, numerous problems occurred as a result of the cattle pushing through the electric fences and getting into areas of the pasture they weren't supposed to be grazing. In addition to this, the above ground line delivering water to the tank would occasionally come unhooked and flood the area around the tank. This problem was corrected partly by eliminating the lanes and partly by switching from regular barbed plastic couplers to special O-ring couplers.

One thing that was accomplished by moving the poly wire fence daily was that stock densities of 25 head/acre were achieved. Stock densities of 25 hd/acre or greater have been suggested to minimize selectivity in grazing and force the cattle to evenly graze every plant rather than just eating the ones they considered most palatable.

Finally, the grazing system may have impacted some of the soil characteristics. By setting a fence up every day with the poly wire and fiberglass posts, soil conditions to a certain extent were monitored daily. From the end of June until when the rains arrived in August, a metal spike was needed to create the hole into which the fiberglass posts were placed because the ground was so hard. After the rains in August it again became dry toward the middle of September. In spite of this, it wasn't necessary to pre-open a hole in the ground with a spike because even though the soil was dry it was not as hard and compacted as it was during the summer. While it is uncertain if this is actually what happened, it would be a fairly notable accomplishment if the high-stock densities which occurred during the grazing season were able to reduce soil compaction over the course of just a couple of months.

A tour of the grazing demonstration site was held on June 13, 2002 at 1:00 PM. It was attended by approximately 25 producers and natural resource professionals.

(Tour photos courtesy of Tri-State Neighbor.)