Best practices

As I sat in my hotel room on the morning before my final visit of the trip, I reflected on what I had seen and what I had learned. Mob grazing is a catch-all description for many subtly varied ways of high-density grazing. Most were successful, in terms of improving plant recovery rates and increasing stocking rates, as well as making pastures more drought-tolerant (and better able to stand heavy rainfalls too!)

The majority of practitioners were also practicing holistic management, focusing on its three entwined measures of success, namely financial, environmental and social measures.

However, there were still certain things eating away at me. The main one was weed control. Would UK pastures, in our non-brittle environment, revert to a mass of inedible weeds in a few years? What type of management strategy would need to be adopted to avoid this? Would we be forced to top our grassland with mowers to prevent this or could cattle alone be used?

If weeds did invade, how easy would it be to manage them away in favour of grasses and other more desirable plants?

The trip to see Dr Allen Williams that day could not have been more timely, and provided a whole host of the answers I had been seeking.

Allen was an academic, specialising in genetics, who has more recently changed tack to become a farmer. He brings an investigative and inquiring mind to the topic of mob grazing, coupled with a rigorous intellect, a habit of postulating theories, recording results and drawing sensible conclusions.

Three years ago he, and his business partner Al Smith, took on a block of CRP land. This had been within the CRP programme for 25 years which, as no grazing, cultivating or topping was allowed, had reverted to scrubland and semi-mature woodland. The first step taken by the partners was to clear the larger stems with a bulldozer. After that, they made the decision that all subsequent clearing work should be done by cattle. No more mechanical operations would be undertaken, chemical controls would be avoided and burning was out of the question.

The woodland is in the background, the cleared land in the foreground. Allen had purposely left elongated stands of trees to provide shade from the worst of the Mississippi summer and shelter in the winter

The results were nothing short of amazing! The impact was made greater because this was so much a work in progress. Land that had been properly managed by Allen for three years had transformed into lush, rich grassland in which cows grazed on shoulder high grass stands, the seeds all naturally occurring in the soil from the (at least) 25-year-old seedbank!

Allen's management had transformed the land from weed-covered scrub to dense, productive sward after only three years of mob-grazing. Incredibly, no reseeding had taken place, the clovers, grasses and other legumes were all either already in the seedbank (and had been dormant for the past 25 years+) or were carried / blown in from elsewhere.

Those pastures being exposed to only their first year of grazing were covered in weeds, mass invaders designed by nature to provide speedy ground cover, protecting the soil from the ravages of sun, wind and rain. This showed what the vegetation would look like without intensive management of the grazing (the first step towards reverting back to woodland).

After only one year of grazing, annual weeds still dominated the pasture land. More intensive grazing / trampling needed!

Next stop was to look at a pasture in its second year of grazing. Allen had concentrated the animals really tightly, encouraging them to eat all the weeds, leaves, grass and vegetation down to ground level. The perennial grasses were just starting to regrow and would quickly form a thick, dense sward, out-competing the annual weeds that had previously towered above them.

Allen had mobbed up the cattle tightly, forcing them to eat everything virtually down to the ground. There is a risk of cattle performance suffering if you ask them to do this too often, though Allen used dry cows who are better able to cope with a high roughage diet of relatively low nutritive value. As can be seen, the pasture looks more like a sheep-grazed field. This allows the sward to thicken up and it will outgrow any annual weeds this year and in future years.

As a final contrast, he also had a paddock that had been properly managed for the first three years but then for this year had been set-stocked with a group of purebred angus cattle. The sward was showing typical signs of overgrazing, with thin, bare patches interspersed with unpalatable ageing tussocks.

The set-stocked land. Bare patches interspersed with tussocks show how selective grazing allows cattle to overgraze some plants, returning time and again to eat off newly emerged leaves, whilst leaving other plants standing to seed, die and slowly oxidise. Adequate rest next year should allow the pasture to start to recover.

The variety of pastures on view was a natural result of the gradual progress Allen was making in improving the land. However, it had all the appearances of a scientific experiment, with control plots and various different 'treatments' on view. Quite fitting for a former academic!

MIG and Mob

Durwood Gordon is typical of many of the farmers I met: Observant, willing to think through problems and happy to take the road less travelled.

For example, he practices managed intensive grazing (MIG) in the summer but a more intensive mob grazing during the grass-dormant winter months. He also, against the advice of his neighbours, sowed a mixture of big bluestem and other warm-season grasses (the neighbours claimed they would be grazed out within a few years; 15 years of excellent pasture management later, they are still the dominant species in the sward).

His cattle were some of the best I saw during my travels, well adapted to their all-grass regime (Durwood farms organically) with good rumen capacity and excellent conformation. His grasslands looked productive, despite the heat of Mississippi, and he'd installed a very good infrastructure of permanent electric fences, water sources and cow tracks to make this an easy-to-operate one man system.

A drilled stand of warm season grasses that has thrived under Durwood's grazing management

An unusual flytrap used by Durwood. The dark colour replicates an animal's hide. The flies try to fly underneath the 'body' and the transparent sheets below guide them instead into a liquid-filled trap

Sweltering in Mississippi

I was fortunate enough to meet Sledge Taylor and a neighbouring farmer-friend of his, Sonny Henry, at the mob-grazing school hosted by Greg Judy in April. Somehow, I managed to get myself invited to visit Sledge's farm (he was probably too polite to refuse my request!)

Sledge is a successful cotton and cattle farmer based in Como, Mississippi. He is also a busy man, and on my arrival was in the throws of installing a huge cotton gin into his factory. Corn harvest was also about to start, cotton was in full bloom and being regularly irrigated, soybeans hung heavy with pods and he was carrying 400 cows on the farm. Despite all this, and typical of the kindness and hopsitality shown by all the people I met on this trip, he willingly gave up his whole day, and evening, to ensure I was shown all aspects of his operation.

It was fascinating. Whilst looking at his mob grazing setup, the adage "If you want something doing, ask a busy man" sprung to mind. Sledge had only visited the mob grazing school a couple of months ago but had already installed miles of fences and water pipes and was mob grazing cattle across a large part of his land.

Sledge inspecting a water connection within his recently laid water system



It was early days for the mob grazing system on Sledge's farm but already things were looking good. Lespedeza and other legumes were interspersed within the warm season grasses and the diversity is likely to increase with the longer rest periods given to the pasture land.

Mississippi is also extremely hot and humid, which further aids vegetation growth, though it does make things hard for cattle - they spend the heat of the day in the shade of the trees. One problem faced by livestock farmers in the warmer states of the US is that of endophyte-infected fescue which is toxic and exacerbates the effects of heat. Careful management of the pastures under the mob grazing regime and selective breeding of cattle are both necessary to combat its ill-effects.

A further indicator of the early success of the mob grazing was the signs of life in the soil. Dung beetle activity was visible in cow pats and there was an incredible array of grasshoppers and other insects rising in front of us as we crossed the grass fields.

Heaps of earth within the cowpat are a sure sign of dung beetle activity. They roll the manure into a ball and bury it underground, naturally cultivating the land.

Cotton farming is something new to me (not surprisingly, coming from the UK where, as I was sweltering in 98 degree F temperatures and near-100% humidity, my wife told me it was mid-60's and raining in the UK, with 'a touch of autumn in the air in the early mornings'!) I spent a fascinating few hours looking at all aspects of its production - the half-mile long centre-point irrigator on land within the Mississippi delta was particularly memorable, as was the logisitical challenge of installing a nearly-new cotton gin into a factory with the cotton harvest only weeks away.

Following a delicious steak, eaten in the enjoyable company of Sledge, his wife Denise and various neighbours at a local restaurant I retired to an old wooden house, moved 20 miles and renovated by Sledge in the last few months.

Huge programmable centre-point irrigators watered the crops growing on the Mississippi delta, driven by powerful diesel engines. The wheels on the irrigator are driven by electrical motor and operated by a pressure switch - as a wheel is activated, it moves its section of the pivot forward, thus tripping the switch of the next wheel along the boom and activating it too.

It's not mob grazing but.... cotton growing on a plant in Mississippi

A cotton harvester

The house that Sledge (re)built. In fact, he had it moved from his land on the delta, some twenty miles away. It was jacked up and transported by a specialist firm of house movers. Sledge added the veranda oncve in-situ here

Not Enough Cattle!

This was a popular refrain amongst ranchers and farmers practicing mob grazing: "We haven't got enough cattle at the moment".

Although no instant fix, over time mob grazing produces more grass - much more - than under conventional set-stocking regimes. It also requires animal impact, especially in the more non-brittle areas (Allan Savory came up with a brittleness scale, from 1 to 10, with one being very non brittle, humid and damp, and ten being desertlike conditions).

In a non-brittle environment (and Missouri and Mississippi were both lower down on the scale, as would be much of the UK) a lack of cattle numbers or a lack of cattle grazing density has several unintended consequences. One is that the rest period can allow weeds to proliferate in the pasture and lack of density doesn't then have the 'pasture-topping' effect that mob grazers look for from their cattle.

I saw several farms where weeds, in particular ragweed and ironweed, seemed to be shading out more desirable species. The farmers were unanimous in their opinion that, with higher stock density and grazing at the right time of year, they would be able to get the weeds under control.

If only they had more cattle....

Regrowth on a well-managed pasture on Doug Peterson's farm in North Missouri. The pasture shows an excellent mix of warm and cool season grasses and broadleaf plants and will provide excellent forage next time it's grazed, whatever the weather

It's not what you know, but who you know!

During my meeting with Gabe Brown and Jay Fuhrer, they both suggested, as I was passing through Missouri, that I should try to get in touch with a guy called Doug Peterson who worked as a Grassland Conservationist with NRCS in Missouri.

Days later, I mentioned the name to Chad Peterson who, it turns out is distantly related to Doug, though neither was aware of it for the first five years of their friendship (It was their wives who finally realised they both look the same, act the same and share the same interests in mob grazing and cattle breeding. There's no escaping your genes! After some digging, they realised they shared the same Great Great (?) Grandfather on the paternal side)

As a consequence of this, I visited Doug. As well as a rewarding visit, he invited me to attend a farm walk with a group of Missouri farmers the following day, during which I met another farmer, Ben Coleman, who also invited me visit his place as I was passing. Doug also gave me the name of a geneticist-turned-farmer by the name of Allen Williams who he suggested I should meet up with in Mississippi. Subsequently, Allen gave me the name of another farmer, Durwood Gordon who I also met up with.

This is the beauty of a trip such as this, when you're meeting farmers willing to give freely of their time and their contact lists. One name, mentioned in passing, resulted in five further meetings.

Sometimes, it's true that it's not just what you know, but who you know.

Farm walks are the same the world over!

Traditional conservationists want to fence off riparian areas to prevent cattle accessing the creeks and damaging river banks. During the farm walk, we saw how, with proper management, cattle could actually improve the vegetation, helping to support the banks of the stream and thus preventing erosion. This is a creek looking as it would have done hundreds of years ago, when buffalo passed through the area intermittently. Note there is grass right up to the water's edge and small groups of trees exist in places.

Cattle grazing a pasture recently reverted from CRP land (not dissimilar to long-term setaside land in the UK). Note the large numbers of weeds in the foreground, which I comment on further in my next blog.

Chad's Challenge

Chad Peterson's ranch is unlike any other I visited, posing a unique set of challenges to any farmer or rancher.

The first issue is the soil type. Chad farms in the Sand Hills area of Nebraska, where much of the higher ground is, literally, sand dunes. The fine sand is extremely unstable, and if exposed to the air will blow and wash away in moments.

The second issue is the low rainfall. Interestingly, the water table is only a few feet below the surface of his land, so water availability for cattle is not an issue - he pumps water continually into a trough for the cattle, letting surplus water run back onto the ground and into the aquifer. However, lack of rain coupled with the sandy soil means grass will only grow if managed very carefully.

This is a picture of Chad's watering system (borrowed from this website - http://handnhandlivestocksolutions.com/blog/?p=62 - as for some reason the photos I took failed to save onto my camera).  Water is pumped continually, with surplus water emptying through a sumphole and down a pipe onto the previously grazed field behind the cattle.

Fortunately Chad has the skills and ability to make a success of farming under such conditions. He realised long ago - before he had heard of 'mobgrazing' or knew of anyone else who was farming like this - that allowing grass time to recover was vital. The best way he found to achieve this was to bunch the cattle up, keeping them off the majority of the land for long periods.

This allowed plants to grow a good root structure, it gave soil microbes a good food source and it encouraged the development of fungae and the excretion of glomalin into the soil, all of which help to stabilise the fine sandland.

Chad's land is to the right of the fence. Notice how, on the previously overgrazed left hand side of the fence, bare sand is showing through, whereas Chad's paddock has excellent vegetation covering and protecting the soil.

That Chad arrived at this conclusion long before anyone else was practicing (or even discussing) mob grazing demonstrates what an innovative thinker he is, coupled with great observational powers and a willingness to try new things.

He has recently turned his attention to the type of cattle he runs, and has switched breeds, preferring the hardiness of highland cattle which, he says, perfom well under the harsh climate of North Nebraska.

The highland cows and calves moving to new grazing. The calling is not typical of mob-grazed cattle but in this sitation was due to a combination of cows and calves staying 'in touch' with each other and also that Chad was making them graze down some older, less nutritious pasture. They were complaining a little, but still looked in good condition. If they'd looked over the fence at Chad's neighbours, they'd have realised the grass isn't always greener....!

The water table on Chad's ranch was a few feet below the surface of the soil. Here, he and his assistant, May, cross a small creek. Sand can be seen on the hillside in the far distance.

Dances with Buffalo

Farming in nature's image means trying to work in sync with nature rather than fighting it all the time. On the prairies of South Dakota, buffalo seem the obvious choice and, at the Jerde ranch, the sight of hundreds of them grazing the land was a marvellous sight.

Buffalo being moved from one paddock to the next. The siren heard in the background is the horn on Phil's old pickup, letting the buffalo know it was time to move

The Three Amigos (or at least two and a half, I managed inadvertently to self-edit my face out of the picture!)

One of the things that goes hand in hand with holistic management and mob grazing is a real interest in nature and the natural world. The whole Jerde family exhibited just such an interest, with excellent observational powers, a really good knowledge of native and introduced plant species, an understanding of the importance of the water cycle and a desire to record, with photographs and by other means, the improvements they are making to their environment.

This interest means the Jerde Ranch will be in good hands for decades to come.

Phil and daughter Emily examine grasses growing in adjacent paddocks. In the foreground, heavily trampled land shows a typical combination of large amounts of litter and good, even regrowth. The animals only remained on this area of land for a day, thus avoiding damaging the plant root system.

The benefits of properly planned grazing. In the foreground is land on the Jerde Ranch, with lush green grass growing right up to the fenceline. On the far side of the fence is a neighbour's paddock, showing poor grass growth and drought stress due to overgrazing, a typical result of set-stocking the land and not giving plants sufficient rest.

The whole of the neighbouring land looked like this, despite stocking rates being much lower. I saw this pattern repeated time and again on mob-grazed land which adjoin conventionally grazed land throughout my trip.

Phil examining an individual plant which caught his eye

Examining soil on the Jerde Ranch, typical of the interest the family showed in all things related to land and the environment.

Examining a green draw high up on the prairies on the Jerde ranch

Unfortunately the sun on the lens spoils this photograph a little, but this was a big bull buffalo passing within a few feet of me on his way to new grazing. These animals are perfectly adapted to their environment.