'300 Days Grazing' Program Still Making Steady Progress, 16 Years On

RYAN MCGEENEY

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

A new way of thinking can often be a hard sell, especially to an old hand. But since Kenny Simon, extension forages instructor for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, first began showing growers how they could reduce wintertime dependence on hay and other feed, he said he's seen gradual acceptance, especially when conditions are tough. 

Simon was among a group of Cooperative Extension Service agents and Division of Agriculture specialists who created the 300 Days Grazing program in 2008, introducing it to cattle producers through a series of field days and demonstration events across Arkansas. The program involved using existing management principles to reduce the length of time producers typically spent feeding their livestock on hay and other forages from an average 135 days – ostensibly, Nov. 15 to April 1 – to a lean 65, keeping cattle grazing pasture later in the fall and starting earlier in the spring.

“What we wanted to address at that time were the record-high prices on feed, fertilizer and fuel,” Simon said. “We were looking for ways a producer could offset that.”

Simon said that when the program was first introduced, it was greeted with enthusiasm. The logic of the program seemed obvious.

“We’re using the cows and ruminant animals to graze their forage,” he said. “It’s what they were designed for – grazing forages and turning it into protein. That’s going to be a cheaper option than us harvesting forages with mechanical equipment than feeding it back to them.”

Good times, bad times
The program saw some of its highest interest levels during the severe drought in 2011-2012.

“When we have adequate rainfall through the summer, and producers can put up a lot of hay, they’re not as interested in alternative management practices,” Simon said. “But that drought was affecting people’s livelihoods. They were in survival mode.

“We went from having 40-50 people attend our meetings to having to move meetings to college auditoriums because 300 people signed up.”

The frustrating thing, said Simon, after seeing so many producers adopt the program’s practices to great benefit, was watching many of those same producers return to their old ways once regular rains returned and hay became more affordable. Jonathan Kubesch, assistant professor of forages for the Division of Agriculture, said that “even in a good year, it’s still beneficial to push the grazing season as far as you can. It’s still going to save you money.”

Embracing the unknown
One challenge to adoption, Simon and Kubesch said, is that the 300 Days Grazing program requires a certain level of comfort with ambiguity.

“What producers seem to have real trouble with – and I’ve seen similar programs rolled out in other states – producers can plan a hay crop, but can’t mentally plan a grazing event,” Kubesch said. “It’s just this vague amount of grass that goes into the animal, not ‘this many tons per acre’ that goes into the barn.

“When you do the 300 Day program, you have to change what you’re looking into,” he said. “A producer can count their cattle and they can count their bales fairly easily. But to do this program, you need to track your weather, track what’s actually growing in your field and you need to be ready to monitor and adjust.”

The personal touch

Simon found that the most effective approach to getting growers to stay with the extended grazing concept over the long haul is to first build a personal relationship with an interested individual, then shape the program to the needs of his or her particular operation.

“When a producer reaches out and makes that initial call, I like to spend time with the producer,” he said. “It’s going out and building a personal relationship with them, being respectful of their time, and giving them the opportunity to talk to us about their operation. I’ve found that before producers start asking questions on the expertise level, they want to get to know us first.

“Once you’ve built a personal relationship, you can build a professional relationship,” Simon said.

Picking your battles
Simon said that while some chronological approaches work better than others, he’s had more success in winning growers over by finding the one or two things they’re already willing and able to change about their current approach to cattle feeding and building from there.

“It’s figuring out the producer’s interest, and finding something that fits their situation,” Simon said.

“The first thing we’re looking for is a way to improve the management of the existing forage base and how can we improve their management of infrastructure,” he said. “So say they’ve got cross fences up, but the only time the gates are shut is when they’re getting ready to cut a hay crop – they shut the gates to keep the cows out of it. So, can we start with shutting the gates? Put the cattle in pasture ‘A’ today, let them graze that for four or five days while pastures B, C and D are resting, then move them to the next block.”

A cross fence is a fence used to subdivide a larger fenced-in pasture, often used to control where animals can and can’t graze.

“When we improve management on what we already have, that’s going to be a cheaper option than planting something,” Simon said.

First steps
If a producer is interested in adopting the 300 Days Grazing approach, Simon said the first step is to contact the local Cooperative Extension Service office, and to read extension’s fact sheet, Arkansas 300 Days Grazing System — Getting Started, available online at no cost, along with a general overview of the program. Extension agents will then work with the grower to collect soil samples and establish other baseline information on the existing operation.

“What we’re trying to determine is when the operation is deficient in forage production, and when it has a surplus,” Simon said. “We’ll get some aerial photographs to see where the water points are, what the shade distribution looks like, where the cross fences are, take a look at soil fertility maps, and so on.”

Fine tuning and low-hanging fruit
Simon said converting a cattle operation to rely on grazing for 80 percent of the year isn’t an overnight process – it’s better thought of as a five-year plan.“Let’s figure out where you’re at today,” Simon said. “If your goal is a 300-day grazing window, you’re going to need to reduce the average hay feeding window from 135 days to 65 days – basically cutting the number of hay feeding days in half. So what’s something we can do in Year 1 to gain two or three weeks of grazing.

“Instead of starting to feed hay on Nov. 1, maybe we can start on Dec. 1,” he said. “So now that 135 days is 100 days. Now let’s see if we can plant some annuals to knock another 30 days off the end of it.

“With those initial steps, we can make big jumps in a short amount of time,” Simon said. “Getting all the way down to 65 days is a lot of fine tuning and seeing what works for the producer.”

Generational divides
Simon said that while new and younger growers may be more amenable to extended grazing than more experienced farmers, older voices still have a say in the matter.

“More than 95 percent of our livestock operations are multigenerational family-owned operations,” Simon said. “So even if you’ve got a young, open-minded farmer running the operation, dad and grandad are still involved.

“If a first-generation farmer who just bought 20 acres comes to me and wants to try stuff, he probably doesn’t have the mindset of ‘this is how we’ve always done it,’” he said. “So those new farmers are a fun group to work with because a lot of times they’re more receptive to the information.

On the other hand, larger, long-running operations can are sometimes in a better position to experiment with new approaches, Kubesch said.

“Having come over from Virginia, they have a ‘Graze 300,’ which matches our program here in Arkansas,” Kubesch said. “You’d get these operations with high enough productivity, in terms of livestock and forage, where they could afford some trial and error – they were a lot of our adopters. These guys had the willingness and the management ability.

“Arkansas has a lot of opportunity because there are people coming to the state, buying land, starting grazing operations. They bring their own ideas and mindset with them, but 300 Days is pretty approachable,” he said. “You don’t have to have grown up with it to do it.”  ∆

RYAN MCGEENEY: University of Arkansas