Low-Risk Strategies to Transition from Conventional to Adaptive Grazing
Starting small and using what you have are ways to ease into regenerative practices.
As course participants gathered ‘round in the pasture, the instructor started the timer at the word ‘go.’
The ranchers began by observing the animals and the available forage. How much grass would these 168 heifers need for the next grazing rotation?
Once they reached a consensus on paddock size, the men and women set out with step-in posts and a polywire reel to build a temporary electric fence enclosure. They added a path to the existing water source and then dropped the fence. The eager heifers filed into the fresh paddock on their own. When the last animal crossed the wire, Charles Rohla stopped the watch.
12 minutes from paddock-size calculation to happy heifers.
“That was a huge ‘ah-ha’ for those ranchers in the Grazing Essentials class,” says Rohla, senior regenerative ranching advisor at Noble Research Institute.
The participants spent the first day of the Noble course in the classroom discussing the principles of regenerative, adaptive grazing. Inevitably, a quiet grumbling began: “We don’t have time to build all this fence,” and “Who has time to move cattle every day?”
“When I stopped the clock and showed it to those participants that were questioning the feasibility of building temporary fences and moving cattle daily, they were pretty well hooked from there on,” Rohla says.
If you’re considering transitioning from traditional, season-long grazing to a more adaptive, regenerative system, you can apply the same steps: take an inventory, start small, and measure your results.
Step 1: Take stock of your land, animals and current infrastructure
The first step for students in the Grazing Essentials course is to create a current inventory. The ranchers review a large aerial map of their own property and list their water sources, fencing, pasture sizes, and stock inventory.
Many ranchers easily carry these numbers in their heads, but there’s power in writing it all down. “When you get it on paper and look at it on a map, then you can start thinking more critically about what you have and what you could do with it,” Rohla says.
Then, get a snapshot of your land’s health and set a benchmark using the Haney soil health test. This will give you a clear view of the current state of your organic matter levels and your soil’s biological and chemical health.
Finally, take stock of your true carrying capacity. Many ranchers base their stocking rate on historic capacities, or the number of animals that they feel they need to sell at the end of the year to make their bank payment. Instead, Rohla suggests evaluating the current forage availability and the needs of your cow herd.
Consider calculating your business’s current profitability per acre rather than basing success on a per-animal performance model. This calculation will illustrate how your land management impacts true profitability.
Step 2: Start small and use what you have
With a clear view of your current situation, you’ll see new ways to make small changes. Set aside worries about building miles of new fences, adding water sources or making complicated management changes all at once.
Instead, Rohla suggests finding ways to move a portion of your herd more frequently to lengthen recovery time on one particular pasture. Look at the big map and see where you might temporarily split one pasture to offset the effects of continuous grazing this spring. Build a lane or let cattle float back to an existing water source.
“The first thing to do is always use your existing infrastructure,” Rohla says. “Start with what you’ve got, and you’ll see, over time, the best places to invest as you learn and grow in your management.”
Starting with one or two of these small steps ensures a manageable increase in stock density, too.
“There is power in adding stock density. That’s often where we see the greatest changes in soil health,” Rohla says. “But you can’t just go out and try 100,000 pounds or more of stock density on Day 1 and hope it turns out ok.”
If your herd is split between multiple continuously grazed pastures, consider combining just a couple of groups together to give one pasture a rest for part of the grazing season to allow plant recovery to occur.
Step 3: Observe and measure progress along the way
Once you take these first small steps, the most important job will be to observe, monitor, and record small, incremental upward trends. Measure and compare your soil health, animal health, forage production, carrying capacity and profitability over time.
“With adaptive grazing, you’re observing not only the forage in front of you but the forage behind you, and also more closely monitoring animal health,” Rohla says. “You start seeing things differently. Once this occurs, you start doing things differently and start pushing the envelope and trying things that you probably would’ve never tried before. That’s when it gets fun.”
Most importantly, Rohla says, this is where you see the tradeoffs inherent to the regenerative transition.
The rancher who combines herds might spend a little more time trailering or trailing cattle between locations throughout the grazing season, but he or she also cuts down on the weekly time and wear and tear of traveling to multiple locations to check water, livestock health and fence all summer.
Seeing is believing
When the watch stopped at the 12-minute mark, the ranchers in the Noble Grazing Essentials class, shocked by their speed and efficiency, realized that building a fence and moving cattle in an adaptive grazing model is not the same as how they shifted herds from pasture to pasture (or at all) in the previous decades of their careers.
“We didn’t have to go get the bale of hay or round up three neighbors on four-wheelers. The cattle were at the fence, ready to move, and we spent our time quietly observing the grass and our livestock,” Rohla says. Those 12 minutes opened up a new perspective on old procedures.
“Once we get into this fresh mindset of observation and adaptability, it almost becomes like a game. We get our curiosity back, and we start to feel the excitement of watching growth and positive opportunity,” Rohla says. “And that’s what makes ranching fun.”
Laura Nelson
Laura Nelson is an agriculture journalist, author, and farm and ranch photographer based in western Nebraska. When she’s not writing or researching for her next book project, she’s tending her garden, helping on her family’s farm and ranch, curling up with a good book, or staking a claim in the front row of a music festival.
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