Section16cattleco’s Blog

Three years ago after losing a ton of money trying to mega row crop farm like everyone else I decided there just had to be a better way of making my farm work for me and my family while being more in tune with nature. I read and read and read some more about different farming and cattle feeding practices from the past and present. Along with this information and my twelve years in the field of agronomy sales I filtered through all this info and just decided I liked cattle more than corn and beans. I had cows and was kinda half assing it and didnt really have any farm machinery for row cropping(I was hiring it all done). So I decided to work towards putting my whole farm into grass, alfalfa and forages to feed and raise my cow herd, along with feeding my calves after weaning. I started two years ago seeding my first field of alfalfa/grass. I then seeded the rest of the farm to row crops. The hay mix has been awesome and yielded two years of wonderful hay crops. This spring a seeded another field down to a grass/alfalfa/red clover mix. I used oats as a cover crop and harvested that for hay. I then turned to cows out in it in august for calving and they did very well on it for a couple months. So I am now down to 52 acres of crop ground on the home place with the balance in pasture and hay mixes. I have found that the machinery you need to run a cow operation/hay and grazing operation is not much and I have very little money invested in it. The main piece of equipment I have is a New Holland LX885 Skid Loader. I believe this is a must have for every single person on the planet. This machine gets so much done and has so much hyd power i can not believe it. Besides the fact I can run circles around any $80,000 loader tractor ever produced!!! I use it every single day for many hrs a day from doing chores, hauling hay, cleaning brush, moving junk, hauling manure, digging dirt and holes to bury stuff, packing silage, fencing and much much more. The other machinery I run is a medium sized tractor, round baler and disk mower conditioner. I also have a feeder wagon on a smaller tractor for feeding my calves in the feedlot. $15,000 is what I have invested in equipment. This fall we have been putting in more fence which has become much easier with the hyd post hole digger I made for my skid loader for $300. The thing works awesome. New ones are $1500-$2000 which after building mine I would never think of buying one for that kinda money. The fence we are putting in this fall will fence off another 22 acres of crop ground that I will seed to oats/native grass next spring. I will cut the oats for hay and then turn the native grass into more grazing. The remainder of the crop ground will be planted to corn which some of will be chopped for silage. I intend to to be left with 10-15 acres of crop ground that will be in a corn/winter rye-red clover rotation with the corn being cut for silage and a place to spread manure before seeding it to winter rye/red clover which will be cut for hay the following spring and then back to corn. I like this rotation for a number of reasons. It allows me to double crop leading to alot of feed off a small number of acres. It gives me a place for manure and the red clover will produce some nitrogen for the corn. I have another rotation that would allow for a person to purchase zero commercial N. I will be posting about this rotation in later posts. As far as the grazing plan I have taken an arial map of the home farm from my soil testing company and put it in microsoft excel. This allows me to to draw lines all over the map planning my fencing for now and future years. I suggest anyone wanting to change their farm be it rotation or fencing to do this. Its alot easier drawing lines on your computer and studying them rather than building fence only to tear it out two years later cause you changed your mind on how you want to things. Other than that the cows calved out good this fall. I still have my calves from last year and am feeding them silage, corn, hull-less oats, ground milo and alfalfa. They look great and being the first time I have ever kept them this long I am suprised how well cattle do on no commercial bought feed, no fancy mineral or concentrate and no growth hormones. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Erik