(Feb. 2013) Remember last year’s tough grazing conditions? Did you experience stress in your life, your pastures and your animals? How did the decisions you made affect your bottom line and this year’s upcoming grass crop?
Are you ready to take a step toward improving your grazing-management skills?
Planning out your grazing season in advance by using a daily grazing chart tool is an approach that is gaining in popularity among serious grazing managers and conservation professionals to keep track of where you were, where you are and where you are going throughout the grazing season.
Highly recognized grazing practitioners such as Joel Salatin, Jim Gerrish, Greg Judy and Steve Kenyon all use grazing system monitoring tools to create the land they want and improve profit.
Here’s what folks said about learning the process of pre-planning their grazing season:
“This tool helps you to think along lines you traditionally haven’t breaking through mental block(s) & view the grazing system from a different and fresh perspective.”
“Planning with the chart gives you a picture of the grazing season to come and will serve as a tool to assess success and failures of the past grazing season.”
“This type of planning and critiquing previous season’s experiences, points out the value of correctly (and honestly) identifying the bottleneck.”
“It emphasizes contingency forecasting, and I love how it takes into account life and how it is vital to plan around those things that are important to our families.”
“I believe this is a must-have tool for anyone grazing cattle.”
The team of Bob Weaver and Troy Bishopp, from your local conservation districts of Otsego and Madison counties, NESARE and The Upper Susquehanna Coalition will lead a lively conversation and demonstration in teaching the forward-planning decisions of using the grazing chart by partnering with dairyman Robert Tracy of Cooperstown to help guide his upcoming season. That’s right: Mr. Tracy is on the hot seat, and you will be his grazing specialists for the day.
This training will be held Thursday, Feb. 27, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a light lunch at the Farmer’s Museum Main Hall, 5775 State Route 80, Cooperstown. Grazing charts will be available at the site for a nominal fee, along with grazing management consideration factsheets.
To register for this meeting, contact Bob Weaver at the Otsego County SWCD office 607.547.8337 ext. 4.