DRIFTLESS - Great River Graziers (GRG) held a pasture walk on the farm of rural Coon Valley grassfed beef producer Rod Ofte. The June 3 event was held despite the heavy rain that had fallen in the Driftless Region that day, and was designed to highlight the profitability of bird-friendly grassfed animal agriculture.

Ofte is an old-hand at grassfed production, and general manager of the Wisconsin Grass-fed Beef Cooperative. In recent years, Ofte has undertaken measures in his pastures to make his operation more bird friendly, and based on the number of birds viewed or heard on his farm, is realizing success. Audubon Great Lakes Grassland Ecologist Ashley Steinke attended the event.

The pasture walk drew participants from counties across the Driftless Region, as well as the neighboring states of Iowa and Minnesota. The event, according to GRG coordinator Amy Fenn, was sponsored by Sand County Foundation, Audubon Society, Grassworks, Wisconsin Grass-fed Beef Cooperative, Crawford Stewardship Project. Some of the funding for the event came from USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

“It's great to see everybody even with all the rain,” GRG’s Vance Haugen told the group gathered in Ofte’s barn. “We're going to divide you folks in half, and half of go on the wagon right away, and we’ll be talking about bird-friendly grassfed production to the other half that stays here.”

Bird-friendly

Haugen pointed participants to a publication written by his friend and colleague Laura Paine 25 years ago. It provides a detailed explanation of how to foster a bird-friendly environment within a grassfed production system. He said he’d reached out to Laura before the event to ask what the one thing was that she would want event participants to understand.

The publication can be downloaded from the internet at University of Wisconsin-Extension, SKU A3715. The name of the report is, ‘Grassland Birds: Fostering Habitats Using Rotational Grazing.’

“Laura said, first, think about concrete,” Haugen recounted. “Then, she said, that the next level of unfriendliness to birds, is corn and soybeans. She said you're not going to be bird friendly with crop farming. Then, she said the next thing that's just a little bit better is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), still not good, but it's better. It's supposed to help wildlife. It does help. It helps it more than what concrete and row crops do, but because of what is allowed to be planted, unless you plant an expensive bird friendly CRP, it's garbage. And then you can go up to rotationally grazed, and that's one of the best if you're looking at some economic things, but it has to be done correctly. And then, the cream of the cream is a diverse wildlife area that has burning and grazing and other things. So that would be the continuum that she wanted to talk about.”

Management changes

Haugen emphasized that profitable, grassfed, bird-friendly production can be relatively economically benign, and works wonderfully. Haugen asked producers present what they are doing on their farms to make their operations more bird-friendly.

Responses ranged from converting row crop land to pasture, establishing a lightly-grazed, native warm season prairie, splitting up pastures to allow more time for the grasses to rest and grow, establishing refuge areas within pastured areas with flash grazing, and putting in farm ponds surrounded by refuge areas.

“The idea that you totally exclude animals, the idea was that then you would have a paradise, right?” Haugen commented. “If you look at some CRP where that was done, was that correct? No, it was absolutely terrible. So, the idea is that you should have some disturbance, and you can do that in different ways, but flash grazing is a real nice way to do it.”

Haugen explained that ‘flash grazing’ an area means you bring in a huge amount of cattle into an area, let them graze everything down, and then have a very, very long rest period.

 “So the stuff might be 20-30, maybe even 40 inches tall. You bring in the cattle, and you wham it down to maybe three, four inches. But then you might have 90 or even120 days of rest, and it does tremendous things. Cattle are a wonderful thing, and fire is a good thing, done correctly. Done correctly, the mixture of those two things does some tremendous stuff for our birds and for our grazing.”

Grazing and streams

Haugen also recounted the history in the state of allowing grazing on the banks of streams. He put forth the proposition that eliminating trees in riparian areas (on the banks of streams), and having grass grow right down to the streambank, is better for the stream.

“Many folks here can remember in the 80s when the Wisconsin State Legislature tried to ban grazing near streams,” Haugen said. “How many people here know personally streams and creeks where grazing has gone away, and has the stream improved? Or has it degraded? Well, in most cases, it is degraded, and the reason for that is that trees have very large roots, and they don't hold the soil very well, and they fall over, and they can cause all kinds of different things. So if we can have grass growing right down to the edge of the water, you're going to have a lot better stream. “

Haugen posed the question, “doing these bird-friendly things on your farm – will it detract from your bottom line?”

“The answer is not necessarily. “One of the studies we cite in the information provided to participants today demonstrates that its possible to both increase production on your acres, and increase habitat for birds and other wildlife.”

Soil health

Haugen also touched on the growing practice of using cover crops to increase soil health and prevent erosion. One of the most common, winter-hardy cover crops planted in northern regions is cereal rye.

“When you terminate the rye, let it go to at least 12 inches,” Haugen advised. “The soil is a living thing. It has mycorrhizal fungi, and micro and macro insects. All of those things have to be fed. And if you think about it as a solar collector, what happens is that the plants take the sunlight, convert it into carbohydrates and other things which go to the roots. And the roots have exudates that the plant uses. So, it's a symbiotic relationship.”

Haugen talked about a billboard he sees along the highway enroute to Minneapolis. The billboard says, ‘Don’t Farm Naked – Plant Cover Crops.’

“What they're talking about is that you're never supposed to have bare soil - you're supposed to have something green on it all the time,” Haugen explained. “And when we're grazing and we've got grass, there's always something that's growing. And under the soil there’s always things working. It might get real, real cold, and some of it will freeze, but there's always some living things, and we feed those living things with that living cover.”

 Haugen explained that new data is showing that as the soils get more exudates and more diversity, you can actually grow more tonnage with less inputs.

“It takes a while, and it's not overnight, but it is measurable, and it is becoming substantial for some of the folks who've been doing it for 20 and 30 years,” Haugen said. “So in the short term, you got to pay the banker, but in the long term, we can make money by grazing. So, we can be tree-friendly, we can be bird-friendly, fish-friendly, and mycorrhiza-friendly, and it can all benefit us.”

Haugen emphasized that rotational grazing can get a lot of benefits for wildlife, for the environment, for people, but it is not a natural system. He said rotational grazing mimics nature, but not perfectly.

“So we do the best we can, trying to incorporate having the outcomes that we want to have with the biological systems that we have to work with,” Haugen explained. “Just this morning, Laura Paine said the word she really wants everybody to think about, whether you're taking a look at your grazing, whether you're taking a look at your bird friendliness, whether you're taking a look at your soil health issues, is to think about optimizing things rather than making it the best.”

“So, sometimes we might have to get by with just a little bit less, maybe pounds of beef per acre, but we want to have those birds over here, or whatever,” Haugen explained. “So you have to think about optimizing, and sometimes that means that we have to compromise some of the things, but that doesn't mean that we give up on any of our goals. So if anything else, think about optimizing what you have going on. And as far as making it possible to be bird friendly, you can be bird friendly, maybe not to every bird, but to many birds.”