ON-FARM THOUGHTS: Planned Recovery from Drought
by Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
Soil health expert Nicole Masters will tell you that “a drought is no different than a flood, fire or anything that has major effects on the biology and soil life”.
As many of you are aware, Nicole presented at our 2020 MFGA Regenerative Agriculture Conference (posted on the MFGA Youtube Channel) and did a great job kicking off our conference. Previously, I have heard Nicole state on other presentations that the “severity of the action has a bigger effect on recovery time than anything else”. That is how bad, how long or how intense was the effect. For those of us that ranch and run livestock herds in the Northern Great Plains this is the 2021 drought that we have endured this year. According to Nicole, the more intense and impactful the effect (drought); the longer the recovery must be to get back to status quo.
As such, the big question for a lot of us is how do we plan for a recovery from a majorly, impactful drought that many of us have dealt with at varying levels over 2021 from lack of precipitation. The more I think of this, the more questions I have on this topic. I have learned to plan for and deal with droughts - on our farm near Virden Mb, we have gone through dry times over the years. In the past, I just let the cows graze the new growth. Our focus was always to feed our cattle herd today and not worry about tomorrow’s grass.
This focus is referred to as “chasing the green”. We all do what it takes to stay in business. Gene Goven is a well-regarded rancher and Aldo Leopold Conservation Award winner from North Dakota who says that chasing the green will cost you in grass production next year by reducing the amount of grass produced and reduced fertility by exposing the soil and not feeding the soil life. Gene believes in feeding the soil first and the cows second. This strategic focus positions the little things we can do to add up and make a big difference.
Last month I gave a short talk about drought management at our local grazing club. It was a great crowd of neighbours and friends. We all had a good visit. My main point to the group was to stress that it is now too late to plan for a drought… it’s all about surviving the drought. While researching my talk to the grazing club, I reached out to my grazer network, past conference speakers and friends who are aware of drought research, past and current. It is nice to have friends and acquaintances that I can call on in these times. I asked them all, when is a drought over? What should we be looking at in terms of soil health? How long does it take to recover from a drought?
Throughout this challenging summer, I was thinking all we needed was some rain. Of course, we all need the rain. But what else is needed? Nicole makes the point that the more that the event has bared the ground will mean the longer the recovery that is required. This point really struck a note with me and had us looking at simple tests that could help us better understand how impacted our land has been from this summer’s drought. We recently dug up sod from our pastures to look at the soil aggregates. The soil aggregates should look like cottage cheese around the plant roots. An easy-to-do second test on your pasture’s soil health is a water infiltration test by placing a six-inch diameter ring into the soil and timing how long it takes for one inch of water to soak into the ground. Then repeat, which is the real test as to how long the second inch of water takes to soak into the same ring. Healthy soil should take less than 15 minutes to seep in the second time. These two simple tests are a very good window into your pasture’s soil health.
Also, as I was searching YouTube to help gather my grazing club thoughts on drought recovery I found a presentation done by the University of Utah University Agriculture Extension from March 2021. Amazingly, despite widespread drought in the western United States and Canada, this video had a low number of views to date. The presentation is well done and presented so that any rancher can understand the topic. My biggest takeaway coming from this video presentation was the rain will determine when the drought is coming to an end. The presenters referenced the severity of the drought’s impact on recovery and differences of cool season and warm season grass. They also talked about research done on drought recovery or lack of good information, and the need of research into timing of rain to forage produced. A research station in eastern Montana correlated the rainfall amounts and the timing of the rainfall event. This research now provides a production guide for forage insurance and forage production for grazing.
Ranching consultants Steve Kenyon from Greener Pastures Ranching out of Alberta and Dallas Mount from Ranch Management Consultants feel that being proactive is the best way to help recover from a drought by matching your herd to the forages that are being produced. This herd-matching exercise will keep your ground covered and keep the soil cool while feeding the soil life. Once the forage production has rebounded to levels you require and beyond, then you can start to rebuild the herd. Dallas also refers to how stress levels are higher after the drought than during as many producers now must pay for their drought management, specifically how do producers pay for feed bought that they didn’t originally plan for.
Here in Manitoba, our provincial and federal governments have worked closely with agriculture groups and municipalities around funding to try and help producers through these tough times via a series of funding assistance mechanisms and best management practices (BMPs). This work has been very comprehensive with a lot of effort and dialogues to deliver it as quickly as what has been done. But as a community of producers, we still can always remember to reach out to friends and neighbours and ask, “How are you doing?” Just talking and listening and showing interest can be really important and kind.
Going forward, my recent grazing club talk preparation also allowed me to update our plan to monitor our forages and soil health. When the soil and forages have shown that they can handle more grazing then we will start to restock our herd. This summer has been a challenge for pasture management. We have had green up via some sporadic rains three different times, and we don’t know how tough will that be on the root reserves. As of the start of September, we still have 100 acres we have not grazed yet. We will start on that paddock next week. We plan on early weaning of the calves to reduce fall forage requirements for the cow herd, and hopefully graze further into fall – fingers crossed on late November - on rougher forages. We are looking at planting 35 acres of winter triticale and hairy vetch for spring feed and green feed, so we will have a choice. Remember, there will be a rain that will break the drought. Honestly, though, I am not sure which rain will officially signal this drought break as this summer has shown us no clear indication of that breaking point.
The late Bud Williams, a well-known cattle handling expert from Alberta, often said that when it comes to ranching there are only three inventories to manage: grass, cattle and money.
You cannot have too much money or grass but you can go broke with too many cattle. We sure can make things complicated in the way we do them.
