The Moos Room™

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Emily
And welcome everybody to The Moos Room. Yes, you are hearing me correctly. It is I, Emily. I have returned. Or more accurately, I should say, I, texted Bradley to remind him that I am his cohost and that he does not have to do every episode alone. We'll say it that way. Right, Brad?

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Brad
Sure. I let you back into the podcast this.

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Emily
Yeah. It was it was becoming too much of the Bradley show. But and of course, you know, we sound like broken records, but, you know, some are especially is very busy in extension World. And it seems like in our in our pre-show chat here, Brad and I were comparing calendars and of course, our schedules don't coordinate at all for like the next two months.

00;01;00;19 - 00;01;24;21
Emily
So weeks where Brad is gone, I'm around weeks where I am gone. Brad is around. So, bear with us over the next several weeks, as we kind of get our schedules in order, but I will kind of, give you, a peek forward. If you noticed when you clicked this episode, you are currently listening to episode 299.

00;01;24;23 - 00;01;32;07
Emily
Which means episode 300 is coming out next. So kind of crazy. We're about to reach that milestone.

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Brad
It is crazy. I remember when we hit 100 episodes and that seemed like so long ago. I think we were still all sitting at home when we hit 100 or something like that, I think. I can't remember, but it's been a while.

00;01;45;10 - 00;02;07;25
Emily
Yeah, so very exciting. For those of you who have been here since the early aughts. And also exciting for those of you that have maybe just started to listen to us recently. So, you know, stay tuned, for next week for episode 300. Brad and I got some some hopefully what we think is fun stuff planned for that.

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Emily
So but before we get to that, right, we got to get through episode 299 first. And you know, as of time of recording. So we're in mid-June here. We are recording this episode on Friday the 13th, so, hopefully nothing, nothing happens.

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Brad
I thought about that this morning. I'm like, oh, maybe we should just not do it.

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Emily
But yeah, yeah. And I do own a black cat, so I'm waiting for him to show up at any time. But anyways, given that it's about this time of June and, depending where you are, right. And Brad and I are in different areas of Minnesota, but in both of our respective areas, I would say, especially this week, we've had a lot of rain.

00;02;56;06 - 00;03;11;26
Emily
So I was kind of talking to Brad about my out of control lawn. And we've been talking about his, very, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for here, but your pastures, I think, are they're pattering.

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Brad
They're out of control as well. Out of control?

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Emily
Yeah. So we thought we would talk about pastures a little bit today. So. Yeah, maybe Brad the first. Let's talk a little more about what's happening there in Maurice with your pastures. You know, and maybe what your strategies are. And then what are some general strategies, specifically for overgrown pastures. And then we can maybe talk about some other pastures stuff.

00;03;37;02 - 00;03;52;01
Emily
But I know. Yeah, again right now and depending where you are. But I think most places, at least in Minnesota, have been getting a fair amount of rain. So your pastures are probably also going like gangbusters right now. So let's talk about that. Bradley, what's happening in Morris?

00;03;52;04 - 00;04;13;27
Brad
Well, I should say today, overnight we have had a little more than two inches of rain as well in the last 24 hours. So we have had a lot of rain. There's water everywhere. I think within the last month we've probably had almost five inches of rain. So it's been a lot. We I should say we barely got, the hay crop.

00;04;13;27 - 00;04;41;05
Brad
And there were some that said in the field for two weeks, and then we just put in the manure pile because we just couldn't get it up fast enough. So hopefully nobody experienced that. But it's been raining. It seems like not nonstop, but we have been grazing for about a month. We put the cows out on May 13th, so a month ago we put the cows out and I was pretty apprehensive because it hadn't rained at all, hardly in the spring or April.

00;04;41;07 - 00;05;05;05
Brad
And I was worried that if I put too many cows out on the pasture too fast, we would go through the grass and it wasn't going to rain, and then I wouldn't have any grass. By mid-June. Well, now I have grass coming out of my ears. It seems like I don't have enough cows. We we are. We are milking 315 cows today at our research center.

00;05;05;05 - 00;05;29;10
Brad
So we have a lot and they are all going to pasture today. All 315 of them, even the conventional herd is going to graze today. So what? Why is that? Well, I've traveled a little bit in the last few weeks and it's been kind of crazy, but trying to manage the cows and the grass is never easy.

00;05;29;13 - 00;05;52;10
Brad
I should say. It's never easy because you don't know what the weather's going to be like. How much grass are the cows going to eat? There are about 4 to 5 pastures that are heading out. The grass is growing. It's one pasture I went to. It's knee high at least. It's got lots of lush grass, metal fescue, orchard grass, alfalfa in it.

00;05;52;12 - 00;06;16;00
Brad
And I just need to get things, under control. Or I'm afraid that if I don't graze them now and help control the grass, I'm going to have no grass in the summertime because it's not going to want to regrow, because I've let it grow too much. So it's been kind of a challenge to manage these cows and make sure that they're going to eat enough.

00;06;16;00 - 00;06;26;01
Brad
So we've decided that today we're going to put all milking cows on pasture and help manage it. And I still don't think I'm going to be able to do it fast enough.

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Emily
Well, and when it is getting like this, overgrown. And of course, I know your pastures have, a broad mix of different plants in them, but I mean, don't we also kind of run into issues with, the palatability of it going down, right. Getting Stemi or just it's too overgrown. It's I right? I'm not a cow, so I don't know.

00;06;49;09 - 00;06;55;26
Emily
But I would imagine we run into to some of that as well as this overgrowth really gets going.

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Brad
Of course it is a little bit overgrown. So palatability becomes an issue. Forage quality goes down. The more seeds that the grass forms. So they're probably a little bit less nutritious. It's kind of a balance game because on one hand, if I'm into lush pasture, when we first started grazing, the protein of the grass was 23, 24%, which is probably too high.

00;07;21;08 - 00;07;49;12
Brad
But now it could be less 17 or 18, which is still pretty good. It's not not bad. So it's kind of that one thing. How do I balance protein and energy in the grass with actually employees complaining that the cows, have loose manure everywhere. So that's always a challenge. And it's tough because we're not supplementing now, I've, we supplemented for the first two weeks on pasture just to help the cows adjust.

00;07;49;12 - 00;08;12;29
Brad
And now we've gone with no supplementation, at least on the organic herd. So we're kind of a grass fed herd, I guess you could say, to try and help manage the pastures and have them control the grass to help it regrow. And I have, you know, we're 30 days past when we first started grazing. Well, I need to go back into the pasture that they started, a month ago as well.

00;08;12;29 - 00;08;36;17
Brad
So, I don't know, it's, you know, this is this is what happens, I guess, when you either don't have enough cows, which is always the case, I guess, for most dairies of cows, or if we haven't really managed the grass or we have good weather, which is probably been, for us, the best thing is to have all this rain, because now it should.

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Brad
The grass should keep growing. It'll warm up a little bit and now the grass will eventually, hopefully keep growing well into July. Anyway.

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Emily
Right. And of course, in, in very early spring, I mean the the drought monitor was not looking great for most of the state. So it's it's always interesting, right, to, to see how things change and how quickly they can change. And I'm curious to Brad, the you know, you were kind of mentioning this just of how variable the nutrition content of this grass can be.

00;09;08;00 - 00;09;25;03
Emily
Just with all these things changing. So are you testing your grass at all throughout the season or how often are you doing that, or what's kind of helping you make some of these decisions? Or is it just employees complaining about loose stool, telling you that the proteins too high?

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Brad
I tested some early on to see what the protein percentage was, but I've kind of gone away from the testing now because we are just trying to manage the height of the grass, so I'm just kind of trying to go through it pretty fast. Moo ends are a good way to help manage what's happening. As far as protein utilization and if we're managing the grass.

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Brad
Well, well, if I look at, let's see, five days ago, our muffins were about 15 in our organic herd. So total grass fed. So they're kind of ranging between 12 and 15, which I think most people would say that's maybe higher than what you would want. I think if we think about a standard TMR conventional herd, we want to be 8 to 10.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;37;21
Brad
I've seen it as high as 20 in our grazing herd. So 15 is not bad. You're going to see lower Munz, the more mature the grass becomes. So that's maybe helpful as well. So we're not it's okay, it's okay. I do watch it a lot to see what happens. And if it gets too high well maybe supplement with some hay or something to maybe slow down things.

00;10;37;21 - 00;10;41;26
Brad
But yeah, that's it's always a challenge.

00;10;41;28 - 00;11;08;16
Emily
Okay. So so you had mentioned, right, trying to get all your cows. All what, 315 of them out to kind of work on this, this aggressively growing, grass in these pastures. But besides doing that. Right, like by just trying to get more animals out there on it, I mean, at what point would you recommend mowing it, like, is is there a benefit to that?

00;11;08;16 - 00;11;22;17
Emily
I mean, I'm really trying to go back to my college classes here and it's like, well, I remember also being taught that mowing can can sometimes actually help, right, with this pasture management. So when, when does that come in.

00;11;22;19 - 00;11;46;12
Brad
Yes. And we've been talking about that on some of our pastures. That's a good point. We have some heifer pastures that are, you know, heading out to do we go in and mow the tops off to prevent the seeds from getting too, mature, or are the grass getting too mature so we could go in, maybe mow the grass off so it's ten inches tall, you know, there's there's grasses.

00;11;46;12 - 00;12;13;22
Brad
It's two feet tall in some of these pastures. It's growing gangbusters. So we might go in and mow the top off to help, stimulate some regrowth, kind of, stimulating grazing, I guess you could say to help it not become, to rank and to mature so the animals won't eat it or it's all we it's it's we've talked about this, but it's not necessarily going to happen.

00;12;13;24 - 00;12;25;21
Brad
I guess if it keeps raining is to bail it, cut it and bail it. We thought about, baling some of our pastures, but if it's going to keep raining like this every three days, that doesn't really bode well for.

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Emily
You're probably not baling it.

00;12;27;10 - 00;12;47;29
Brad
You're not going to bale it either. So. But even even going in and mowing it, you know, I was driving in one of the pastures this morning that we had seeded last year. It's kind of a new seeding pasture and the there's kind of some standing water in it. So, I don't know if we'd want to dare drive any tractors in there without just mudding everything up too.

00;12;47;29 - 00;13;11;06
Brad
So it's it's kind of one of those challenging things. Do you mow it? Do you cut it and bale it, or do you let it grow, mature and hopefully the cattle will eat it? I guess we're going to hop on some is we're just going to let the cattle eat it and hopefully it it regrows because, with the weather right now, we really can't do much else.

00;13;11;06 - 00;13;14;08
Brad
We just have to utilize the cattle that we have to make it work.

00;13;14;11 - 00;13;42;28
Emily
Okay. So I mean, Bradley, I've been out to Morris many times. And I know that you use rotational grazing. So also kind of how how are you doing your rotations any differently? You know, like, are you still kind of trying to maintain the same schedule or, you know, do paddocks get skipped for certain reasons or were staying at overgrown ones longer than normal?

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Emily
You know, how do you kind of manage the individual paddocks within your rotational grazing?

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Brad
That's a that's a Hellboy.

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Emily
Now I've put him on the spot.

00;13;51;22 - 00;14;10;13
Brad
Yeah you have and that's a good one. How do you manage all of this? Some of it is. We're just trying to maybe get the cows through it fast enough. Let them eat a little bit, and then we're going to go out and probably mow it to maybe help simulate a little bit more grazing. So move the cows through it a little bit faster.

00;14;10;15 - 00;14;36;15
Brad
So they're not going to eat all of it. They'll maybe leave half of it there. Obviously they're going to trample along, trample a lot of this Stemi stuff. So that's maybe some good soil fertility. But I think that's what we're probably going to do is move the cows a little bit faster, and hopefully we can keep ahead of it, because I should say, we're probably going to have to go out and mow these pastures anyways.

00;14;36;17 - 00;14;50;27
Brad
Why is that? Well, with all of this rain comes thistles and holy smokes, have the thistles been growing like crazy in our pasture? It is wild.

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Emily
Even in my yard. The the those are really bad.

00;14;54;12 - 00;15;15;28
Brad
I know it's they're growing everywhere. And I went out this morning to feed my heifers at home and I looked at the pasture that they're on, and I see thistles that are three feet tall on my cool. I got models this weekend or try and get in and mow them, because otherwise they're going to be out of control and you don't want to wait for them to go to seed because then they just spread everywhere.

00;15;15;28 - 00;15;42;17
Brad
So that's going to be probably our most challenging thing now is going in and mowing and trying to get ahead of the thistles, because, and we have to we have to keep ahead of the thistles. You know, all of our pastures are certified organic, so we can't use, any herbicides or anything to kill the thistles. There's some there's some products that we can use from an organic standpoint that we can use, to control the thistles, but they're really expensive.

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Brad
So we've kind of shied away from that was on a large scale. But yeah, mowing we're going to have to do it. And,

00;15;51;14 - 00;15;58;25
Emily
Because those thistles, like, talk about getting Woody. I mean, they'll get those stocks will get very thick and yeah, it's.

00;15;58;27 - 00;16;09;24
Brad
Oh that you are correct. They're going to get, thick and they're going to get tall, especially plume this thistle. And it is going to be this year.

00;16;09;27 - 00;16;12;20
Emily
The thistle field is going to have a grass problem.

00;16;12;22 - 00;16;32;14
Brad
That is correct. That is correct. And there is there there's one pasture that I'm planning to redo. This fall we're going to rip up and plant winter rye in it, probably mid-August, because the thistles are just they've gone out of control. And, it was kind of a bust pasture that we tried to reseed and it didn't work.

00;16;32;14 - 00;16;50;05
Brad
And probably more thistles grew than what should have. And so we're going to try and redo that. So it's that's one of the things with all this rain is that the weeds and the thistles come as well, not just the grass. So you get lots of grass, but to get lots of other stuff too. So it's kind of one of those balancing acts.

00;16;50;08 - 00;16;55;14
Brad
I don't want to complain because we got rain, but along with it comes the thistles.

00;16;55;17 - 00;17;18;06
Emily
So yeah, just lots of considerations, for, for this, these pasture overgrowth issues, we'll call them, but, you know, as we kind of wrap things up here, Bradley, do you have other, you know, tips, tricks, you know, magical remedies, for, for folks as they're thinking about pasture management this year?

00;17;18;08 - 00;17;24;10
Brad
Well, I never have the silver bullet ever, trying to deal with it off. I think there's a lot we did.

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Emily
We'd be rich.

00;17;25;03 - 00;17;27;03
Brad
That's right. Exactly. We we.

00;17;27;06 - 00;17;28;15
Emily
And we wouldn't be here.

00;17;28;21 - 00;17;50;07
Brad
Yeah, yeah, you're right. And we'd have, highly productive cows and everything would be going well. I think probably the biggest thing is with trying to manage the grass in the spring is maybe increasing your stocking density. So if you need more count, maybe keep keep a few more animals around just to help manage the grass in the spring.

00;17;50;10 - 00;18;13;17
Brad
You can tell them a little bit later if you want. Obviously you can mow those pastures and sometimes it it might be all right just to mow it. If you can't get in and bale it, or if you don't have enough time, you could just mow mow it and maybe mow it high. It'll regrow. You can skip the pasture if you want and maybe bale it later.

00;18;13;19 - 00;18;34;02
Brad
Depends on forage quality. I think it all depends on your management and what you need for feed. You know you don't want to run out of feed, so you have to be thinking about is there going to be pasture in the fall where your cows are going to be? So I've kind of been developing this grazing plan or grazing rotation.

00;18;34;02 - 00;18;51;12
Brad
So I know, like I said, one month from well or a month ago from today is where we started and we should be back there again. So trying to figure out, when will we get back to that pasture? And I kind of figured it out. It might be another ten days before we get there and that might be okay.

00;18;51;14 - 00;19;10;06
Brad
So we'll hopefully be in a in a rotation. The biggest thing is trying to manage the weeds in the pasture and managing thistle. So I think there's a lot of different things that we can do. Right now for us, we're going to increase our stocking density. We're going to put more cows on pasture to help manage it, because we do.

00;19;10;06 - 00;19;30;26
Brad
I get not everybody has that luxury to, to have that. But we're going to increase the number of cows on pasture to see what happens. And hopefully it will keep raining. Actually, I get it. I mean, I know the crop people might not like all this rain and I've, I looked at our crop fields and went, oh man, there's a lot of weeds coming in those fields.

00;19;30;26 - 00;19;55;04
Brad
So getting out and spraying for weeds or cultivating or heroin or whatever method that people are doing for cropping, obviously comes at the demise of all this rain. But from a pasture based area, all this rain is is wonderful because it keeps the pastures growing all summer. So hopefully we'll be able to manage our grass and we'll have a highly productive grazing season.

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Emily
Yes, it'll be interesting to see, if you keep getting your rain, you want Bradley?

00;20;00;28 - 00;20;08;14
Brad
Yeah, I hope so, I hope so. Not everybody agrees with me when I say, oh, I love the rain. You keep bringing it, right?

00;20;08;14 - 00;20;11;21
Emily
Yeah. The email inbox is about to blow up, I think.

00;20;11;22 - 00;20;14;15
Brad
Yeah. Right. Exactly.

00;20;14;17 - 00;20;43;05
Emily
All right, well, I think that that's as good a place of any, to wrap up today's episode. So if you have any questions, comments or scathing rebuttals or want to yell at Bradley about, his wish for more rain, you can email the moos room@um.edu and you can find us on the web at extension dot UMD. We hope that you'll join us next week as we celebrate our 300th episode of the movies from,

00;20;43;07 - 00;20;49;03
Emily
But until then, we hope, that you have a great week, and we'll catch you next week.

00;20;49;05 - 00;20;53;25
Brad
Bye bye.