Watch your footing here. Okay. It was, it was trampled, but like, it was wet, and so
the ground has holes.
Yeah, I mean, this field hasn't been grazed in a while. It has
grasses, but it has a lot of invasives, too, like this stuff. The biggest problems are
this brush and then the Italian thistle which has a little purple flowers on top.
How do you get rid of those thistles? that's a big problem? Well
the only way really is to pack them shoulder to shoulder in a field, have
them pound it out.
That part of the ranch? No, that's across the street.
Have you seen the new bull? No.
That's Mike, that's the new bull. I need to get a little closer.
Which one, the brown one? Yeah.
Being a good boy?
Alright, I want to make sure they're in their field, and that they're performing well,
and happy, and have water, have their minerals, everything they need.
Then it's super easy.
You'll see, I'll just cut the line and they'll just run through and I
can, I'll move them in a grand total, it'll probably be about one minute.
Sixty-four.
It is, I promise you. There's 44 finishers and 20 yearlings in here.
All right, kids, ready to move? (snap)
That's wire, right? It's wire and plastic.
Okay, maybe but not even a minute, maybe.
Animals, when they're hungry, the way to
tell if they're hungry or not, whether you fed them enough, is that
when you move them in the morning, their rumen is a good indicator of
whether they're hungry. So that right in front of their hip bone there, there's a
triangle pocket that if it's sucked in at all it means that they're not haven't
got quite enough. Which grass is best, vetch or clover? They're both super high in
protein, so. (tap, tap, tap)
They check their boundaries, because they want to know what their,
what their field size is, and where they can go, and then once they do that,
they start eating and move back and forth in their field.
How many times have you been shocked? Fifteen.
(birds singing)
in the really hot times when we used to have
like 80 animals, they'd go through 2000 gallons almost in a day.
How much... But, in the
winter, they go through like like 300 or 400 cuz there's so much water on the
grass that they're like, they don't need to.
Are you just changing that out? Yes.
Alright, so the only thing, I just, I was gonna pull the truck into here so I have
enough room with the hose.
Just hold that tight so that cuz that holds that whole
side tight. Oh, got it, yeah, okay.
They're called scurs. They're not real actual horns. They're like, you can see
they're like little like things that curve over. Right. I mean, he's
full-grown and so like those are not even that big of horns.
Hey, cows! He-ey!
(cows moo in response)
Come on, Mommas!
(birds singing)
(in distance) Come on, come on!
That does not look like a deer tick. It's too big.
There are times we don't want to be in the fields because it's too wet, or Birds,
or other considerations. We map all that out, then we map out where we want to
graze at a certain time of year, and we plan all that out. Last year, we lost two
calves to mountain lions and we're trying to see, we're trying to coexist with them.
We don't want, we don't want to go out there and harm them,
but we want to live with them, but we don't want them to take our calves.
This is the herd we've kind of were able to really play with our genetics here
like as we've talked about. This is really an experiment, so, just even with
grazing, it's a great experiment, but with herd composition, and with the way we
want to see our herd kind of develop over time. I don't have to worry about
them going anywhere and we can work in these tight spaces and learn how to
handle them and learn how to move them in low stress ways because it's really,
it's really easy, makes life easier on you to do it that way, but it makes them
have a great life. They don't get stressed out, makes the meat better in
the end. That makes their overall experience
better. What we try to do is get them to just eat that bite, so that, that forces
the ground, for the grass to regrow. So you don't want to eat it all the way
down because then that, the roots just have to die and the plant kind of dies,
but you want to eat it like halfway almost. You just want to eat that bite
off the top and force the plant to regrow, which pulls that carbon and
organic matter into the soil and causes it to regrow. And then at this time of
year, we're really trying to create a layer of like mulch for the soil so a
lot of times... The grass is not tall, quite tall enough to do it here,
but our least property is tall enough that they eat it enough, but they're
laying down so much that the grass just lays over and covers all the bare soil
so that when it rains it's not hitting on bare soil and we're not causing any
erosion. So that it literally, it just, it stays there and the grass will bounce
right back up.
Your goals kind of change throughout the year. When you're in this time of year,
when things are starting to not grow as much, you really want to lay things down
and especially not, you don't want to graze your perennials and natives too
hard, because those are the ones that keep growing throughout the year. Your
annuals are the ones that are starting to die out now. If you see anything
that's brown around the ranch right now, that's because they're annuals and
they're, and they're, and they're dying back now but the ones, the perennials are
the ones that stay green all year. Those are the kind of grasses that we'll be
able to graze through, all the way through the winter, back into the next
growing season.
(cowboy music begins to end)
I love my job, because I get to work out with animals at this beautiful 1800 acre
ranch, as you can see is super sunny and nice, and don't have to sit at a desk.
I had a great mentor named Mike Giannini who taught me everything about how to
work with cattle, to graze grasslands, to have fun at work, to have fun outside of
work, to just love your job and love every minute of it, so, I'll never forget
what he taught me.
(Kaye) Some major turns here.