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Indicators Signal Right Direction
by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni/Wall of Fame Inductee
Following up on my most recent MFGA Blog, I wanted to continue the topic around how we as experienced grazers/soil health advocates explain to a new grazer or someone trying to up their level as an agriculture producer about some things we might know that perhaps they might not.
In that blog (available on MFGA.net), I delved into the different grazing systems, blending my experiences, trials, successes and errors into my own thoughts around outcomes. In this blog I will be trying to explain indicators of pasture management and soil health. Indicators are the things we see or notice on the property that tell us we are going in the right direction. Sometimes these indicators show us that we have taken a step backwards. It is not always a bad thing; we just have to learn from it. It is like dancing two steps ahead and one back. Indicators can be as small as a microscopic bacteria count to the larger numbers of cow/day/acre for yield equations by advanced grazers.
Here's my own list of indicators, based on my experiences and learnings. Again, to each their own and each farm is different. But perhaps there are some idea generators or reinforcements below:
*Start out by making a benchmark of everything on the operation: These benchmarks can be from soil tests to bird counts, plant inventory, wildlife inventory, water sources, reptiles, amphibians and anything else you can think of. Take pictures and make notes of the date/time and about the context of the photo. Remember you cannot measure your gain if you do not have a point to start from. In hindsight, this is one of the things that I wish I had done more of it and put more effort into in the big picture. The benchmarks would have made it easier to see the progress we have made over time.
*Profit: Tome this is the biggest single indicator for the path forward. If we are not profitable, our business will fail. We can do everything else right and have all the soil health practices implemented, follow good grazing practices. But without a good profit what have we gained.
*Diversity: In soil health, plants and animals on the land. The more the better. When you stand in your forage field, how many different plant families can you see from the one spot? What birds do you to see and/or hear? If you walk ten steps ahead do the plant families change in numbers and in total? Even if the plant is not easy to be grazed by the livestock it is providing benefits to the soil, plant and the animal health.
*Bare ground: The less bare ground the better for soil and plant health.. Bare ground will have a higher soil temperature, and the higher temperatures will kill off the soil microbes. Covering the soil with growing forages will benefit your total production. Covered soil provides surface roughage that will lead to less water running off after a rain event. The goal should be 100 per cent ground coverage.
*New seedlings in the stand: All living things have a life cycle: new, young, mature and dying. Seeing new seedling in your forage stand shows that your forage stand is renewing itself. Your soil is an active seed bank of new and old species waiting for the right conditions to start new plants. This year our operation has many seedlings that were of the bunch grass family. As matured, I could see we had both native (Needle and Thread Grass and Big Blue Stem) and tame or introduced (Meadow Brome Grass, Orchard Grass). Bunch Grasses produce all the leaf material from the crown (base of the plant) and then seed up a stock for the seed head. Stem grasses have leaves growing off the main stem. We also have Alfalfa, different Clovers, Black Medic and Native Clover seedlings growing in the forage mix. In the past few years, we also had seedling growing in the stand that died due to the lack of moisture later in the season. We had a high number of legumes in the forage stand to increase the amount of nitrogen captured from the air to supply the grasses in the stand. This is referred to Quorum Sensing AKA the plants talking to each other.
*Sod bound: The plants only come up a few inches before producing a seed head. The roots will be shallow when dug up. If you see this indicator on your forage stand you are in trouble: you have grazed the forage down too far without giving the plants time to recover before being grazed again. You can recover this standby long rest periods or you might have to terminate the stand and reseed it. Both will cost you time and money. We all have had to come back to a paddock too soon after the first grazing and grazed again, our priority is always to feed the herd. We then must allow a longer rest period for the plants to recover by producing a seed head, even if the plant does not grow due to the lack of moisture. Watch to see if the plant roots going down deeper into the soil. It is a balancing act we all must do to recover and maintain our forage stands.
*Less seed heads on the grasses: The plant must be stressed for the plant to produce a seed head. If the moisture is not a limiting factor and you have multi leaves on the plant, the plant will become lazy and not produce a seed head. This is a sign of a health forage stand. Remember forages must be grazed to maintain a healthy stand. If a forage stand is not grazed it will reduce production over time as it is not required and, in some cases, die out. In our area of the world these grasslands will become a stand of trees. In nature there is constant change happening.
*Apex Predators: If the animals in the top levels of the food chain such as spiders, snakes, coyotes, bobcats and many more are on your property indicates that there is a diverse food source for them. Sharp Tail Grouse bring foxes, if you have coyotes, it’s a solid bet you have rabbits, gophers and mice. Falcons and hawks will prey on small birds, rodents and other feed sources on the paddocks. Learning how each of them live and interact together is a life lesson to all of us. It is the Circle of Life.. It does get frustrating when you find a big pile of chokecherry filled scat from the local bear on the trail behind the house, or a hawk takes a chicken from the pen, or a coyote takes a slow-moving calf. All in all, it is the whole life cycle, and we must know how to manage and deal with all life around us.
*Increase production: It does not matter how you measure production whether it is in cow days per acre, tons per hectare or bales per acre. A more creative way to look at this is pounds of beef produced per acre, litres of fuel used per acre on the farm, dollars per acre generated by custom grazing. Are you seeing an increase in production? Why not? Were there rains at wrong time or not enough rain? Did you have a late freeze in spring or an early fall freeze or hailstorms that affected your production. What as a manager can you do better next season to increase production, including contingency plans around the unpredictable.
*The shovel test: This is a simple exercise done by stepping down a shovel blade into the soil. Rely upon all your senses to tell you what is happening in the soil. Do the roots go down as deep as you have penetrated? if they do that it is great and if they do not, why not? Is there a hard pan the root cannot penetrate? How does the soil smell? A healthy soil is pleasing to our sense of smell, an unhealthy soil can be rank to soil managers. Are there earth worms? How many do you see? Can you see the earth worms’ paths in the soil? Is there aggregation in the soil? Good soil aggregation should look like black cottage cheese or chocolate cake. The aggregation in the soil makes pathways for water and air to move through soil. This is vital in water infiltration and carbon sequestration. Does the soil break off in layers from part tillage operations. If there is a legume plant in the dug-up sample, are there nodules on the root? Are they working fixing nitrogen? If they are, the nodules should be pink inside. Do the plant roots come out clean or does the soil stick to them? You want to have the roots, and the soil stick together to show good soil health, it shows great fugus and bacteria activity. Clean roots are not a good sign. Compare a good field to a poorer field, can you see the difference?
*Water infiltration test. A well-regarded mantra: “It is not how much rain you get but how much can you keep on/in your soil”. A water infiltration test is very simple all you need is a 6-inch diameter and about 6-12-inch-long piece of pipe and a watch. Push the pipe into the ground 3-4 inches (you may need a block of wood and a hammer to get it in). Take a regular water bottle 357mm take a sip out of the water and pour the rest into the pipe in the ground and time how long it takes to soak in an hour. If it all soaked up quickly, add another bottle of water and so for the one-hour time. Many crop fields cannot soak up inch of water in an hour. Soil litter (cover of old died plants) starts by slowing the water droplet down and slows down the chance of run off. The soil aggregation that we talked about in the last point allowed the water to work its way down into the ground. The deeper the aggregation, the deeper the water will penetrate down. It is a great thing that when it rains the dugout does not fill, if your soil is healthy, it will fill the dug out several days later. I have a friend in dryland Saskatchewan and told him about the water infiltration test done on our land in a research project (done by third party). The results were from three and half Inches to seven and half inches of infiltration per hour. His reply was it was a waste of time for him to do soil health to catch seven inches in an hour as they never get that much rain in a rain event. I said if you can absorb 1 ¼ inches in a 10-minute downpour, that is equal to seven inches in an hour. It is the same amount and same effect.
While these are some of my tried, tested and reliable indicators, everyone has carte blanche on the number, types and mechanism of indicators that they use.
There is no right or wrong, but whatever works for the farmers and land managers on their operation. Just as long as they are monitoring and making sure their indicators are helping them go in the right, most profitable direction.
Have a safe fall harvest and keep a little bit of time for yourself.
Larry
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