Knowing how to estimate forage inventories and actively manage grazing accordingly cuts down on hay feeding and protects both livestock and soil health.
If your grass totally stopped growing on a given day, how many more days could you sustain your herd on the forage you have standing in the pasture?
Hugh Aljoe refers to this calculation as ‘reserve herd days.’ The director of ranches, outreach and partnerships at Noble Research Institute says this is a valuable tally to track for anyone ranching on the drought-prone Plains, or for those who are simply trying to project dormant forage inventories into the winter.
“No matter where we are in the growing season, we’re tracking our reserve herd days,” Aljoe says. “No matter what the weather throws at us, we know whether or not we’ll have enough forage to get us through the winter. We always have a plan.”
That confidence in the face of drought conditions is the culmination of nearly 30 years of practice at the Noble Ranches. He points to two of his early mentors at Noble – R.L. Dalrymple and Charlie Griffith – who were masters at implementing and teaching the reserve herd day concept.
“They showed me this fuller picture, this idea of managing proactively, knowing all year long what you need to do to get to the next spring,” Aljoe says. “Then I really started to understand the value of our forage production throughout the year, that you can never have too much grass, and how to manage that production really effectively.”
Start by crunching your numbers
The goals in Aljoe’s mind are clear: “I don’t want to have to pay for hay. I don’t want to have to produce hay. I want to graze as long as I can, because on the ranch, it’s typically easier and cheaper to take the cattle to the forage than it is to take the forage to the cattle.”
Supplemental feed is the largest direct cost in most ranch businesses. If one of your regenerative goals is to kick the hay habit, Aljoe says, a good place to start is by tracking reserve herd days. Following this principle requires three fairly simple figures: days, demand and supply.
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