Drawn by the milder winters, Mel and Elaine Heggelund moved to the Deer Lodge Valley from Wisdom in 1991. The place he bought needed improved management because the soil was in poor condition from overgrazing and emissions from the former Anaconda Co. smelter.
Over the next 17 years he put in cross fences and began rest-rotation grazing, aerated pastures and hay meadows, started feeding hay to cattle on some of the poorer sites to increase organic matter and manure and then planted grass seed.
The Heggelunds' son, Tom, a truck driver by trade, took over the operation in 2008 when his folks were slowing down. He began educating himself about strategies to increase productivity and profitability. One of his goals was to reduce overhead while increasing the gross profit per animal. At the time, the ranch supported 250 mother cows and about 300 sheep.
“We used to buy pasture, pay for trucking and buy hay. So we reduced our livestock to a manageable herd of 69 cow-calf pairs, 90 ewes and 25 goats and everything stays here at home. We made a lot of changes so we can stockpile forage for use in the fall and winter so we don’t have to feed as much hay and it saves on costs,'' he said.
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In 2012, Tom developed a high-density grazing program. The first year he created several 20- to 30-acre pastures using electric fencing, monitored grass utilization and moved cows as often as needed to prevent overgrazing. The next year he made smaller pastures and moved the cows daily.
“Last year we made 10-acre pastures,” he said. “I aim for 60,000 lbs. of live weight to the acre and move cattle and sheep two or three times a day, but that depends on the time of year.”
Tom says this year he plans to ease up on the stocking density early in the spring when plants are getting started and build intensity as the plants grow faster.
“You have to take into consideration the variations of the ground, whether it is a meadow or a ridge,” he said. “Our goal is to move them faster.”
He said the key benefits of high-density grazing are the moisture retained in the mashed grass and duff; livestock eat things they won’t normally; natural fertilizer of manure and trampled ground cover provides carbon and nutrients to the soil, reducing weeds and fertilizer costs; and it provides more flexible forage and more winter feed.
The livestock know they have to eat and move on, Tom said, so the forage is more evenly grazed; you can actually see how even the length is across a pasture. It’s all about time and pressure. We are seeing some significant improvement after three years.
CHANGE IS SCARY
Change is scary, Heggelund admitted, but I see things differently than I did before. Weed management is one example.
He said, I used to spray, to try and get rid of weeds, but I’ve found that I can manage weeds, even knapweed, leafy spurge and thistles, with livestock instead. Trying to get rid of weeds with sprays takes time, expensive equipment and fuel.
“The more we do sometimes, the worse it is,” he said. “But using weeds as forage and putting them through an animal to make a pound a meat to sell, is much more effective and profitable.”
Heggelund is a man who studies nature and livestock habits. When he put the goats into a field covered with leafy spurge plants, he observed them attack the flowers for a while but then quit; but later in the afternoon they began again, he said.
“I wondered why they did that,” he said, “so I checked plant sugars in the morning before turning them in and the Brix level was up. The sugar level went down after the plants were disturbed, but 4-6 hours later the Brix level was up to 14-20 and the goats began eating again. Goats are top feeders and it was interesting to watch how they nibbled the spurge plants from the top to the ground, leaving the grass.”
The thing about long-rooted weeds is they pull a lot of minerals from the soil and are beneficial for feed, he said.
Last year Heggelund seeded a 14-species cover crop, developed by Kate Vogel at North Forty Ag in Billings. He said the mix contained both warm and cold season grasses and broadleaf plants that included annual rye, buckwheat, turnips, collards, sunflowers and millet, with corn and vetch to fix nitrogen in the soil.
He said it was amazing to watch how the early warm-weather broadleaf plants covered the soil protecting it from water evaporation while the other plants grew.
“I let the cover crop grow for fall and winter forage and the cattle were grazing it in December when we had that cold snap and the snow crusted,” he said.
BALE GRAZING
Heggelund didn’t want the cows to lose condition and decided to experiment with some bale grazing.
He took enough round bales for four days of feed to the field, but the cows got five days out of them. Some people stand the bales up, but he laid the bales flat and removed the twine because he hates twine in the field.
Asked if aggressive cows push away more timid ones, he observed the aggressive ones did eat first, but when they went to lie down the hungry ones went to feed.
“I wouldn’t put out less than four days of bales,” he said, “but think the magic number might be enough for six or seven days on more spots. You just have to be sure the livestock has plenty of water.”
Bale grazing frees up a lot of time, he said. The delivery cost is the same whether you feed every day or once a week. This method leaves a bit of a mess, but I picked spots to put the bales so the organic matter, manure and urine would add nutrients to the soil. He believes there about the same or less waste as feeding a bale with a processor. Adding that waste is not waste if it gets microbes and creepy crawlies active to improve the soil and there are grass seeds in the hay that will germinate.
“I was pretty happy with the results,” he said, “but you never know what’s going to happen when you start something new.”
An added benefit to bale feeding he said was that when the wind blows, cattle lay down behind the bales that create windbreaks. You can control the distribution of manure better because it puts the waste where you need it rather than around water troughs, in sheds or windbreaks.
“When we went out to feed the next time the cattle didn’t mob us as they have a tendency to do because they were not hungry,” Tom said. “They weren’t in a dry lot, so could pick range grass where the wind blew off the snow, but I know we’ll do a lot of this in the future.”
After the storm, the cattle returned to feeding on forage remaining from the summer grazing program.
“There is no right answer because there are too many variables,” Heggelund said. “Each of us has different goals, and will go about achieving them in a different way. But we really have to do something to conserve organic matter and moisture, and we are losing too much carbon.”
