Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 109. You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, Cal Hardage. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. Techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg slash grazing site at nobleorg slash grazing. It's nobleorg forward slash grazing.

On this week's podcast, we're going to talk about the Laster Philosophy of Cattle Raising, part two. Episode 105 was part one of the Laster Philosophy of Cattle Raising and that was inspired by the Hard Quitter podcast, I believe episode 163, with Alan Williams and he was discussing his cattle raising philosophy and how it's changed over the decades. The Lasseter Philosophy of Cattle Raising is a book wrote by Lawrence Lasseter about his dad's philosophy, tom Lassiter, who created the Beefmaster cattle breed. If you're interested in the book, we'll put a link in our show notes. Do not buy it from Amazon. There are some used books on Amazon but they're very expensive. You can order it directly from Lassiter Ranch that's not the name of the ranch, but I'll put the link in there so you can get it and order it. It's a very easy read, quick read, just an evening read. I really enjoy it and I reread it every so often. One thing with his breeding philosophy he has five pillars or commandments, and in episode 105, we discussed the first pillar, which is to select for the six essentials, and the six essentials are disposition, fertility, weight confirmation, milk production and hardiness. We didn't talk about fertility very much because to me fertility really follows under that second pillar of reproductive efficiency, which is mainly what we're going to talk about today. So in that let's talk about the second pillar. Second pillar is reproductive efficiency and Tom Laster believes you should keep 80% or more of your heifers.

In fact he goes so far as to say that a big error most managers do is they sell heifers. They don't keep them all. He said you should be breeding them young and culling extensively on your cow herd. You're breeding them young. You're culling extensively on your cow herd. Those heifers should be the best genetics in your herd. In fact he goes on to say if your heifers are not better than their mom's, you need a better bull. I think that's really true and I'm not sure that's something we often pay attention to. I'm going to have to say for us we are not doing a good job with that, with my herd. I'm keeping all my heifers, except I just sold 50% of them, helped pay some bills, but I need to keep them all to advance the genetics of them. And going back to what Alan Williams said in episode 163 of the Herd Quitter podcast, he keeps all his heifers and breeds them, and the ones that don't breed they go into a grass-fed beef program. And then your second point that you lose a lot out is that first calf heifer does she breed back? She breeds back great, she stays in the herd. She doesn't. She moves into the grass-fed beef market because she's still fairly young at that time.

Laster says you should breed them for a short breeding window, 65 days at 13 months of age. Yes, you heard me correctly at 13 months of age. He says at 13 months of age, put bulls in there with them. That's the same age, so you're talking a 13-month-old bull. And he puts them in at a ratio of one bull to 10 heifers and keeps them in there for 65 days, then pulls the bulls out. He preg checks and the ones that are open get sold. Initially I'm like 13 months of age. That's producing a calf at 22 months of age. I'm calving in May. So those calves are going to be 24 months of age in May when they'd be calving. So if I'm calving at 22 months of age, I'm calving these heifers out in March. So my first thoughts are I'm not a fan of that. But then I take a step back and I think that might work.

We had probably 10, 12 years ago. We had a set of heifers with a young bull and they bred and calved at 21 and 22 months of age. We didn't have any problem with those Granted calving them young. You could have some problems, so you've got to be aware of that, but that worked out. And calving ahead of the herd and we try and do this with dad's herd we always put the bulls out to the heifers a couple weeks in advance, or a full cycle, 21 days in advance of the cow herd, and the goal in doing that is so those heifers get extra days to breed back as a first calf heifer. If you put a bull with them at 13 months of age and they kept it, 22 months of age they're getting, instead of 60 days or 90 days before that bull's put in there, they're getting 120 days. 150 days Might be some benefit to that.

So, like I said, my knee-jerk reaction was I don't like that. But as I think about it, I'm not sure I don't like it. In fact I would love to have a discussion about that. So reply to wherever you're listening to this. You can reply. Make a thread in the grazing grass community. What do you think about breeding your heifers at 13 months versus 15 months?

Lasseter goes on to say that if you're having too many heifers, you know you're breeding all those heifers and then you're culling your cows extensively so you're improving your cow herd. He says if you're getting too many heifers bred, then go back to a 21 day breeding season for them. I'll be honest, that scares me to do. Maybe, as you work that way, that would be possible. I'd be interested to know if anyone out there's doing a 21 day breeding season heifers, cows, anything. Now I can do that with my sheep. It's amazing with the sheep and goats how quickly how many they breed and how quickly my lambing season usually after three weeks it's basically over. So interesting. And then I mentioned this a while ago. But if their heifers are not better than their moms, use a different bull. If the heifers are not better than their moms, use a different bull. If the heifers are not better than their moms, use a different bull.

And one thing when we talk about bulls, a few generations of bulls have a tremendous power to completely remake your herd. Lester says Any bull battery will remake a cow herd in its own likeness in three generations, and I've heard that numerous times. Of course, that's not three breeding seasons, it's three generations. I like to throw out the converse of that. If you have cows you like, why not remake your herd in the image of your cows? How would you do that? By keeping your own bulls out of your best cows and let's capitalize or double down on those cow genetics. Of course, if you're not there yet, if your cows are not there yet, you need to bring in those bulls with the genetics to get your cow herd where they need to be first. But if your cow herd's there actually double down on your cow herd and start using bulls from your best cows. That's probably another discussion deal we could have in the grazing grass community. Now, one thing he said I thought was very interesting popularity hurts a breed. You know, when I first hear that that's interesting. But then I'm like, oh yeah, it does. Because he goes on to say the man hasn't been born who will cull high priced cattle. And that goes with any breeding stock. You pay a large amount of money. It's easier to forgive them not doing something Because you've got a lot of money in them. However, they need to be culled as hard or harder than commercial cattle Because you're keeping seed stock out of them or potentially keeping seed stock to breed for the next generation.

I had a cow calve last week that I ended up pulling the calf on. She calved a little bit earlier than anticipated but I saw she was off by herself one evening. Then when I went back she was with the herd. And then the next day she was off by herself one evening. Then when I went back she was with the herd and then the next day she was off by herself and I gave them a new paddock and she immediately went over and grazed. So I got her in later and the keff was coming backwards. And if the keff's coming backwards it's not good, but it's not bad as long as the feet present themselves. In this particular case the feet were folded up under the calf so the tail presented itself. So it's not a good situation.

I actually called my daughter, who's a vet tech, and asked them what they were doing. I said I may need you all to come out. I will let you know. So I had her on standby. I was able to get the calf out, had to push the calf back in, get those back legs up so we could pull it out. Once I did that, I was able to pull it out without a problem. But I lost the calf. So that means on her line on my records. I don't have a calf to sell. So who pays her bill? The cow does and I like this cow. In fact I've got a yearling heifer out of her that I really like. So I was really disappointed and the calf was a heifer. I was really disappointed by that, but that's the way it works and she's not going to produce a calf this year, so she's going to go to town and just on that.

On the record-keeping portion, Laster has an interesting philosophy on record-keeping that I know some people will agree with and some won't. He says for the records we'd like to keep, we don't need to. He says brand those cows with the year they were born and then you breed them as heifers, you preg check them, cull any that's open. Then, as a cow, you preg check them. If they're open they get sold when you wean their calf. So every cow in the herd has produced a calf every year. He's like you don't need to know this cow had this calf or anything, you just need to know the year they're born. That makes it easier to cull animals because you're not seeing them as individuals but you're looking at them as a herd. I for one I like to keep a few more records of that. So I'm not quite there on that. But that is an interesting philosophy and really simple. So you can do it and keep them going. Of course, if you're doing registered animals, that's a little bit different. You got to be able to trace them to the correct animal.

Now one thing, moving on from the second pillar, which the second pillar about fertility and reproductive efficiency, in my opinion is the most important. Now, these are all important. There's great things. I love the six essentials, but the first thing no matter what species you're doing, if you're not getting offspring on the ground and they're not weaning them, you're not bringing any money in if you're running a cow-calf or a lambing-kitting program. So to me you got to start at reproductive efficiency and make sure things are raising calves every year, lambs every year, kids every year or whenever you plan on that. If they're not, you need to get rid of them and get an animal that will, and then you can start worrying about the other things. I think the argument could be made that some of these other things, if you worry about them in the beginning, they'll help you get there faster. But don't overlook that. Reproductive efficiency.

In my opinion, the third pillar is performance test in a constant environment. And really what he's saying there performance test your animals in the environment they're expected to perform under or the environment they're expected to produce in. So when we think about bulls, we want them forage produced, we forage developed, because they're going to be in forage conditions. At least for me they are. Maybe your operation is a little bit different, but look at your operation and however they're going to be managed in your operation, that's the way they should be developed. And one thing if you develop them on feed or whatever, lester has a couple things to say about that. Fat covers a multitude of sins. So you know you get that animal fat. You don't know what's hiding under that fat. On the other hand, fat covers a multitude of virtues. So it may be a pretty good animal under there, but feeding them hides a lot of that. So make sure you get them in the condition they're going to perform under for you.

One thing I love about goats in Oklahoma there's a forage buck test and mainly Kikiko, some Spanish end up on it and those bucks are put out on grass. Their rate of gain is is measured, their fetal egg counts are measured and you're able to see which bucks perform the best in that environment. But that's the environment you're going to keep them in, as opposed to putting them in a pen and giving them feed and seeing what their average daily gain is on feed. Along those lines, laster goes on to state something that's pretty obvious but sometimes we forget. I've forgotten this in the past. You take a animal that's been fed and you put them onto a forage only diet, that animal may fall apart because they're not produced in that environment, because we're going down in nutrition instead of instead of up. On the other hand, if we take a forage developed animal and we decide we want to feed them, they will perform better in that environment because we're going up on nutrition. They will perform better in that environment because we're going up on nutrition, not too much on the third pillar, but just that you want them developed under a system like you're going to use them. And the fourth pillar is employ direct selection and the main thing we're talking about here select for the traits, salt. So what traits do you want and select for them? And Lester goes on to say not for a combination that you hope will produce the desired results.

I was listening to a podcast the other day about livestock Actually it was about poultry and they were talking about selecting and each generation, what you're selecting for, and they were making the point that you really need to really choose a single trait or just a couple of traits. If you go trying to fix the whole animal, you're liable to lose some progress there. So the fewer traits you're selecting for, the faster your gain is. Fastest progress in that genetic development in that trait will be by single trait selection. Most of the time we want to do a little bit more than single trait. But if we get carried away and calculate some kind of index or combination that we think will work, we're selecting for the wrong thing. I like to think we're selecting for a cow produced a calf. I'm not selecting for the wrong thing. I like to think we're selecting for a cow produced a calf. I'm not trying to guess at what traits causes a cow to produce a calf and wean a calf. I'm selecting based upon her weaning a calf and a certain body weight or percentage of her body weight, because we want the most pounds per cow and I say that most pounds per cow and I say that most pounds per cow. We want to optimize that because we could get the most pounds per cow by having bigger cows. But if we get the most pounds per pound of cow then we can be a little bit more efficient. I have to be careful with that or I'll be moving towards that combination of traits there.

With the fifth pillar, it's utilize the adaptive powers of nature. And what Lester means by that. He just asked those cows to do the impossible and he says now wait, he doesn't ask them to go crazy on the impossible, but he just asked them to do more. And I think the Herd Quitter podcast with Alan Williams discusses a little bit. Let's ask cows to produce without supplements. I think that was the discussion we had grazing grass community about what are supplements? What does minerals count as supplements? But if you're asking your cows to produce under those circumstances, if you're asking cows to produce without deworming them, the cows that produce are the genetics you want, as opposed to propping up those other genetics so they succeed. Now there's a fine line there you go cold turkey, and I say cold turkey. I just recorded an episode with August Horseman of Horseman Cattle Company, a catch-up episode that'll be available in a few weeks here on the grazing grass, and I know we talked about his Regentee journey on episode 15 of this podcast and we'd like to say he went cold turkey for Regentee Bag. He found about it and he went whole hog into it.

I think when you start thinking about using these powers of nature, I think that's a great way. But there is a fine line there, because if you are not sustainable in making money, your farm's not going to be here long enough for it to make a difference. So if you make all these drastic changes and say, hey, my cows are going to have to produce without any supplements, without anything, if you end up with half your herd open because they didn't breed back or they didn't wean a calf or something, Is that sustainable for you? Only you can answer that question, because I don't know your farm structure. I would assume it's not sustainable unless you have some off the farm income coming in. But that's a decision you have to make. But if you have to supplement, if you have to do something to help prop them up so that you get decent percentages know it's a temporary fix and Alan Williams talks about this If you're supplementing or providing something extra for them, the goal is to do it temporarily until you get your animals where they can do it on their own. So that's going to take a little while, but you do have to look at your farm and make sure it's sustainable. And one thing that Lassard talks about it's talking about having that first calf at 24 months and every year afterwards. He says those cows will do it.

I don't remember if I shared this story on episode 105. I'll go ahead and share it today. It's been a couple weeks. So I don't remember if I shared this story on episode 105. I'll go ahead and share it today. It's been a couple weeks, so I don't remember.

I remember as a kid and I don't recall this happening, but dad has shared it with me since then. But he was running about 20 cows and he had a fair number of them. Or when he went to weanan calves he only had so many calves to wean, so he had a fair number that didn't wean calves. And he had read this book and thought I, I'm doing that. So he sold those cows that didn't wean a calf. His next year he went from I'm gonna make up numbers here because I don't know the numbers but he went went from like a 50% calf crop to a 100% calf crop, granted a smaller number of animals, but his expenses were lower because he didn't have any freeloaders. So that goes back to reproductive efficiency and making sure that cow calves it 24 months and every year afterwards. And if we're asking cows to do that and they're not able to do it. Did we mess up somewhere?

Lester also goes on to say quit worrying about unimportant traits. And for Lester coat color, the color of cattle, was not important. Now I think some people could make an argument that color is important in certain markets, depending how you're marketing your animals. But he says we shouldn't be worrying about that. Now I argue the point on that. I get a certain intrinsic value from seeing my herd look very uniform and I have preferred colors that I want to see out there. However, I don't want to select for those colors and her other selection. So if I have two animals of equal quality, I pick the color I want. Now, if my best animals are not the color I want, then I'm just going to go with that and maybe I'll get to the color I want later on. Or the other thing is, if you're going out and buying good quality animals, buy good quality animals in the colors you like, but just be sure you're buying quality animals, not because of the color. And I do think that intrinsic value is important. It doesn't pay too many bills but I do enjoy it, so I have to decide what value it provides to me. So that's the five pillars that Laster has in place for his philosophy of cattle raising, and that's to select for the six essentials, that's to focus on reproductive efficiency, performance tests in a constant environment, employ direct selection and utilize the adaptive powers of nature.

Now the book I'd mentioned. It's a pretty easy read. It goes on to cover a few other things like feedlots, suspension fences and suspension gates. He talks about utilizing a dead man's corner and as far as he's concerned that's the best corner or brace you can put in. Also talks about tax and land ownership and then the origins of the Beefmaster breed and how that got started. And then it finishes up with a two-page summary of the Laster Beefmaster Standard of Excellence, which is very much his philosophy. I think that that two-page summary is really good.

But, like I said, I really enjoy this book. I think it ought to be on your bookshelf and it doesn't matter if you're breeding cattle, goats, sheep, pigs. I think it works for whatever species you're using. It gives you something to think about and a roadmap to go from. I know when we start talking about drought plans and we get into that drought. If I have a plan that's on paper, it's easier for me to follow and not make emotional decisions. I think that same goes for your breeding plan. Having it on paper makes it much easier to follow and not make emotional decisions Like that cow. I'm a little disappointed. I lost that calf the other day. That cow has to go to town now. It's part of my breeding philosophy because I want cows that are productive Calve every year and raise a calf Because or in spite of me. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Next week we are going to talk about cattle colors, the genetics behind that, and that's really you know. I mentioned it here just a while ago, but then there was a post earlier on my Facebook about the color of an animal and that really fascinates me. So I right now that's what I've got ten leaf scheduled, so we'll talk about that next week.

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