Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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NOTE: There were 2 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.

0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, Episode 130.

0:00:05 - Steward
I recommend holistic management at Rancho for Profit, but I did them in the wrong order.

0:00:11 - Cal
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 Hartage. You're growing more than grass. 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. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy-to to follow 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. It's N-O-B-L-E dot org. Forward slash grazing. Stuart, we're excited you're here today. Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast.

0:01:41 - Steward
Well thank you very much for having me.

0:01:43 - Cal
I'm looking forward to it, stuart, to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation?

0:01:51 - Steward
Okay, well, I'm Stu Staudinger, born and raised in central Alberta, Peerbread, cementola Cattle Ranch, and I graduated high school in 91, and I'd always wanted to be a pilot and an engineer, so my mother's English. I ended up going to the UK to study engineering at university as an aeronautical engineer and I ended up joining the Royal Air Force while I was there. So I was sponsored through my university degree by the British military and I joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. So I commissioned. I started officer training in 96 and got commissioned, earned my wings and ended up in tactical aviation in battlefield helicopters. So I flew helicopters through my military career. So I did that through until 2013 when I moved back to Canada, retired as a flight commander and came back to Canada. I joined the Canadian Forces Air Reserve as a reserve pilot, flying part-time for three years, did that 2014. And then in 2017, I left that completely and came back to the ranch full-time and I'll tell you in another 10 or 12 years whether that was a good idea or not. Yeah.

0:03:02 - Cal
So when you were growing up, it was a Scimital ranch. When you came back, was the ranch still Scimital.

0:03:09 - Steward
No, no, in 95, dad had always been interested in bison and in 95, he got his first group of bison heifers and fenced off a couple of pastures to be able to handle bison and then bought a few more in 96 and 97, got a bull and then in 98, he had this dispersal sale for his purebred Simmental herd. He was in Fleckvieh and he was actually very well recognized in the Simmental in the Fleckvieh industry. We still get the odd phone call people asking him about one bull or other, cause there's still semen floating around out there. Anyway, he he's had a dispersal sale at 90 for his cattle and went out of Shemp bison. I think the biggest thing is he liked the bison and he was getting burnt out from the purebred industry, all the constant showing, shows and sales and all that kind of stuff. It's for a one man band as he was, it was just, it was whatever 25 years of non-stop rat race and and he just needed to have a change. So he went into planes bison and about that time I'd got commissioned and got my wings.

My first, my first tour as a pilot was actually on a squadron where I worked 21 days on, seven days off in northern ireland and it was a great place to be and great experience, but anyway, with my seven years off, I was a great place to be and great experience, but anyway, with my seven years off, I was a single. We call it supes, single officers, useless purchases. My supes consisted of airline tickets to fly across the Atlantic, so I ended up coming home 15 times in only three years and I tried to time it with things like weaning and anything that we needed to do.

So I was home for weaning for three years straight and helping out where I could, and I really, as soon as I got exposed to the bison even in like 99 when I was home in the summer I just thought, man, I like these animals. And so that was the hook, the thing that kind of brought me back to the ranch.

0:05:02 - Cal
For me. I love seeing bison out grazing somewhere. I always have to stop and gawk for a while, but when I read about bison, they're just a little bit different than cattle. What are some things you've noticed that's different between cattle and their management?

0:05:19 - Steward
Well, I mean, the biggest thing is bison are a wild animal. So their herd response, their natural instinct response, is that natural herd defensive response that you'd't there a wild animal. So they. Their herd response, their natural instinct response, is that natural herd defensive response that you'd get in a wild herd and they become habituated to us. So they drive out there with a tractor or a pickup that they're used to. They just ignore you.

Oh yeah, but yeah, but as soon it's funny I I take people out that I want to go and look at the animals and I say you want to see their herd instinct, watch this. I'll stop the truck and then I'll just step out of the truck and step two, two step, two paces away from the truck and the whole herd, just the whole herd, just lights up and they all cluster up and back off and now and you can just see they're on alert and people are like, wow, that's amazing. They're like it's almost like they all react simultaneously there. Oh, it's really interesting. And you'll get the odd one that's a little bit more laid back, that'll just stand there and look at you, but most of them all, just they go into that natural thing. It's like, okay, something's changed, there's a potential threat here. So they all perk up, they all move together, they mob up and then they look at you and decide whether you're actually going to cause them trouble or not. Oh yeah, it, it's pretty cool. Yeah, so there's that.

But they're also much faster than cattle and like a big bison bull he'll jump a five foot fence without even touching the wire if he wants to go somewhere. So as long as they've got decent feed and they're happy where they are, they don't go anywhere. They can outrun a thoroughbred racehorse. They're incredibly fast. A bison bull's windpipe is five inches across and that deep chest is full of lungs and they start like a mule deer.

So they bounce on all four and I've had a bison bull a 2000 pound bison bull plant his front hooves as he went past me and he spun around 180 degrees in the air, hit the ground in front of me and then hit the gate that was right in front of me with his head and clanged it like literally inches from my face, oh, yes. And then he just stood up and then he just walked away and my dad was laughing. He goes oh, he's just letting you know who's boss. But the speed that he turned. Just I couldn't believe how fast he turned and it was literally one, one movement. He bounced, and he bounced and he spun in the air and he landed with all four hooves, whomp and, oh yeah, only like four, five feet away.

0:07:31 - Cal
Oh, unbelievable, really cool and I know I've heard that they're that fast and that agile, but they just don't look like they're that agile no, they don't look at when they're out there.

0:07:44 - Steward
And but it's funny, the wintertime for us is the best time to see it.

We well, if we get a snowstorm and fresh snow drifts off the hilltops and so there's a snow drift that's maybe two and a half, three, four feet deep, whatever you usually start with the yearling heifers, they'll start their two-year-old heifers, they'll all decide to go for a run. See, I was like 15 of them will go running through a snowdrift and snow goes flying everywhere. The next thing, you know, you'll have a whole herd of 90 or 100 animals charging through the snowdrift, snow's flying and they're just kicking their heels and dancing around and having fun calves, cows, everything. And then the funny thing is then you see, like a 9 year old bull, he's standing there watching all this and then he decides to get involved and he'll charge through a snowdrift and kick his heels and everything else. So then they don't deliberately act as agile when they get older, except what is when the whole herd starts to play. Then even the older bulls will get involved it's really neat to see it's really neat to see.

Most of the time you don't notice that. If you just drive by on the road you won't see it as a general rule. But if you watch them for a while you'll see these moments where the whole herd just decides to play anyway. They go?

0:08:49 - Cal
oh yeah, I imagine. So that's pretty cool. With the change from going from scimitars to bison, what kind of changes had to happen on the farm or on the ranch?

0:09:01 - Steward
well, initially it was two, two issues. One, obviously keep them here. So a little three and a half four foot cattle fence is not suitable for bison. It's not to say that they won't stay there, but if they're pushed for some reason, if a low fence they'll just hop over it just and off they go. So dad did quite a bit of fencing early on Around the perimeter. For most of the ranch we've got page wire, so they've got a five foot page wire fence. Oh, okay, and that's a decent sort of outer barrier.

And this is, I have to say, here we've learned a lot since then and the whole industry has learned a lot of wood handling bison since then. And then he started building handling setup. The biggest thing was our wooden handling setup and alley to the chute and stuff like that wasn't up to handling bison. So dad had got a bunch of welded steel panels with boxes with rolling doors and that kind of stuff Started off smaller, modified his. He had one of those half half moon cattle tubs so he modified, had that modified with extra piping built up higher to give it a bit more height. Because I've seen a, I've seen a two-year-old heifer with her front legs over a seven foot fence, so they'll if they're in a panic, they'll jump pretty high, and so we've got seven and a half foot paddles in our handling system.

And so there was there was a bunch of that kind of shift was how do you adapt what you've got for cattle to be able to handle a few buys? And of course, initially he bought a bunch of heifer calves and then he had a bunch of yearlings to handle and then he got a bull when they were two-year-olds, and so he was stepping things up as he went. You can't do it all at once. But then when he totally got out of bison he had to, sorry, out of beef. He had to put a fair amount of time and money investment into making sure he had a setup that could handle the Bison. And we've been well, we've been modifying it ever since. But he went and visited a bunch of other ranches that were handling Bison and got their advice on what worked and what didn't. And some guys built some really elaborate setups based on what Parks Canada has, which are probably complete overkill.

But you learn through experience over time and so we've got to the stage where we know what we need and when we built a new loadout system, whatever it was three years ago or four years ago we had a much better idea of what we were looking for and when we got the panels welded up, we got them welded to the right shape and size and everything else to get exactly what we wanted and it works really well now. So that's what we now got. We get new guys coming into the industry. Now they're coming. They'll be on a tour.

They'll be going around looking at people's handling setups because they bought themselves 40 cows on this july and they're looking off into the fall christmas time and thinking about weaning and they have no idea how to catch their cows because they're just out of the pasture. They've maybe added an electric wire on the top of the posts on their cattle. Now they got to figure out how to catch them and handle them and wean the calves or whatever. So you get the odd young guy or young gal driving around to a few ratchets saying, oh, how do you handle them? And taking pictures of the handling setup and finding out what works and what doesn't.

0:12:08 - Cal
One thing you mentioned earlier. Your dad got into playing Now just help me with my memory of it or or requelish. I can't even say that there's a couple subspecies of American bison.

0:12:21 - Steward
There's woods and plains Is that correct, and those would have roamed initially all the way down through eastern states, kansas, and then further east and even into the Shenandoah Valley and that kind of stuff. So they were quite widespread. The wood bison were generally in the boreal forest in the north, so northern Alberta, saskatchewan, manitoba, all the way up into the Yukon, alaska, northern British Columbia. But there were a couple of what they think were subspecies of those which there was a subpopulation that was in the mountains both in Alberta and then down through Montana and into Colorado and stuff that generally tended to be a resident herd that lived in the mountain valleys and through into Oregon and other places like that. Now, whether those were actually a subspecies or not we're not really sure, but there's people that think that they possibly were slightly different, but they would have been effectively plains bison but a little perhaps, maybe slightly adapted to that environment.

And then there's a group of bison that we call the parkland bison. Now they're effectively a blend of plains and woods. The natural ranges of the two herds overlapped in what we call the parkland region, which is effectively skirting the boreal. So we live in parkland here. So it's like aspen forest and open grasses in its natural state and there was what they call the resident parkland herd back in the pre-settlement, and that herd, as we've discovered, were a bunch of animals. Just from looking at the way the two different subspecies act and how the offspring act with regard to open spaces versus more bush country, it looks as though the ones that are crosses are less comfortable out in the open without having any cover. Oh yeah, like the wood bison, you expect that, and so there's it's a speculation, but it's probably a fairly well-educated guess that the resident herd, as they called them, the parkland resident herd would have been made up of hybrids between the two subspecies, and the northern plains herd would move to the parkland in the winter and that would go back on into the plains in the summer, but there was a smaller subpopulation that stayed in the parkland year round, and those ones were probably ones that were first, second, third generation offspring of crosses between wood bulls and plains cows or vice versa.

So anyway, so that's where we are with what we understand about the two subspecies. We've done a bunch of research on it. In Canada, the Canadian Bison Association and a couple other organizations led by the CBA did a bunch of genomics research on bison. Then we developed a new SNP test, a single nucleotide polymorphism test, to work out subspecies, differentiation, cattle integration, parentage and stuff like that. So that test is now up and running, it's run through Neogen, it's available from both American and Canadian producers, and so in Canada we've come up with an idea of where we're going to go in terms of herd registry management and how we classify the animals based on what their genetics looks like. So that's where we're at.

0:15:36 - Cal
Oh, interesting. But we've stuck with pure plains so Well, I know in the little bit that I've read and seen that there's bovine genetics into bison, into a lot of the herds. Is that correct or am I misunderstanding?

0:15:56 - Steward
that yes and no. You'll hear this quite a bit. It depends on the testing. We originally tested using the Texas A&M test Well, actually it was run by California Davis which is a microsatellite test. By 2017, we had a 100% pure herd showing no cattle integration. Oh yeah, but when we came out with the new test, we submitted 130-odd samples into the original research project and then we've had our whole herd tested ongoing since then and we found, when we went to this higher fidelity test that's got about 10,000 polymorphisms determining cattle integration we found that we had, off thinking about it, probably around about I think 30% showed a small amount of cattle integration.

But if you look at the percentages the amount of integration that's actually in the bison herd it's incredibly small. And there's this thing called genetic clustering involved, where you might have an animal that tests out it's 0.6 percent bovine and then its offspring will test peer, because that that 0.6 percent of genes are in what they call a genetic cluster. So the parent will pass on on that whole cluster as one chunk or maybe two chunks or not at all, depending on which side of its own genome gets passed on to the offspring. And so we've had a bunch of discussions within our conservation committee about how this effect works. And I've got a wonderful friend of mine who works in Saskatchewan. He's a genetic, he's involved in genetics in Saskatoon. His family have bison as well, so he's got bison plus. He's a geneticist and we've worked with Jen and so we think that a lot of the genetics up here like Custer I think Custer State Park has got the largest, the highest level of cattle integration that we know of so far at the moment, but that cattle integration is slowly dropping out of the herd because of this genetic clustering effect.

And now that we have a tool that we can manage the genetics, I think there's less of an issue in terms of worrying about cattle integration, because now you can let's just say you've got 10 heifers you want to choose as heifers to hold back. You can hold back the 10 that have a lower level of cattle integration and over a period of generation in not very many generations you end up with pure animals, and so it's interesting that we now have a tool to do that. So people panicking about the number of cattle or buys with cattle integration I think is well, I can understand it going if you went back to what people understood the science 20 years ago, but now I think it's a bit less of an issue because we have a much better tool chat. That's much better toolbox for dealing with it. I think over a period of the next 20 years or so there'll be a much larger population of bison, even in private hands that test a hundred percent pair genetically, just because guys will be able to manage the herds that way.

0:18:57 - Cal
Having that tool available makes that management so much easier and better. I can see the full benefit of that.

0:19:05 - Steward
Oh yeah definitely, and so we were obviously early adopters. We had our herd tested using the previous tool. We were the first fully tested herd in in Canada and we've stuck with it and so we're still. I'm on the conservation committee for the CV and I registry committee, so it's an ongoing project, but I think it's a really good sign that the cattle integration in the herd across North America is not as an issue as some people may have thought. And what is there is manageable and we can generally work away from it. So as long as people don't panic and do something rash in the short term, we should be able to preserve the bison genome without having to retain the cattle genetics over time.

0:19:46 - Cal
Oh, yes, and Stuart, we're going to talk more about grazing in a little bit, so we're going to jump more towards the end of the process. In that, how do you market your bison? Are they through meat sales? Are you selling breeding stock?

0:20:02 - Steward
Well, we do a combination Because we've got a pure plains herd and Dad came out of the purebred industry. His instinct was breeding stock, seed stock, herd, and so we do a bit of that. So we're selling a few bulls every year and we sell a bunch of bread heifers every year, but the industry is not big enough for that to be the entire piece. It's one of the enterprises we run, or two of them the bread heifers and the bulls. When I look at it, I came back to the ranch and I came out of the military. I was a military helicopter pilot flight commander. I was a rancher just by proxy, showing up and helping out when I could. But I didn't really understand the business side of it and it took me longer than I probably should have to figure that out and I actually went away to business school to figure this out.

But the industry as a whole is based around the meat market and predominantly probably about 60% of the business. Well, this pre-COVID it might be less now, but certainly pre-COVID 60% of the bison industry was food service. So we're talking hotels, restaurants, bars, that kind of stuff, and so we market. The majority of our animals get marketed into the meat market Our yearling bulls. So just when they're one year we keep back the ones that we bought prospects and the rest they get sold into guys who are going to feed them out and put them into that market. The rest of the animals on the ranch we keep until we market them ourselves.

So our heifers we keep until they're two years old and they either go into the breeding herd as bred heifers, either as replacements or to sell, or they go into our feed group which gets fed out and we market them. We're more most of them locally, I say some of the meat goes further away because a couple of the local marketers marketed to europe and stuff. But we sell them in smaller groups to a couple of local marketers and some of it's going out to Quebec, some of them a smaller percentage of them getting shipped south to be processed in the States for your market of the ones we have. Obviously, the vast majority of Canadian buys and end up going south. But we have a bunch that are going to Europe and Quebec just because of the guys that we're marketing to and so they're processed in Alberta and then the meat is shipped from here.

And then we also, on the side, we have a small butcher shop and pantry market in a town about 50 miles away from here. My sister manages that butcher shop. It's like a European style artisan butcher shop and we do all local sourcing there. So beef, bison, yak, pork, chicken, turkey, whatever, a whole bunch of stuff, eggs, a little bit of dairy, and so we move a bunch of our odds and ends and what have you through the store? We market quarters and halves from our feeder heifers. We market those through the store. Some of them are marketed directly through the store. Some of them are marketed through a partnership with a grass-fed bee marketing group, because we've got customers that want bison as well.

So we market in all huge numbers but through the winter we were probably averaging, I'm guessing, two animals a month and quarters and halves going through that work so we've got our fingers in a bunch of pies and sometimes it feels like there's too many pies and we need a couple of bigger pies rather than a whole bunch of small ones.

0:23:20 - Cal
But anyway, that's where we're at right now.

0:23:23 - Steward
With your bison? Are you finishing them with grain? Yeah, so we're finishing what we call a mixed ration. We've done a little bit of grass finishing, but without being able to manage the grass properly. I had a bit of a grass finishing disaster a few years ago, and so I'm not going back into that until I've got the infrastructure for it, because it's a bit of an art form and if you can't keep them on fresh high-bricks grass then you're looking for trouble. So what we do is we feed them a mixed ration.

Bison won't eat as much grain as cattle. They don't like it. They're not as healthy on it, oh yeah, and so we feed them free choice hay or grass, because some of them they spend a lot of their time on pasture, but they've also got access to a feeder and so they got free choice hay or grass. And then we feed a pellet blend. Some of the pellets have been like a pea and lentil screening pellet, which we used for quite a few years, which is a good one, but the prices went through the roof, so we switched over. We're now using a mill run pellet right now, so that'd be mostly wheat. We've recently used a malt sprout pellet as well and a couple other blends, but they're mostly pelleted. We're not feeding any straight barley or straight corn or anything like that. It's a pellet blend. It generally tends to be something like a screening pellet or a mill run and that's where we're at, just so people have an idea in terms of grain.

I've got a local beef guy who's a pail of chop by the fence type beef guy but he's still feeding a pretty high ration.

He gets up to between 16 and 22 pounds of grain a day when he's finishing his steers. So they're eating a lot as a beef animal and some guys are up to 26 to 30 pounds a day. So it's a really high grain ration. Whereas the bison even our bigger bison bulls when we're finishing about nine that we're going to market in the next couple of weeks those guys are still only eating maybe four and a half pounds a day, maybe five. So there's a big difference there in the consumption of grain. Those guys are still only eating maybe four and a half pounds a day, maybe five. Oh yeah, so there's a big difference there in the consumption of grain or pellets versus green forage with bison. And, like we said, we're just free choice and that's generally when they settle out at and the heifers. They're a bit smaller. They might only be eating three pounds a day when they're finished, so most of what they're eating is green forage.

0:25:35 - Cal
Oh yes, very interesting, stuart. It's time we're going to go ahead and transition to our overgrazing section. You'd mentioned there about you tried to grass finish and you need to do a little bit more on your grazing management Well, paddock grazing and infrastructure which feeds right into that.

0:25:55 - Steward
Yeah.

0:25:58 - Cal
So you're grazing a bison, that's right. Yeah, how are you doing it?

0:26:03 - Steward
Okay. Well, when I arrived back on the ranch, the best term would be rotational overgrazing. So we had one herd that was in a large in a pasture pasture complex that had five paddocks, but the problem with that is it only had water reliable water in three of them, so in the springtime, we could graze through five paddocks, but come mid to late June, when the water started drying up, then we were down to three paddocks, and it's quite sandy soil, which doesn't do well under heavy, late continuous or heavy continuous grazing, which is effective. The way you do it, even if you're rotating just through three paddocks, you'll see you're doing 10 days here, two weeks there, two weeks there and then back again. Your rest periods aren't long enough, your exposure times are too long, so you've overgrazed is going to happen. There's nothing you can do about it.

And then our bigger herd we had originally split into two, but just because of bull genetics and and those were all in, basically, in a complex was just two pastures each, so it was just a two way rotation for two herds, and so that's where we were when I came back to the ranch in 2017.

And in the meantime, though, because I was here part-time for four years before that, we had started looking at more regenerative stuff and soil health. So our hay land was not in particularly good shape. We switched it over to polyculture and made silage bales off of planting about a 12 species polyculture cover crop mix in, and we've done that on various parts of the land, just making sure we increased the biodiversity in the stand, putting in stuff that's going to over the longterm and then replacing it with perennials. It's got a much more diverse blend so that we've got we've got the the biodiversity to be able to then move on to the next stage. So we started that in 2016, so a bit before I came back full-time and then and then. But we didn't really do much about the grazing until I was back and I try and figure out exactly what we're going to do to try and deal with the overgrazing issue.

0:28:19 - Cal
So how are you combating? Combat, I cannot talk today, yeah no worries.

0:28:25 - Steward
Well, initially I went, I wanted to learn more about it and I did just a short seminar at a bison convention with Roland Cruz, who who's who's out of? He's out of billings, I think, but he's with hmi, holistic management international. Oh yeah, and so I roland, was running holistic management seminar series specialized for bison guys although there were lots of beef guys on it as well down at durham ranch in wyoming, and, and so in 2018, I went down. I went down and did the holistic management stuff with Roland and those guys down there, which was a which was good, cause I'd done a bunch of reading on regenerative ag and I started understanding the whole grass growth cycle overgrazing issue, cause I'm a science guy. So I immediately turned around. My engineering brain went to work. I had to figure this stuff out, and so I went down and did that. But what it didn't do was give me that I would highly recommend holistic management to anyone who's who's thinking about it. Go do that. But what it didn't teach me was in sufficient depth or, yeah, sufficient depth is the business side of it, because no matter what you do, you have to pay the bills.

And so, in 2021, I went to ranching for profit with RMC. It was in the middle of COVID so I had to fly all the way to Pennsylvania and go through all the nonsense, but anyway, what a disaster, but anyway. So it was really good. I was at Harrisburg, pennsylvania did that. So I had a really diverse group of people who had goats and sheep and potato farmers Like I say, a really diverse group of people.

So it was great to learn with and from them and that opened my eyes up to the business side of it and I really did the deep dive on it. And then I realized I nearly had a heart attack once. I ran the numbers of where we were at, because I was one of those things where I couldn't see how the business model worked. And when I went through it I thought you know what? So many farms and ranches are in this position in North America where people are in it because their families were in it and they've got the land, but almost none of them are profitable. And so I did RMC. And then when I got back from RMC I started working on the plan.

I was a little bit slower getting going than I maybe should have been, because it was such a culture shock, particularly for my dad, who's looking at this and thinking that all these ideas are a little bit crazy that I wanted to jump off a cliff and take him with me. But I just worked out that there was no way we were going to survive if we didn't change, and so I started last year in earnest on a major infrastructure development program, and so that half section I was mentioning that had five paddocks that only three had water. That half section is now divided into 19 paddocks, all of which have water, and within the 19 paddocks I have the option and I don't have the time to do it right now because I'm still in the middle of this project on the home section here but we've got the option to be able to further subdivide using temporary electric.

And so I can get to 30, 40, 50 paddocks fairly quickly if I need to. Now I've got the water, I've got the main fencing infrastructure and the water infrastructure in to be able to do that. So that's what I'm doing here, and so that herd from about the beginning of August last year 10th of August I think I managed I was up and running that herd has been, we're in adaptive management and I've actually got to go and move them to after we talk here into the next paddock. So so that's where we're at with that herd. The bigger herd here at home we got into it last fall.

The finding, finding the money to be able to do this was very tight because we're COVID actually hammered us. It shut down the food service industry across North America and totally destroyed our market, so cash flow went out the window. So we probably lost $300,000 in revenue over three years, which is really hard to stomach. Fortunately I've got a small military pension, Otherwise I wouldn't even be here. But anyway, we got involved in a government program which supports investment in regenerative agriculture, so polyculture, crop, adaptive graze, a very solid program so you can get some financial support for infrastructure investment, and so I got involved in that. And so, as of later last year, we started a phase two of our program, which was to get our home place rich, cross-fenced, and so we're getting towards the latter stages of that now. So it's not 100% there, it's not perfect yet, but by the end of the year I'll have the home section, I'll have about 40.

The main herd will be running through. I think it's 40 water, 42 paddocks, all with water, oh yes.

And the intent isn't to maintain them as one herd in the longer term because we are still in the breeding stock business. But what I will have is I'll have one herd running through 18 and the other herd running through the rest next year probably and that way I can take the bulls of one bloodline in one set of paddocks than the others, and then I can use temporary electric to subdivide further as the situation demands, to further manage the grasses, because we've got a mixture of tame grass and native parkland, and so the bison naturally prefer the native parkland. So if you put them in a paddock that's half smooth brome and half native rough fescue, they'll sit on the fescue and destroy it and leave the brome.

0:33:54 - Cal
And so I've got to start using next year.

0:33:57 - Steward
I've got to start using temporary electric to minimize their impact on the native species and make sure that they're utilizing the team species. And there's just it's not all of our paddocks, but there's probably five of those 42 that have got an issue where I have to put a bit of effort into managing those in a little bit more fine detail. And then, of course, with anything adaptive, over time you discover that there are more issues will pop up. You'll start noticing different things with different plant recoveries, et cetera. So there's no doubt that my temporary electric fencing will continue to expand over the coming years.

0:34:35 - Cal
With your infrastructure you put in to make those initial paddocks. What are you using for your fencing material?

0:34:43 - Steward
Okay, I designed a system myself. I looked at the cost of putting in fencing and if you're looking at T-posts they get fairly expensive. The cost of wood posts went through the roof and I'm dealing with bison. So I've got to have a reasonable fence and I worked out that I need a top where about 57, 57, 56, 57 inches. Realistically, that's probably a little bit of overkill if I'm running electric which I am but 48 is just a little bit short, if that makes sense. So I want to be over 50,. But 48 is just a little bit short, if that makes sense, so I want to be over 50. Anyway, 52, 54 at least.

And so I got a hold of a bunch of sucker rod out of the oil industry and started cutting posts and figuring out how do I insulate a sucker rod at a price point. And so I developed a system where I use two pieces of poly pipe. I have about a two-inch long chunk of three of poly pipe. I have a about a two inch long chunk of three quarter poly pipe and a two inch chunk of one inch poly with a slit down the side, and they just go on like over top of each other and then I use an easy twist tie, which is a fencing tie system used developed for page wire not for page wire for a chain link.

0:35:51 - Cal
Oh, okay.

0:35:51 - Steward
And the one that fits an inch and three quarter chain link post works just fine If I've got a seven, eight sucker rod with those two bits of plastic around it. And and so the first, that first section where we I forget how it's about four, four and a bit kilometers of fence. We did three wire electric. So I did two top, two hot wires on the top and then a ground wire running along the bottom, all insulated. But then I went back as an alumni to Ranching for Profit again in Cheverry here and talking to a couple of the bison guys that are doing similar stuff, and they've a lot of them have been experimenting with two wire fences and so for the fencing we're doing now we've gone down to two wires. So I've got one at 56, 57 inches at the top, another one at about hip height at the bottom, both hot and that's it.

And it works quite well because the deer will go at the does. We've got both muley and whitetail here. They'll go under the bottom wire without touching it and we get the odd pronghorn. We're not really in pronghorn country but we get the odd pronghorn. We're not really in pronghorn country, but we get the odd one here and there and they go under the wire as well, and so the wildlife can move. The moose will go over the top and deer go underneath, and it seems to work. So obviously I'll let you know in a couple of years how well it works, but so right now that's what we're doing, and so if I'm doing an alley where they're going to be a bit more crowded, I'm still putting the three wire on. But if I'm just doing cross fencing for separating paddocks, I'm using a two wire fence, two wire length.

Oh yeah, and using a steel sucker rod post, and I'm still using wood for the braces. I experimented with some sucker rod braces, but they're just too flexible. You can use steel pipe if it's bigger, but using a small seven, eighths or one inch sucker rod it's too flexible. If you build a brace out of it, it just can't hold the tension. And I figured out how to stop them pulling out of the ground. I just weld some barbs on the bottom, some nails as barbs, so I can get them to not pull out, but they're still too flexible. So I, I we went back to wood and so we're using a standard wood brace at the ends, with steel sucker rod posts in between oh, very good, very good for your temporary fences.

0:38:02 - Cal
How are you doing temporary fences?

0:38:05 - Steward
I'm still experimenting I've got some of the standard step in. Well, they call them 40 inch posts but they're only 40 inch when the with the spike in the ground. Oh yeah, I've used that and I use it with yearlings and I'm doing it and I'll be doing it in another week or so in our yard. I'll graze a few of our feeder yearlings and stuff in the yard and it seems to work. But there's the step in pigtails that you can buy. There's guys building them for bison and they're a little bit higher and I can't remember what the top of that is. I buys them and they're a little bit higher and I can't remember what the top of that is. I think that's at about 42 inches, but there's a company down there's a company down in the States, I'm going to try.

I'm trying to find a Canadian supplier who can get them in. This building is 60 inch step-in post, so there's plastic step-in with some multi hooks down the side. Yeah, so that 60 inch, when you few of those, and maybe it's just for my own psychology to have that one wire a little bit higher, but two wires and electric seems to work.

0:39:01 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:39:02 - Steward
We've had guys experimented with a single wire and where they're not crowded it works when they've got lots of space. But if you're trying to graze a little bit more intently, the bison don't seem to. They'll blow through a single wire fence, whereas a two wire fence with the top wire at the right height seems to be and a decent electric fence seems to work.

0:39:25 - Cal
Oh, very good, that was. That's interesting to me. I was wondering what you would have to do different to beef up a cattle fence, cause so often we just use one strand so I thought it had to be different. So that was interesting and see how you're doing it differently for the bison, to respect it, and for them yeah, like, like right now I'm experimenting around my watering point.

0:39:45 - Steward
So I've got a watering point, for example, that animals are using right now.

Let's go to access to four paddocks and so while they're in one, they can come up and it's basically just an open box and I've built like a 60-foot gate across on the permanent ones. It's a combination barbed wire and electric and I use PVC pipe posts because you don't have to worry about insulating them. I can just use my twist ties and tie them on. But I've been experimenting with just using temporary around one of the boxes and it seems to work. I'm using the standard step-in posts, so the top wire is at, say, 40 inches, something like that, and there's enough juice on the wire and the animals have got enough feed. It seems they're not pushing it, so I don't know whether I could use it on a longer run across a field where animals are likely to run into it in the dark or something like that, but around that watering point, where the animals have got a very defined box that they know where everything is, it seems to work at the moment. So watch this space. It's working right now.

I'm not saying it's going to work in I don't know a day's time, so we're still experimenting.

0:40:54 - Cal
I'm not saying it's going to work in I don't know a day's time, so we're still experimenting. Do you think your bison that you're raising, that's been exposed more to that temporary fence, will respect it more as adults and maybe not give as much? So you may be working yourself out of some issues that you would have now?

0:41:11 - Steward
Yeah, I think so. In fact the bison, once they respect electric probably even more than beef do. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so I've found, if I've got fence is new and they don't know what it is, they'll push it, they'll go through it If it's hot. You very quickly learn, and then they become habituated to it very quickly and they'll avoid it. In their brain it bites, it's a predator, and they stay away from it. They'll go up close, they'll graze up to the bottom of it, but they don't push it at all. There's no pressure on it. And whereas beef will pressure even an electric fence if they want to some of them will, depending on how much, what sort of energizer you got, but the bison don't seem to, and we've actually generally what happens is bison tend to. They learn their pasture boundary very quickly and then, even in the dark, if they're startled, they won't go through a fence. They know exactly where they are all the time.

And if they stampede in the dark they'll get towards the fence line and they'll turn left or right.

They'll avoid it, even if they can't see it in the dark, because they know it's there.

The issue we have is if you put new animals into a paddock and if you put them in late in the day and they haven't had a chance to explore the boundaries before dark and then they get startled by a moose or whatever during the night, then they can end up going through a fence.

So I think that temporary electric the key is not so much that the animals understand what it is, you put it in at the time of day where they have a chance to explore it, and once so, if you let them in let's say I'm moving the animals at, say, 2 in the afternoon, let them into a paddock that's got a temporary electric boundary on it. At 2 in the afternoon plenty of time they'll go and explore, they'll do a bit of grazing, and then At two in the afternoon plenty of time they'll go and explore, they'll do a bit of grazing and then they'll go explore the whole perimeter. They'll find out where all the fences are, and then you don't have a problem. But if I let them in there in the evening, when it's just about to get dark, when they haven't had time to figure out where everything is, that's when you have a problem.

0:43:21 - Cal
So that's different than cattle, that's interesting.

0:43:24 - Steward
Well, even before we started doing this, the grazing behaviors have always been different. They mull graze, naturally. It's very rare to have the herd completely spread out across a field, like beef. You can put 100 beef into a 400-acre pasture and they'll spread out evenly across it if you give them the chance. And then if the wind starts blowing they'll all drift into wind Bison. On the other hand, you let them out into a pasture and you put a herd of 90 or 100 bison into a pasture and they'll all be in two or three acres. And even if the pasture is 100 acres, the bison will all still be in a cluster. They'll spread out a bit. They might go down to only 10 annals per acre. 10 to 12 is where they're comfortable. As soon as someone comes out there and disturbs them, they cluster up to 20 or 30 animals for the acre but they don't spread out beyond about I I'm thinking maybe 10, guessing 10 hours for the acre. What is where they're comfortable? Except once we do we wean the animals.

I have noticed if you wean the animals wean the head calves and then the cows are back out in the pasture on their own. They'll spread out a little bit more when they haven't got a calf by their side, and I think that's just a instinctive thing, and so you'll occasionally get them spread out. The bulls wander off on their own on a regular basis outside in the breeding season. So that's but that's. You know, there'll be four or five of the old bulls will be off on their own, or maybe six of them doing their own thing, but even then they're not spread out. They'll be in a small cluster somewhere. They're just separate from the rest of the herd. Oh yeah, so yeah. So they do mob graze. Naturally. It's not as intense as the guys who are deliberately mobbing animals to have high impact on the land, but they do mob graze naturally. It's just their natural instinct. That's how they protect themselves and they haven't lost that.

0:45:24 - Cal
Talking about weaning calves and such. Are your cows calving every year with bison? Yeah, are your cows calving every year with bison? Yeah, oh, okay.

0:45:35 - Steward
Yeah Well, we're in our fourth year of really severe drought here. Right now. We've got sloughs drying up around here.

0:45:47 - Cal
The old boys around here haven't seen dry since 1933.

0:45:51 - Steward
And there aren't many guys around left that witnessed that, so that's quite a challenge, and it's resulted in a smaller calf crop than we normally would get but I've had.

we generally are in the 95% calf crop sort of area. We dropped down to about 90 or just under 90 the last couple of years because severe drought. We just didn't get the breed back that we were looking for. There's a body condition issue under drought conditions but I hope aiming for recovering that with the grazing. If you can control the grazing and keep decent nutrition in front of them through that critical period as they're going late July and the breeding season starts, if the cows are in good condition and gaining condition, then we should be comfortably in the mid nineties for breed back.

0:46:40 - Cal
Oh yes, you mentioned earlier with the grass fed, the making sure your bricks are high enough. Are you measuring bricks in your pastures now?

0:46:49 - Steward
I'm not, no, I'm just. I just it's one of these things. Well, rather than measuring bricks, I'm just looking at. Okay, if I'm, if I got a choice of moving animals in the morning or in the early afternoon, I'm going to move them at lunchtime so that they're onto, they're onto the high bricks grass, you know, give or take, two o'clock in the afternoon is where your, your plants are at highest production. So that it's just, it's more of just a timing thing.

If I've got the option of moving them when the grass, when the plants, are at full growth midday or just after mid then that's when I'll move them and then I'll figure it out from there. But right now I'm still so neck deep in infrastructure that it takes a little bit of time to settle down and figure out the rest oh, yes, yeah, well, stewart, it is time for us to move to our famous four questions.

0:47:44 - Cal
Sponsored by ken cove farm fence. Ken cove farm fence is a proud supporter of the grazing grass podcasts and grazers everywhere. At Ken Cove Farm Fence they believe there is true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow, proper management and monitoring, can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant.

Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres, ken Cove has everything you need to do it well, from reels to tumbleweels, polytwine to electric nets, water valves to water troughs, you'll find what you're looking for at Ken Cove. They carry brands like Speedrite, o'briens, kiwi Tech, strainrite, jobe and more. Ken Cove is proud to be part of your regenerative journey. Call them today or visit KenCovecom, and be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Ken Cove YouTube channel at Ken Cove Farm Fence for helpful how-to videos and new product releases. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question what is your favorite grazing grass-related book or resource?

0:49:05 - Steward
My favorite resource I think my favorite resource goes back to and I refer back to regular is Savory's original work, and it would be a toss up between that and Grass Productivity by André Voisin, who's, you know, the original guy that had a look at this stuff back in the fifties. So yeah, between those two for sure.

0:49:29 - Cal
Very good. Our second question what's your favorite tool for the farm?

0:49:36 - Steward
My favorite tool for the farm. My favorite tool for the farm.

0:49:38 - Cal
Mostly.

0:49:38 - Steward
John Deere gator and it wouldn't have to be a John Deere, but just that's been a. We didn't have one for most of my life Dad never had a quad or a gator or whatever. It's. Just it's such a handy little rig. It's low fuel consumption and going out and checking fences, fixing fences, checking the animals, it's a great. It's a great machine. So, no, I glad to have that around.

0:50:06 - Cal
Oh yes, my parents have a mule and I actually used it a day or two ago, and normally I never use it, but I'd use it every day and I was thinking maybe I do need one of these. Yeah, yeah, no, they're handy, definitely handy. Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started?

0:50:26 - Steward
I would say go into it with your eyes wide open. I would recommend.

I recommend holistic management and Ranching for Profit, but I did them in the wrong order. I wish I would be in a much better position right now if I'd have done ranching for profit business school first and then followed up with holistic management, because, effectively, ranching for profit teaches you how to keep your head above water and then holistic management gives you the technical details to maximize your grazing management. But yeah, if someone's just thinking about getting into it, don't just dive in, call up RMC and at the very least, go do ranching for profit. You'll never regret it. Even if you decide that it teaches you not to do something, you'll still never regret it. And then, once you've done that and you've figured out what direction you want to go in, then go to holistic management with either Savory Global or HMI, either one. They're both great. They're both great organizations.

0:51:24 - Cal
Wonderful advice there. And lastly, Stuart, where can others find out more about you?

0:51:30 - Steward
Well, you can find us online at mflbisonranchcom or mflbisonranchca. One of those redirects to the other so you get to the same page and there's some contact details on there. I don't keep that site as up-to-date as I probably should because I'm busy with a bunch of other stuff right now, but our contact details are on there and there's a little bit of information about our ranch. And then we have a store in Sullivan Lake, alberta, which is the Ranch Gate Market. It's a separate business, but it's where we market a bunch of our animals through and there's a little website there, my sister maintains. And so if you're ever in central Alberta, stop by there for some of the world's best bacon and some excellent bison jerky. And we carry our own products in that store. And I've got Savory's book for sale in that store and Voisin's book and some of Joel Salatin's books are for sale, so you can start your reading whilst eating some good bison jerky.

0:52:23 - Cal
Oh, there you go. Yes, well, very good, stuart, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today. No thanks for having me.

0:52:33 - Steward
It's been really good and I'm hoping that. I can maybe get some feedback and learn something from this whole experience.

0:52:41 - Cal
Hopefully, so I know our listeners will benefit from it. So again, thank you.

0:52:45 - Steward
No worries, you're welcome. It's been a pleasure.

0:52:49 - Cal
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