#108 Case Study on Ayavalla Land

Hello, I hope you are well and thriving. I am Jim Elizondo and I hope your Spring grass is coming up great and you have an abundance of fat livestock and are making more money by converting your grass to saleable products as efficiently as possible.

Today, I want to tell you a good story, a real story, a case study of a farm in Tallahassee, Florida where I have been a consultant for around 9 years now.

I met the owner of this property the very first time I taught in the USA back in 2013, immediately he grasped how important it is to reach harmony between the soil, grass, and livestock to produce more beef per acre at a lower cost.

He started to use Mashona Bulls soon later and started seeing how much better their offspring performed on his land with poor soils and low-quality Bahía grass and broomsedge.

They were fascinated with the Mashona cattle but still had some doubts about marketing the offspring and did not go full bore on Mashona just yet. Regarding grazing management, they had been doing rotational grazing for many years with overgrazed grass and degraded soils from the farming done there a long time ago which eroded the soil.

After doing rotational grazing for around 17 years, the land had not improved much in long-lived soil organic matter, and grass production was not enough for around 200 cows. They were feeding much hay trying to increase soil organic matter by feeding hay in the pasture, but grass production and soil did not improve. 

Later, he hired me as a consultant and we started doing small steps in the grazing side while improving the herd with Mashona Bulls from the North Central Florida Mashona herd where I worked at that moment.

We observed how a ¾ Mashona was best for that environment and management so we started focusing on getting to that percentage. I explained how the best animals would show themselves if we stopped feeding hay and/or supplements.

They started creating stockpiled acreage of Bahía grass and in the first year of grazing stockpile, they almost eliminated hay feeding saving around $10,000 per month.

Later, they grew the herd to double without feeding hay, which saved them even more money and allowed the stockpiling pastures to produce much forage as standing hay for their Winter and dry seasons.

We gave preferred treatment to the poorer sections of the property, to stockpile more frequently as the soil there was very eroded and compacted. After the first year of stockpiling, these areas started getting spongier, and partridge pea, a legume, came in along with hairy indigo and little bluestem. I got excited as this meant that succession was happening there in front of our eyes.

Because we had enough grass in other parts of the property I decided to stockpile those poorer areas three years in a row, only grazing them in Winter after the seeds of these native warm-season grasses dropped to the ground to increase the number of seedlings establishing in the long stockpiling season next year. 

Purple top, a good quality warm season native showed up and started to spread, then we got some big bluestem plants producing seed for the first time, I was excited. Then we started seeing more and more Indian grass and finally a little number of switch grass along with Desmodium and Desmanthus legumes.

Why are these warm-season native perennial grasses so important?

For one they are natives, and they produce much more grass and higher quality than introduced Bahía grass. They also feed wildlife better, and provide more shelter to young and vulnerable to predators young wildlife. This is very important for the owner and for the land resilience.

Wildlife numbers went up, we started seeing larger racks of whitetail deer and more wild turkeys which were very low in numbers when we started. Bobwhite quail also increased with the better food source that more legumes bring to the table

Then we started to notice that cool season annual legumes were more abundant in all paddocks where at the start there weren’t many of them. We are seeing white clover, ball clover, black medic, vetch, plantain, and others. They provide high-quality food for baby quail and turkeys.

And it all started to improve by stockpiling large sections to use as standing hay in the difficult seasons of the year to save on hay. They are saving around $300 per cow per year on hay.

Now, remember I said they doubled their stocking rate? They went up to around 420 cows plus the calves without having to feed hay even in below-average rainfall years.

How is this possible? This is the result of minimizing overgrazing

Overgrazing happens when grass is grazed before it has recovered and is what reduces grass productivity the most. Overgrazing is what creates a manmade drought. Overgrazing happens when we rotationally graze our grass when grass growth slows down due to dry or cold seasons. Overgrazing, which can be minimized at high to very high stocking rates under the total grazing program.

This is why I call this style of grazing management a program; it includes not only minimizing overgrazing at all times but also creates a large area of standing hay in the green season when the herd cannot keep up with the surge in grass growth without the grass losing its quality.

This is the main difference with other grazing systems: We minimize overgrazing, even at very high stocking rates and greatly reduce hay costs. 

These two things, plus improving the soil by increasing long-lived organic carbon when stockpiling mean that no rotational grazing system can compete with the total grazing program in profitability and soil enhancement.

Then comes genetics, real-life fertility increased due to having better-adapted cattle that could maintain good body condition when it got hot and grass increased in fiber.

We need to consider that heat-unadapted cattle will not consume much grass when it gets hot. The reason is that digesting the fiber in the rumen releases much heat and with the high ambient heat index they just cannot cope with it. As cows need good body condition at calving this means that real-life fertility took a hit.

Now real-life fertility is higher, they have more cows carried at a lower cost, and their pounds of weaned calves produced per farm have greatly increased.

Finally, they are selling grass-fed beef of their Mashona/Angus cattle and noticing that marbling is excellent as is yield and tenderness.

With these results, it is a matter of time before they become one of the leaders in providing the best genetics for similar high heat index environments with poor soils for people to regenerate their lands.

I want to invite you to see, touch, and feel this for yourself.

We are going to hold an onsite course at Ayavalla Land LLC in Tallahassee, Florida on June 21 and June 22. Register for the onsite course at www.rwranching.com/tallahassee2024

Lunch will be provided and we will have classroom sessions along with field tours to observe and explain what I am teaching. This is a great chance to see firsthand what the Total Grazing Program along with the Adapted Genetics and Selection Guidelines results are.

You will see how the soil and pastures are improving.

Not only will you see more grass and better soils, but you will also get the chance to network with people like you, that want to maximize their profits while they improve the land the fastest.

As always, make sure to enroll in our email list to get my weekly podcasts free.

May God bless you and I hope to see you in Tallahassee, very soon:)