#114 Total Grazing Academy | Student Interview with Josh Teague of North Carolina

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching.

I hope you are having a wonderful day, with good health and especially with a good attitude as we know that our attitude will have an enormous influence on the results we get when dealing with other people or even with our livestock!

Today I want to invite you to watch two YouTube videos for free.

One is of a student panel interview with Josh Teague of Running T beef farms in North Carolina 

The other is again of Josh Teague showing how the Total Grazing Program works in creating a vigorous regrowth after nonselective grazing when done on well-recovered grass.

This is what a total graze is; a high harvest efficiency grazing or nonselective grazing on well-recovered grass and done in less than 3 days so that your livestock do not regraze the regrowth which would be overgrazing.

Overgrazing is not severe grazing as many people think, overgrazing only happens when we allow our livestock to graze forages before they have recovered. And what is it that we want our forages to recover? Their energy reserves which are in crowns and roots! 

People need to realize that what happens under the soil is even more important than what happens above the soil: what do I mean by this? I want you to consider the energy reserves and the impact your grazing has on the energy reserves of your forages, energy is stored in roots and crowns, which means we want to manage for stronger and deeper roots, well these stronger and deeper roots we get with the total grazing program also help to maintain your pasture strong and healthy and free of invasive or less desirable plants. Isn't that great? That by creating fatter stronger roots we also create a better sward? With less interplant spacing which also means a better solar panel.

Watch Josh Teague's video and reach your own conclusions as there has been a lot of backlash from people who may not know how plant physiology works out in the land and how we need to manage what Andre Voisin wrote about many years ago: grazing is the meeting of the grass with the herbivore. 

Josh has been a Total Grazing Academy graduate for years now, and he is one of our Fat Wallet Ranchers members, he is getting top results and understands how plant physiology, economics, livestock genetics, and good body condition are necessary for success. Not many livestock farmers know as much as he does.

What I would like is for many livestock grazers to learn how plants and soil work together, how we can maintain a much larger number of livestock in good body condition at a very low cost, how we can increase grass production per acre by 3 to 5 times by minimizing overgrazing.

Plus, I want you to know that stocking rate, the number of productive livestock you can maintain at a low cost per year determines your profits AND your soil improvement IF you minimize overgrazing!

Did I mention that Josh is not feeding hay? This saves a lot of money, grazing stockpiled grass can save you around $300 per cow per year. Big money ready to be saved!

If you are grazing conventionally, set stocking, or if you are grazing rotationally, you can greatly improve your stocking rate, save a lot of money on hay, and continue improving your land which after the first few years slows down improving under rotational grazing.

And, if you are doing rotational grazing you know that under a very high stocking rate, your best species seedlings will not have the chance to establish successfully as your livestock returning will pull them out of the ground. You need a program a total grazing program where you stockpile large areas of your property for use as standing hay, to increase your long-lived soil organic carbon, and for your best forage species seedlings to establish and reproduce. 

Recap and conclusion:

1. Overgrazing is not severe grazing, overgrazing happens when we allow our livestock to graze plants before they are well recovered.
2. Nonselective grazing is a high harvest efficiency grazing that gives you more cow rations harvested per acre. This gives you the flexibility to either stockpile more grass or minimize overgrazing depending on rain and growing conditions.
3. Stocking rate, the number of productive livestock you can maintain at a low cost per year determines your profits and your soil improvement.
4. In the Total Grazing Program you can produce much more grass by minimizing overgrazing even at a very high stocking rate plus save much money on hay by using stockpiled grass.
5. Join the many people doing this with success near you, watch the video and draw your own conclusions. 

Watch the Youtube link of our Student Panel Interview with Josh Teague here.

Have a great day and start improving your land, your grasses, your soil, and your livestock genetics today. 

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