Adirondack North Country Association Building Vibrant Rural Communities and Resilient Local Economies
Spring 2012
ANCA news
Since 1999, ANCA has helped hundreds of livestock farmers, horse boarders and other related business owners develop grazing plans for their land. USDA Photo
Heading Out to Pasture Grazing plans help livestock farmers make best use of their land
Northern New York has some of the best pasture in the State, and ANCA wants to help livestock farmers get the most from their lands. ANCA’s involvement with cattle farmers dates back to the 1980s, born out of the desire to promote best practices for effective grazing land management, said ANCA Director John Kiechle, a key resource on the ANCA board on agricultural issues and a lifelong dairy farmer. From those early days, the passion to help farmers increase their capacity evolved into a partnership with the USDA-funded Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI). Through GLCI, ANCA works in 10 Northern New York counties with a network of contracted grazing land specialists who design a customized management plan for each participating farm. Denis LaFleur, who owns a 70-acre farm in Fort Covington, northern Franklin County, went through the program in 2010 looking for ways to better manage his 16 red and black Angus cows. Two years later, LaFleur speaks highly of his experience and enthusiastically about the transformation he’s seen on his farm. “It’s a great program, and it was easy to understand. For people doing grazing for beef, sometimes there’s not a lot of money being made, so it’s great to find help for us small producers,” he said. Some of the benefits LaFleur noted: • He no longer buys grain, a savings of at least $80/month. • With rotational grazing, his cows are always eating the sweetest grass and rotating them between eight paddocks gives the other areas a chance to recover. • The cattle are growing 25 percent faster, resulting in more money at butchering time. • Access to funding: Having a grazing plan in place allowed him to access $20,000 in grant funding that was used for additional fencing, water lines and watering facilities for the livestock when they are rotated farther from natural water sources.
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UPDATES, 10 -12