HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

LIVESTOCK &

Cow Chip Ranch— Growing Healthy Food

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Chad and Amanda Njos and their three children are ranching holistically near Bowman, North Dakota. Chad is no newcomer to Holistic Management; he was introduced to these concepts on his father’s ranch. His father John Lee Njos went to a Holistic Management course in 1986, when Chad was still in high school.

“When I left home, I went to college and basically told my dad that I wanted to be as close to farming and ranching as possible without actually doing it because it was too much work! I got an engineering degree and worked as an intern as a design engineer for nine months. This made me realize that I wanted to go back and ranch again,” Chad says.

After he graduated from college there was a small ranch for sale about 20 miles from his parents’ ranch. “I decided that a ranch was the best place to raise a family, so I bought that ranch in 1993, and moved back,” he says. He calls his place the Cow Chip Ranch because to him cow chips represent fertility (a lot of cow chips mean lots of cows or healthy soil). The operation at first consisted of mainly a cow/calf herd and a small heifer development program, where genetics and nutrition were the main focus.

At the time Chad bought his ranch, he was using Holistic Management as he knew it, which was mainly just in terms of managing the land and cattle. “I tried to use the principles I was taught by my father and by some of my other education, but I didn’t really totally understand the principles of it until about 2010 when Amanda and I went to a Holistic Management school together. After that, we started focusing on the whole rather than just parts,” he says. They also focused more at improving soil health and ranch profitability with use of intensive grazing and winter bale grazing.

“Up until then, I think my own thought process was in the way. I was

looking at the livestock, and the grass that I could see—rather than soil health and the root systems and biology of the soil,” Chad says. During the prior decade, their region suffered many drought years. “We had to start moving our cattle more often. Before that, I moved the cattle every five to ten days, based on looking at the plants above the ground and not thinking about recovery time and soil health. After we started moving the cattle more often because of the shortage of grass and worrying about dust pneumonia, I started seeing a response in the plants. I realized we needed to take this a little more seriously,” he says. He and Amanda took more courses in Holistic Management and then in 2011 they initiated a more intensive grazing system with the cattle. “We run about 200 cow/calf pairs. We have a lot of land here that was farmed at one time and in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), so we have a lot of tame grasses with early season growth. We started moving our cow herd twice a day, giving the cattle just enough forage for half a day,” he explains. “We started seeing a response after leaving more cover and a longer rest period. We began to do more monitoring, and putting together better grazing plans, marketing plans and financial plans,” he says. There are also abundant game animals on the ranch with grazing management supporting improved wildlife habitat. “The thing about Holistic Management is that we take The Njos Family (left to right): Amanda, Molly Mae, everything into account. We not only Zakai, Tobias, and Chad. manage for our livestock, but also for wildlife. Our animals are stuck here, on this ranch and have to live and survive here, but the wildlife come and go. If I can provide a habitat that wildlife want to live in, I am doing something right,” he says. Breeding for Efficient Smaller Frames The Njos’ 200 cows are mostly Angus. Nearly all the heifers are retained and bred AI in the summer. “We then keep just what we need and sell the rest as bred heifers or open heifers. We’ve had serious drought the last two years so a lot more of the heifers were open. This past year

was really bad. We actually sold part of the heifers the day we started AI breeding. These last two years we only did one round of AI because of the drought, and only kept the heifers that got pregnant,” he says.

These are the kind of decisions that Holistic Management have helped—with the pasture management and the cattle. “My dad started using AI breeding in the late 1960s. He was a representative for ABS (American Breeder Service) and I did the same. After the late 1990s and into 2000 we noticed that the genetics of cattle were changing in almost all the breeds and getting larger. Even though we were trying to use moderate-framed bulls, they kept getting bigger, and the new generations of cows kept milking more. Longevity decreased, fertility decreased, and structure problems increased. So now we are trying to get down to smaller-framed, more efficient cattle again,” Chad says.

“When we were AI-ing the heifers early on, in the feedlot, we would get between 80–90% of them pregnant on the first goround. Now, we keep more heifers and have moved our calving back to late April and May. We let Nature make the decisions on which ones to keep. We always liked picking the nice-looking ones, but they are not always the ones that make the most money!”

“That’s what we’ve done, the past few years. I’ve picked out the top indexing heifer calves and sold them. The way we run the cattle, those females milk themselves out of the herd so it’s better to sell them. We have focused more on soundness, fertility and dependability. I tell people that if I remember a cow’s number, I don’t want her around here because she is either too good or too bad! We want them to perform and produce big calves, but not at the expense of the cow and her own future,” he says.

“We’ve changed our genetic focus to what most people would consider lower-producing animals, but with the changes we’ve made (the genetics, the grazing, etc.) and reducing the stress on these animals, we have good performance. The nutrition of our grasses is higher now and the cattle are more adapted, so we have less health problems. We have healthier animals and the weight gains on our calves have actually gone up over the years,” he explains. It’s hard to pinpoint any one thing that has changed, because they are all interrelated. Engaging the Community

A few years ago Amanda started her own business she calls Cow Chip Creations, building beautiful furniture out of reclaimed barn wood. “A couple of years back we purchased a small place next to us, and it had some old buildings on it,” says Chad. “I asked Amanda if she might be able to help us pay for that place by doing something with the wood from the old barn. So she went down to the shop one day and started building furniture.”

She now has her own workshop in one side of their old barn. “Our project the last two years has been to remodel an old A-frame barn that’s 60 feet long, with lean-tos on each side. I never had the heart to tear it down because it’s a classic; you don’t see very many of those old barns anymore. A couple contractors came in and helped us with the work, and we also straightened the main barn and got it secured. We tinned the roof and the lean-tos and now one of the lean-tos is where we home school the kids, and it’s also kind of a recreation room. The other one is Amanda’s shop,” says Chad. The downstairs part of the barn is her show room where she exhibits her barn wood furniture, and the loft now serves as a big meeting room and kitchen area. “We are using that barn for her business with the furniture but also for education and meetings.” Amanda uses the show room to display other artists’ work as well as her own creations. “The entire barn project is something we’ve tried to make into a community thing. She showcases the work of local painters, photographers, and people who make jewelry, pottery, etc. This is all part of the whole scheme of what we do, trying to add to our community rather than just trying to see what we can get out of it,” he explains. The goal is to spread the message and have more people come, and look at many things and see the talent within the community. This old barn has been a perfect place for multiple Amanda Njos has led the charge to renovate an old barn on their property as a purposes. The floor from the showroom for her recycled wood furniture and as an event space for rent. old hay loft was recycled to use on the walls, and the old red shiplap siding was useful to finish the ceiling in the loft. This barn and the furniture enterprise is just another business generated by the ranch, helping with education and agri-tourism, Holistic Management, etc. Amanda had a teaching degree and taught school for a while after she and Chad were married, but she was also interested in ranching and cattle. “After we had our first child, we decided we wanted to be a family on the ranch. She quit her job and stayed home to raise the kids and help with the ranch. She likes to socialize a lot more than I do, however, so building the furniture and meeting her customers is something she enjoys,” he says. This renovation is also another “crop” off the ranch. As Chad jokes, it’s another way of recycling carbon—the barn wood. The remodeled barn also fills other purposes. “We tried to set it up so we can use it any way we need to. The next generation that comes along, whether it’s our kids or someone else, can hopefully utilize it also,” he says. “That’s one thing I was taught growing up—that what you do now affects the next generation. You are always trying to improve what you have (your various resources), for the next generation, whether it’s the land or the habitat.” Holistic Management Benefits When asked of the benefit Chad has experienced with Holistic Management he notes: “It helps us make our decisions based on a plan rather than making decisions at the last minute based on emotion. We’ve

seen that happen a lot in ranching.”

Going into each year, he and Amanda try to have a good financial plan, grazing plan and marketing plan. “We have been selling cattle on these dry years rather than buying feed and increasing risk. We have been working with a local farmer/neighbor who has corn, and this is the first year we’ve ever grazed cornstalks,” Chad says.

Being able to work with the neighbor, and still be grazing the cattle in December instead of feeding them, has kept costs down. “We are trying to help the neighbor, also, helping him understand soil health and things like that. We are trying to work back and forth with him and share resources,” Chad says.

“That’s the benefit of Holistic Management; we try to look at every opportunity and find what will fit into our management plan. Utilizing the cornstalks rather than spending a lot of money for hay after this dry year (and adding more risk) was a good choice. Going into 2018, we still had no moisture. We had a little bit of snow in early December but we’ve had so much wind that the sky was brown with dust blowing. We figured it wasn’t a good idea to put all that risk into trying to feed cattle, not knowing what next year is going to be like,” he says.

“Another thing I see value in, regarding Holistic Management, is the networking—to be able to have other people you can work with and bounce ideas off of, like my father. I am fortunate that my dad is on the same page that I am. Here in our community there are not very many people that do what we are doing. Many people want to do what we are doing but they don’t know how.” They don’t know where to start because this concept is so foreign to them.

“It’s always easier to do what’s comfortable—what you’ve done as a habit—than it is to do what’s right, or to change,” he says. What a person is doing now might have worked in the past, but it might not be the best for what is happening right now.

When you go through a drought crisis, it really helps if you can work together with other people and pool resources. “Yet many people go the other direction; it’s getting harder and harder to work with neighbors; instead of wanting to change and work as a community, they want to isolate themselves and continue doing what they feel comfortable doing,” Chad says.

This creates a frustrating challenge. Having some networking, and being able to work with other people who are doing Holistic Management, can give a person a lot of support. “I was appointed Chairman of the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition so we are spending quite a bit of time on that right now. We helped bring the Leopold Conservation Award to North Dakota, for instance. We tried to include as many groups in the state as we could, whether it was energy, or government, conservation groups, etc. The hardest ones to bring on board, however, are the agricultural groups,” he says.

“We are really struggling with getting support from them and I think it’s because of a certain mentality that comes all the way down from our universities—encouraging people to specialize rather than diversify. With the grazing lands coalition we are trying to support anything positive. If Extension wants to do a bale grazing project, for instance, we need to help fund that because the universities won’t, since it’s not the conventional way to feed cattle. When you get into the community aspect of Holistic Management, it’s a whole different challenge,” he explains.

He and Amanda try to help other farmers and ranchers, with any spare time they have. They are very involved in the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition mentoring program and educational workshops. “Many of these types of programs are funded with matching grant money, so it’s always a challenge financially, but this is a real need in our state. Hopefully people can look for other possibilities in these tough years,” Chad says.

It’s hard for young people to get started today, with the high cost of land and machinery. Some of them want to come back to farming and ranching and are searching for education to help them. Holistic

Management is a way to help them accomplish this.

“North Dakota’s economy is based on agriculture. Energy has come into the picture and helped the state’s economy, but the main industry has always been agriculture. If you look back 50 years or more, every farm operation had some cattle, milked some cows, had pigs, chickens, etc. Farming and ranching was more of a holistic type of operation because one thing fed another.” Also if the market was poor for one enterprise, it was often better in another. If cattle prices were low, the market for lamb and wool might be good, for instance. There was usually something that worked out to help make agriculture sustainable.

“Farming practices probably weren’t the greatest, but many other things helped make things more efficient. Back in the 1980s my dad had a milk cow and we had chickens and we raised bum lambs and had the beef cattle, but then the universities said you need to focus on just one enterprise. So that’s what happened with most farms.

“A lot of the ag groups became even more specialized—the wheat

The Njos use bale grazing as a way to build soil fertility on their pastures. The Njos AI their Angus herd and are careful of their stocking rate in order to grow good grass.