Program Roundup

our planned grazing has really helped us out on that. We decided to go to at least twice-daily moves due to the fact that you can lose residue very easily. Certain times of year we have 70-mile-per-hour sustained wind. We don’t want to make very many grazing mistakes.

“On our grazing plan, when we look at it from a brown side and a green side, and fill in all the little columns, you can get a fairly good idea of what you can do. You also need to have a destocking plan and incorporate that with a stock flow plan and it makes good sense. On a cash flow analysis basis we figured out what kind of cattle numbers we should have, and we keep up with the sales at the sale barns and buy cattle as much as we can, to keep the balance,” he says. “We may also go back to using more sheep and goats. We’ve had some in the past and enjoyed working with them and they are also profitable. So we are just thinking about doing more with what we’ve got,” says Erik. Erik can see progress on what they’ve been doing with the land itself and finds it rewarding. “It has been a personal revelation which makes me happy and drives me to do more of what I want to do and less of what I don’t want to do. It all boils down to being in the right place at the right time for the right reasons. What we are doing with our own cattle, with our own grazing is all a part of that. It’s better than anything we’ve done before and we’re starting to get comfortable. It’s what I’ve been working toward, my entire life, but I didn’t know what it was. Now that I am out here and seeing how this is working, we are getting along really well,” he says. “I have read many articles in IN PRACTICE that helped me get to where I want to be, so I thought it was interesting that I could maybe do the same for someone else.”

NM Low-Stress Livestock Handling

In June HMI partnered with Socorro, New Mexico rancher, Mark Cortner, and HMI Certified Educator Guy Glosson to offer a LowStress Livestock Handling Clinic at the Socorro Rodeo and Sports Complex. Guy Glosson, a long time student of Bud Williams, has also been the Ranch Manager at Mesquite Grove Ranch for the past 29 years.

Ten participants from New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Colorado joined

Guy and Mark, as well as HMI Program Manager Stephanie Von Ancken to learn about the history of LowStress Livestock Handling including Bud William’s principles of stockmanship and the experience of Whit Hibbard. Before participants had any contact with the animals

Guy demonstrated with diagrams the animal’s flight zone and how our movements as “predators” into this zone affect the animal’s movement.

He explained how the fulcrum of the animal is the shoulder and if you move towards it and then back away they will move forward but if you move towards the animal in front of the shoulder the animal will most likely turn around. He said the animals learn quickly and become more comfortable responding to pressure by finding ways to relieve it through movement which can be controlled by the rancher. He instructed participants to apply pressure by walking towards the animal’s shoulder and then take it away by walking towards the back and then turning around in a triangle pattern which pushes the animals forward without any other verbal or physical cues. Guy also showed some video clips of Bud Williams and Whit Hibbard that demonstrated how to move cattle along a fence, how to pass them through a 4-foot-wide gate, and how to calm them down by running them. After the classroom demonstrations the group was eager to get outside and meet the animals. The participants sat outside the corral as Guy began running the animals up and down the fence using the bodymovements he had just taught in the classroom. Then each participant had a chance to practice moving the cattle up and down the fence on their own. After everyone succeeded they moved on to the next task, moving the cattle up the fence and turning them at the corner, then to moving them half way up the fence, turning them and moving them around a big blue plastic barrel Guy had set out on the opposite side of the arena. In the afternoon participants divided themselves up into groups of three and learned how to move as a team applying pressure on each side as well as in a zig-zag pattern behind the animals to move them through two blue barrels placed 8-feet apart that mimicked a small gate. The next day was mostly spent in the arena with more hand-on practice. Classroom time included a talk on Holistic Planned Grazing and how it

Guy Glosson explaining ties into Low-Stress Livestock Handling before one more final livestock low-stress livestock principles. handling task in which all participants were successful. Thank you to the Thornburg Foundation for their support of this program.

Event results:

Topic

The basics of low-stress livestock handling Low-stress principles for processing & shipping Techniques for handling calves & moving/gathering cow/calf pairs How-tos for successful health check, pen riding & working singles Holistic Grazing Planning & how to improve land health

Participant Percentage of Improvement

89% 89% 78% 78% 56%