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SOIL HEALTH IN PRACTICE - REAL SOLUTIONS FROM REAL FARMERS

were that dramatic. They have all visually improved, they
are just darker and more mellow over time.
Q: What can you share about the economics of finishing beef animals on irrigat-
ed annual forages? How many animals are you running on a pivot? What kind of
performance are you achieving?
Tyler: It’s penciling out well. The cost of gain is really cheap,
Photos by Dale Strickler especially on the lighter cattle. It also gives us flexibility in
when we want to market animals. We can run them on forage
and delay putting them in the lot and hit a better marketing

acre, depending on animal weight and forage production.
Above: Highly productive sorghum based mixes make up the base of the summer month later on. We are stocking from 2.5 to 4 animals an
mixes due to heat tolerance and excellent regrowth. Below: Taken after the cattle Our gains usually run from 2 to 2.7 pounds per head per day
have grazed through a paddock—note that not everything has been eaten to the
ground to allow for regrowth and a second grazing. Q: I understand that this project won Cactus Feeders an award for environmental
stewardship. Can you elaborate?
Tyler: We were one of 20 statewide winners of the Texas
by Nature Award, a program developed by Laura Bush to
showcase Texas businesses who have done environmentally
beneficial projects.
Q: Where do you see this project going in the future?
Tyler: We definitely plan to expand as we learn more and
work out the kinks. One change is that we do plan to in-
corporate more perennials into the system, to reduce the
number of trips we have to make in a year and to give us a
We spoke with Tyler Dinkel, Grazing Manager at Cactus little more forgiveness with weather events.
Feeders, about his thoughts on the project. All in all, despite a lot of minor setbacks inherent in any
Q: What have been the best parts of the grass finishing project so far? new enterprise, it appears that grazing irrigated annual for-
Tyler: Probably the most impressive thing has been how ages might provide a profitable and environmentally sound
much feed we can produce using rotational grazing with alternative or enhancement to traditional feedlot finishing,
daily moves. It is fun to watch how fast things can regrow with one option to graze animals until they are close to
after we move the cattle off a paddock. finish weight with a short grain finishing period just before

Q: What have been the drawbacks and difficulties you have had to overcome? slaughter for the traditional grain fed beef market, and the
Tyler: The biggest thing has been the learning curve in other option to finish animals entirely on forages and sell as
matching animal numbers to available forage. It takes a grass-finished beef.
few moves to train your eyeballs to make sure the animals
have enough to eat and you are also leaving enough residue
behind to protect the soil. Every batch of cattle has a little
different level of intake, and Holsteins are completely dif-
ferent than our beef breeds. Providing adequate drinking
water to over 1000 head on a pivot and making the fences
so the pivot can walk over them was an initial challenge as
well, but once we figured that out it has been pretty smooth.
Q: One of the touted benefits of grazed cover crops is the benefit to the soil.
Have you seen soil health benefits?
Tyler: Definitely. The soil just gets mellow. Our best results
were where we also inoculated the seed with mycorrhizal To achieve maximum gains on grassfed beef, high levels of management must be
fungi. In one season our organic matter test went from 1.6 employed and fencing and water for daily or semi daily moves must be thought
out. Here are 1200 head of steers in one paddock drinking from a creative watering
to 2.2 %—that is a huge jump. I don’t think our other pivots solution developed by Cactus Feeders.

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