e118. Embracing Native Grasses with Kody Karr

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast Episode 118. You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host Cal Hardage. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment.

[00:00:34] You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you.

[00:00:57] That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy-to-follow techniques to quickly assess your forage production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently.

[00:01:18] Together they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at noble.org slash grazing. It's noble.org forward slash grazing. On today's show we have Cody Carr of Carr Family Farms.

[00:01:44] Cody is 9th generation in Monroe City, Missouri. His operation including mixed grass and crop farm that's integrating cattle and sheep into the cropping rotations while converting crop ground back into native pasture. It's a really good episode we talk about his journey, a little bit about his cows,

[00:02:05] a lot about his sheep and native pastures. It's a really good episode I think you'll enjoy it. First let's jump in 10 seconds about my farm. And for it we have decided not to bail any hay this year which is always great. Dad and I've discussed it for years.

[00:02:26] We did go one year without bailing any hay, but a little bit of stress finding hay and getting it here so we went back to bailing hay. Earlier this year dad was willing to buy hay if he could get it for the right price.

[00:02:42] So we stayed off our hay medas, but we've been watching hay price and trying to decide what to do and dad just talked to the custom bailer a couple days ago and we're able to get it in our barns cheaper than we thought.

[00:03:01] So we are not bailing any hay, which is great news for the hay medas because they get abused because we take that hay off and then we feed it other places. So I get to graze it now so actually I have more grass to graze than I anticipated.

[00:03:17] Obviously if I had been holding off of it thinking we were going to hay it, it's much more mature than I'd like for it to be. But that's a problem I'd rather have to not having it to graze. So we'll see how that goes.

[00:03:33] I'm excited that it gives me more grazing days and maybe I can manage it a little bit better and get us further into the year. So enough about my farm, let's talk to Cody. Cody we want to welcome you to the grazing grass podcast.

[00:03:53] We're excited you're here today. Thank you, Kyle. I appreciate you having me on. I've listened for quite a while and pretty excited for the opportunity. Wonderful. Cody, to get started can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation? Yeah, I live up in northeast Missouri.

[00:04:10] Monroe City is the town's name. We're about an hour and 15 minutes north of St. Louis, so the outskirts of St. Louis. 20 minutes west of Hannibal and 36 if you know where that's at. I am a ninth generation agrarian in northeast Missouri.

[00:04:24] A fifth generation on the farm ground we're still on. My mom, my grandpa, and myself own about 550 acres of mix between row crop and pasture. We've been converting more to pasture the last couple years. Yeah, so I moved home in 2021 after my dad passed away.

[00:04:41] I'd been involved in the farm for quite a few years but really opened the door after he was gone. Mom didn't want to run the whole thing so I came back on about half the ground. Started taking it over. Now, Cody prior to coming back in 2021

[00:04:57] did you grow up thinking hey this farming is great this is what I want to do? Or what were your thoughts as a kid about this? I always liked being outside and playing on the farm.

[00:05:09] I probably wasn't the most excited about doing the farm work at all times. I enjoyed cattle, I don't love sitting in tractors. I do some row cropping. I live in row crop countries so it was just a reality for us but

[00:05:22] the livestock and the grasslands were always my favorite so at the time I was looking to get away and do something else because I didn't want to have to sit in the tractor and then yeah full circle I spent a lot of time in machinery but

[00:05:34] I get to sneak out and play with playing the pastures quite a bit too. Yeah. Pretty fun. And I have to concur the livestock was always my favorite. Haying season. Haying season was the only time in my life that I'm happy I have asthma and allergies.

[00:05:49] That's a good out. Yeah and it got me out of a lot on haying season. In fact, it caused my parents to get a cab tractor which took some of my excuses away but we were just we just had a family

[00:06:03] get together for Mother's Day and my brother was still complaining about how I didn't help as much in the hay pasture and here we are a few decades later. Yeah, I've got a younger brother and there's always comparison. We're 11 years between us. Oh yeah.

[00:06:21] We're always comparing how the two of us were raised because there's quite a few differences. Yeah and completely on a tangent we have a sister so my brother is 22 months younger than me so two years. Almost two years.

[00:06:34] We have a sister that's seven years younger than us so she's the baby and the only girl in the family so we feel like we really were mistreated. Now dad gets tired of hearing that and he's oh you guys weren't mistreated.

[00:06:49] We weren't but it's fun to complain about it. Oh yeah yep gets everybody started up at family events I'm sure. Oh yeah yeah I pride myself on being able to make my brother and sister mad in half a second. Anyway enough of that tangent.

[00:07:03] Cody when you did you go away to college? I did yeah I graduated high school in 2012 went to the University of Missouri study plant sciences that's I got to school and I've got a couple friends

[00:07:15] I got hooked up with and realized I wasn't the only weird kid that really liked grass so that that probably started the addiction for me a couple of buddies myself we got into native grasses and talking about how to work within our our ecosystem better ecological

[00:07:29] context for our area we would have historically been oak savanna tallgrass prairie obviously a lot of red crop now but I'm always interested in doing like habitat restoration and that kind of stuff and tying in the livestock to that yeah college opened some doors in that area

[00:07:43] or it helped me grow my network with some friends. Yeah that's put some time down there my wife she's from my hometown we got married while we were in college and both of us graduated in 2016 and decided to move back home

[00:07:54] to the farm her family raised they had a commercial hog operation and she came back home to work on that and I started working at a local co-op up here just helping on the side

[00:08:03] on the family farm I rented about 40 acres from my family at that time for pasture but that was our foot in the door getting back home. Yeah then in 2021 you really started helping a lot more there tell us what you're doing on your farm.

[00:08:18] Yeah so we're a mixed operation like my wife and myself she runs the hog side of it I really don't have I don't have anything to do with that she's great at that I run our livestock

[00:08:28] grass-based livestock and row crop we farm a little over 500 acres of row crop about that's just a hair less than 300 acres of grass ground we have 230 ewes that we run on cover crops and some perennial pastures we only had cows of our own we run anywhere between

[00:08:44] 40 and 80 contract cows on a given year depending on the grass but yeah that's what we do on that end of the operation. When you went back in 2021 were cows and sheep already on the operation or were they a addition after that?

[00:08:58] We had my mom and dad had about 100 head of cow-calf pairs that's gotten whittled down I'm not counting those into it. My mom still has 210 acres she lives on she runs a herd of cattle we culled

[00:09:09] back quite a bit on the amount of cows we had for her just easier for mom she's put in a water system on her farm with quite a bit of infrastructure so she's dialed back to

[00:09:17] 50 head of cows letting grass recover and as the system's coming online she'll probably continue to grow it from there but we always had livestock like I said we were bounced anywhere between 90 and 110 head of pairs of cows a big part of our operation for quite a few years.

[00:09:32] What brought you to adding sheep to your operation? So my wife she grew up showing sheep I always said we wouldn't have any and at one point in time she thought we needed five for the kids they're smaller easier

[00:09:45] to work with and she talked me into getting sheep and I probably annoyed her ever since things I became obsessed with them because they just they've really fit our operation well so I took it and completely ran off the deep end with it so we had about 340

[00:09:59] head last year before a drought hit and we cut back a little bit we're bringing pastures back online from converting crop ground but yeah that's she's the one that got me to dream of the Kool-Aid on the sheep whether she wants to admit it or not

[00:10:11] yeah they're probably my favorite animal to deal with now but You know there's that joke always about chicken math one plus one equals ten or something so it sounds like sheep math math got you all so yeah it goes from like five

[00:10:26] to fifty to three hundred and it just keeps yeah it doesn't stop for some reason. Yeah so when we think about your livestock we're talking your cattle and your sheep how do you manage those? So we've got a rotational grazing pistol we've been putting paddocks in

[00:10:41] when I started out with my cows on that first 40 acres I had somewhere around 18 or 19 different paddocks the sheep currently I run them inside of net fencing a lot of times I'm on crop ground

[00:10:51] with no perimeter bin which sometimes is good experience another I can tell you some horror stories on that thankfully they normally stay off the neighbors and just eat my crops but yeah yeah so I give them anywhere depending on the grass supply a half acre to an

[00:11:05] acre and a quarter a day as far as that uflock goes and sometimes multiple moves hoping to eventually get the infrastructure in on the place I live on to where I've got five

[00:11:13] acre paddocks and I can subdivide from there oh yeah but we try to move up every day to two to three days this time of year with my day job and being in the field some of the farms

[00:11:22] I rent we dial back for we're probably moving weekly on cattle I'd like to be better about it but it's just a time issue on getting to them we had direct market to some me the last couple

[00:11:31] years into st louis so we are grass bedding grass managed as far as that goes I stepped out of that this year just for the road crop side and um workload at my day job was picked

[00:11:41] up a little bit so we dialed back as far as going down to the city every weekend to a farmer market but I'm still doing some online sales one one thing that immediately jumps out to me is your rotation or your duration on a paddock you're moving them

[00:11:58] a little slower than a lot of people talk about and you've got to do those daily moves or you got to move them closer or more often I think you bring up an excellent point

[00:12:08] you're working off the farm so you have to move them in relationship to that off the job or off the farm job because we can complain about those but they pay a lot of bills

[00:12:20] yep they do when you you pay down some debt with and let the livestock just take care of themselves you can make a lot of headway so yeah I first year back from what

[00:12:29] after my dad passed I worked myself into the ground trying to keep up on those daily moves and everything and yeah just had a little re-evaluation about we're going to give up a little bit on the grazing just be more effective with our time rather than a grazing

[00:12:43] efficiency thing I'm hoping to get back to that someday but we're not there yet the infrastructure has got to be there first but yeah and two things you touched on there or two things I'm going to expand on just a little bit your physical and mental health is

[00:12:56] so important because when we talk about farms we talk about farms being profitable so they can be sustainable the other side of that is if you're wearing down yourself because you're burning the candle at both ends it's not going to be sustainable long

[00:13:10] term for your body for your mental health so you've got to do what works for you and the reason I'm harping on this just a little bit I feel like we're all the time

[00:13:20] do daily moves but really what is your context and what are you doing you don't have to go crazy and and just work yourself raw just doing daily moves there's other ways to manage

[00:13:34] and you don't want to leave them there too long so you're doing rotational over grazing but at the end of the day a little bit of rotational over grazing is better than over grazing a whole place absolutely yeah we're still seeing a lot of the benefits

[00:13:48] we were when we were moving right every day but yeah like if you have the time to move them daily I won't argue with anyone on that yep yep now you talked about you would love to get down to

[00:14:00] where you've got five acre pastures and then subdivide them as you move them I assume that's a long-term plan and as you work towards it how are you putting those then and planning those yeah so we've converted some ground out of row crop that doesn't have any

[00:14:16] perimeter fences around it current it's it's a proportion of a larger row crop field so there's a perimeter around the whole farm but I'm trying to break it up so we're adding high pinball in we've been playing around some of the timeless fence posts nothing gives them a

[00:14:29] plug or anything it's just that's okay they have to work well with the sheep we're gonna run some three to five strand high pencils testing to see what we can keep them in with inside

[00:14:37] of a place we're getting down to three three strands I've got a couple spots out in the middle where there's no fence for a mile half two miles we've got some five strand stuff just

[00:14:44] to make sure it's a little more beefed up and that's actually where my sheep are currently sitting on a piece I'm gonna plant a corn hopefully when it stops raining here I don't

[00:14:51] want to say that out loud because we went through a drought last year but yes but yeah that's what we've been doing you know weekends or winter time I do a lot of

[00:14:59] fence work when we're not in the field or not as busy at work at the co-op but yeah now one thing you mentioned there so you can get them down to about three strands and

[00:15:12] you've got them in this piece that's a little bit further and you've built a little beefier fence there five strands are you keeping your cattle in the same area or are you managing

[00:15:20] those as two separate I have urge flocks currently so on the farm I live on there's 150 acre farm that I live on it's actually right I have 10 acres in city limits of Monroe City and then there's 140 acres outside of city limits the sheep and the cows work

[00:15:35] together on that farm we have another 190 acres down the road that has been row crops and these sheep are the first livestock on that farm since the 1970s they used to bring hogs over

[00:15:45] to it this is the first year we've had livestock back on it so I haven't brought cows over my grandpa's still a little skeptical on the whole there's a row crop farm there's a livestock

[00:15:55] farm that can't be both even though he grew up on the yeah the duo farm but he's coming around to the idea I think that five strands beefed up enough I would be pretty comfortable

[00:16:05] running cattle in it especially as long as it's hot and there are fours in front of them yeah to this point we haven't taken any cattle over there with it I think I finished building

[00:16:14] that fence right around the winter it's relatively new but as you're building these fences and stuff what are you doing for water I haul that's that's another reason we take sheep on a lot

[00:16:26] of farms we don't have the cattle I've got some old hay wagons that we've got tanks on so I can haul the wagon out to the field sheep obviously had a lot lower water requirement

[00:16:35] so while we're converting these some of these row crop pieces or fencing off these row crop pieces I it's a lot easier on me by having the lower water need by the sheep if I was trying

[00:16:43] to keep water in front of cows this time year with temperatures picking up I'd be chasing them constantly some of the other farms we had put some wells in trying to run pipeline to where

[00:16:52] we got active things from the row crop down to for the livestock while we're grazing cover crops but yeah that long term we'd hope to have a well or a pond or some kind of a

[00:17:02] water source that we can pump from but right but that but having a portable water there for sheep like you mentioned so much easier than if you were doing it for your cattle and that's a

[00:17:12] great way to get started on a place if you don't have a good water source you can bring water to sheep and you mentioned right now about 230 years how much water are you having

[00:17:24] to take water every day or you have big enough tank it's once a week yeah I think last summer I had a big tank in front of them I'm trying to think so I was grazing some

[00:17:34] sort of the day and sun him and sun flowered behind some wheat on one farm I want to say I filled it up every two to three weeks and we actually had 340 years in that group that like

[00:17:44] that before before we we with the drought last year we cooled down a little bit just to make sure we had plenty of winter feed it was probably every two weeks that I was feeding

[00:17:52] them and it was drought conditions it was 95 degrees they had shade it was a rougher farm a rolling farm so there were some tree cover so they weren't out in the sun all day

[00:17:59] but thousand gallon tank over I want to say two week period is what we're getting at so the it was pretty pleasant to fill up and drag around those just kind of dug it from one

[00:18:08] paddock to the next I think we're doing four or five day moves on that particular farm just because it didn't have any infrastructure yeah it the sheep really fit some of those farms that don't have infrastructure well because you as long as you can keep them

[00:18:20] in a fence or building up enough of a temporary fence to keep them in you can get livestock impact on places that most people wouldn't let your brand cows to they seem to feel a little more comfortable with sheep being out there is what I noticed

[00:18:31] from some of my landlords go on that topic just a little bit more on amusing I have that I keep thinking how to figure this out I see all everyone around here's got cattle and and

[00:18:42] I look at those pastures I'm like sheep could get some benefit out there and could help them with some weed control and stuff and I've tried to think how I could structure a lease

[00:18:53] just for sheep grazing on those places of course you got to be very aware and convince that landowner the cattle person that you're not taking forage away from their cattle so I haven't figured that out if anyone out there in listener land knows or is doing that I'd

[00:19:09] love to hear more you might talk great christianson up he's out by lacing kansas I don't remember the exact town my brother-in-law used to live out there he's a grandview livestock on youtube he I think yes I watch his channel sometimes he does some of that on he

[00:19:23] takes some sheep on some farms and other people run a cattle on to clean clean up sheep or he may have goats well but he'd be wanting to talk to you about that I think I've seen on him or

[00:19:31] I've seen the goats portion of it and goats I think is a little bit easier argument because goats can go into brush and change the looks of that when cattle are not getting into the

[00:19:43] brush so yeah but that's interesting I'll have to look I know I watch him on youtube sometimes yep yeah yeah let's talk a little bit more about your sheep we're in the middle of lambing

[00:19:57] right now so it's on top of my mind she's been trying to figure out more about it how or when do you lamb them and how do you manage during lambing because for me that's always

[00:20:09] an issue now I'll I'm trying to do daily moves I've slacked off of that more during lambing and in full transparency I don't do daily moves with my sheep all the time but when I move them

[00:20:22] up close to the house for lambing I start tightening a rotation up and moving them more often I have to be careful about lambs bonding with their moms yep that that's one thing I

[00:20:33] was going to say I've struggled with a little bit this spring just like coming out of a drought I've been trying to rest some more perennial pastures so I took them out to some

[00:20:41] rye that doesn't have any fence around it started lambing on the rye and moving the sheep daily to every two days depending on the paddock size I've had some bonding issues I would

[00:20:51] so partially talking about those five to five acre paddocks in the future as far as wanting to do that I'd like to be able to do more of a drift lambing just them to where every

[00:20:59] two or three days you bring them up from the rear so they really have time to bond with their mom at all yeah I'm not there yet I was talking from other guys that are doing more of

[00:21:07] a system like that and then get back whenever you're through lambing backing that tighter rotation as far as parasite management and grass management goes but yeah so late I'm lambing right in the middle of lambing myself right now I just moved them into a 24 acre

[00:21:20] piece that was a stockpiled summer annuals last year's got some volunteer wheat stuff coming up and yeah just for that reason let the sheep dampen down have a chance to

[00:21:29] rebond with their moms I'm hoping to keep them in there for a week or two before I take them back home to some other cover drop ground but that is one yeah I've done I've always moved them

[00:21:40] pretty frequently with lambing I think that's one change I'm going to make after the last two to three years I've had a few more bottle lands and I think I should be having

[00:21:47] I've been there bottle land they're cute but yeah they are so much work they're high maintenance yeah yeah they're cute for the first 12 hours yep and then I got some in my yard and

[00:21:59] anytime I crack the door they come running because they think it's time to feed you know but been there yeah completely agree now with your lambing are you doing any tagging or working

[00:22:10] of your lambs or when do you do any type of work with them I don't currently the same reason I try to keep my hands off as much as possible through this window I'm sure if I was

[00:22:21] running a pure red operation I couldn't do what I do we're just a commercial flock but no I try to keep these hands off as much as possible you get closer to that August window I'll start

[00:22:31] peeling off some of the bigger ram lambs and probably do it August September we start weaning all the ram lambs off we don't we don't dock tail we don't castrate I'm pretty lazy cheap

[00:22:41] farmer I say if I can find a low maintenance way to do stuff um yeah I'm all about it so I want to help you out there Cody you're efficient yes yeah because efficiency is laziness

[00:22:52] with good PR that is true yeah yeah I'll roll that next time someone asked me right you're a fishing farmer and and I do the same thing granted if I was running registered animals I'd

[00:23:05] have to do something different but you know very low maintenance hands off except one thing I have or one issue I have I try and raise my own ramps yep and then I want to be careful

[00:23:18] because I want rams that are twins or triplets and not singles and when you're weaning them later the nicest looking rams are singles yeah and that is one I should have said I do try to mark

[00:23:31] it's like the first 15 20 years at lamb I try to mark some of the if they have twins and twin rams I do try to mark those I know I've actually got a group like the first 15 years

[00:23:41] that lay him this year I've got separated off just before I hold all my sheep over to this other farm that they'd already had lamb so I've got them partially separated so before I regroup

[00:23:49] everybody back up I will probably put some tags in those just so I know to pick rams out of that group just some of the mob breeding principles just you want to have early maturing

[00:23:59] use or maturing rants and yeah I really like that idea and I hadn't even thought about it I had thought this year I might ear notch some yeah but like I've mentioned on the podcast

[00:24:10] I'm really quick I can catch them if they're just born but if they're over like 15 minutes they have age actually it's a little bit more I can go probably a couple hours I can't catch

[00:24:20] them so nimble and then yeah and then you don't want to interrupt that bonding period so I had thought I'd get them in at 24 48 hours that ear notch some and I'll be honest the efficiency

[00:24:33] of myself got ahead of me and I didn't get that done so I've thought about going out there and some ewes that I know are older that's been in the flock a long time I'd mark some of those

[00:24:44] but I really like your idea of taking those first few that's lambed and marking those so you can pick from them because like you said you want to pick from the early maturing ones

[00:24:55] the ones that are lambing early in the cycle yep yeah so there's definitely some higher fertility going on there something yeah talking about your sheep what breeds are you working with so yeah we're currently we're a little bit heavier on easy cares which are katahdin

[00:25:14] dorpor and romanovs they're they're a little bit woolier than I like but they're supposed to be a higher fertility breed the other ones we run are hopping composite which they would

[00:25:24] have came not too far from where you're at kind of yeah from Warner okay yeah so those are Wagner either way it's not very far yeah down Oklahoma and those I've really they're harder

[00:25:35] to find I've got a couple contacts that I've got through to Jeremiah Markway one that he's raided them for years now and when I first got back in sheep I went down and visited him and

[00:25:44] just he is they're really nice flock so I've been pretty pleased with the hopping composite that's the range we run are all hopping but oh yeah I've seen photos of them I haven't seen

[00:25:55] them in person but I've heard good things about them I've also heard about the easy care sheep and enough I've looked into it but I can't find any are relatively close to me

[00:26:06] yeah the thing like there's Nebraska and Iowa I had to go north to find most of those were the hoppings I could go to southern Missouri and find so I'm in the middle of both of them so

[00:26:14] it I guess it worked out okay so yeah but the easy care isn't done pretty decent I was curious how they'd handle the heat with the wool but they seem like they they've done pretty

[00:26:24] decent the summer is hot as last year was I was pretty pleased with the way they performed it oh yeah and do they so they don't shed completely but do they shed enough that it's

[00:26:36] okay or are they carrying full wool it I don't know what breed to compare them to their bellies flick off pretty deep bit and if like halfway up their back it seems like it their the wool

[00:26:46] starts there it goes out if someone wanted to cheer on I'm sure that would probably benefit them but they seem like they've handled it decent until I have an issue I'm probably gonna

[00:26:55] I'm gonna delete with the hopping genetics hoping we get a little bit of our own composite up here oh yeah just continuing on breeds I'm talking about your cattle what kind of breeds are you

[00:27:05] working with there yeah so my mom's running south pole bulls on her operation just a violet red low-input animal it really fit what she's done my foal August horse beans kind of

[00:27:15] beat in my head the corey anything so I've got some corey ns I'm going for that too yes they fit my budget that's the best part about corey exactly I agree yes then we're putting

[00:27:27] obrik bulls on those corey ns for our graph bed market but yeah now obrik it's I think it's a you are bac yeah I know what you mean yes they are wild type coloration and that they're that

[00:27:41] brownies with a darker front on them yes yep they and they I know when bulls mature they really with testosterone coming on they darken up on the front they look similar to a bison almost

[00:27:51] as though the coloration pattern the cows are just a real I don't have any cows we've just got our first batch of calves out of an obrik bull hit the ground out some corey ns we've got

[00:27:59] we're hoping to keep back crossing and kind of great up eventually to some obriks just something different and I like weird stuff oh yeah I struggle with that too I'm just glad

[00:28:09] struggles with as well that helps yes so on those bulls were you able to get them locally breeder nearby or do you have to go quite a ways to get them so one I've got a I guess he's

[00:28:25] six and a half seven years old I got hooked up with the gentleman that he was the breeder I don't think he runs them anymore because Darren Unruh was his name he seems to know

[00:28:34] everyone has got him he's been a really good resource I sort of bounce the questions off of him after I'd reached out to a couple other people and he had a bull out by Kansas City so

[00:28:43] I was able to get that bull relatively close and then I have a younger pulled bull that I picked up from Minnesota so I drove a little ways for him the horned bull is pretty

[00:28:53] impressive specimen I gotta say there's nothing wrong with the pulled one just the horned bull that Darren had bred is it yeah if you look up she's reading Johann Weizmann and the whole inherent fertility and sexual dimorphism he really shows it so I'm excited

[00:29:08] to have him on the farm so hopefully he sticks around for a couple years I know it's getting a little older but very good yeah hopefully he does what made you go with that breed

[00:29:17] I just want a heartier animal that can perform on grass I know it's like the quarry anything like so they're cheaper to get into but I think having a little bit of that in the background can help on the handle heat that can handle insects and other stressors

[00:29:28] we've got a lot of Kentucky 31 fescue up in this area of the country just like other people do so we fight a lot of the issues that come along with fescue the bulls I think complement those

[00:29:38] cows well they come from a region of France that the genetics haven't really been tampered with and they don't feed a lot of grain because it's a mountainous region the one figure there was it's a cooler region but they seem like they handle it well it's

[00:29:50] southern France I believe so it I shouldn't say it's completely cool it's just a higher elevation but last year the drought that was one of the worst fescue years I saw a lot of conventional cattle struggling with fescue last year and doing these bulls from the quarry

[00:30:03] and it just I won't say it didn't affect them but they handled it a lot better than some of the other stuff like even some of my lawn's conventional cattle yeah and that'll be interesting to see how this project goes for you and how they work out for

[00:30:15] you I've seen pictures of the breed I've read a little bit about them but I've never been next to one always and to be honest sometimes on those French cattle not to pick on the French

[00:30:30] too much but sometimes those French cattle are a little crazy they can yep I my grandpa on the car side brought in some limousine back in the 80s I've heard a lot of stories on and

[00:30:40] there's a reason we didn't run any continental cattle for a lot of years but oh yeah that's true now you mentioned last year that you had grass-fed some beef did you also grass

[00:30:51] finish some lambs as well and direct market them yeah yep yes yep so we fed I don't remember the number but yeah so we sold it like st louis farrow market just testing out see how that

[00:31:04] would be and it went a lot better than I expected for I'm green on that end of it and I got a lot of irons in the fire so being I'm fairly organized but can always be improved

[00:31:14] it but yeah we marketed eight eight to eight to twelve lambs through there in addition to some of the cattle we were selling it I was pretty pleased with the reception of land there's a lot

[00:31:23] of younger people my age that they didn't grow up in a house eating lamb but they were trying it and they kept coming back especially they'd test out ground lamb and then they would venture

[00:31:30] into some lamb chops or some leg steaks or something and see it seemed to do pretty decent every time I had lamb it didn't last very long so oh yeah a nice surprise

[00:31:40] and one thing you mentioned there sounds like you were selling it by the cut as well yes yeah so we we did some we did a couple whole lambs but for the majority it was by the cut down

[00:31:49] to lake st louis we sold quite a few whole whole beefs half beefs so the lamb for the most part was by the cut but yeah and you mentioned a lot of irons in the fire so you're not

[00:32:01] doing that so much now do you plan on doing some later on yep and it is something we want to continue to do we're actually working with barnador to get an online website I'd like to

[00:32:13] do drop sites take some stuff down there it's just a nice little site and come to the farm it's just fitting it into the schedule currently like I said the the row crop side and we picked

[00:32:21] up some more pasture ground this year that we weren't really expecting been pretty fortunate we've had some older neighbors retire wanting to slow down just giving us some opportunities

[00:32:29] so I want to make sure I do a good job on that so I had to let something go and being down there every Saturday that I get a lot of work done on Saturday mornings and when I'm

[00:32:37] sitting at the farmers market it doesn't happen always yeah but it is something I want to get back into because I enjoy talking with people from the city there's a disconnect from the rural

[00:32:46] areas to the city the more we can tell our story and get on the same page with them that's the best thing we can do as far as pr and ag and I don't care if it's conventional or regenerative

[00:32:55] but we've got to be our own voices in that spectrum but yeah yeah now just continue on that working in an education system for a number of years I used to always tell them if we're

[00:33:08] not out saying good things about ourselves no one else is going to say them for us we have to get out there and say those good things form those connections because a lot of times there's some negativity that comes and negativity gets spread so much easier than the

[00:33:24] positive stuff but we've got to be out there saying it we've got to be meeting the public building those relationships and connecting them back to the farm yeah absolutely because yeah

[00:33:35] no one's gonna do it for us if we don't do it and there's so few farmers on the land anymore we've got to rebuild those bridges I know my my in-laws are pretty involved in a lot of

[00:33:45] organizations farm your own national producers and stuff that's one thing they've done a really good job with kind of I was probably something I didn't appreciate as much as what I was a

[00:33:52] kid you want to farm to hide from people and that's one thing I'm trying to be better at is telling our stories oh yeah I think those stories are so important hence the podcast

[00:34:02] yeah anyway when you'd mentioned there's got a lot of row crop land you've got some pasture have you worked on converting any of that row crop land into pastures or are you keeping them

[00:34:16] pretty separate yeah when I was in high school and my dad started the I gotta give him full credit he always said he was a cattleman stuck in row crop country and I've probably

[00:34:25] taken that vein I'm trying to think of the acreage split but the majority of our ground originally was crop ground we're really fortunate we've got four soil types and 550 acres so we've got some really uniform nice farms oh yeah and thankfully like I said the ancestors picked a

[00:34:41] pretty good area to settle in but yeah so we've been converting some since I was a kid I'm trying sorry I'm trying to get that split we're somewhere around like 220 acres of that 550 that we own is in grass now and or we were probably only somewhere around 160

[00:34:56] so my dad started it back when I was in high school and college and then I've done a couple conversions the last couple years like 2021 we did another 24-25 acre of cool season fescue

[00:35:07] orchard grass and some red clover just some tan grasses and the last year and a half I've been working on doing some native restoration just because for multiple reasons like I bet

[00:35:17] I'm an eco nerd on the I'd like to have a little bit of what was here back in the day because if the genetics are adapted to our climate our the drought last year I watched

[00:35:25] my fescue shut off about April 15th to April 20th and I had some Indian grass naturally been creeping back in that was just plugging and I'm not saying the yield wasn't reduced on the Indian grass but I still had something to graze there when the fescue was

[00:35:38] just done oh yeah so that's an area we've been focusing a little more the last couple years and plan on doing some more restoration was there but actually let's just go ahead and dive into that Cody for our overgrazing section we're going to talk about native

[00:35:52] restoration and since we're already here let's just dive deeper into it yeah so like I said that is something I've been interested in I've got a friend from college he really I would like

[00:36:04] native grass and stuff yeah just spent a lot of time reading about it when I was younger and he's probably one of the sharpest people I know on that so I would bounce ID questions

[00:36:12] off of it and we're always trying to figure out how we can make our trashers more productive without just pumping more fertilizer more inputs into it I think a lot of that is

[00:36:20] getting some native grass native plants back in there so we started with five and a half acres I put some eastern game of grass and ended up drilling it I was going to try to put it through

[00:36:29] a corn planter I started with that of my base we've done some big blue stem this last year did 13 and a half acres and I was actually walking it last night with my cousin I think

[00:36:38] it was eight or nine different species but swiss grass big blue some pale purple coneflower gray headed coneflower just getting some forbs back into depending on the conditions we're in this fun area of the country that we catch we're flooding out right now we were

[00:36:52] in a severe drought last year we have really hard freezes and then we'll have 80 80 degree days midwinter so the more diversity I think we get out there in those pastures the better and like I said though those natives are just they've been through it before they've

[00:37:06] got 10 000 years of evolution in these areas the kentucky 31 fescue or orchard grass that they're not adapted to here they're good quality forages and they got their benefits but the going forward I eventually get to where we've got about a third of our grass acres and

[00:37:21] in perennial native grasses oh yeah as you think about those native restoration and you've also done some where you've converted some crop land into kentucky 31 and orchard grass and other stuff is do you prepare the land in a different way or is it

[00:37:40] basically the same process for both um I'm trying to think both times we just drilled into existing crop residue I play around with no-till quite a bit going back to the whole iron

[00:37:50] in the fire it's just it's efficient to go across the ground and plant it so we've got a no-till drill in the county office has a no-till native seed drill going out occasionally

[00:38:02] you can burn down with a herbicide or you can graze really hard I had an accidental experiment last year with the gamma grass that worked out really well at the co-op we had a mix

[00:38:12] up and someone treated an entire box of wheat that didn't need to get treated and they were trying to find a spot to get rid of it so I said I need a nurse crop for this native grass

[00:38:19] so we drilled the weed out dirt 250 300 pounds per acre weight way too high but we're just trying to burn it up then I went in and drilled the gamma grass into it which

[00:38:30] in these native seedings or it's really important to keep the weeds back if it swallows them rather than taking a one-year establishment you might push that to two to three years to actually

[00:38:39] have an effective stand out there and in the grazing world every dollar counts so we really want to get those stands up to snuff as quick as possible that weed actually did a really good

[00:38:47] job I grazed it three times with my uflock in the spring between March 15th and April 30th before the game of grass had germinated and then I got them off of it and the wheat stunted

[00:38:58] out maybe about 12 inches tall and it suppressed the weeds all the way to August I got a pretty decent fan of gamma grass underneath that using it as a nurse crop they say it wasn't my original

[00:39:07] plan but we just tweaked it but I tried to cut back on as much chemical as possible it's a really good tool but I just if I can get away without playing with chemical I'd like to use

[00:39:17] nurse crops and some other crops to to get these stands up but expand upon that just a little bit about a nurse crop yeah what is it and what's the gold there so a lot of times

[00:39:28] like a nurse crop you would take oats or wheat or something and you would mix it in the grain drill at the same time that you're putting in whatever whether it's a cool season

[00:39:36] introduced species or a cool or warm season native you'd put it in at the same time it's going to germinate during the year and it's going to just help smother weeds keep those new seedlings from getting beat up whether it's deer running through or hail or something

[00:39:50] it's like a nursery you're taking care of some little baby plants doing what you can to make sure they get the best start in life because the better start you get the better

[00:39:57] that stand is going to be and the quicker it's going to come online for you and once you get those plant up as long as you graze them properly you use rest you you don't just

[00:40:05] natives are very sensitive to overgrazing as long as you're mimicking the bison and moving every so frequently you can really abuse them for a short period of time if you give them

[00:40:13] the proper rest period on the back end they're super resilient but so but from the time you put you drill them in you've got your nurse crop you mentioned just a while ago you were

[00:40:23] able to graze your sheep through the wheat I think said three times before that gammer grass really got started but once that grass starts coming up how long before you do any grazing

[00:40:34] on that so one once it starts coming and that's part of the reason I was walking mine last night I'm getting ready to bring sheep back to that farm so I've seen what has germinated I don't

[00:40:42] want to hit any of these new seedlings so as far as I'm concerned like this new stand I've got in that came a grass I'm taking them to frost I'm probably going to intercede some my

[00:40:51] low just for some stockpiled grazing it I don't know whether I'll get much of a stand think of some of my stuff is out there currently but I'll add on occasion I'll add some other

[00:41:00] species try not to hinder the new stand I'll probably plant some 60 inch milo out there just to add some other winter stockpile feed but at this point I'm looking at that stand is

[00:41:09] just it whatever it makes me for winter feed I'll go in there after the first killing frost and then I'll sort grazing some stuff off on it but it's offline for the rest of summer so

[00:41:18] yeah I had suspected that was probably the case and then graze it during dormant season will you plan to graze it next year or you baby it a second year yeah I'll probably start

[00:41:29] grazing it next year I'll be a little careful making sure but so these smaller younger plants I don't plan to push it overly hard the second year but I will try to get at least two

[00:41:37] grazings off of it next year if it's we're getting adequate rain and I can get in and out of it pretty quick um but a lot of times like if you do you take care of them the first

[00:41:46] year they can go basic not full production year two but they're pretty good chunk of the way there so yeah and when you think about your native pasture versus um fescue how does

[00:42:00] that grazing differ so like I said historically when I was moving every day you try to leave depending what style of grazing someone will do I know there's a lot of different ways

[00:42:10] to graze stuff there's some total grazing I was I tried pushing the grazing on on on fescue with my sheep and I had some health issues with the cheeps I've backed off to where I'm leaving a little more residual than most people and the higher density grazing probably

[00:42:24] are we just seem like the sheep didn't handle it as well as cow do but the natives rather than leaving that four to six inches of residual you're probably leaving summer closer to eight

[00:42:33] to 12 inches and like I said if you've ever read anything on how bison used to graze they they can pummel it so you can go in and pummel those grasses but that's a longer rest

[00:42:43] period on the back end if you leave that 12 inches you can probably crank out a couple grazings in summer because it's going to respond pretty quick if you're looking I'll probably misspeak here but fescue the majority of the roots are on the first foot two feet

[00:42:56] each from gamma and indian grass and big blue some of those you're talking 10 to 16 feet and we've got a hard clay hard pan up here I think that's one of the issues we fade my row crop

[00:43:06] is we took grasses out of this area that had these deep roots that helped us get through those hard pans and they're adapted to get through there our fescue is not really

[00:43:15] breaking that up as much up in this area though I've seen those images comparing native roots to these improved variety roots it's just amazing how deep those native roots go yeah and it's yeah there's it makes them so resilient burning harsh grazing or whatever

[00:43:33] that whatever's going on that there's a lot of reserve there for those plants to kick it back in and go again and I had I kind of I did that I had a couple plugged the gamma grass

[00:43:42] I've got a local ecotype I've been digging and plugging around my farms to help spread those genetics around I had a pretty good clump that forgot where I did it at I didn't mark it and

[00:43:51] so I had one spot of fescue I just I had a bunch of lambs in that paddock so I left them there longer than I normally would have last year and I realized afterwards I'm like oh

[00:43:59] that's where that gamma grass is at I pummeled it the fescue stunted out because we got so dry the gamma grass even just a one-year stand it was an established plant that I'd

[00:44:07] plugged but yeah immediately ramped up and took off and it was pretty resilient where I thought I killed the thing it did great you've talked a little bit about if you hammer it pretty hard

[00:44:19] you gotta give it enough rest time are you typically trying to give it on native grass twice as long as fescue to recover or how is that rest period when you think about it

[00:44:32] I look to see I look to watch the leap tip make a point again I think Greg Gio talks about that that's my big thing I do follow that same principle as far as I don't want to

[00:44:40] put a time limit to it because if I graze it hard mid-june it may be ready again in two weeks so it's you just got to watch the grass and if it's still showing it's growing low the leaf

[00:44:51] hasn't pointed back out like it's fully recovered I you might be a little bit early on that gray thing but I don't want to say four weeks or five weeks because it just depends

[00:44:58] on the time of year the rainfall you're getting later in the season I would shut down September 15th is the cut off for us ahead of a killing froth if you want to make sure you

[00:45:07] leave enough stub that enough leaf that you put in root reserves back in so that's northeast Missouri that's our cut off you get animals out of warm season natives at that time to make sure that they're they got adequate fill for winter and then after you have

[00:45:20] that killing frost you can dump back in and basically take them back to wherever that stubble height is the bunch grass double height starts at even a little farther from that 12 inches I said earlier but yeah now one thing we talk a lot about with fescue is stockpiling

[00:45:33] it yep do you do some stockpiling and fescue can you stockpile native grasses yeah so we do stockpile fescue and that's part of the reason we're bringing the natives in it gets us off

[00:45:44] of the fescue in a window that it's going to allow me to stockpile better than what I've been doing it's a big part of it the cover crops slain our personal operation big in that

[00:45:53] early winter window but the nate historically people always say that they lose quality as they mature out extremely quickly one of my friends has done a little bit of testing showing that

[00:46:03] game and holds on to it holds on to nutrients a lot longer than what people thought he sent off some oh yeah there's no I don't know if there's a whole lot of data on it outside

[00:46:11] of him saying off forward samples so it was carrying quite a bit of nutrition into December originally people wouldn't have thought they did and I gotta say I noticed my sheep when

[00:46:20] I dumped them in that's one of the first things that is the sheep and a couple of corea so we're out there with them they went right to that game and patched and started

[00:46:25] taking it down where we had some really burnt up stuff out of the drought last year that they found the natives pretty quick oh yeah we I'm not really sure on the gamma grass

[00:46:36] range I know my dad had read something about it and we've talked about trying to establish just a little bit see what it does here I think I'm a little west of where the normal range is

[00:46:50] but to be honest I'm not sure I could identify if I walked out in the pasture I'm just not familiar with it yeah once you see it and it almost I don't say it looks exactly like

[00:46:58] Johnson grass because it doesn't but it would have some similarities to Jonathan grass or if you're a shatter cane starting out young it's it's in the corn family gamma grasses so it's got a lot of similarities as far as leaf structure it's obviously smaller but

[00:47:11] yeah I'd say your area Oklahoma there probably were some varieties down there some ecotypes that would arrange there I think I don't want to misspeak on here but I know there's a couple southern yeah Oklahoma Texas there's some ecotypes that come from that region

[00:47:24] so but yeah I know we've talked about it and it's always been something I gotta research I gotta look at Dale Strickler's book see what it says yeah that's a good one and I haven't

[00:47:33] done it yet and that's one thing with the native sabbatum I talked to Dale quite a bit before I did the gamagrass because I'm one of the big gurus on it and he told me to inoculate

[00:47:43] the seed and I can't think of the name of the stuff I use but I got it through him I did inoculate the native seed because they have obviously been take the fowl out of crop ground

[00:47:51] the microbial community isn't what prairie is so that really is supposed to help that initial establishment period I think in his book he's got a side by side in it of stuff that he

[00:48:00] inoculated and didn't inoculate on gamagrass and I will for what I see from mine I didn't leave a strip that I didn't inoculate I just inoculated at all but I'm pretty pleased compared

[00:48:10] to some other established ones I've seen in my area no very good yeah I my my dad'll see something or I'll see something so we're always talking about something else we got to try and

[00:48:20] sometimes I'm like let's just put the brakes on it and just do what we're doing but I know we've talked a lot about gamagrass and seeing what it does here and we don't most of our

[00:48:32] land here my dad's place is all improved varieties it's it's not any natives most of my least land there is natives on it a lot of broomsedge and a lot just johnson grass so I graze a lot of that

[00:48:48] yep I don't have any johnson grass and I don't it looks like it can pour on some tonnage but I'm a little bit scared of the south so I'm glad it's not something I had to face yet but

[00:48:58] it is right now it's one of my favorite grasses it gets late summer that patch of johnson grass one place I have like the north half of the property is johnson grass mainly and I can graze

[00:49:13] that as hard as I want and doing my rotations and before I even realize it I'm ready to go back there it's amazing how much foliage it'll put up put out there for you of course you got

[00:49:27] to be very careful about grazing it and for the most part I've not had any trouble I say for the most part I haven't had any trouble but I grew up and my dad had trouble grazing

[00:49:38] johnson grass and we lost some cows that's always been back in my mind because I'm too poor to lose cows here and they're really expensive to replace right now so they are yes yeah cody it is time for us to move on to our famous work questions

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[00:51:08] same four questions we ask of all of our guests and our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource yeah that's i read a lot of old journals just about so i

[00:51:20] don't know it's a grazing grass resource necessarily but i like to see what the ecological context of our area was pre-settlement that's the template i think it's never going

[00:51:29] to be like it was but if i can mimic some of those systems my great thing i had some of the old louis o'clar journals and there's some others from my area you can find and then

[00:51:37] anything from windowberry it's he's a big grayarian writer i can't say it's necessarily grazing grass again but he's all about community and bringing stuff back to the farm so i really enjoy reading his stuff as well but i need to read his work because his work gets

[00:51:51] brought up and i haven't read it and it's really it's really a lack on my part i need to read some of that yeah i recommend it it's yeah unsettling of america was written in 70s and he's called what's happened the last 50 years pretty yeah that that book

[00:52:07] forecasts a lot of what happened in agriculture and in rural areas i'd recommend it cody our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm definitely side by side so again i'm an

[00:52:20] efficient farmer so i like getting places fast and without walking as much as possible so i've done a lot of walking as a kid and i really enjoy the the gator that we got on the farm

[00:52:30] i'm about to transition i do most of my setting up fences and stuff by walking but i've got a knee that has decided that it wants to hurt once in a while so i'm about

[00:52:43] to transition to a side by side or a four-wheeler to put up fences yep i've been pretty stubborn for a lot of years and after we finally got one i'm not looking back oh yeah i i keep

[00:52:53] pricing them and prices scare me yeah i haven't jumped on anything and and of course i'm always looking on facebook marketplace for a bargain yes my wife is usually quick to say you know how

[00:53:05] fix that and sadly my problem is i'm like nope but i think i can figure it out but yep yep for save a couple thousand dollars you can do a lot of research on youtube exactly yeah

[00:53:17] our next question cody what would you tell someone just getting started yeah get involved with some local farmers that are doing it or find someone maybe if you have to drive an

[00:53:26] hour or two bounce ideas off of guys that have been doing it because if they can save you some headache mistakes i've had a lot of guys that have helped me keep from making mistakes and i

[00:53:34] made a lot of mistakes that i've hopefully been able to help other people not make network wise i would just definitely network and then don't be scared to jump in and try it you get small scales still a great learning opportunity don't get yourself hung out but

[00:53:46] just go out there and try it you need more people on the land i think all that's great advice building that network figuring out people in your area go to conferences so you can find

[00:53:56] who they are because went and listened to alejandro carillo just a couple months ago and i met someone too i was going to say two miles he's not he's he would be six miles from

[00:54:08] me i'm like i didn't even know you were there where you've been hiding yep it's amazing what kind of people come out of the way you start doing something that's different with

[00:54:18] people that are a lot closer to you have been doing it for quite a while but you never knew it because they were yeah they're too scared to talk about or they were just in their own

[00:54:25] right area doing it or out of the way where you don't go yeah so get out there and network and then i love the advice of getting started nothing gets finished if you don't start yep

[00:54:38] yep say just get the ball rolling that's the big one and lastly cody where can others find out more about you yes i'm on most social media i'm on tiktok and x now i guess instead

[00:54:51] i got 40 grazers my handle on both of those just i got calves of sheep i thought that was a cute name or whatever but and then i'm on facebook it's just cody car and instagram is

[00:55:01] car family farms so i like to throw a bunch of pictures of the farm when my kid being honoree on the farm on there oh very good but yep that's probably the place to find me and

[00:55:11] yeah if anyone ever got any questions i'm happy to tell them how i've messed stuff up before wonderful cody we'll put those links in our show notes and we really appreciate

[00:55:19] you coming on and sharing with us today yeah thank you car for having me this has been pretty fun like i said i've enjoyed listening for a while so i appreciate you for reaching out having me on wonderful i appreciate you listening and i've enjoyed the conversation

[00:55:34] thank you i really hope you enjoyed today's conversation i know i did thank you for listening and if you found something useful please share it share it on your social media

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