e74. The Power of Genetics with Dan Glenn

0:00:00 - Cal Hardage Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 74. 0:00:05 - Dan Glenn There's a lot of resources out there, but nothing beats boots on the ground or ranch near you with someone who's successful in making their living. 0:00:13 - Cal Hardage You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, helping grass farmers learn from grass farmers, and every episode features a grass farmer and their operation. I'm your host, cal Hardeech. On today's show we have Dan Glenn from Deep Grass Grazers. It's a wonderful show. We talk about his journey. We wrap up a little bit with heifer and bull development on grass. You don't want to miss this one. Before we talk to Dan, 10 seconds about my farm. And rather than talk about my farm, I'm talking about what I'm doing this weekend. If you're going to the South Pole Field Day and sell, you'll probably see me there, so come over and say hi. I will be wearing a Grazing Grass shirt. We'll look safe, by the way, but if you're over there, come say hi when you see me. I'm excited to travel down to Albertville, alabama. So I think Teddy Gentry speaking and Greg Judy speaking. So those will be interesting to hear. So, looking forward to it, I'll let you know about it next week. Don't forget about the Grazing Grass community on Facebook. We've added the Grazing Grass community on Facebook as a place for grazing grass discussions and it is growing very quickly. You can just get on Facebook and do a search for Grazing Grass community and it'll pop up and just join. We have a couple of questions on there. That's not required, because the required questions drive me crazy, but I do appreciate it when you take a moment to fill them out. It helps me know you a little bit better. We have great visions in the future for it. Thank you, enough of that. Let's talk to Dan. Dan, we will welcome you to the Grazing Grass podcast. We're excited for you to join us today. 0:02:06 - Dan Glenn Thanks for having me, Kyle. Always fun to speak with other people interested in ranching and making the soils a little bit better than we found them. 0:02:14 - Cal Hardage Very true. And, dan, to get started, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation? 0:02:20 - Dan Glenn I grew up here on the farm that I find myself on now Only child, only grandchild, son and grandson of farmers on both sides of my family Growing up really had no interest in being a farmer or on the farm. I had my head in a book, you know, went off to school and studied English and journalism and you get an English degree and you have the freedom to do whatever you want to with your life. I got the opportunity to do a lot of different things, from catering to bartending to landscaping. I did a brief stint in St Croix in the US Virgin Islands where I helped founda school of sustainable agriculture and then had the opportunity to move back to that family farm. And even when I moved back I wasn't sure exactly. You know what my role was here and we had cattle my grandfather said cattle since the 60s and he had passed away by the time I came back. But I had the opportunity to step in and start looking after our cattle and quickly fell in love with cattle and then, you know, with forages and eventually found my way to really have a love for soil health as well. 0:03:26 - Cal Hardage So when you came back you mentioned just then you found that love for soil health in that journey. Did you come back to the farm thinking some of these more progressive ideas, or were you thinking I'm going to do it like we've always done it? 0:03:40 - Dan Glenn So I would say that I've always been a little outside the box. You know, I come from a kind of an organic ag background, sustainable ag background and even permaculture, so really thinking, you know, about things from more of a long term perspective as opposed to a maximum model short term. You know, gain from those mindsets. Now, having said that, you know, when I came home, I wasn't quick to make any big changes because I wasn't an expert at any of those things, and so I really had to spend some time here and figure out what part of our existing program I wanted to maintain and what were the things that I needed to change in order to live a life here and make my mark on this farm. 0:04:24 - Cal Hardage So, oh yeah, when you came back, describe the farm to us at that point. 0:04:29 - Dan Glenn Sure so, and we still we row crop. My family, I have about four full-time row crop employees, so we we farm about a thousand acres of peanuts and corn in rotation. And then we had, we had a few hundred beef cattle and we were retaining stockers. We'd wean our calves in the fall after peanuts were harvested, retain those in a feedlot type scenario and feed them corn, corn silage and soybean mill, take those cattle up to seven to eight weeks and then sell them in the spring. You know, with the first run up and corn around 2012, I sat down with an economist and we thought, well, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to, you know, run this expensive corn through these cattle. And so I stopped feeding in that traditional manner that year and haven't, you know, kind of never, never turned back, focused more on winter annual production. You know, I live in a zone that really can have something growing about 12 months out of the year and that's when I met as my education kind of unfolded through academia and extension and networking peer-to-peer and meetings to mentors. I really got involved with genetics and that's when I slowly started changing the herd makeup to types of animals that I thought would would optimize, you know the type of management I wanted to employ. 0:05:47 - Cal Hardage And before we continue down that path, just a little bit let's talk about where you're located. 0:05:52 - Dan Glenn I'm about an hour 15 minutes north of the Florida line, in the central part of the state, just a little east of central. I'm about 35 minutes east of Tifton, georgia, tifton's, on I-75. That's the coastal plains. So we have, you know, predominantly sandy loam soils. We are in the Bahaya Bermuda Belt, below the Fescue Belt. We are firmly entrenched in the Nat Zone. So if you come visit me in the summertime, be prepared to, you know, use your mouth to blow air at the gnats that are hovering around your face. 0:06:25 - Cal Hardage Okay, very good. Just give everyone an idea where you're located. You talked about there when you started making that change in 2012 and you're looking at what you're doing. You mentioned a focus on genetics. How did you identify what you wanted and what was your base herd you were working with? Sure, yeah. 0:06:45 - Dan Glenn So the base herd was a real traditional Angus Angus Cross genetic herd. A lot of Sim Angus. Grandpa had been using Sim Angus bulls for the past probably 10 years and they did. You know they were great for his program. They were pretty growthy, they had, you know, a good combination of muscle and fattening ability and they did, they did well in our feedlot situation. You know it was an effective program. It just wasn't something I was very passionate about as far as you know, kind of maintaining this, this status quo I was. You know, I came to this actually from a eating standpoint. You know, one of the reasons I, when I moved back home, I wanted to open a farm to table restaurant and I wanted to supply, supply our beef and so, from from a, you know, a chef and an eating perspective, I wanted to make really good, high quality grass finished beef because, you know, my early studies told me that I believe that, you know, grass finished beef is is a little bit better for you than than corn fed beef. You know, I think beef in general is is a good, you know, nutrient dense product. I don't want to down anybody's product, but I was really looking to produce a superior grass finished beef and serve it to my customers. But, as I you know, went down the rabbit holes of everything there is to learn about, you know, cattle and grazing and and soul health. I had to. I've got to put the, the, the restaurant thing, on the back burner. So that got me interested in the type of cattle. Because I finished some of those first cows and and it was hard, I mean those, you know, those were frame six on average females, frame five to frame six females. I had steers that didn't and I was also really interested in a proper finish. So full brisket fill, tailrump fat. You know I wanted, I wanted to produce kind of a superior steak product as well. Call, call me quixotic, but some of those, some of those steers didn't finish until they were 15 to almost 1600 pounds at around 20, 25, 26 months, you know, met more mentors and and come to understand the landscape of genetics. I recognized that I wanted to take that frame size down a little bit, concentrate more on the straight British breeds, you know, and and really easy flashing animal, and so that started my journey. Well, you mentioned there why British breeds, so you know the British breeds are cattle that have historically been used more either single purpose or dual purpose, you know, for meat and milk, as opposed to a lot of the continental breeds which oftentimes were also used for draft. You know the muscling of the continental breeds to makes them a really good cross for for feedlot situations and for efficiently making a big carcass to hang on the rail and also to grow aggressively. But but the British breeds were the Angus, red Angus, devin, you know her, her furs even they typically can marble and fatten on grass as as a group, you know. I mean there's certainly, you know a smart person has said and people resay all the time, there's much as much variation inside of breed as our between breeds at times. But that was overarching. You know we started with Black Angus genetics for more, that older type, you know, that kind of original Angus type I started, you know, my first foray into that was meeting a breeder in West Point, georgia, named Ed Oliver of Oliver family Angus today. Today Spencer, his son still is running that program and and I bought a bull from Ed and really liked what they did for me and I came back the next year and I bought all his bull caps to raise, to develop and sale and to use. You know the bulls on my program that that I wanted to and so kind of developed. You know that was one of my first, you know, relationships with someone I would call a real breeder and and that kind of got me started in the road of of draft genetics. 0:10:44 - Cal Hardage And as you started down that journey and you're picking out bulls that that fit, that model or or those features you're looking for, did you just? Did you continue with your base cowherd, or did you bring in some heifers as well? I did both of those things. 0:11:00 - Dan Glenn So I didn't want to throw away, you know, 40 years of environmental adaptability I had, you know, even though I was attempting to go in a different direction than my grandfather. You know he was a good cattleman, he was a successful cattleman, and so, while there were things about the home herd, I did not like the hostility being one, others being another. You know there are certainly things that we selected against and managed differently, but I had a lot of respect for the fact that you know he had been selecting in his environment for a long time. So so you know the, the grand. Well, actually I was about to say the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his herd are still there, but actually some of his cattle are still there. I had a. I had a 22-year-old cow that actually got on a trailer earlier this year. I was going to let her down the trailer and then, when beef prices went to a dollar, oh it's like girl, can you get on that trailer? 22 years old so, and I've got probably an 18 year old right now, still still cabin for me as well. So so certainly something to be said for for the. You know those cattle that have lived and worked in our environment for a long time and it's one of the things I preach. You know, as we are, as we are breeding, you know, saving animals off of those best cows in our environment and saving sons off of those best cows is the quickest way to move our program forward. So but, but we also, like I said, you know, I also started a registered program, so at that time we were all commercial. So some of the first cows I bought were from Ed actually Ed. In fact I think I was one of the first people Ed ever sold heifers to. He had been saving and building this herd up, you know, and really growing, and after a couple years of buying bulls from him, I think he took a shine to me and sold me a few of a few of his heifers and I bought those for two years and that was the start. Him and another mentor, bill Hodge Bill Hodge sold, sold me a small group of his cows as well, and so that was my start in the purebred Angus world. 0:12:58 - Cal Hardage Two things there. I think the you know cattle bred to to your local environment is so important. You know we've been doing this on a small scale for a long time. You know I'm learning stuff all the time that I should have known for years. A couple of years ago I purchased some heifers that were trucked in. I knew better, but I needed some cows. I bought them. I have zero of them still in my herd and I thought they were. They would work for me. But they came from the North and they were trucked in. I thought we'll be okay. You know I'll. I'll suffer a few losses, then I'll have some. No, I'm I'm two years from that and they've all been cold out on my herd for for various reasons. 0:13:40 - Dan Glenn We're certainly put here on earth to learn our lessons right, so the key is not making the same mistake more than more than two times. 0:13:47 - Cal Hardage Right, yes, well, that costs me enough. I'll definitely think twice before make that mistake again. And then the second thing you got into purebred angus. And when we were talking about British breeds well ago, you mentioned some other breeds, such as Devin or Herford, or you could even go Red Pole or another. Why did you choose Angus? Was it because your grandfather had been involved in Angus and you were that direction, or what contributed to that decision? Sure, it was more about relationships. 0:14:17 - Dan Glenn If, if Ed Oliver had had Herford's, I probably would have bought Herford's, you know. So it was recognizing a breeder. And this is another thing that I often tell people is, you know, we can get to this late in the later in the conversation, but, you know, when you're getting started in this, find people who do what you want to do well, especially those who are in your environment, and learn as much as you can from them. And so I had a lot of respect at just after a short time with Ed, had a lot of respect for how he went about making breeding decisions and his program, and so, you know, my mentors were the people who got me started in the black Angus world. Now, as I have more seasons breeding under my belt, you know, I'm continuing to refine heat tolerance, because the one thing you know I've recognized is that, you know, british breed cattle are from Britain, they're not from South Georgia. So even though we've been selecting for those and Ed had been selecting for those for, you know, a few decades in Georgia, they still, you know, are only so adapted compared to, you know, the heat tolerant breeds which, which is where where I've eventually ended up, is, you know, doing some crossbreeding efforts Because, you know, after you know, nearly 15 years in this industry, I've recognized, you know, as, as my customers are looking for more commercial type cattle than registered cattle. I don't, you know, I'm not trying to sell up the $3,000 or $4,000 bred heifer. You know, I'm trying to create heifers or cattle, you know, bred cattle that can go to a commercial producer's farm and make them money. You know, and that's you know. One of the challenges is you, you want to invest in good genetics but at the same time, you know, cattle is not a high margin business and so, you know, I'm trying to set up my program to produce cattle in a way that that I can, I can create some value, for my customers are also, you know, in not only the price but also the work I've put in in order to provide them a product. Hopefully this is going to go to their their place and thrive. 0:16:21 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah, very important. I'd love to continue down the path of cattle breeding more, but let's jump over and take just a little bit. Talk about your operation and how you're managing your animals and then we'll jump back because I've got questions about that heat adaption and and we'll go from there. So when you look at your operation, tell us how you manage your cows on it. 0:16:44 - Dan Glenn When I got home it was set stocking. It was, you know, it was a five strand perimeter bob wire and and ponds and a one working facility at the end of the 800 acres right. And so and so grandpa, you know, would, if he wanted to work cows in November, you know, in September he's starting to get moving in the, in the, in the right direction. And and you know, one of the things I struggled with when I got home was the cattle had been worked, had been pushed with trucks, had been mishandled, had been yelled at and, and, you know, and they had been trained to be problematic. And so, you know, the day, the days we would work cattle would just be stressful to everyone. We would be dog tired. The next day we would be sore, you know. And after doing that for about two years, I told my employees I was like, give me three years and we will not be doing this again. And, and that was a matter of culling, we started by culling the cattle that tried to kill us when we worked them, and then and then we culled the cattle that tried to jump out, and and finally we made our way to the point where we'd gotten rid of our problem, our troublemakers. And once we'd done that, you know, we started using bulls that were docile, you know, to to try to work that into the genetic component. But also we just learned how to handle cattle in a in a way that that did not make make our jobs any more difficult. So, you know, and really learning about animal husbandry and animal handling techniques, building, you know, better facilities, we started doing cross mincing. I started moving the cattle on a more regular basis, you know, and when the cows see on a daily basis, they, they, they come to understand that you're not the wolf anymore. And so you know. And so, to answer your question, today, we, you know, subdivided our farms. You know we have perimeter electric coming off of that barbed wire so that we can hook in, you know, mostly anywhere, and we've strategically subdivided those farms with either single strand or or two strand, poly or, sorry, permanent wire, and then also we have polywire that we can further subdivide those farms with, and we're really flexible. If I'm traveling, we might set stock for a week or even two weeks, depending on the type of pasture and what our goals are at the moment. And then, you know, in the winter time, if we're grazing winter annuals we might. We might put them on for three hours and pull them off at lunch. We certainly try to build a lot of flexibility in our grazing systems and the more value we have in our grass. So, for instance, if we invest in annuals we really try to maximize utilization and and minimize waste on those pastures, on some of our lower, lower productivity pastures. You know there's times where I want my cattle to be able to be more selective because performance will increase and so I'll give up. You know some of the sole health of building properties, of having a high stock density for just the ability for, say, those two and three year old, you know, young cows to be able to kind of pick and choose, to be able to thrive a little better. 0:19:53 - Cal Hardage You know, during a tough time, Right, which all that makes makes sense as you, as you're setting it up, as you're using it. One thing I want to touch on is that training your cattle to go through your facilities, to train them to be around you, because you know the cows are reacting to you the big eye opener for us. We were loading out steers and they went into and I was a home. I said I work off the farm, so I was at work and of course dad thought he could do it and those, those yearling plus steers ran in, hit the front of the trailer and started back out and he couldn't get the gate closed and it knocked him down and luckily no one stepped on him and he walked away, fine. But right then we said we got to make a change. This is ridiculous. Like you said, we, we started paying attention to the sale of the bulls we were purchasing. We started handling our cows different. Dad still does a little bit. He's he's a little harsher with the cows than I am. I can work him. It's amazing. I just go out there. I enjoy the whole day. It doesn't matter how long it takes, it's just a nice calm thing. And I've trained those cows and they've trained me as likewise, and it just makes all the difference. Like that day after I'm not, I'm still sore because I'm just out of shape, but it's not for the same reasons. You know, it's amazing. 0:21:17 - Dan Glenn Once you develop good cattle handling skills, it is enjoyable. It is enjoyable to to move cattle in an efficient manner, in a quiet manner and to. you know it's an art, you know it's a science and an art and it's amazing how much more enjoyable your life is when you develop and hone those skills and and have a team. You know, a team that can also employ those, because one person will wreck you know a working job and often, you know I'll send people. I mean there's times where I don't want an extra person because, you know, especially in a ring, you know I mean like cattle, cattle work a lot better with the minimum amount of people necessary to do the job efficiently. 0:22:06 - Cal Hardage Now I'm talking about your, your forages there. You've already talked about behavior, grass and Bermuda and cool season annuals. What annuals do you like to plant? And I'm I'm making the Assumption here and I probably should never make any assumptions Are you you pasture drilling? You putting that on some no-till land? Are you telling some land how are you getting those cool season annuals in? 0:22:30 - Dan Glenn We do a little of all of that. So we still do employ some tillage because we double crop some of our cash crop ground and with our, with our corn, we do minimum tillage, but with our peanuts, unfortunately, the peanuts are kind of the, the weak link in our cash crop programs where we're still doing pretty heavy tillage, and that's the. You know, my long-term goal is to get away from peanut production. Presently it is a it's kind of a cash leader for us and so we still we still grow peanuts. We're we're good at it historically and they're still in and and it's it's still part of the process. But so on that cash crop land, we still do employ some tillage and the. The main advantage of that for us especially, is timely, you know, getting a stand-up timely and then being able to graze that November. So one of our, you know I think it's really important for people to understand their forage chain. So, from you know, from January to December, how many days a year can you be grazing, what are the forages that fit that chain and you know how many and how can you piece together as much grazing days as possible, because the easiest way to spend money is for you to have to feed your cows and and not just supplement but feed your cows, and so so for us, you know, funny, the most challenging time is it December or January or February. We do a really good job with annuals. During that period it's actually September, october and then the beginning of November, because while our summer perennial species are still alive and kind of kicking I mean, you know, we've had, we've, we've even had November, december's where Bahia was still growing the quality declines greatly. And so For, you know, and that's one of the challenges too with weaning weights, for us, you know, and I've even, you know, gone back and rethought my calving probe in my calving dates. You know, I've always set up my calving dates based on, you know, that high level of nutrition that I'm trying to provide, that that mother at calving and post calving for the next, you know, 60 days. But but honestly, but honestly, you know, having those six month and seven month old calves On real declining forages, it's a tough time for us to put on weight. You know, they're still coming off heat stress, the dams are starting, you know, to milk less because of the quality, and and we don't, you know, in our, in our journey to wean our, our perennial forages off of commercial fertilizer. You know, we really we don't fertilize Bahia grass, I mean, and, and the only the only real fertility we applies to our annuals and to our, our hay ground, and some of our hay ground we will graze as well. So our improved Bermuda grass, we've got to 55 hybrid Bermuda it's, it's great if it has water and nutrients, it's great, but it requires inputs, you know, and those inputs could be chicken litter. I mean we get local chicken litter and I try to use chicken litter when it's, you know, affordable, and I mean there's times where I can spend. You know, I only need 30 units of commercial fertilizer. I still use commercial from time to time, but we're very thoughtful about our usage. So much of our program is about how can these cows, you know, optimize our environment? I mean, I think that that word is very important. We're not trying to maximize production, we're not trying to starve ourselves into a profit, we're trying to find that middle ground. You know, how can we have these cattle select for themselves to thrive in this environment and raise a, you know, raise a decent calf, you know, and get bread back on time, year after year after year. So we got a little bit off the subject forages. But that was, in essence, you know, kind of a lot of what's going on in my thought process. You know, with our winter, with our winter annuals, we almost think about it too from a fall grazing perspective, a winter grazing perspective, and then almost like a full season grazing perspective. Because, you know, on some of my row crop ground I'm gonna have to get back in that field with corn in March and so if I know I'm doing that, I don't plant a lot of, I don't plant any rye grass, I don't plant much vetch, or I plant less crimson clover because I know I'm not gonna get a lot of growth out of it. If I'm going back in peanuts or if I'm following that winter annual with a summer annual, then I'm really going with kind of that full season winter annual mixed. So I'm gonna bring rye grass in the mix, I'm gonna go heavier on my crimson clover and my hairy vetch. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, you know, continue to add things like Forage or spring oats, potentially cereal rye, and even last year was the first year we experimented with spring pea, and spring pea is another one of those legumes that you know I don't see the production. I've only got one year in my belt, but typically crimson clover and hairy vetch are the two, you know, legumes, winter legumes that really we feel like we get our monies worth out of. The other ones I add for diversity. You know I'm a believer in and you know trying to piece together a mix that, yes, does focus first and foremost on forage production and quality, but at the same time we want to add smaller amounts of forages that we feel like are gonna benefit. You know that, that complex biology, you know trying to rebuild, you know, our, our sole biological life and and just to just follow up, our fall mix, if we can get in there early, especially if we have tillage, is predominantly brassicas and and and Spring oats. Spring oats really come out of the ground quickly, wide blade, good regrowth. We've had really good luck with them. 0:28:16 - Cal Hardage So well, I was just going to ask you about brassias, see if you planted those and utilize those in your program. 0:28:23 - Dan Glenn So you beat me to it more so in our clean tillage we find that the small, the real small seeded brassicas struggle in an over seeded operation now the Dicons and the bigger seeded brassicas do pretty well. We also have a time limit, you know, if it's after mid-october, late October, we really don't see the fall growth and we don't get our money's worth as much as if we can get those in in late September, early October. 0:28:48 - Cal Hardage One thing that that kind of jumps back to your location. How's the rainfall or your precipitation year-round? Is it pretty spread out? Do you have a dry summer? 0:28:58 - Dan Glenn And not only are the weather forecasters progressively worse. But but I understand why I think our historical, you know, I think for a long time October was our driest month, which is good for peanut harvest, not good for, you know, trying to get winter annuals out of the ground. Weather patterns are more varied, you know, I don't have 50 years of weather data to say that just just anecdotally from the last 15 years since I've been home, unpredictable I'll say, you know we haven't. Since I've been home, we probably only had one real extended, costly dry period and I think that was back in gosh, was it 13 and 12, 13. A lot of the country was dealing with it and it was, I think it was after Texas and you guys had dealt with it. But we, you know, we enjoy 42 to 48 inches of rainfall a year and it spread pretty well throughout the year. So it's a good place to have a cow-calf operation. You know our grass, I mean, if anything, you know our grasses can get a little washy, you know, just from our sole type and the amount of rainfall we get, and you know, and, but I'm not complaining. 0:30:11 - Cal Hardage Yeah, it doesn't sound like you need to. We we don't get. You know, we're probably on the lower end of that rain range you gave there, but we definitely have some rainy periods and some dry periods, which which presents some new or not new. It's been going on for centuries. Some, some other challenges here, as opposed to where you're out. 0:30:33 - Dan Glenn Of course, you've got your own challenges there, you know, and our sole type is real sandy, so so we certainly dry out quicker than a lot of the heavier soil regions and you know, I don't necessarily have a firm drought plan in place because of the amount of rain we get on a regular basis. I am thoughtful about Not Overtaxing. You know my land in a dry situation, so if we have to feed hay in July, it will feed hay in July, you know. You know we haven't been to the point where I felt like we've had to actually destock and, and there's times there's there's times too where we will use summer annuals almost as a as a, you know, as a Redundancy plan, so that you know if we feel like we're approaching being overstocked, we'll have those to kind of fall back on and they're, you know they're, they're, they're not a cheap Redundancy plan. They're probably cheaper than bringing hay in and feeding hay. 0:31:28 - Cal Hardage So you when we talk about your cattle management. What has been some of your challenges? 0:31:36 - Dan Glenn What we do as ranchers and as farmers is not easy to execute 365 days a year. Not only are we dealing with the unexpected and fixing problems on a daily basis, but we are also asked to wear a lot of hats. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on a lot of the major concepts and the how-to's. Executing that consistently 365 days a year it can be challenging. Also, you would think, just raising one species. I would have made it simple enough for myself, but unfortunately I've got three farms and we have nine to 12 different herds. We manage from our replacement heifers to our bulls, that we sell our bull battery, that we keep our registered red Angus cattle, our registered black Angus cattle, our commercial cattle. We have different management groups, we feel, and there's times where right now all my bulls are running together. I have 50 bulls in a pasture. That's not perfectly ideal for those long yearling bulls. They probably would benefit from some type of improved protein forage. But we make sacrifices in order to accomplish the whole and also to recognize that there's only so much we can do. Labor is obviously one of the most expensive parts of what we do and we try to do a lot with a little. I was a one-man show for quite a while and I would steal from the row crop help from time to time to bail hay and to help work cows and that kind of thing. Today I have one full-time helper, which allows me to focus more on marketing, to travel more to conferences which we market at some of those as well and to really think more about working on the business and not working in the business, as they say, and just ranching for profit. 0:33:44 - Cal Hardage And Dan great conversation. We're going to go back to cattle and some of that discussion, but we're also going to do our overgrazing section, where we take a deeper dive into some aspect of your operation. And we talked a little bit earlier and we were going to talk more about heifer and bull development. 0:34:04 - Dan Glenn One of the things I recognized as I started my networking experience and gaining mentors is one of the things that I find found fault in the registered business and the C-stock business was I felt like a lot of those people were trying to maximize production and produce really big muscled bulls at 14, 16 months and really chasing maximums and mostly chasing terminal trades. And honestly that's a good thing for a lot of people. I mean, a lot of breeders just need a terminal bull and they just need to sell all the cows, calves into that feeder market. But I think there's certainly a percentage of the population that doesn't completely understand about the separation between terminal and maternal genetics and also, I think, doesn't see a clear picture sometimes of, like, what some people claim is maternal versus what I believe is truly maternal and we can all define that differently. But I think, if anything, the way I set up my program to try to raise cattle is to almost do the opposite and I have to be careful about that as well, because if you really make a cow work in a low-energy environment, she will work in a lot of places, but you can also remove the milk production and make the cattle too small for a lot of environments. So if we've done anything, we've probably over challenged our cows at times in order to pressure fertility and in order to find the type of cattle that will work. In our program we do use annuals. We really try to have these cows grazing as many days of the year as possible, but we offer almost zero supplement. I mean right around weaning. We have used whole cottonseed before but besides that we have its hay and forage and it's like I said earlier, a lot of that is unfertilized as well and so the protein content's lower. But hay grass is already kind of a low-energy washi grass. But what I find the value I see in raising cattle this way is it does take longer for these heifers to get grown. We find that our cows really aren't probably at full maturity until they're close to four years old. But we hope and I'm still young in this process. We're still only about 11 years into probably my active breeding program. We've found so far that those cattle as they go to other people's farms are doing quite well. And that's the thing. If you go to a mainstream breeder to buy breeding stock, watch what they feed their cattle, watch the type of supplementation they're doing and match the type of program you want to have with your source of genetics, and there's money to be made in all different fields of cattle production. So there's not a right way and a wrong way. You just have to recognize what your management wants to look like and find models for if you're still building your program, for how you can do that and then potentially take advantage of someone else's progress, especially if they're in your region. You spoke earlier of bringing cattle from another region area. I've done that as well. I thought when I got started with this that I really wanted some of those old line Angus genetics and then brought them in from different places. Some of those cattle have worked fine. Some of them were so old line that they didn't like Georgia at all. They marble on grass Great. But if the cows don't get rebred because they don't flick, oftentimes they can suffer With bulls too. Especially and this is one of the things that is so obvious when you come to my place we don't try to sell a lot of bulls. We are a little bit in that Pharaoh model of. We put a lot of pressure on our cattle from a fertility perspective so we can only support a certain amount of growth. So our bull customers are people who want to raise grass, finish beef or want to save replacement heifers, especially in this kind of southeastern region. I mean that's where I feel like my genetics are going to be most valuable. Having said that, we grow them pretty slow. I don't really even show bulls. I mean if you come to my place I'll show you anything here, but I don't really market them until they're around two years old, coming into that second winter of annuals. And we find that about that time and about that 20 months to 22 month period, they really start putting on muscle, they really start, they're cresting pretty aggressively and they just really look and fit like bulls at that period and they have enough athleticism and growth to where we feel like we're comfortable putting them on 30 cows. But the advantage of not feeding those bulls, of letting those bulls make those bulls work in the environment, is that you see the top end, you see the bottom end and you see the middle and feed is not covering that up. And so if you want the best bull I have, you see the two of them out there and they're a little more than the middle ones and the middle ones are a little more than the bottom ones. It's really a good operation. It's a good way to separate the genetics that really thrive in the environment from the ones that just are doing okay. 0:39:39 - Cal Hardage And when you talk about your heifers growing slow and not seeing that really that mature size reaching till four or so, are you still calving at 24 months, or what's your philosophy on getting them into production? 0:39:54 - Dan Glenn It's funny you asked that because it's something I've been thinking about hard over the last six months and part of this was kicked off by I just started about two years ago, two or three years ago, crossbreeding with Cinnapole, a heat tolerant breed that came out of St Croix, when my first Cinnapole, half Cinnapole, sten Angus cows came into production and I exposed them and I typically, depending on how many heifers I want to sell, I will expose those heifers for as little as I've exposed them for as little as 30 days and I've exposed them probably for as many as 75 days. If I want to sell more heifers, I'll expose them for a little longer. You know I choose the cattle out of, I choose the heifers out of the cattle that I want to save daughters out of, and but so much of my business is marketing bred females. So depending on how many I'm looking to sell in a year, I might leave those bulls in a little bit longer. But last year, last year, I had about a 47, 48 day breeding window and what I found was is that my, I have Cinnapole cattle. Actually, even though I felt like size-wise, body condition scoring, they were neck and neck or just as good as my straight Angus cattle, my Baldy cattle. They didn't get bred up near the percentage that my straight Angus cattle did. Thinking that through, I would have thought that the heterosis, they would actually get bred at a higher value. But the Cinnapole from what I believe, based on physically, what I've seen, they mature a little slower than the British breeds. Testicle development is a little bit behind from a timeframe perspective and I think and Cinnapole breeders out there, you can disagree with me because I'm not a Cinnapole breeder, but I think that what we're seeing is a little later maturity in those animals and even in the half-bloods. I re-expose those animals to cav at two and a half and every one of them got bred and I didn't do anything differently. It was just a time period. There's been times where I have kept the heifers around, didn't get bred to cav at two and a half or three, and then market all those and what I've seen is in my program they typically wean a heavier calf when they're calving at a later date. So in my head now the gold standard has always been early maturity, early maturity, early maturity, and we've really prided ourselves on the fact that we have straight-bred cattle that will get bred at 50% of their adult weight. I mean really light. Unfortunately, though, you're going to have a higher percentage of dystocia. You're not going to wean as big a calf, and they're going to. If we don't do anything special for those cattle, they're going to have a tougher time getting bred back to cav at three and then also just struggle to get grown. So the jury's still out for me. I'm trying to decide if I want to do a better job of managing annuals than providing them with a better intake, better energy, if there is a strategic supplementation that I would like to employ without propping the cattle up, or if it's just a matter of potentially having those cattle cav at two and a half, and I heard Hame El Enzando talk about the further we get into the tropics, the more those cattle are really set up to cav later, and I think that I see a little of that in sub. I mean we're right the verge of the subtropics here in South Georgia. I think I see a little of that in the quality of our forage and really trying to make these cattle work just in this kind of forage only environment. That is just more difficult. I mean, we've had as high as 88% of our hapers get bred in a 30 day period but they were in really good flesh condition. Our average is probably we probably average about two cycle exposure, about 40 to 50 days and our probably average breed up is around 82, 84%. 0:44:25 - Cal Hardage So which that that conception rates so much better than what we've been doing and we're well. Actually. That's what led us to look at some other breeds from. What we were originally using was because we were getting into, our cattle were late maturing and we were spending so much to get a replacement heifer going and then we were having half of them breed and so we're playing with that. We don't have the answers. I don't have the answers for much. You know we're trying to figure it out. So it's really interesting to have that conversation and find out your thoughts on it and where you're going with that. 0:45:06 - Dan Glenn It's funny because I've definitely changed thought over time and I used to think cabinet two is the only way, like that's the only way to provide enough fertility pressure, to be this pushback against all these programs that have propped up, you know, fertility with inputs. But I think it's just more nuance than that. I think every program has that question to answer for themselves, you know, based on their management, their forages and what their goals are. 0:45:35 - Cal Hardage And one thing you mentioned there. You mentioned about bringing some Cinnapol in, and earlier in the conversation you had mentioned about getting a little bit more adaptability for heat. Is that the direction you went to bring that in? Did you look at any other directions? 0:45:52 - Dan Glenn Yeah, I did, I've seen I haven't. Honestly I didn't probably do the full due diligence that I've done in the past with my bringing Angus and Red Angus in. I pretty much relied on relationships to steer me towards my experiments with Cinnapol. I had a close friend and breeder in Tennessee who had had success with Mark Sanders and Millertown Cinnapoles there just outside of Knoxville, tennessee, and I went up and visited his farm. He's a longtime active member and past president of the Cinnapol, one of the National Cinnapol Associations, and found some cows in that herd I really liked moderate, some real moderate cattle that I thought would compliment a lot of my breeding gulls well and was fortunate that the cattle in the herd that I really admired and had that phenotypically really fit my bill. I had the opportunity to buy sons out of both of those cows. So that was the start of my breeding. I'd considered Mishona. I'd been around just a few Mishona Cow Gaddling Bulls. Their coat quality is just something else. I mean like I was really blown away how oily and like shiny slick those cattle were. I was concerned that the Mishona cattle might downsize. A lot of the Mishonas I've been around were the maul cows and I did not need to make. I'd put enough pressure on my cattle that I didn't need to make them any smaller. You know, I mean my cattle fit great in a kind of a grass finishing environment in the South especially. But if anything, I wanted to make my have just a little more power and growth so that people who are just selling into a conventional marketplace would also have, you know, something that would work for them, which is why I went with Cinnapole. The Cinnapole were you know more of the dyes and type that matched my cows. I recently also. So I had the opportunity to go back to the Grassroots Exchange last year at Fort Worth and met Watt Casey, who's become a close friend of mine. You know Watt's family, casey Beefmaster, is one of the original three Foundation herds of the Beefmaster breed and Watt and his family have been had one cycle breeding program since 1977. So they have exposed their cows for 25 days since 1977 and called or sold everything that didn't get bred, which I, yeah still. You know, at some point people value the program so well that they would pay a premium for those cattle that came up open. And so what they? I don't know how long they've been doing it, but they'll re-expose those opens over a period and they'll sell all those bred. And what Watt said, they almost all get bred for a premium, even right, you know, I mean, once you've established a program like that and they're they're they're hardworking, moderate, good-uttered. I I am a no-nonsense cattle. I probably wouldn't have just chosen Beefmaster had I not kind of fallen in love with his herd and their and their program. I bought a handful of cows in a bowl and I am also experimenting with Crossing beef master, not only over my commercial cows but some of my registered cows as well. I really want to take some of the some of those best black and red cows and makes them just dynamite F1s out of them. So kind of excited about that future and seeing those, seeing what those new calf crops will be like. 0:49:23 - Cal Hardage Yeah, that'll be exciting to see how that goes and just Follow your journey on. And Dan, it's time for us to go ahead and transition to our famous four questions Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. And our very first question what's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? 0:49:45 - Dan Glenn I tell people, especially in the southeast, if you could only own one book, it would probably be southern forages and it's it's a textbook, but it's it's kind of the Bible of, I would say, of southern grazing and there is it's just a complete education of forages for each type, planning regimens and Raising cattle on grass. And so if if I could only have one book, it would be, it would certainly be southern forages, but but it is pretty region-specific. I mean, there's something in it for everyone, but but you know, but from Texas, virginia, I think it really. I think it's really a valuable book very good, very good, excellent selection there. 0:50:28 - Cal Hardage Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm? 0:50:33 - Dan Glenn I would say Polywire. I would say the ability to stub, divide, manage and move cattle in a in a very efficient and cheap manner has really changed the game for Thousands of breeders across the country, you know, and especially the east, where our paddock size is smaller and we have a lot more dense forage swords. It is, it's, an indispensable tool. It would be one of the last things I would give up. 0:51:00 - Cal Hardage Yeah, polywire has done so much for me and I mean there's times I don't like it very well, but for the most part I like it. 0:51:08 - Dan Glenn Yeah, you know the the ability to not only Improve production but also just training cattle. I mean, once you have, you know, a group of cows used to following you. They are easier to live with for the rest of their lives. 0:51:24 - Cal Hardage This just Amazes me, and I've done this multiple times now and I've only done it in the last year or two. I can, I can pull out in a pasture with my trailer and Some polywire and I can load cows that I need out of there, which if you'd told me even just ten years ago, I'd said you're crazy, I can't do that. It's amazing, these cows that that we've for my, our home place here. We have all the pastures permanently subdivided and I don't use much polywire here. I've got lease places and I use polywire. So that's, that's one of the big differences. But I'm just amazed. Of course, the cows are calm, they're, they're used to me being out there and it's this Every time I leave there with some loaded. I'm just I want to call my wife and say, guess what I did? And she's like really do I have to hear about again? But it's so amazing to me polywire and a trailer and calm cows, I can do anything. Our third question what would you tell someone Just getting started? 0:52:26 - Dan Glenn I listen to the Michael Vance podcast on the way up here and his answer was pretty much exactly mine, which is create relationships, find people who and I said it earlier in the podcast but find people who are successful doing what you want to do and become friends with them. Visit them at their farm, ask questions, develop these, this, these, these networks and these relationships. They'll be invaluable. There's also in a lot of states. There's for me. I use extension Aggressively. You know so much free education out there or very cheap education. You know, one of the most valuable things I did and one of the most expensive things I did was a ranchie for profit, the week-long course. If you, you know, if you're not at the point where you can afford, you know a full week-long course. They do short courses as well and a lot of times those are sponsored by by. You know. So, in water conservation groups and national groups, having a relationship and really the I think a lot of what ranchie for profit in Ranch management consultants has has to offer. If you're new to this, look into them they. They have an incredible curriculum and just an amazing set of set of instructors, and they don't pay me to say that either. 0:53:37 - Cal Hardage I just had a great experience to be honest, I only hear good things about going to their conference, people coming back saying what they they've learned and what they're implementing and how things are going. They just that's just essential to their success. So they, they are definitely doing good things, and you said conferences, which reminds me of that as well. 0:53:58 - Dan Glenn So that's another thing that I've done is I started going pre-aggressively different conferences. So the American Forge and Grassland Council, the National Grazinglands Coalition, has one every three years grassfit exchange. I've been going to since it was a gay Browns, you know, over ten years ago great group of young people. You know if I could only go to one, it's probably one of my favorites, just because there's so many outside the box thinkers and so many, you know, thought movers. So a lot of opportunities there. Even. You know some of the cattleman's events, depending on your state. You know there's a, there's a lot of resources out there, but nothing beats boots on the ground. You know, at a ranch near you with someone who's successful in making their living, like Michael said, someone who's making their living doing it. If that's what you want to do, you know it can be a hobby. There's not. There's. There's nothing wrong with with this lifestyle being a hobby. I tell people my cows are my blood pressure medicine. You know, I mean this isn't a hobby for me. But when I come home after traveling I mean after seeing my family the first thing I want to do is ride through my cows an excellent advice there, dan and Dan. 0:55:05 - Cal Hardage Lastly, where can others find out more about you? 0:55:09 - Dan Glenn Sure, so I have a website, deep grass grazerscom. Graz I er s, and also I'm relatively active on Facebook, so you can definitely check me out there. Feel free to call, email text, come visit. I have people at least once a month come to the farm, so I love talking about cattle, riding cattle it's a passion of mine, so, and and I try to help everyone who comes to me, so, and if you buy an animal from me, I'll answer the phone every time well, wonderful Dan. 0:55:42 - Cal Hardage We really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today cow is a lot of fun. 0:55:46 - Dan Glenn So thanks a lot and keep this up. I just discovered your show, I love it and I'm a new follower, so well. 0:55:52 - Cal Hardage Thank you, I appreciate it. 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