e85. Rebooting Herd Instinct with Bob Kinford

00:00 - Cal Hardage (Host) Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast episode 85. 00:04 - Bob Kinford (Guest) I'm not going to tell any two people the same thing, because the context is different. Between two places, the context is going to be different. There's no silver bullet. 00:13 - Cal Hardage (Host) 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 Hardidge. On today's show we have Bob Kinnford and we talk about herd stink reboot, migratory grazing, some things he's done, as well as getting struck by lightning twice. It's an interesting conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. But before we talk to Bob, 10 seconds about my farm and, like last week, we're not talking about my farm, we're going to talk about the Grazing Grass Community on Facebook. We just surpassed 700 members, which is amazing to me because we just started it a few months ago. I believe we got it online in August, so really appreciate the support there and it is available for you to ask your questions and help each other out, because that's why we're here let's help one another along this journey. But I do have a favorite to request. 01:21 We have started getting some requests to join the community from bots or scam accounts. You know they make a account, they don't have much there, they do just a little bit and in an effort to cut down on those accounts getting into our group and causing problems, we have a few questions for you to answer to join the group. In the past. If you didn't answer them, no big deal, I let you in. However, I'm being very cautious because we've seen that increase in those spam accounts or scam accounts, however you want to call them. So I want you to come join. I want you in the Grazing Grass Community. I want it to be somewhere where we can help each other. 02:09 If you have not joined, go there and join. Let's answer the questions. Two questions do you follow the rules and what motivates you to join the community? The answers are always great, but just answer them, because right now we are not approving anyone who didn't answer them, just as a safeguard to try and keep those scam accounts out. I apologize for the inconvenience, but thank you for understanding. And if you're not part of the Grazing Grass Community and you're on Facebook, do a search for the Grazing Grass Community and join us. Let's talk to Bob. Bob, we're excited to have you on today to get started. Just tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll go from there. 03:00 - Bob Kinford (Guest) This was back in the days where they had cattle trucks and cattle trains and my dad and I were fishing next to a railroad track and a cattle train went by and that was the best thing I had ever smelled in my life. Oh yes, and to this day, a cattle truck full of sweaty cattle is one of my favorite smells, and I had an uncle that he ran a diversified farm. I always wanted to be with a cattle. It was anytime I was around cows. I mean, I was trying to feed a cow through the fence when I was five years old and she actually came up and my parents said I started having a conversation with a cow. 03:38 And then we lived right above one little ranch and we're surrounded by small places and as a kid I was going around all those places and helping on all those places and by the time I was eight years old, I knew two things. I knew that I was going to spend my life of livestock and I was going to write a book. So it's like what are you going to do when you're a kid? What would you have done if you did what you wanted to when you were a kid? Well, I haven't done it. I'm not going to grow up. I mean, it's just a part of me, I can't, I get away from it and I am miserable. But in helping on those places I'd noticed on how cattle scattered out like marbles from sheep and goats would graze together and that got an interest and every bit of my stockmanship has ever since then has always had that in mind. That's been a question that's just constantly nagged at me and that answer I got as a kid. Well, that's just what they do when they don't get treated right. Because if you look anymore, if you drive around, where they've got sheep and goats and a lot of those places anymore, the sheep and goats are scattered out just like the cattle and the difference is people have gone to handling sheep and goats just like they do the cows and so they've got these stresses that are built into there that we don't look at as a stress because we do everything the easy way. And oh, look here they're coming in for this bag of cake, they're not stressed. They're coming into the feed truck, they're not stressed. But you drive around and I bet if you drive around in your country right now with a cake feeder on the back and all you got to do is drive down the road and stop. Every cow on both sides come running up to you. I bet that would be the case. Yes, and the thing is that is stress. Yes, because they'll do it in the middle of the summer. I mean, I go to Kansas quite a bit and in the middle of you know they've got grass and they're leaving the grass to come running up to the feed truck and that's a stress deal and that all those cattle that are doing that, that's causing more people to lose money that they don't even know that they're losing. 05:52 I started having clients go and not let their cows know they're feeding them. Oh, yes, and it's like on calves. You're weaning calves and you get them out of the pen. Well, I'll say feed them down at the other end of the pasture, go out and lay out your line in three or four, five lines where those cattle can hit it and spread out. Then go jump on your horse and you bump them over towards that cattle, over towards that feed. Once you can see that those cattle are close enough to hit that, you don't have to worry about it. You can just walk off and leave. 06:26 By the second or third day you can have three, four hundred head of steers out there and you can be on the back and tell when the front end hits that feed, because it's like an electric shot goes right down that whole bunch of animals. They pick up and they're not. You know, when you drive out there with a feed truck and they've got purpose when they're going in and they might be going up there but it's kind of a negative energy in their butt and heads and their fight. You see who gets to that feed truck first? And you got those cows that are just sitting there just grabbing at that cake while it's coming out of the bin. Then you got all your thinner cows on their back going. Oh well, you know, maybe we'll get something, but this way here it's like, oh, there's feed and everybody is running and bucking and playing all the way up and that's most of these places that are doing this now are getting a half a pound a day more gain? 07:16 - Cal Hardage (Host) Wow, and that's from spreading that feed out so they have plenty of room to eat, and and what's reducing that stress? 07:24 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Okay, I'll put it to you this way. You look like you might like to eat. I do like to eat. Do you like a beer? Once in a while, occasionally, I do. Okay, well, I'll tell you what we're going to go. I've got a party set up All the prime rib and lobster that you can eat, plus any side dish you can imagine and any type of beer you want. 07:44 - Cal Hardage (Host) Sounds like a good deal right, it does for it does, but I think there's a catch coming. 07:49 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Yeah, there's a catch too. I'm gonna have all the, all the the linemen and linebackers from the NFL at that same party and they're under under instructions to not be nice to you. Yeah, and it's not gonna take you long before you look over across the street, see that McDonald's and decide you'd rather go have a big Mac than a prime rib. No, you're exactly right. Yeah, and it's. It's the same. 08:10 The stress thing on on cattle. The way I look at it, we don't recognize stress in each other. You probably know somebody you at least know somebody that had a close friend or relative commit suicide. Yes, now, the person that kills himself, they're under a lot of stress. Yes, and what's the most common thing you hear when somebody that you know kills himself, it's, they had everything going for him. 08:37 Oh, we didn't know that, nobody knew that anything was wrong right now, and no, but you can look at me and you tell me oh, yeah, there's no stress on cows, look how happy they are. If you can't tell it, and your wife or your, your brother or or your best friend, how can you tell me that you can see it in those cows? Oh, yes, you can't. And that's stress thing. And and the way that we observe. I think there's a probably two of the biggest problems that people have, because we, we observe what we want to what we, what we want to see. We observe what we, what we perceive is the obvious, when sometimes it's the obvious isn't really what we should be looking at kind of that confirmation bias You're going in there. 09:22 - Cal Hardage (Host) Yeah, yeah, there will there's confirmation bias. 09:25 - Bob Kinford (Guest) And what is the most common thing? That that any regenerative grazing Method. I don't care if you're talking Alan savory or if you're talking Richard T, alejandro Carrillo's, anybody, anybody. You know, enrique Guerrero, you talk with you, and what are they all saying? Or, and and even, oh, jaime, what's his name that does the total grazing? Yeah, all of them say the same thing. We're mimicking nature, right, yeah? 09:54 Because, oh, all the massive birds of buffalo, all the were, bison, you know, right, what on, cut whatever you want out of, want to insult anybody here. Anyways, it was easier to observe them when you had a Million head of a bison going by, or maybe several million, and you got to sit there and wait for two or three days. The thing that nobody is is Really looking at on this is that they weren't always in that high a density, oh yes. And then you also have to remember that we also had around 60 million Anilow, we had around 60 million elk and the same number of multiple species of deer, oh yes. And they would come together in those big herds, kind of at the end of the wet season, when they had grass and plenty of water and it was Nutritionally was time for them to breed, boom, they come together in these big herds and then, as the feed and water starts getting a little bit harder you know to do, then they break out into sub herds and the predators really have nothing to do with it. You know the predators are there and the other working the back end of that herd, but they're not really driving it, they're back, they're picking off the weak ones and when those herds break up, all of these, all of these animals, you don't see bull, elk in with the cow, elk other than breed and sees you don't see, you know the bison or the same way, horses are the same way. But I mean, that's just, that's just animal nature what they do. And I think if you really If they could get a research program going, which I think would be cooler than the hack to go to some of these big herds in Africa, I think that if they took these sub herds and they did the collar testing on them and DNA, make sure they're all, all related, and then do the same thing, that predators around them, and I think that there's actually a pretty strong relationship going between those predators and that herd animals To where, when it's time, when they get into that big herd. 12:07 Those predators follow that herd and then when they come out, my bet is that it's the same set of predators following the same set of animals back out. I mean, that's just a gut feeling that I've got. But all those sub herds are all related females and that's something that we do. What that? I think that we make a mistake With the registered outfits. 12:28 They kind of do it, but you know we bring them together and then we go okay, we're sitting all the bullcaves out this way and all the heifer calves out this way and they've actually got pretty strong relationships, you know, stronger between some cows and others. But I've seen I've sat there and watch for you get done weaning the say that you mean the bulls first, and then you know you win those heifers and Take the cows out and you turn them out with the other ones and you have cows that just sit there and they will just lick and groom on each other for hours and they will spend days I mean just Dang near touching each other. They're so close for days. So if we're interrupting that, what are we doing to the animal? 13:12 - Cal Hardage (Host) performance. So. So what do we do instead of that? 13:15 - Bob Kinford (Guest) run them is run them in one herd, but you've also got to let that density. You've got to let that density change. Is it needs to change? Yeah, when you're first starting out like down here, if you can feed them on an area to build your fertility, fine. It's hard to make a profit doing that and that's one of the things that just that just really kind of twists me off on this government program. Oh, we're gonna help the regenerative grazing deal. We're gonna help you build water lines and fences and, okay, water you need. 13:47 Fences is the last thing you need. You do not need to to fence cattle in on their feed. In fact you would. If I'd like to see somebody like in Ricky Guerrero and he's actually been to one of my schools and and Alejandro Carrillo's has had me down to his place and that's where he's sending those cattle up to the draw. Yes, that's, that's the stuff that he learned from me, because he wanted to know how to graze that. So, yeah, yeah, but anyways, if, if you would take, instead of Putting that feed in there, and it's right. 14:19 Next, these cows are looking at that, they're seeing it, boy, they want to get over that feed. So they're getting all stressed up and Ricky's getting around three pounds a day in gain. But I think he could Increase that. Even instead of put them in the fences, he'd feed them, because that that country is, you know, is big enough and has enough terrain in it that he could feed on one spot for a day and have a guy that all he's gonna do is pick that up, send them over there to where that feeds that, and then they, and then instead of one line, and then instead of one line, have it where they can spread out there and go in there nice and calming and set down and then, and actually could, he could feed. 14:58 I know a lot of people that will feed for two days in the winter and then you know, they feed, put out two days worth of feed and Today and move the cows tomorrow, and then they put out two more days of feet didn't take a day off, you know. And they can, they can reduce their workload in the cattle or calmer. So if they could set out that feed and then a guy go over there pick it up and Then portable fencing isn't that big of an expense, it's the labor behind it, right, yeah? So if you can take away that labor, you got a feed anyways. So you're dispersing your feet on a little bit different, because, rather than putting it out solid like they do, you'd be putting it out about Two cow widths apart. You're not getting quite as much organic matter in the ground, but you're gonna get better gains with less feed, while still while still helping the soil. 15:48 - Cal Hardage (Host) Now one thing you mentioned there about in one area thing going to another area You're talking about Larger acre acreage. So so someone working with smaller acreage, how do they implement something as long? 16:02 - Bob Kinford (Guest) as you do the stockmanship. That's gonna help right there because you're reducing that stress and and actually I think it'll help your Help you out health wise oh, you don't have the stress off that and it's like I'm 69 years old and I'm not taking, I'm not on, any medications. I had that deal with my gallbladder last summer but the doctors told me they said they said we've never seen anybody your age so healthy and it's like I chew Copenhagen. I smoked up until about eight years ago. I have not let a healthy life, oh yeah, but but the thing is is that even though I do, I do get a lot of stresses and stuff on my life. At times. 16:40 I've spent most my time out in cattle, you know, directly involved with it, for my stress levels are down, oh yeah. And then I'm not. You know I'm not munching on donuts all the time, stuff like that. You know if I take a snack it's gonna be some Jerky or or dried fruit or something like that, and I eat more meat than than anything. So you know it really had him confused. He's off. They kept sending the nutritionist in talking to me and Don't think he's telling you the truth. 17:12 - Cal Hardage (Host) Something's gotta be wrong here, well no, he was actually. 17:15 - Bob Kinford (Guest) It was pretty interesting because you know it's. I pointed out to him that that you know Canola oil is rapeseed and they had to really go through a lot of genetic, you know GMO process and then another High heat process in order to get it Approved as by the FDA is being safe, but it's not really. It still has the same toxins in it, just not as much. 17:41 Oh yeah, and I said, and I told him. I said, you know, you Sent me some yogurt this morning to eat and I said, did you know it had more canola oil in it than it had yogurt. But but that's all that whole, that whole deal with the grazing. There's a direct relationship, not just to heavy density all the time, but in fluctuating, because in reality, when a big herd of bison would go through and They'd be, they'd eat. Well, then they go. Oh, you got to let it rest for for a year, year and a half, you got to let it rest. But the thing is, is these wild animals when they go through, they are looking for the highest Nutrition value. So you have bison go through this week For three weeks from now. You got a bunch of antelope going through at a different angle. A couple weeks after that You've got help going through from a different angle. Then you'll have got some deer going through. It might get that same spot. You'll have spots that have been grazed three or four times in a season, so it's not really graze it once and go down. Uh, yeah, I've got a student that she's the only other person that's going out there teaching. This is that you know, and this is this Deal about being grazed by multiple species at different times. It's something that I bring up at every school. 19:07 So they tried it and they were at the point that they were basically running their stalking rate was was already double what the area was around and and they decided that they were going to experiment with this and they gave half their ranch off the whole grazing season, just gave it off. Well, they're grazing the year round, but they the growing season. They gave it off and they went across the other half of the ranch with what would be considered A quadruple stalking rate. They went across that three times and actually stockpiled grass. And the reason is is these cattle, once you get them get the herd instinct rebooted, they start doing like wild animals do and they're looking for the highest nutrition. So the highest nutrition level in your plants is the top one-third to one-half of that plant. 20:02 So they're going through and say your, you've got your clover going and your wheatgrass is going, that's what's ready. And they go through and they take the top through that. Well, what does that do for the recovery rate of that plant? It doesn't stop growing and in fact what winds up happening is the is it recovers a little bit taller than it would if you would have eaten it all the way down to the ground, or or more than half, you know if, because you've got that variety of you can eat it all the way down to do the total grazing, or or or take it down to just half or less than half. There's a lot of varieties, but these animals, once they've been rebooted, take the most nutritious part of the plant. 20:48 So the next time they go through Well, you know what that clover had recovered again. They had green clover clear into August. Where everybody else's clover was was trashed by the end of June. And then the next time through, well, there be a couple different types of grasses that were Were ready and the other ones weren't recovered yet. Well, they took the ones that were ready and they did that three times and actually built grass doing it. So the thing saying that we have to have a high density all the time, and especially a high density all the time, and then not Doing anything with it for a year, is kind of off base. Yeah, and this is plant recovery. What's the fully? What's a fully recovered plant? 21:35 - Cal Hardage (Host) so you know, when you get a fully recovered plant, you know that bite mark's gone and you've got the full leaf structure and it's got a certain number of leaves and it's so tall. 21:44 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Yeah, that's what everybody says, but actually the fully recovered plant is when it's at its full mature height and has the seed head on it. Oh, okay, that is full recovery. Yes, Now, if you're doing annuals, if you're doing annuals, you can go by that, by those parameters that you just set. Right, right, and it works great. If you're doing irrigated cover crops, you can get by with that. But if you're doing perennials, you know you're wanting that seed head to come, oh yeah. And even in your irrigated pastures, you know, like I say, I've been around a lot of different management systems and stuff. What does everybody talk about in these pastures that are irrigated and they're farming it? Oh, what are we going to plant this fall? What are we going to plant this spring? Every year, same thing, right, same thing, same thing. What does nature do with annuals? 22:40 - Cal Hardage (Host) They reseed and keep going. 22:44 - Bob Kinford (Guest) You look at California. Big part of California is volunteer roads. Oh yeah, they can't get rid of them. They can't get rid of them because they reseed themselves every year, oh yeah. So so just going just from that, why aren't you taking, say you graze there, towards the end of August, you know, mid-august, towards the end of August, go ahead and no till end your winter fall crop and then give it a break. Let that, let those, especially these people that run in yearlings, they can pull the yearlings off. Let that summer crop fully recovered to where they've got the seed heads. 23:25 Oh yes, you know, and I mean know how they may have millet and see down in there and the grass-fed people say, oh, we can't have that because it's grain, the grain's evil, it's not part of their diet. What did these animals do in the fall? Did they go? Oh, my God, we can't eat. We've got to. Now we have to starve until all those seed heads fall off because we can't eat grain. You know it's. The grain is an actual part of a cow's diet. It's just, it's not the cow, it's the how, it's not the grain, it's the how. It's the same, same concept. So if they change their management up on these fields a little bit. Then after about three years, guess what? You don't have to plan anything because you're letting that get recovered. You got the seed head on it and it's self-seeding. You know, because you do the same thing in the spring. You know, and you've got to plant it for about three years, but then after after about three years, it is just self-replicating as long as you graze it right. 24:34 - Cal Hardage (Host) Yeah, give it an opportunity to set seed. Yeah, yeah. 24:38 - Bob Kinford (Guest) And that's just another part of our observation deal of you know, oh, we got to do this, we got to do this because this is, we got to do this and nobody's going. Well, this stuff supposed to seed next. What's that seed for then? 24:51 - Cal Hardage (Host) How? How did it survive without us managing it Exactly? 24:55 - Bob Kinford (Guest) exactly. You know it's. It's water and grass drive everything, and I mean everything from the animals to the climate. It drives the whole thing and we've got to learn to to balance the management. You know it's like you get down here, you're going to feed the soil and you're going to, you're going to be putting out all this hay and then it doesn't. It doesn't pencil out initially and it sounds really, really good to these people getting started out and I see a lot of people, young people they're going out, they're getting their their 60, 80 acres and they're going to, they're going to do this and and they start feeding that hay like that, and then most of them go broke in a few years because it's you can't just keep doing that and expect to make money. 25:43 I mean, it's a really good practice to get that soil back, but that's where this ag bill needs to be be focusing the money on regenerative agriculture is. They need to be focusing as much on that as they do anything else, because the the water is a big problem, but it's also not the problem that we, that we make it, because we we tend to think well, we've got to have a drinker every quarter of a mile, right, okay, you get down here and you get into a 2000 acre pasture and that means you've got five water points and in reality all you need is two. Oh yes, and those two water points are both going to be watering parts of other pastures at the same time. So there there's a lot of this that we get educated into thinking what that we need, that we really don't need, and you're a crazy son of a gun If you try to tell them otherwise. Oh yeah, yeah, well. 26:47 - Cal Hardage (Host) Well, anytime someone comes with us with ideas that aren't exactly the same or or where we are, and they question, they cause us to question our thinking. Sometimes our reaction is not to question our, our thinking, but to push back and say, no, you don't have it right, but you know. I think Alan Williams said you know we need to question everything. Well, one thing that you said earlier was they need that herd instinct rebooted. So how do you do that? 27:19 - Bob Kinford (Guest) That is really a good question because everybody gets confused and I have done interviews and had people write articles on it and everybody takes it that I'm training the cows. I'm not training the cows, I just go out there and go, hey, how you doing? And I approach them in ways which, rather than approaching them like we do, we always approach them as a predator. Hell yeah, I change up my body English, my horses body English, to where it's more resembling either the lead cow or a dominant bull. You know, if you ever notice and you've got cows walking through or bulls walking through and you know that ball of scale kind of tip down her head and kind of like that, yes, it's just like, okay, we're part in the Red Sea, here, we're getting out of your way, and it's about the same with the bulls, unless you get a young guy that thinks he's tough, you know, and then the bull fights on. Your people don't realize how much just the way we approach them affects their attitude. 28:28 And this is this series going back to another, another Bud Williams deal, and he taught it because I think people could understand it more. I mean he always thought about you go against the grain of cattle and they'll speed up, you go with them, they slow down, yes, and then, on starting cattle, you're going to zigzag across the back, and that's because he figured people could understand that better than they can the other. Now, what's interesting about this is how come people don't to me? How come they? They don't go up and down that side more. You get some guys do, but the majority of people don't. And what happens when, when and this is why I say that you don't want to go back and forth across that back anymore than you absolutely positively have to Because what happens if somebody starts going like this and back to you? 29:23 - Cal Hardage (Host) you know, you can feel that I turned around and looked at him. 29:26 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Yeah, you can. Yeah, you're going to turn around and look at him. And so if, if you've got a bunch of cattle going and and they're pairs right, and they're paired up, and you start going like this, well, the mother cow goes up and maybe slides in front of another one, what do you want? Oh, yeah, and all of a sudden you've got a bunch of calves on the back of these stupid calves, they won't go with their mother. Well, if you approach them from the front, where they can see you, they watch their. Their mother walks off and they can see that they're looking at you and they can see their mother, or they just catch up to them on. That simplifies a lot of stuff right there. 30:06 But you've got a lot of different things that are going on here, because one of the things that that bud didn't really get across well is that, okay, yeah, they slow down when you're going in the same direction, but there's different zones of that. You can be out here and it does nothing. You can be in here. They'll slow down. You get in a little bit too close and they speed up. If they actually slowed down when you're going the same direction, these team ropers would not have any fun at all. 30:39 - Cal Hardage (Host) Yeah, right, yeah. 30:41 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Oh, and then the other thing and I hear this and the statement a lot and it's it's probably, it is probably the biggest pet peeve I have. You got to get through, you got to get through, you got to get up there until you can get through. As long as you are not directly in back of them, you have the right. They know you're there, yeah. So if they know you're there, you have the right. If they're not doing what you want them to do, it's because you're in the wrong position. 31:16 And, surprisingly enough, these people that say this, they're still keeping that same distance, being a little bit closer or change that the attitude of your cow. 31:27 It's you can be going along parallel and if you start coming up back of a cow like, say, you're working in a feed lot or you're starting to cattle and this cow keeps trying to race around you, right, well, when you start putting, putting pressure on your head, their natural instinct is something, but talk a lot about a lot too, it's to go around you. 31:48 So if the gate's over here and you're putting pressure on them here, their instinct is go here and you're cussing that cow out because it isn't looking for that gate. Well, if you take and you, just you can be same distance, go in the same direction, but have your horse traveling like this. You know what happens oh, he's taking away that possibility to go around them. Let's look, oh, there's the gate, yeah, and they'll go out it. And you can do that over and over and over, and people, some people just can't see it. Then the other thing is is when you're going against the cattle. Now, if I'm sitting there and I'm looking straight forward and your horse is looking straight forward, where's your focus In front of you? 32:37 - Cal Hardage (Host) Right. Is that on the cows If they're not in front of you, that it isn't. 32:42 - Bob Kinford (Guest) So if you take your cow and you're going against these cows now and you've got your horse kind of or you walking and you've got your body turned or your horse just having their neck turned and they're kind of doing a little bit of half pass out of where's that horse's focus, so if I'm staring at you as I'm going by, you can feel that more you can play. Go to Walmart and go walking up and down the aisles and find somebody and just kind of tip your shoulder at them, like that a little bit when you're going by, and they will unconsciously speed up. Oh yeah, you know you can play with this on people works, on everything, but you've got to remember that focus. Ray Hunt and the Doran's brothers and Buck Branderman all these guys that talk about balance, timing and field but one of the most important things on that is focus, and Tom kind of talks about it because he talks about focusing on where you're wanting to go. Well, the same thing goes over to the cattle. You've got to have your focus on them. Oh, yes, and as such, when you're say you're going down and people say, well, you're going to blow them out the back, trying to start them that way, well, the thing is is you're going down and you've got your cattle looking at them or your horse looking at your cattle as you're going by and you're reading those animals, 50 head down, and you can tell when one is getting ready to want to break out, because it head comes up and it starts looking around and it starts getting agitated. All you have to do is straighten that horse out and take your focus off of the cows Just for a second. You know if you have to look away a little bit. But then, as you get up close enough to it, put that focus back on and you know you'll have a little bit slower motion on those others. But all of a sudden that cow that was getting ready to break by boy, it will bust a butt trying to get by you. We're in the direction that's supposed to be going. And what winds up happening when you do that? 34:46 When you, when you are doing this, and say you've got a bunch of cows that are, you know you're moving along and you're walking, everything's going good, and you look back, oh shit, there's three head that they they stopped to eat. Well, you start trotting back there and they will pick up and they'll put a kink in their tail, I mean six, seven year old cows will be trying to buck and play as they're coming up, because it takes that much stress off of. Oh yeah, so what you're doing is you're changing your, your handling methods to pull the stress off of, and then you, when you place them on a, on a where you want them to graze you don't want them to stay in one place, you want them to graze and then so actually you're not doing the daily moves, you're doing a constant gentle move through the pasture that it is totally dependent on the, the quality and density of your forage. You know, if you get down here and you got a blade of grass, it's a that's. You know a hundred yards apart and you know those cattle, they've got to spread out to go through that area, right. But then the same cows. All of a sudden you come to an area where you've got nice, nice green, less grass or a lot of browse. They will come in and actually graze together so tight that they're touching each other. So you've got to. What you're doing is you're taking the stress off and once you take that stress off, they want to be together. Then they also start looking for the highest nutrition in the plants, which means they're biting the grass different and they literally start looking for other sources of nutrition. 36:26 Ah, I got into it on Facebook with this guy. Right, if I tell you what he's he he was saying I don't want to hear about this reboot, the cow herds. Cows will not, will not eat ragweed. I'll give you a thousand dollars ahead to come down here and and and you can bring them, bring your own cows that if they'll eat this ragweed, I'll give you a hundred, a thousand dollars for every cow that eats it. I come this close saying, okay, I'll go down, I'll work with your cows for three days and on the third day they'll be eating the ragweed I would have owned, I would have, I would have owned half his cow. But it's basically you're. 37:01 You're taking the stress off, and to take that stress off you have to go on what I call cow time. You know, you start out first thing, the first morning, you go out and you just throw the cattle together, just suggesting it, and boy, it's like. It's like watching paint dry, because I got to go out and and I'll explain something and then I'll I'll make an approach out there, kind of give them the idea of what's going on. And then I'll take you and we'll go out and you follow me and then I do that and you do that 10 times and then every time you know you do it. You don't keep the motion going, you just do it and then the motion dies. You got to start again, so everybody keeps. 37:43 You know, you just got this, this little conveyor belt, going and then you send them out and then I'll have a. I've got radios now for I can. If something starts blowing up, I can send them the other way and and straighten them out. Or if they get into a wreck. It's like it's funny because people go, well, we'll have something mess up and think, oh boy, this is boy, it's going to take all day to get this straightened out. And I go out and I'll make two or three passes and there they are going to wreck. So but it takes that, it takes that being explained to, kind of getting walked through it and watching it repetitively for you to get it, because it's always the constant state of flux and it's like I tell people I can't teach you anything, all I can do is give you the concepts Now, if we're on on your set of cows on this school. 38:33 Your set of cows will be usually be there. If we're doing it on your links they're going to be there after five days. But even though those cows aren't quite there, you've got the tools that you can go ahead and and continue through it. Everybody else is going to go home, figure, and some people. I had had a kid do a two day clinic with me and he went home, put his cows together. He he grasped it that fast. But there again, that's that deal with the talent and and having that connection with the cows and the horses and the and the whole thing is what allowed him to do that. 39:04 But in the end you're doing it all on cow time because once you get them turned around and they're going into water and that first day there might be an hour difference between the front end and getting in and the back end going into water because you're not forcing them. Well, then you sit there and until at least half of that herd is ready to go graze, you don't let them go anyplace. Then you use the same stockmanship to take them to feed and sometimes, depending on the place you know you might have good feet a hundred yards off water. You just slip them up and if they're sitting in there, if they're grazing instead of walking, you walk off and you leave. You know you're not sitting there forcing them. And this is the thing that everybody who has tried to do this on their own. You got to have the control. You got to have the control. There is no control. Life is chaos. There is no control. You go with the flow of the chaos or you just grew up so they're going out there. There's an outfit in in Idaho that I was wanting to go up there because they've got a really cool program going on and they're getting, they're getting better at it. But every day eight o'clock we go to water, every day 10 o'clock we go out to graze. So they're making those cows work on their schedule when in reality those cows will graze for about four hours and then they'll kick back and they ruminate for three or four hours. So we, you know we're setting this on on our schedule, not theirs. And and once you get it onto their schedule and you've got that stockmanship going for, they understand it. 40:41 Third day, and I mean this is consistent. I don't care if I go to Mexico or Kansas or Australia, no matter where I go on the third day there's something that clicks in on these animals where they start eating things that they had been avoiding, including ragweed. Oh yeah, yeah, including ragweed. When I was at the Flying W that first year and we worked on a bunch of heifers, they had paths that were going through stanzasumac that was, you know, just like six, eight inches high and ironweed, and they had a path going through there but they wouldn't even graze the grass that was in between there. On the third day they started eating sumac and ironweed and ragweed. They had one willow tree and, boy, they just stripped that sucker down and we, we took and we asked Josh, I said well, you want to take and send them? Let's send them down that draw and just see what they do to that draw going down, so we can get an idea of what the impact of all those cattle going you know doing it. So we set them up and we go down through there and he rode down in there to see if they were doing and he didn't take a picture of it. He says did you know there were cows down there standing up on your hind legs to get the locus leaves? Oh yeah, completely changed the whole dynamics of that. Grass was coming in and it's like it's. It's one of those things. You got to see it because you know, I got to admit, because if I think of it from somebody who has done nothing but conventional set thought, grazing all their life and conventional handling, that's BS. It's got to be out that I've never seen a cow do that. But once you see it and experience it a little bit, that makes a big difference and that. But we had that little faux pas there for we disappeared. 42:27 I got to talking about the education deal and how why it's so hard for people making this change over, because for the community within the community, it looks like, oh wow, we're making all this progress, everybody's doing this, but in reality no, it's, it's we've getting more, but it's a long ways to go. And big part of this is on the education and I'm all for knowledge but I'm kind of an auto diet. I diet, I learned where if I go out and I learned something and I read books and just started out I was in high school gotten arguments with teachers, my biology teacher. Some of these books aren't really right, you know. They talk about animals being grazers and browsers. Oh yeah. Well, if this was true, we wouldn't be seeing deer out in the alfalfa field, we wouldn't have elk climbing the top of climbing our haystacks and we wouldn't have deer brows and acorns and pine nuts. And so there's a lot of stuff that they teach in school that's not quite right. And what happens is is for somebody as much as myself, or I don't know if you went to college or not, but we're sitting there and we're looking at a wider range of things. We look at the book and we go okay, I know this is bull, I'm not going to kick that out. Okay, you're going to college, you're paying for that, and you're trying to get that little piece of paper. And so, instead of thinking about, oh, that don't sound right, and questioning it, the book says it, teacher says it must be right, I got my piece of paper. So it takes longer for people, you know, to open their minds up to it. And then, when they do open their minds up to it, they'll read a book or they'll read a couple of articles and they'll halfway do it. 44:20 A lot of this research, I mean there is so much research out there showing that the regenerative grazing words, but yet you still have these studies coming out saying that it doesn't, it's inconclusive. And I figured out what it what it is because I've I've looked at enough of these studies. I've talked with these people, I've gotten into arguments with them on Facebook and what it is is okay. This doesn't make sense to me, but I've got my piece of paper and I'm going to study this. So they go out and they study it and as Richard Teague said in the in his first study on multi-pathic grazing, is that they studied it but they didn't understand it, so they didn't follow the directions. 45:03 So, of course, it doesn't work. If you don't follow the procedure, it doesn't work. If you don't have the flexibility built into it, it's not going to work. So they go and they hope it doesn't work. So what do they do? They take all their, their data and they take it over here to this group of people who also don't know how it works and don't understand the flexibility of it, and they go oh, you're right, it doesn't work. And then the vegans go oh, look, see, it doesn't work. You got to get those cows out of there. You know it's. And the animal rights people do the same thing. So you know we've got a lot of well intentioned, false information going on and that's like I don't know how you. I don't know how you combat that, especially in in today's age, when you're doing this with AI and I don't even exist. Oh, yeah, yeah. 45:56 - Cal Hardage (Host) We talked about that migratory grazing and how you're. You're out there and you're nudging them in the right way. You're relieving some stress there. But when we think about someone who's got smaller acreage and just a few cows, well, just that change in stockmanship alone. 46:16 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Yes, it's going to make a big difference in your, in the attitude of your animals. And the other thing that these people need to realize is that you're we're training these animals to be stressed and we don't even realize it. Oh yeah, one of the things that you get onto ranches and on every spring the calves take a few weeks of being messed with before they start going with their mothers and everybody cuts us the dumb calves and it's like well, and this goes right back to what we're talking about earlier the way you feed. Yes, they put out a bed bedground over here and then they feed over here. So every day that cow I mean from the day that calf's born the cow walks off and has gone for a couple hours and the calf doesn't think anything about it. That's the way it is. So you go to move the cows. Why would that calf ever think it needs to go? 47:06 - Cal Hardage (Host) with it, oh yeah. 47:07 - Bob Kinford (Guest) He's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, what we're doing with with all of this this fences and time moves, the back bat latches and that we're training them. We got to go now, even if we have plenty of feet. When I went to to alley honros the big problem he kind of thought that maybe that this was full of a bunch of bull, but he's pretty open-minded about stuff and he had a big problem with he had these 200 acre pastures and and he was K out his cows in there is doing daily moves. Well, he'd get out there and the cows had run off and they'd leave the cows behind and even at that point his bottoms had enough grass built up that a newborn calf could not walk through that and Until it was two or three days old. Oh yes, it was just impossible. There's too much, oh yeah. But those cows were so stressed even though the grass was that thick I think, because there were so used to getting moved every morning, that they were just we're down there at six o'clock and coming up top this hill and you could hear these cows beller in and and moving. I mean, they were stressed and we, you know, I said, well, what the heck? We're gonna push them back up. We're gonna teach them a lesson. We push them back up, got them paired up and went to turn around go and it literally turned into a stinking stampede. Some of them even made new gates. Oh yeah, but you know, because when we do this we're going out, for we're hinted twice a day Down there. 48:42 It was hot enough that they, you know, and they knew the schedule the cattle about. You know how long they'd be on coming off of water. So we'd go to the house and we'd have lunch and and sit there and some people take naps. And then, you know, like Fernando Fallimer, who'd be another good guest for you he's the grazing consultant for, uh, understanding ag, him and I sit there and discuss stuff, then we go back out about time They'd be coming off of water and every time we'd go out they'd be easier to handle. They would, they would be a lot more responsive, they'd be closer together. 49:18 And then we go out on that fifth morning and we go up on this hill where you could see Three fourths of the pasture. There's a little around this point of that hill, you know, if we're looking down there and we can't see any cows and Ali hunt is going well, first the cows Where's the cows in? And I said, well, they'll probably be over, so we go over here. Sure enough, there they were 50 cows on about an acre. Oh yes, and there was a calf. 49:42 When we're looking down there, there was a calf sitting down there that had just been born and just barely getting up to nurse. So we go, we walked on around and we kind of look cow herds and and I told Ali hunter and the other guys, I said, well, I'll take your foreman down here and and we'll, we'll start these cattle up and then you guys just make, just kind of get down there and just kind of make sure they don't go too far. I didn't think that we're going to go take it off, but it gave something to do where it's, it's, gives them something to do and it gives me time and one on one time with a foreman who didn't speak English I don't speak Spanish to where we could do our little sign that oh yeah, draw pictures in the dirt. 50:20 And we went down there and and he started going to the back and I go no front, and I walk and he go, you know what, walked up to the front and I just kind of went about a third of the way up there Two or three times. Then I go back to the side and I said, okay, now you know you got coffee, brittle, and you look at me, go, because he heard a goats as a kid and he goes like goats. Oh yes, so it's. It's all of these animals where there's goats or cattle, elk, kangaroos I played around with kangaroos. It works on kangaroos. This is a way of of stockmanship that relieves the stress on them. So if you, if you take away your all your time, stuff, jack around with the time, go out there sometime during the day just to just to be with your cat, I mean you can learn a lot just sitting out there and just watch under behavior and interaction and to where they're not getting excited about having to make a move every time you go out there. Oh yeah, because every time you do that, you're, you're, you're Stressing them out. And what happens when you stress them out? Your gains on your cows aren't going to be as good. Yeah, so you, you get out there and what you'll wind up finding is that sometimes, if you've got them doing say you've got 10 acres on a, 10 cows on a on a two acre, and Right now you might be moving them Every two days, every three days you might find out that once you get this stockmanship down on this, you're going to extend that up to three or four days. 51:57 It's kind of funny because the, the guy that sent me to my first bud Williams school actually fired me after two and a half years because I kind of get sarcastic over the radio and he didn't like it. But we stayed in contact and he was managing a place down here, an irrigated place that he was built, that they were building up, and he Hired me to come down here and help them with this. Well, we had a number of pivots that we were building and that, all these different projects going on. But we split up the cattle anyways, for I took the outside pasture cattle and then then a one group of cattle and he took another group of cattle. Well, we had, uh, 1120 Head for for pivot, well, for for rotation. Okay, so you've got two pivots, 1120 head. You graze this down, you move them over here, graze that and then you water that graze. Hypothetically, 1120 cattle of the same size should have eaten off, eating it off and been ready to move at the same time. Right, yes, and he got frustrated. He started building fences, doing like Jim Garrish and doing daily moves with fences. Oh, yeah, yeah, which was a lot of work because he was making me put up, put up. 53:09 Yes, my cattle were just they. They worked their way around the outside of the pivot and it's like they go partway and then go back for water and they go partway and they go, maybe clear, on the other side and they would walk all the way back around to go to water instead of cutting across the pasture, which is I have not figured that out but when they get around Once, then they just move in right next to it, just like a swath, are going around that thing, but they were only eating the top one half. Oh, yes, and it took them two to five days longer to get through the pivot. Is they did the ones that were eating it all the way down to the ground. Okay, for why they do that? How does that even compute. Now You're gonna also think that there's got to be something different on the gains. Right, right, nope, identical games. 53:57 Oh yes, and I was talking with temple grandin on this and and this is something that the people are doing, the total grazing in that they don't understand it Is, is, and I didn't know why they were doing that. But after temple explained it, it's like pretty simple Is when you're eating the lower quality forage at the bottom, your the room and has to work harder, so the cattle is overheating, more it's it's it's doesn't handle the heat as well in the summer the ones that are only in that top half, that room and is running like a perfectly tuned drag car. 54:31 Oh yeah, it's just it's just running at the it at optimum levels. So they're eating less but they're getting more out of the feed. The other ones are eating more but happen to work harder to get the same benefit. Oh yeah, and what's what's interesting about this is ricky cremers has got her cow, her, they've got some bottoms that got washy grass. Cattle would constantly camp out down there Summertime. They'd be underneath the shade of them cottonwood trees. That's just where they'd stay. 55:02 And she sent me a video in fact it's it's on my, my website when the cow herd is grown enough now to where their old water system. And you know if, having the drinkers quarter-mile apart, they can't all drink at once. So the cow herd had split up into two groups, and this was she said it was around seven o'clock at night. It was still 105 degrees. None of these cattle were in the shade. Oh yes, they were up close to this one walk water ruminating. The other ones were down here. As the ones on top of the hill started going Cow's lord, they picked up and went. They couldn't go right straight up because it was in Kind of a little ravine going down to there. They went down and they turned up and they went up and joined back up for those other herd. Oh okay, so so they can. They can actually split it up to go to water because they know that water's it, but then when it comes time to graze, they go back together. Oh yeah, so that relax. 56:02 So if you can get your cattle in those smaller pastures, going on this, what are you doing? You're rolling your stress rate down. You're they're hitting that grass in a way that's going to give you faster recovery and it's doing nothing detrimental to your animal performance. In fact, your animal performance should go up a little bit, but just because of the fact that you've taken that, the stress off by changing your, changing your routine up to where you've got the stress off the cattle, the cattle don't automatically think they're gonna have to move when you show up and there's there's no, there's no timing to it to get the Pavlov's dog response oh yeah, and if you, if you watch, because all these people, they've got all these moves about oh, look how easier cows move, look how we sure cows move. And I'm sitting there, I'm banging my head on the wall because these cows, they go all. They go through that gate and they spread out and they got their heads down or eating, and they're walking fast Till they hit the other fence and then they turn around, they come back and oh, I see we did a total great. No, they're selectively grazing, but you've got them sets where they're in a panic. They've got to. Oh yeah, they've got to go and do that. 57:18 If you know, your cattle are are actually relaxed and acting as a herd. They walk through the gate and they put down their heads and they start and they get out there far and they keep moving a little bit, eating and walking, and Everybody walks through and then everybody's through the gate and they're in a unit. Nobody's stressed, nobody wants to run back, nobody, you know it's. They're just more stinking relaxed. So they perform better. Guess what? You're more relaxed, oh yeah, yeah, just because that's the Going back to that vibration and frequency thing again. The energy. If you've got that relax energy, then you're more relaxed. Right, yeah, they go through there. They've got all that energy. Oh boy, this was fun. No, I can go do something else, you know, because we've got to be busy. If we're not busy, we're not being productive. Yes, and some of the most productive times you can have is be be sitting there watching cows grazing and all of a sudden something will pop into your head that, oh, that it works. 58:19 - Cal Hardage (Host) Oh yeah, yeah Well, bob, we're gonna have to wrap this up and move to our famous four questions. Same four questions. We ask a lot of our guests. A very first question is what's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? 58:33 - Bob Kinford (Guest) I don't have one, because there's there's thing good things in all of them, and then there's things in almost all of them that I have a tendency to disagree with. So I don't, I don't have a favorite. I'm trying to write one myself right now, and it's like I argue with myself that I that it's not clear enough. 58:52 - Cal Hardage (Host) So and and you're absolutely right there you know, when we read any book, it's a snapshot in time of that person's thinking and I'm sure it's evolves for them, and then we're use, we're, we're looking at it with our experience and our knowledge as well. 59:08 - Bob Kinford (Guest) So, yeah, yeah and it constantly, it constantly expands and changes and, and something you do today, you may get into a similar situation a year from now and There'll be something that you'll learn doing there. And you go, oh yeah, maybe if I try, and then all of a sudden, you're, you're, oh yeah, another rabbit hole go down. 59:30 - Cal Hardage (Host) Well, our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm? 59:35 - Bob Kinford (Guest) My horse, you can move cattle with a four-wheeler, you can move cattle with a, with a side-by-side or a helicopter, but you're creating so much stress it's Unbelievable. I have a good friend who worked within Montana, that's in Australia and he drove eight hours to visit me at a school with my first school I didn't in Australia and we're having this talk on stress and about how the machinery and he goes yeah, bob, but and he was a helicopter pilot he goes you'd be amazed at just how fast you can settle down a mamba cattle with a helicopter and a couple good guy guys on bikes. And I go yeah, yeah, they're just just do, just like those Jews when they were surrounded with bomb wire and machine guns. Boy, they just settled right down. They didn't have no stress on them at all. But if that's the same sort of relationship, just because they appear calm Doesn't mean that their hurt isn't on pump up. 01:00:29 - Cal Hardage (Host) I've. I have a drone I put up. Sometimes I Thought, oh, this will be me, I can fly it out there and look at the cows. It stresses my cows out like crazy whenever I put that drone up. They don't not like it. 01:00:41 - Bob Kinford (Guest) I've. I've actually, when I did my my cattle handling video, I used the drone and they Didn't mind it that much. I was involved with a as a consultant on a on a study for drones with Colorado State University and I Told them they're going the wrong way on this, because guys want to check for sickness in his cattle on a 40,000 acre pasture and cattle scattered out all over the place. What you need to do is go ahead and reboot them, for they're all together. So you know what the condition is. But what you need that drone for it is an infrared camera ability to judge your forage of which forage is. Is it the optimum and which forage you know, like you might have. 01:01:27 I never get touch on oxidized grass because that's kind of a. That grass oxidizes and if it gets too far Then you just lose that standard grass. So if you're sending that drone up and, oh man, look this over here, set these, take those cattle over to that and just run them through it just to get the, hold them up, rodeo them there for a minute or not a couple hours to add fertility, and then we can go over here where it says that that we've got a whole bunch of, let's just say, cockleburgs, that are out of the two-leaf stage, that are six inches high. That's really good forage and we can just point those cows up. I mean, you could really use that to pinpoint your grazing, but you know that doesn't pay as much as the fencing people. 01:02:10 - Cal Hardage (Host) Yes, that's true, that is true. Our third question, bob what would you tell someone just getting started? 01:02:18 - Bob Kinford (Guest) it there. Again, it depends on their situation. I'm not gonna tell any two people the same thing, because the context is different between two places, and and, and that's what that's. Another thing that this fencing deal bothers me is that that you got all these pastors out there and it's like I'll talk about. You know you tell further. Well, there's times you might need to backtrack, oh yeah, and go back in and run through it. 01:02:45 I mean, if anybody listen to this has got a lot of mesquite, gets your cattle rebooted, send them into that mesquite when it just starts to bud out and then, once it, you know, and what happens is that, having one cow here, one cow there, another cow, you know each plant have each bush having one cow on it. You got two, three, four of them. The next one got two, three, four of them, and Then you pull them out when the as soon as the bloom start coming, let those blooms get out to about an inch, send them back in there. You get the same thing. Well, then, as soon as the beans start going, pull them out, put them back in with them beans, get it to be about an inch long, inch and a half long, and Raise them up until the time those beans start to harden. 01:03:27 And what happens is you're making three passes across that and instead of having a density of One cow per plant, you're going to four cows per plant, so you're quadrupling your density and doing that three times. So basically you've added 12 times the density going through that. So you're fertilizing that and you would be amazed at the amount of grass that'll produce underneath that mesquite. And after a certain time it gets like it. Alejandro's place, where the grass is thick enough that the humidity is gets, gets up high enough that the mesquite gets a fungus and then the termites hit it. And to take care of your mesquite context is going to be different. I can't tell anybody One one. There's no, no, there's no silver bullet, right? 01:04:17 - Cal Hardage (Host) Yeah, and lastly, bob, where can others find out more about you? 01:04:21 - Bob Kinford (Guest) Well, if you browse the internet and you do the search for Bob Kenford, I am the only Bob Kenford on the internet. Oh, yes, but I've got my website at migratory grazing comm and I'm on on Facebook, twitter and well, twitter. I don't do much on Twitter, I haven't really figured that out, and I do some stuff on LinkedIn. 01:04:43 - Cal Hardage (Host) Oh, very good. Well, bob, we appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today. 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. If you've enjoyed today's episode and want to keep the conversation going, visit our community at community dot grazing grass comm. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the grazing grass podcast on Facebook, twitter, instagram and YouTube For past and future episodes. We also welcome guests to share about their own grass farming journey. So if you're interested, belt the form on grazing grass comm under the Be our guest link. Until next time, keep on grazing grass.