By Burt Rutherford Contributing Editor
A grazing plan is a feedback loop, according to Chad Ellis, consisting of three basic parts. The first is setting goals and objectives. The second is to document the management approach, like stocking rates and pasture rotations. The third is monitoring and evaluating the effects of the first two.
That’s all well and good, as long as it keeps raining. If it doesn’t, a contingency plan becomes vitally important. And it’s not just drought. “We need to think about wildfires, floods, disease outbreaks,” Ellis said. He’s part of his family’s Texas ranch and CEO of the Texas Agricultural Land Trust.
“We need to think of a contingency plan in a non-stressed situation where we can think through what we need to do and how that looks when an emergency happens,” he noted during a National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) webinar. And the day to start drought planning is when it’s raining. If it isn’t raining, then today is the day to start.
“The first thing is to take an inventory of our livestock, our water resources, our forage reserves.” Next, set critical assessment dates and actionable triggers. “When we hit certain dates and we don’t have the forage and we’re behind on plant growth, think through what we’re going to do and how that fits us and our operation,” he advised.
The third thing is, if there are pastures with ponds or dirt tanks, use those pastures. If that water dries up, move to pastures that have other water available, such as troughs or pipelines. Fourth, are there neighboring ranches where pasture leasing is a possibility? “Could we have those conversations ahead of time to maybe utilize other resources around us?”
Last, if the target thresholds are met, “We need to relocate the cattle or strategically think about marketing.”
On his family ranch, July 15 is a critical trigger point because roughly 70 percent of plant growth has occurred by then. “If we hit that trigger mark and we’re at 75 to 80 percent of growth and we know we’re not going to have any more, we need to make some decisions,” Ellis said.
If destocking is the decision, approach it strategically. “We maybe want to start with our weaning calves first, our yearlings, open replacement heifers, cows with bad udders or eye problems or are open, our bred heifers, and last our mature cows.”
That’s where the livestock inventory comes into play, helping prioritize which class of cattle to move or market first. “We have our inventory of animals as well as the forage demand of those animals. Then we can start looking at our key targets.”
In the dry ranching country of western Colorado, the LeValley Ranch’s annual precipitation is 8 to 10 inches, most of which comes as snow. When it doesn’t snow, like it didn’t in the winter of 2024-25, contingency planning is critical.
One key factor that Robbie Levalley looks at is root mass. Speaking during the NCBA webinar, she said root mass for cool-season grasses needs to turnover about 30 percent to expand the area, volume and capability of the roots. Root mass turnover is annual root production divided by the maximum standing root mass.
“Managing for that large root mass that needs to be larger than the top growth is one factor we can build for the contingency plan,” she said. “How we treat that plant coming into a drought will not only significantly determine what that plant responds to in the drought but how fast that plant comes out of the drought.”
She advised ranchers to write down their observations. “This year, because of the significant lack of snow and the significant lack of any kind of rain, we have taken inventory of every pond that dried up and when it dried up, and added that to our grazing plan,” she said.
She said she can’t remember everything, “but the minute I go back to that [grazing plan] to look, it jars my memory and I’m able to remember what we did and why we did it.”
