North Dakota Highway 34 runs east and west through the middle of the state and carries drivers for a not-so-grand total of about 57 miles, beginning to end. Examining the landscape, you will find the usual rural mixture of crop and grazing land . . . but that’s not all.
A traveler is also offered the opportunity to gaze at a never-ending abundance of moon-like depressions filled with standing water. An aerial satellite image of the region makes it look like the landscape has succumbed to a bad case of chickenpox. This is the epicenter of a geologic oddity called the Prairie Pothole Region, which exists because of glacial activity that occurred nearly 10,000 years ago and has a footprint from Iowa to Canada.
Not counting Hazelton, located at the west terminal of Highway 34, the only town along its traverse is Napoleon. A bit northeast of this county seat borough is a farm that is owned and operated by Richard Gross. He is something of a pioneer in the area, having gone down the road of rotationally grazing his beef cows nearly 20 years ago. Since those early days, he has spent time refining and adding to his system’s infrastructure that provides forage for his herd of 300 mostly Angus cows and 60 replacement heifers.
The livestock are grazed on about 2,300 acres of pasture. Gross also has 1,500 acres of cropland, raising corn, soybeans, and wheat. Another 250 acres of dedicated hayfields round out the farm’s land base. The full-time labor force on the farm consists of . . . well . . . Gross, although he does pay for his corn to be custom planted and harvested for silage.
Gross and his wife, Sonya, live on the original farm that his father, who had nine brothers, bought in the 1950s. Once out of high school, Gross attended Bismarck State College and got a degree in farm and ranch management. He’s been on the farm ever since, growing the operation as land became available.
No trailer needed
“The entire ranch is contiguous,” Gross explained from his kitchen table. “Ninety-nine percent of my cows have never been in a trailer.” The pastures consist of primarily meadow bromegrass, western wheatgrass, and in some cases, native grasses and forbs. The cows are moved every two to three days to a new paddock, which range in size from 20 to 80 acres. In total, there are 36 paddocks that the cows rotate through. The replacement heifers have 11 paddocks of their own.
The first time over the pastures in the spring is a more rapid rotation to set plants back and prevent seedheads from emerging too early. Gross provides water using shallow pipelines that run throughout the farm. He mounts trail cameras at the waterers to make sure there are no availability issues. The permanent water tanks are set so they can be used for several different paddocks.
Although there is no set plan for establishing legumes in his pastures, he grazes pastures or hayfields late in the season after the forage seed is mature. By moving cattle to another pasture, he finds that some legume seed is spread through the manure. “They kind of reseed the legumes themselves, and I tend to find quite a bit of alfalfa and clover in many of my pastures,” Gross explained. “By leaving pastures idle a large part of the year, they get a chance to establish and not get grazed off right away.”
Cows calve in the spring, starting around April 10. “It’s a balancing act between the weather and getting ahead of the grass,” Gross explained. “I try to be done calving before we start moving cows and calves through the paddocks, generally around early May. Utilizing all of the grass is probably my biggest challenge,” he added.
Gross feels his rotational grazing system goes a long way in keeping flies from bothering his cows during the summer. “We keep moving the cows away from the flies, and then supplement that fly-control strategy with a livestock mineral that contains garlic,” he said.
Keeps them grazing
“I don’t baby my cattle,” Gross asserted. “They have to work and drop a calf in my rotation system or they get sold.” Although fall and winter arrive early in North Dakota, Gross likes to keep grazing for as long as possible. He utilizes corn residue or a cover crop planted after winter wheat for grazing in the fall and early winter. “We sometimes don’t have to start feeding cows until January,” he noted. “I try to have a higher nutritional value crop or cover crop late into the fall to graze as long as the calves are still sucking the cows. That way the calves keep growing until I wean.”
If trees aren’t present in a winter pasture, Gross will put up portable windbreaks, although he admits they aren’t as effective as trees. He’s currently trying to get trees planted in locations where they don’t exist.
When the amiable beef producer talks about winter feeding, he’s not referring to grain or high-priced supplements. That’s when Gross’s hay supply comes into play. The hay he
makes during the warmer months isn’t mature grass; it’s primarily high-quality alfalfa or alfalfa-meadow bromegrass mixtures. His hayfields usually provide two cuttings annually, but that can range from one to three, depending on the year. First cutting begins about mid-June. Hayfields are kept until the resident pocket gophers make them too rough to easily traverse. This can range from five to 10 years. To supplement the alfalfa hay inventory, some winter wheat is cut for forage and might be followed with millet or sudangrass for baling in the fall.
Gross rolls out about seven to eight bales of hay each day as cows overwinter on cornstalks and adjacent pastures. To expedite the feeding process, he still uses sisal twine on his bales to avoid dealing with the plastic during frozen tundra season. “I try not to have much carryover hay from year to year,” Gross said. “The quality of the hay just deteriorates too much if they have to sit outside for a second year.”
Cows aren’t the only animals that need to be fed in the winter. “I like to wait with weaning until average temperatures are a little cooler,” Gross explained. “It seems calves start eating sooner after weaning, and there are less day/night temperature swings, which cuts down on sick calves.”
Gross weans his spring-born calves around Thanksgiving and then backgrounds them until February, retaining ownership after they are shipped. “I make about 30 acres of corn silage and feed that during the backgrounding stage,” he explained. “They get some additional supplementation as well, but the cows only get alfalfa hay, even in their later stages of gestation.”
Moving forward
Gross is not afraid to try new technologies such as biologicals that are intended to enhance soil microbial life in his pastures and soils. “I continue to look for ways to make my operation more labor efficient,” he said. “I would like to add my own drone to help monitor fields and cattle, but so far I’ve hesitated to make that leap because of the time it takes to learn the new technology.”
Gross and his wife have raised three children on the farm. Their youngest daughter, Megan, has taken the most interest in the beef herd. She went to graduate school at Oklahoma State University and is currently working locally for a national livestock nutrition company. “She’s my go-to for livestock questions,” Gross said.
Retirement doesn’t appear to be in the near term for this Peace Garden State beef producer. He still loves what he does. “Many of my friends talk about retiring, so I thought about it and decided that I need to work to be able to retire,” Gross chuckled. “It seems I work a few days a month, and the rest of the time I drive tractor, combine, or am messing with the cows. These are things I still really enjoy.”
Apparently, Gross’s positive attitude and grazing system is infectious. He reports that a few of his Prairie Pothole Region neighbors have followed his lead. Of course, that could also be because Gross was the only one left with grazeable grass during some past drought years.
This article appeared in the April/May 2025 issue of Hay & Forage Grower on page 22-24.
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