In the Ozarks of southern Missouri where my wife, Judy, and I have been grazing cattle for the last 40 years, the predominant forage our cows consume is endophyte-infected Kentucky-31 tall fescue. While the grass is not native to the Ozarks, it sure thinks it is, which brings both challenges and rewards because of its unique characteristics.
Since we no longer make hay, our challenge in managing forage year-round is determining how we graze to best utilize what grows on our place — especially during the spring flush. The cow-calf business is rarely so profitable that a lot of money can be thrown at problems, so the challenge is to work with what forages the farm has. And that can surely come in a hurry as 70% of that growth is from mid-April to mid-June.
Our approach has been to breed and graze animals that fit the farm’s grass and climate and to manage grazing so the cattle can best utilize those forages efficiently and profitably. Managed grazing has been a centerpiece of our farming life; however, a change we made in our business model of even more importance to our profitability was managing the seasonality of grass growth with cattle prices in mind.
Mistakes were made
Over the years, we’ve made plenty of changes in our grazing management and marketing strategies, eliminated haymaking, and switched cattle breeds. But in three decades, we have never changed our perspective in the seasonality of both forage growth and cattle prices to lower inputs and boost profits. It was a big change from how we started.
In 1987, we bought the farm, and with it came close to 200 mama cows. This was during the farm crisis with falling land and commodity prices. The extremely low land prices were an anomaly due to a credit crisis in rural America. The low cattle prices were part of the normal 10-year cattle cycle — something we then knew little about.
We decided to keep the cows, and since they began calving in mid-January, we became winter calvers by default. Since we bought the cows at the bottom of the cattle cycle, we were able to ride the increasing prices to overcome the mistakes we made in those early years — like overstocking our pastures.
Winter calving gave us big calves to sell as we ran out of grass in November, just in time to hit the historically lowest priced month of the year to sell weaned calves. Unhappy with that, we began weaning and feeding the calves to feeder size and selling them in March — just in time to hit the historically lowest priced month of the year for feeder calves.
To make this a trifecta, we pregnancy tested in November and immediately took the open, often thin cows directly to market, and once again, hit the historically lowest priced month for slaughter cows. You would think successfully hitting all three of the lowest priced months for selling three different classes of cattle would take some thought and planning, but it seemed to come kind of naturally to me.
On top of this, we found the cows were difficult to breed back without a good deal of supplement and expense. Even then, the breed-back percentage in a 60-day window was not ideal.
After attending a grazing conference in Mississippi where I learned from some wise men about the importance of seasonality to a grazing business, I came home with the simple business model built around utilizing the spring flush to add value to livestock and to think of fall and winter grass as a precious commodity. The seed of the idea to match animal needs with the seasons had been planted, but the changes didn’t come all at once. However, we never wavered from this goal.
How we pivoted
First, we moved to a true spring calving in April and May. This gave us calves born on green grass, but more importantly, it allowed cows to easily and cheaply put on weight between calving and breeding. We found that cows putting on weight after calving are highly likely to breed back in a short window. This timing also allowed yearling heifers to cheaply put on weight and have them cycling early — just on forage — before turning in with the bulls.
Then, we weaned the calves in January or February and kept them to graze. This way, we could take advantage of the excess spring flush of grass, and with good grazing management, cheaply put value and weight on the steers to be sold as feeders in July and August — often the higher priced months of the year for feeder cattle.
Another key was starting to treat the open cows as an enterprise. Moving to a true spring calving meant we needed cows to breed back in the heat and humidity of July and August. Since our predominant grass is endophyte-infected Kentucky-31, this added another hurdle to successful breeding. For decades now, we have bred and selected cows for heat and fescue tolerance, and our herd has a very respectable breed-back percentage. However, in the first decade of this program, we had plenty of open cows that we had to learn how to manage and when to sell them.
Positive results
By matching spring grass growth with the cows’ requirements at calving, we were able to ensure there was plenty of grass at the time it’s needed most. Then, we closely rationed the grass during times when forage growth slows down and the cows’ nutritional needs decline.
With the yearling cattle and open cows, we had a very liquid group of animals that quickly gained weight and value on excess spring grass yet could be sold anytime if dry weather or drought began to threaten the main herds’ grazing. This gave us a flexible stocking rate to avoid running out of grass at inopportune times — it also gave us a good chance of selling closer to the seasonal high prices for feeder calves and slaughter cows.
Trying to synchronize cattle needs to the seasons has been helpful to us in lowering inputs and raising profits during the ups and downs of the cattle market and the swings in rainfall and temperatures. In future columns, I will explain more fully these changes and both the pitfalls and rewards these changes have brought about.
This article appeared in the August/September 2025 issue of Hay & Forage Grower on page 24-25.
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