Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast Episode 118.
get involved with some local farmers that are doing it or find someone, even if you have to drive an hour or two bounce ideas off of guys that have been doing it
you're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, Cal Hardage. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations.
The grazing management decisions you make today. impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy to follow techniques to quickly assess your forage production and infrastructure capacity. In order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts.
Learn more on their website at noble. org slash grazing. It's n o b l e dot org forward slash grazing.
On today's show we have Cody Carr of Carr Family Farms. Cody is 9th generation in Monroe City, Missouri. He has an operation including mixed grass and crop farm that's integrating cattle and sheep into the cropping rotations while converting crop ground back into native pasture. It's a really good episode. We talk about his journey, a little bit about his cows, a lot about his sheep, and native pastures. It's a really good episode. I think you'll enjoy it.
First, let's jump in 10 seconds about my farm. And for it, we have decided not to bale any hay this year, which is always great. Dad and I've discussed it for years. We did go one year without baling any hay, but a little bit of stress finding hay and getting it here. So we went back to baling hay earlier this year, Dad was willing to buy hay if he could get it for the right price. So, We've stayed off our hay meadows, but we've been watching hay price and trying to decide what to do.
And dad just talked to the custom baler just a couple days ago, and um, we're able to get it in our barns cheaper than what we thought. So we are not baling any hay. Which is great news for the hay meadows because they get abused because we take that hay off and then we feed it other places. So I get to graze it now. So actually I have more grass to graze than I anticipated.
Obviously, if I'd been holding off of it thinking we were going to hay it, it's much more mature than I'd like for it to be. But that's a problem I'd rather have than not having it to graze. So we'll see how that goes. I'm excited that it gives me more grazing days and maybe I can manage it a little bit better and get us further into the, the year. Enough about my farm. Let's talk to Kody.
Kody, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.
Thank you, Cal. I appreciate you having me on. I've listened for quite a while and I'm pretty excited for the opportunity.
Wonderful. Kody, to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation?
Yeah I live up in northeast Missouri Monroe City is the town's name. We're about an hour and 15 minutes north of St. Louis, or the outskirts of St. Louis. 20 minutes west of Hannibal and 36 if you know where that's at. I am a ninth generation agrarian in northeast Missouri. A fifth generation on the farm ground. We're still on my mom, my grandpa and myself own about 550 acres of mixed between row crop and pasture. We've been converting more to pasture the last couple of years.
Yeah, so I moved home in 2021 after my dad passed away. So that was really I'd been involved in the farm for quite a few years, but really opened the door after, after he was gone. Mom didn't want to run the whole thing. So I came back and on about half the ground started taking it over. But yeah.
Now, Kody, prior to coming back in 2021, did you grow up thinking, Hey, this farming is great. This is what I want to do. what were your thoughts as a kid about this?
I really always like being outside and playing on the farm. I probably wasn't the most excited about doing the farm work at all times. I enjoyed cattle. I, don't love sitting in tractors. I do a little, I do some row cropping that I live in row crop country. So it's just a reality for us. But the livestock in the grasslands were always my favorite. So at the time I was looking to get away and do something else because I didn't want to have to sit in a tractor. And then, yeah.
Full circle, I spend a lot of time in machinery, but I, I get to sneak out and play with, play in the pastures quite a bit too it's pretty fun.
And I have to concur. The livestock was always my favorite. Hayden season. I hating season was the only time in my life that I'm happy I have an asthma and allergies.
That's a good out.
Yeah, and it got me out of a lot on haying season. In fact, it caused my parents to get a cab tractor, which took some of my excuses away. But we were just, we just had a family get together for Mother's Day. And my brother was still complaining about how I didn't help as much in the hay pasture. And here we are, a few decades later.
Seriously, yeah I've got a younger brother, and there's always comparison, we're, there's 11 years between us
Oh, yes.
we're always comparing how the two of us were raised, cause there's quite a few differences.
Yeah. And completely on a tangent, we have a sister. So my brother is 22 months younger than me. So two years, almost two years. We have a sister that's seven years younger than us. So she's the baby and the only girl in the family. So we feel like we really were mistreated. Now dad gets tired of hearing that. And he's, Oh, you guys weren't mistreated. We weren't, but. It's fun to complain about it.
Oh yeah, yep. Gets everybody started up at family events, I'm sure,
oh yeah. Yeah. I pride myself on being able to make my brother and sister mad in half a second. Anyway, enough of that tangent. Kody, when you, did you go away to college?
I did, yeah I graduated high school in 2012 went to the University of Missouri, studied plant sciences That's I got to school, and I've got a couple friends I got hooked up with and realized I wasn't the only weird kid that really liked grass, so that, that probably started the addiction for me A couple of buddies and myself, we got into native grasses and talking about how to work within our community. Our ecosystem better ecological context for our area.
We would have historically been oak savanna, tallgrass prairie obviously a lot of row crop now, but I was always interested in doing like habitat restoration and that kind of stuff and tying in the livestock to that.
That, yeah, college opened some doors in that area, or I guess helped me grow my network with some friends but yeah, that's, I spent some time down there, my wife, she's from my hometown we got married while we were in college, and both of us graduated in 2016, and decided to move back home to the farm her family raised they had a commercial hog operation, and She came back home to work on that, and I started working at a local co op. up here and just helping on the side on the family farm.
I rented about 40 acres from my family at that time for pasture. But that was our foot in the door getting back home.
Yeah. Then in 2021, you really started helping a lot more there. Tell us what you're doing on your farm.
yeah, so we're a mixed operation. Like my wife and myself she runs the hog side of it. I really don't have, I don't have anything to do with that. She's great at that. I run our livestock, grass based livestock and row crop. We farm a little over 500 acres of row crop about. That's just a hair less than 300 acres of grass ground. We have 230 ewes that we run on cover crops and some perennial pastures. 20 head of cows of our own.
We run anywhere between 40 and 80 contract cows on a given year, depending on the grass. But yeah that's what we do on that end of the operation.
When you went back in 2021 were cows and sheep already on the operation or were they an addition after that?
We had, my mom and dad had about a hundred head of cow calf pairs. That's gotten whittled down. I'm not counting those into it. My mom still has 210 acres she lives on. She runs a herd of cattle. We culled back quite a bit on the amount of cows we had for her. Just, easier for mom. She's put in a water system on her farm and quite a bit of infrastructure. So she's dialed it back to about 50 head of cows, letting grass recover.
And as the system's coming online, she'll probably continue to grow it from there. But we always had livestock. Like I said we were bounced anywhere between 90 and 110 head of, or pairs of cows. But big part of our operation for quite a few years.
What brought you to adding sheep to your operation?
My wife, she grew up showing sheep. I always said we wouldn't have any. And at one point in time, she thought we needed five for the kids. They were smaller, easier to work with. And I, she talked me into getting sheep and I probably annoyed her ever since then. Cause I've became obsessed with them cause they just, they really fit our operation well. So I took it and completely ran off the deep end with it, so we had about 340 head last year before a drought hit and we cut back a little bit.
As we're bringing pastures back online through, from converting crop ground, but yeah, that, that's, she's the one that got me to drink the Kool Aid on the sheep, whether she wants to admit it or not, and I yeah, they're probably my favorite animal to deal with now, but,
You know there's that joke always about chicken math, one plus one equals ten or something. So it sounds like sheep math got you also. Yeah.
yeah, it goes from like 5 to 50 to 300, and it just keeps, yeah, it doesn't stop for some reason,
yeah. So when we think about your livestock, we're talking your cattle and your sheep. How do you manage those?
So we've got a rotational grazing system. We've been putting paddocks in. I'm trying to think. When I started out with my cows in that first 40 acres, I had somewhere around 18 or 19 different paddocks. The sheep currently, I run them inside of net fencing. A lot of times I'm on crop ground with no perimeter fence, which sometimes is good, a good experience. And other, I can tell you some horror stories on that. Thankfully, they normally stay off the neighbors and just eat my crops. But,
Yeah.
Yeah, so I give them anywhere depending on the grass supply, a half acre to an acre and a quarter a day as far as that UFLOC goes and sometimes multiple moves. Hoping to eventually get the infrastructure in on the place I live on to where I've got five acre paddocks and I can subdivide from there.
Oh, yeah.
but we try to move them every day to two to three days. This time of year with my day job and being in the field, I, some of the farms I rent we dial back to where we're probably moving weekly on cattle. I'd like to be better about it, but it's just a. time issue on getting to them. We had direct marketed some meat the last couple years into St. Louis. So we are grass fed and grass finished as far as that goes.
I stepped out of that this year just for the row crop side and workload at my day jobs picked up a little bit. So we dialed back as far as going down to the city every weekend to a farmer's market, but I'm still doing some online sales.
One, one thing that immediately jumps out to me is your rotation or your duration on a paddock. You're moving them a little slower than a lot of people talk about. And it's you've got to do those daily moves or you've got to move them closer or more often. I think you bring up an excellent point. You're working off the farm, so you have to move them in relationship to that off the job or off the farm job, because, we can complain about those, but they pay a lot of bills.
Yep, they do. When you pay down some debt with and let the livestock just take care of themselves, you can make a lot of headway. So I first year back from when after my dad passed, I worked myself into the ground trying to keep up on those daily moves and everything. And
Oh yeah.
Just had to have a little reevaluation about, we're going to give up a little bit on the grazing. Just to be more effective with our time rather than a grazing efficiency thing. I'm hoping to get back to that someday, but we're not there yet. The infrastructure has got to be there first, but yeah.
And two things you touched on there, or two things I'm going to expand on just a little bit. Your physical and mental health is so important, because when we talk about farms, we talk about farms being profitable, so they can be sustainable. The other side of that is, if you're wearing down yourself because you're burning the candle at both ends it's not going to be sustainable long term for your body, for your mental health, so you've got to do what works for you.
And the reason I'm harping on this just a little bit, I feel like we're all the time saying, do daily moves. Really, what is your context, and what are you doing? You don't have to go crazy and And just work yourself raw just doing daily moves. There's other ways to manage and you don't want to leave them there too long. So you're doing rotational overgrazing, but
Yep.
the end of the day, a little bit of rotational overgrazing is better than overgrazing a whole place.
Absolutely. Yep. We're still seeing a lot of the benefits we were when we were moving them every day, but yeah, like I said, if you have the time to move them daily, I won't argue with anyone on that, but yep. Yep.
Now, you talked about, you would love to get down to where you've got five acre pastures and then subdivide them as you move them. I assume that's a long term plan and as you work towards it, how are you putting those in and planning those?
Yeah, so we've converted some ground out of row crop that doesn't have any perimeter fences around it or it's, it's a proportion of a larger row crop field. So there's a perimeter around the whole farm, but trying to break it up. So we're adding heights insulin. We've been playing around some of the timeless fence posts, not to give them a plug or anything. It's just, that's seems to work well with the sheep.
We've been running some three to five strand high tensils, testing to see what we can keep them in with inside of a place we're getting down to three, three strands. I've got a couple spots. Out in the middle where there's no fence for a mile and a half, two miles, we've got some five strand stuff just to make sure it's a little more beefed up and that's actually where my sheep are currently sitting on a piece I'm going to plant the corn hopefully when it stops raining here.
I don't want to say that out loud because we went through a drought last year but
Yes.
but yeah that's what we've been doing you know weekends or winter time I do a lot of fence work when we're not in the field or not as busy at work at the co op but yeah.
Now one thing you mentioned there, so you can get them down to about three strands, and you've got them in this piece that's a little bit further, and you've built a little beefier fence there, five strands. Are you keeping your cattle in the same area, or are you managing those as two separate
I have it.
flocks?
Currently, so on the farm I live on there's 150 acre farm that I live on. It's actually right. I have 10 acres in city limits of Monroe city, and then there's 140 acres outside of city limits. The sheep and the cows work together on that farm. We have another 190 acres down the road that, that has been row crops since, see these sheep are the first livestock on that farm since the 1970s, they used to bring hogs over to it.
This is the first, We've had livestock back on it, so I haven't brought cows over. My grandpa's still a little skeptical on the whole, there's a row crop farm, there's a livestock farm that can't be both, even though he grew up on the, yeah, the duo farm, but he's coming around to the idea. I think that five strands beefed up enough, I would be pretty comfortable running cattle in it especially as long as it's hot and there's,
Oh, yeah.
But yeah to this point, we haven't taken any cattle over there with it. I think I finished building that fence right around the new year this last winter. It's relatively new, but
As you're building these fences and stuff, what are you doing for water?
I haul, that, that's another reason we take sheep on a lot of farms. We don't have the cattle. I've got some hay, old hay wagons that we've got tanks on so I can haul the wagon out to the field. Sheep obviously have a lot lower water requirements. So while we're converting some of these row crop pieces or fencing off these row crop pieces I, it's a lot easier on me by having the lower water need by the sheep.
If I was trying to keep water in front of cows, this time of year with temperatures picking up I'd be chasing them constantly. Some of the other farms we had put some wells in trying to run pipeline to where we've got access points from the row crop ground to for the livestock while we're grazing cover crops. But yeah that, that's long term. We'd hope to have a well or a pond or some kind of a water source that we can pump from. But,
right. But that, but having a portable water there for sheep, like you mentioned, so much easier than if you were doing it for your cattle. And that's a great way to get started on a place. If you don't have a good water source, you can bring water to sheep. And you mentioned, right now, about 230 ewes. How much water are you having to take water every day? Or you have a big enough tank, it's
It's,
a week?
Yeah, I think last summer I had a big tank in front of them. I'm trying to think. So I was grazing some sorghum sedans, sun hemp, and sunflowers behind some wheat on one farm. I want to say I filled it up every two to three weeks and we actually had 340 ewes in that group. That, like I said, before, before we, we, with the drought last year we culled down a little bit just to make sure we had plenty of winter feed.
It was probably every two weeks that I was feeding them and it was drought conditions, it was 95 degrees, they had shade It was a rougher farm, a rolling farm, so there was some tree cover, so they weren't out in the sun all day, but a thousand gallon tank over a, I want to say it was a two week period is what we were getting at, so the it was pretty pleasant to fill up and drag around because it was just I drug it from one paddock to the next, I think we were doing four or five day moves on
that particular farm just because it didn't have any infrastructure, yeah, the sheep really fit some of those farms that don't have infrastructure well because you, as long as you can keep them in a fence or building up enough of a temporary fence to keep them in, you can get livestock impact on places that most people wouldn't let you bring cows to. They seem to feel a little more comfortable with sheep being out there is what I've noticed from some of my landlords.
Go on that topic just a little bit more on a musing I have that I keep thinking how to figure this out. I see all, everyone around here's got cattle. And I look at those pastures and I'm like, sheep could get some benefit out there and could help them with some weed control and stuff. And I've tried to think how I could structure a lease just for sheep grazing on those places.
Of course, you gotta be very aware and convinced that landowner, the cattle person, that you're not taking forage away from their cattle. So I haven't figured that out. If anyone out there in listener land knows or is doing that, I'd love to hear more.
You might talk Greg Christensen up he's out by Lacey in Kansas. I don't remember the exact town. He's at, my brother in law used to live out there. And he's a Grandview Livestock on YouTube. He, I
Yes, I watch his channel
he does some of that on, he takes some sheep on some farms that other people run a cattle on to clean, clean up sheep. He may have goats as well, but he'd be wanting to talk to you about
I think I've seen on him or I've seen the goats portion of it and goats I think is a little bit easier argument because goats can go into brush and change the looks of that when cattle are not getting into the brush. So yeah, but that's interesting. I'll have to look. I know I watch him on YouTube sometimes.
Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about your sheep. We're in the middle of lambing right now, so it's on top of my mind, sheep, and trying to figure out more about it. How, or when do you lamb them, and how do you manage during lambing? Because for me, that's always an issue. Now, I'll, I'm trying to do daily moves I've slacked off of that more during lambing, and in full transparency, I don't do daily moves with my sheep all the time.
But, when I move them up close to the house, For lambing, I start tightening a rotation up and moving them more often. I have to be careful about lambs
Yeah.
moms.
Yep. That, that's one thing I was going to say. I've struggled with a little bit this spring. Just like I said, so coming out of a drought, I've been trying to rest some of our perennial pastures. So I took them out to some rye that doesn't have any fence around it. Started lambing on the rye and moving the sheep. daily to every two days, depending on the paddock size. I've had some bonding issues.
I would so partially talking about those five to five acre paddocks in the future as far as wanting to do that. I'd like to be able to do more of a drift lambing system to where every two or three days you bring them up from the rear so they didn't really have time to bond with their mom.
Oh Yeah.
I'm not there yet. I'm just talking to some other guys that are doing a more of a system like that and then get back, whenever you're through lambing, get back into that tighter rotation as far as parasite management and grass management goes. But yeah so lamb, I'm lambing, I'm right in the middle of lambing myself right now. I just moved them into a 24 acre piece that was, it was stockpiled summer annuals last year.
Got some volunteer wheat and stuff coming up and just for that reason, let the sheep dampen down, have a chance to. Rebond with their moms. I'm hoping to keep them in there for a week or two. Before I take them back home to some other cover crop ground. But that, that is one. Yeah I've done, I've always moved them pretty frequently with lambing. I think that's one change I'm going to make after the last two to three years. I've had a few more bottle lambs and I think I should be having.
Been there.
Bottle lambs are cute, but yeah
they are so much work
they're high maintenance. Yeah.
Yeah, they're cute for the first 12 hours.
Yep. And then I've got some in my yard and anytime I crack the door, they come running because they think it's time to feed. Yep. but,
there completely agree now with your lambing. Are you doing You any tagging or working of your lambs, or when do you do any type of work with them?
I don't currently, just, it's the same reason I try to keep my hands off as much as possible through this window. I'm sure if I was running a purebred operation, I couldn't do what I do. We're just a commercial flock. But no, I try to keep these hands off as much as possible. You get closer into that August window. I'll start peeling off some of the bigger ram lambs and probably do it August, September, we start weaning all the ram lambs off. We don't we don't dock tails. We don't castrate.
I'm a pretty lazy sheep farmer. I, I say if I can find a low maintenance way to do stuff I'm, yeah, I'm all about it. So
want to help you out there, Kody. You're an efficient
yes, yeah.
Because, efficiency is laziness with good PR.
That, that is true.
yeah.
Yep, I'll roll with that next time someone asks me, yep,
the same thing. Granted, if I was running registered animals, I'd have to do something different, but very Low maintenance, hands off, except one thing I have, or one issue I have, I try and raise my own rams, and then I want to be careful because I want rams that are twins or triplets, and not singles, and when you're weaning them later, the nicest looking rams are singles.
yep, and that is one I should have said. I do try to mark it's like the first, 15, 20 ewes at lamb, I try to mark some of the, if they have twins and twin rams, I do try to mark those. I know I've actually got a group, like the first 15 ewes at lamb this year, I've got separated off just. Before I hauled all my sheep over to this other farm, they had already had lambs, so I've got them partially separated.
So before I regroup everybody back up, I will probably put some tags in those just so I know to pick rams out of that group. Just some of the mob breeding principles. Just, you want to have early maturing ewes, early maturing rams. Yep.
I really like that idea and I hadn't even thought about it. I had thought this year I might ear notch some.
Yep.
but, like I've mentioned on the podcast, I'm really quick. I can catch them if they're just born. But if they're over like 15 minutes of age, actually it's a little bit more. I can go probably a couple hours. I can't catch them. So, and then, Yeah, and then you don't want to interrupt that bonding period. So I had thought I'd get them in at 24, 48 hours that you're not some, and I'll be honest, the efficiency of myself got ahead of me and I didn't get that done.
So I've thought about going out there and some use. that I know are older, that's been in the flock a long time, I'd mark some of those. But I really like your idea of taking those first few that's lambed and marking those so you can pick from them. Because like you said, you want to pick from the early maturing ones, the ones that are lambing early in the cycle.
Yep. Yep. So there's definitely some higher fertility going on there or something. Yeah.
talking about your sheep, what breeds are you working with?
So yeah, we're currently, we're a little bit heavier on Easy Cares, which are Kain, doper, and Romanov. They are, they're a little bit wooer than I, I like, but they're supposed to be a higher fertility breed. The other ones we run are hopping composite, which they would've came not too far from where you're at.
from Warner.
Okay. Yeah. So those
or Wagner? Either way, it's
Yeah. Yeah. It's down in Oklahoma and those I've really, they're harder to find. I've got a couple contacts that I've got. through to Jeremiah Markway is one that he's raised them for years now. And I, when I first got back into sheep, I went down and visited him and just, he is a, they're really nice flock. So I've been pretty pleased with the hopping composite. That's the Rams we run are all hoppings, but
Oh yeah. I've seen photos of them. I haven't seen them in person, but I've heard good things about them. I've also heard about the easy care sheep and enough I've looked into it, but I can't find any that are relatively close to me. Oh
and Iowa. I had to go north to find most of those were the hoppings. I could go to Southern Missouri and fine. So I'm in the middle of both of them. So I guess it worked out. Okay. So yeah, but the easy care isn't done. Pretty decent. I was curious how they'd handle the heat with the wool, but they seem like they've done pretty decent in the summer. It's as hot as last year was. I was pretty pleased with the way they performed, but
Oh yeah. And do they? So they don't shed completely, but do they shed enough that it's okay, or are they carrying full wool?
it's I don't know what breed to compare them to. Their bellies slick off pretty decent and it's like halfway up their back. It seems like it, their, the wool starts there and goes up. If someone wanted to shear them, I'm sure that would probably benefit them. But they seem like they've handled it decent until I, I have an issue. I'm probably going to just let them I'm going to delete with the hopping genetics, hoping we get a little bit of our own composite up here.
Oh, yeah. Just continuing on breeds, talking about your cattle. What kind of breeds are you working with there?
yeah, so my mom's running South Poll bulls on her operation, just a solid red. Low input animal. It really fit what she's done. Myself August Horstman's kind of beating my head the corianna thing. So I've got some coriannas and I'm putting,
that, too.
yes they fit my budget. That's the best part about coriannas.
I agree, yes.
And we're putting obrick bowls on those coriannas. For our grass fed market. But yeah that Obrick, that's, I think it's A U R B A
Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. Yes they're wild type coloration in that they're that brownish with a darker front on them.
Yes. Yep. They, and they I know when bulls mature they really, with testosterone coming on, they darken up on the front. They look similar to a bison, almost with a coloration pattern. And the cows are just a real I don't have any cows. We've just got our first batch of cows out of an Obrick bull, hit the ground on some Corian as we've got. We're hoping to keep back crossing and kind of grade up eventually to some Obricks, just something different. And I like weird stuff.
Oh yeah, I struggle with that too. I'm just glad my wife struggles with it as well.
that helps. Yes.
Yeah, so on those bulls, were you able to get them locally, breeder nearby, or did you have to go quite a ways to get them?
So one, I've got a, I guess he's six and a half, seven years old. I, I got hooked up with a gentleman that had, he was the breeder. I don't think he runs them anymore. I guess Darren Unruh was his name. He seems to know everyone that's got him. He's been really good resource to, I started bouncing questions off of him. I've tried, I reached out to a couple other people and he had a bull out by Kansas city, so I was able to get that bull relatively close.
And then I have a younger pulled bull that I picked up from Minnesota. Yeah. So I, I drove a little ways for him. The horn bull is pretty impressive specimen. I got to say that there's nothing wrong with the polled one. Just the horn bull that Darren had bred is, yeah, if you look up, if you read any Johans Eitzmann and the whole inherent fertility and sexual dimorphism, he really shows it. So I'm excited to have him on the farm. So hopefully he sticks around for a couple of years.
And he was getting a little older, but,
Very good yeah, hopefully he does. What made you go with that breed?
I just want a heartier animal that can perform on grass. I know it's like the Cory anything like so they're cheaper to get into, but I think having a little bit of that in the background can help on. They handle heat, they can handle insects and other stressors. We've got a lot of Kentucky 31 fescue up in this area of the country, just like other people do. So we fight, a lot of the issues that come along with fescue. The bulls, I think, complement those cows well.
come from a region of Fra haven't really been tampe don't feed a lot of grain this region. The one it's a cooler region, but they handle it well. It's believe. So I shouldn't s cool. It's just a higher year in the drought, that Fescue years. I saw a lot of conventional cattle struggling with fescue last year and it seemed like these bulls and the coriannas just, I won't say it didn't affect them, but they handled it a lot better than some of the other stuff.
Like even some of my mom's conventional cattle. Yeah,
And that'll be interesting to see how this project goes for you and how they work out for you. I've seen pictures of the breed I've read a little bit about them, but I've never been. next to one. Always, and to be honest sometimes on those French cattle, not to pick on the French too much, but sometimes those French cattle are a little crazy.
they can, yep. I, my, my grandpa on the car side brought in some limousine back in the eighties and I've heard a lot of stories on, and there's a reason we didn't run any continental cattle for a lot of years.
Oh yeah. That's true. Now, you mentioned last year that you had grass fed some beef. Did you also grass finish some lambs as well and direct market
Yeah, yep. Yes. Yep. So we fed, I don't remember the exact number, but yeah, so we sold it like St. Louis farmer's market. Just testing out, see how that would be. And it went a lot better than I expected for, I'm green on that end of it. And I got a lot of irons in the fire, so being, I'm fairly organized, but it can always be improved. It, but yeah. We marketed, eight, eight to 10, H 12 lambs through there.
In addition to some of the cattle we were selling in it, I was pretty pleased with the reception of land. There's a lot of younger people, my age that, they didn't grow up in a house eating land, but they were trying it and they kept coming back especially, they'd test out ground land and then they would venture into some lamb chops or some leg steaks or something and seemed to do pretty decent every time I had land, but it didn't last very long, so that was a nice surprise.
one thing you mentioned there, it sounds like you were selling it by the cut as well.
Yes. Yeah. So we, we did some, we did a couple of whole lambs, but for the majority it was by the cut down in Lake St. Louis. We sold quite a few whole, whole beefs, half beefs But the lamb for the most part was by the cut. But yeah. Yep.
And you mentioned a lot of irons in the fire, so you're not doing that so much now. Do you plan on doing some later on
Yep. And it Is something we want to continue to do. We're actually working with Barn2Door to get an online website. I'd like to do drop sites and take some stuff down there. It's just a nice little side income to the farm. It's just fitting it into the schedule. Currently, like I said, the row crop side and we picked up some more pasture ground this year that we weren't really expecting. We've been pretty fortunate.
We've had some older neighbors retire wanting to slow down and just giving us some opportunities. So I want to make sure I do a good job on that. So I had to let something go and being down there every Saturday, but I get a lot of work done on Saturday mornings and when I'm sitting at the farmer's market, it doesn't happen always.
Yeah.
but it is something I want to get back into because I enjoy talking to people from the city. There's a disconnect from the rural areas to the city. The more we can tell our story and get on the same page with them, that's the best thing we can do as far as PR and ag. And I don't care if it's conventional or regenerative, but we've gotta be our own voices in that spectrum. But yeah.
Yeah, no just continue on that, working in an education system for a number of years, I used to always tell 'em, if we're not out saying good things about ourselves, no one else is gonna say 'em for us. We have to get out there and say those good things, form those connections, because a lot of times there's some negativity that comes, and negativity gets spread so much easier than the positive stuff.
But we've got to be out there saying it, we've got to be meeting the public, building those relationships and connecting them back to the farm.
Yeah, absolutely. 'cause yeah, like you said, no, no one's gonna do it for us if we don't do it. And there, there's so few farmers on the land anymore. We've got to rebuild those bridges. I know my, my in laws are pretty involved in a lot of organizations Farm Bureau and National Pork Producers and stuff. And that's one thing they've done a really good job of kind of, I, it's probably something I didn't appreciate as much as when I was a kid. You want a farm to hide from people.
That's one thing I'm trying to be better at is, telling our story.
Oh yeah. I think those stories are so important. Hence the podcast.
yes, yep.
when you'd mentioned there's got a lot of row crop land, you've got some pasture. Have you worked on converting any of that row crop land into pastures? Or are you keeping them pretty separate?
Yeah, when I was in high school and my dad started this, so I got to give him full credit. He always said he was a cattleman stuck in row crop country, and I've probably taken that vein. I'm trying to think of the acreage split, but the majority of our ground originally was crop ground. We're really fortunate. We've got four soil types and 550 acres. So it's we've got some really uniform, nice farms.
Oh, yeah.
thankfully, like I said, the ancestors picked a pretty good area to settle in. But yeah, so we've been converting some since I was a kid I'm trying, sorry, I'm trying to think of that split. We're somewhere around like 220 acres of that 550 that we own is in grass now. And before we were probably only somewhere around 160. So my dad started it back when I was in high school and college. And then I've done a couple conversions the last couple of years. Like 2021, we did another 24, 25 acres.
Have cool season fescue, orchard grass, and some red clover just some tame grasses.
And the last year and a half, I've been working on doing some native restoration, just because, for multiple reasons, like I said, I'm an eco nerd, on the, I'd like to have a little bit of what was here back in the day, because those genetics are adapted to our climate, our, the drought last year, I watched my fescue shut off about April 15th to April 20th, and I had some Indian grass that's just Naturally been creeping back in. That was just plugging.
And I'm not saying the yield wasn't reduced on the Indian grass, but I still had something to graze there when the fess ski was just done.
Yeah.
so that's an area we've been focusing a little more the last couple years and plan on doing some more restorations there. But.
Actually, let's just go ahead and dive into that, Kody. For our overgrazing section, we're going to talk about native restoration. And since we're already here, let's just dive deeper into it.
Yeah. So like I said, that is something I've been interested in. I've got a friend from college. He really, I always liked native grass since yeah, just spent a lot of time reading about it when I was younger. And he's probably one of the sharpest people I know on that. So I always bounce ID questions off of him and yeah. We're always trying to figure out how we can make our pastures more productive without just pumping more fertilizer and more inputs into it.
I think a lot of that is getting some native grass native plants back in there. So we started with five and a half acres. I put some eastern game of grass in a, ended up drilling it. I was going to try to put it through a corn planter a big Started with that as my base. We've done some big blue stilm. This last year I did 13 and a half acres and I was actually walking it last night with my cousin.
I think it was eight or nine different species, but swissgrass, big blue some pale purple coneflower, a gray headed coneflower just getting some forbs back in too. Depending on the conditions, we're in the fun area of the country that we catch, we're flooding out right now. We were in a severe drought last year. We have really hard freezes and then we'll have 80, 80 degree days midwinter. So the more diversity I think we get out there in those pastures, the better.
And like I said, the, those natives are just, they've been through it before. They've got 10, 000 years of evolution in these areas that, Kentucky 31 fescue or orchard grass that they're not adapted to here. They're good quality forages and they've got their benefits, but. The going forward I'd to eventually get to where we've got about a third of our grass acres in, in perennial native grasses.
Oh, yeah. As you think about those native restoration, and you've also done some where you've converted some, crop land into Kentucky 31 and orchard grass and other stuff. Is, do you prepare the land in a different way or is it basically the same process for both?
I'm trying to think. Both times we just drilled into existing crop residue. I play around with no till quite a bit, going back to the whole irons in the fire. It's just, it's efficient to go across the ground and plant it. So we've got a no till drill and the county office has a no till native seed drill. Going out, occasionally you can burn down with a herbicide or you can graze really hard.
I had an accidental experiment last year with the game of grass that worked out really well at the co op. We had a mix up and someone treated an entire box of wheat that didn't need to get treated and they were trying to find a spot to get rid of it. So I said I need a nurse crop for this native grass. So we drilled the weed at 250, 300 pounds per acre way, way too high, but we were just trying to burn it up.
And I went in and drilled the gamagrass into it, which in, these native seedings are, it's really important to keep the weeds back. Cause if it swallows them out, you, rather than taking a one year establishment, you might push that to a two to three years to actually have an effective stand out there. And in the grazing world, every dollar counts. So we really want to get those stands up to snuff as quick as possible. That wheat actually did a really good job.
I grazed it three times with my U flock in the spring between March 15th and April 30th, before the game of grass had germinated. And then I got them off of it, and the wheat stunted out maybe about 12 inches tall, and it suppressed the weeds all the way to August. So I got Pretty decent stand of gamagrass underneath that, using it as a nurse crop. Like I said, it wasn't my original plan, but we just tweaked it. But I try to cut back on as much chemical as possible.
It's a really good tool, but I just, if I can get away without playing with chemical, I'd like to use, nurse crops and some other crops to get these stands up. But,
Expand upon that just a little bit about a nurse crop.
yeah.
is it and what's the goal there?
So a lot of times like a nurse crop, you would take oats or wheat or something, and you would mix it in the grain drill at the same time that you're putting in whatever, whether it's a cool season introduced species or a cool or warm season native, you'd put it in at the same time.
It's going to germinate sooner in the year and it's going to just help smother weeds keep those new seedlings from getting beat up, whether it's deer running through or hail or something, it's just it's a, it's like a nursery. You're, taking care of some little baby plants Doing what you can to make sure they get the best start in life because the better start you get, the better that stand is going to be and the quicker it's going to come online for you.
And once you get those plants up, as long as you graze them properly, you use rest, you, you don't just, natives are very sensitive to overgrazing. As long as you're mimicking the bison and moving them every so frequently, you can really abuse them for a short period of time if you give them the proper rest period on the back end, they're super resilient, but
So by, from the time you put you drill them in, you've got your nurse crop, and you mentioned just a while ago you were able to graze your sheep through the wheat I think you said three times before that gamma grass really got started. But once that grass starts coming up, how long before you do any grazing on that?
So once, once it starts coming and that's part of the reason I was walking mine last night, I'm getting ready to bring sheep back to that farm. So I've seen what has germinated. I don't want to hit any of these new seedlings. So as far as I'm concerned, like this new stand I've got in that game of grass, I'm taking them to frost. I'm probably going to intercede some Milo just for some stockpiled grazing.
It, I don't know whether I'll get much of a stand as, Think of some of my stuff is out there currently, but I'll add on occasional add some other species try not to hinder the new stand I'll probably plant some 60 inch milo out there just to add some other winter stockpile feed But at this point I'm looking at that stand is just it whatever it makes me for winter feed I'll go in there after the first killing frost and then I'll start grazing some stuff off on it But it's Offline for the rest of
summer. So
Yeah I had suspected that was probably the case. And then graze it during dormant season. Will you plan to graze it next year or you baby it a second year?
Yeah, I'll probably start grazing it next year. I'll be a little careful making sure with some of these smaller, younger plants. I don't plan to push it overly hard for the second year, but I will try to get at least two grazings off of it next year.
If it's we're getting adequate rain and I can get in and out of it pretty quick, but a lot of times, like I said, if you do, you take care of them the first year, they can go basic, not full production year two, but they're pretty good chunk of the way there.
Oh, yeah. And when you think about your native pasture versus fescue, how does that grazing differ?
So like I said, historically when I was moving every day you're trying to leave, depending what style of grazing someone wants to do, I know there's a lot of different ways to graze stuff. there's some total grazing. I was, I've tried pushing the grazing on, on, on fescue with my sheep and I had some health issues with the sheep. So I've backed off to where I'm leaving a little more residual than most people.
And the higher density grazing probably are just seem like the sheep didn't handle it as well as cows do. But the natives, rather than leaving that 4 to 6 inches of residual, you're probably leaving somewhere closer to 8 to 12 inches. And like I said, if you've ever read anything on how bison used to graze, they could pummel it. So you can go in and pummel those grasses.
But that's a longer rest period on the back end, if you leave that 12 inches, you can probably crank out a couple of grazings in summer because it's going to respond pretty quick. You're looking I'll probably misspeak here, but fescue, the majority of the roots are in the first foot, two feet. Eastern gamma and Indian grass and big blue. Some of those, you're talking 10 to 16 feet and we've got a hard clay, hard pan up here.
I think that's one of the issues we face in our row crop is we took grasses out of this area that had these deep roots that helped us get through those hard pans and they're adapted to get through there. Our fescue is not really breaking that up as much up in this area. So
I've seen those images comparing native roots to these improved variety roots. It's just amazing how deep those native roots go.
Yeah. And it's, yeah, there's, it makes them so resilient, whether it's burning. Horse grazing or, what, whatever the, whatever's going on. There's a lot of reserve there for those plants to kick it back in and go again. Eh and I had, I kinda, I did that, I had a couple plugs of Gamma grass. I've got a local ecotype. I've been digging and plugging around my farm, just to help spread those genetics around, and I had a pretty good clump that I forgot where I did it at. I didn't mark it.
And so I had one spot of fescue. I just, I had a bunch of lambs in that paddock. So I left them there longer than I normally would have last year. And I realized afterwards, I'm like, Oh, that's where that gamma grass is at. I pummeled it. The fescue started out cause we got so dry, the gamma grass, even just a one year stand, it was an established plant that I'd plugged, but it just immediately ramped up and took off. And it was pretty resilient where I thought I killed the thing.
It, yeah, it did great. But
a little bit about, if you hammer it pretty hard, you gotta give it enough rest time. Are you typically trying to give it On native grass twice as long as fescue to recover or how is that rest period when you think about it?
I'd look to see, I'd look to watch the leaf tip make a point again, I think, Greg Judy always talks about that. That's my big thing. I do follow that same principle as far as I don't want to put a time limit to it because if I graze it hard mid June, it may be ready again in two weeks. So it's you just got to watch the grass and if it's still showing, it's growing slow, the leaf hasn't pointed back out like it's fully recovered.
I, you might be a little bit early on that grazing, but I don't want to say, four weeks or five weeks because it just depends on the time of year, the rainfall you're getting later in the season. I would shut down, September 15th. It's the cutoff for us ahead of a killing frost because you want to make sure you leave enough stuff that enough leaf that you're putting root reserves back in. So that's northeast Missouri. That's our cutoff.
You get animals out of Warm season natives at that time to make sure that they're, they got adequate fill for winter. And then after you have that killing frost, you can dump back in and basically take them back to wherever that stubble heighth is the bunch grass stubble heighth starts at. Even a little farther from that 12 inches I said earlier, but yeah.
Now fescue is stockpiling it.
Yep.
Do you do some stockpiling of fescue? Can you stockpile native grasses?
Yeah, so we do stockpile fescue and that's part of the reason we're bringing the natives in. It gets us off of the fescue in a window that it's going to allow me to stockpile better than what I've been doing. It's a big part of it. The cover crops play into our personal operation big in that, early winter window. But the natives historically, the people always say that they lose quality as they mature out extremely quickly.
One of my friends has done a little bit of testing showing that Gamma holds on to, it holds on to nutrients a lot longer than what people thought. He sent off
Oh yeah.
there's no, I don't know if there's a whole lot of data on it outside of him sending off forage samples.
So it was carrying quite a bit of nutrition into December that, Originally, people wouldn't have thought they did, and I gotta say, I noticed my sheep, when I dumped them in, that's one of the first things that is the sheep and a couple of Coriannis that were out there with them they went right to that game of patch and started taking it down where we had some really burnt up stuff out of the drought last year, that they found the natives pretty quick,
oh yeah. We, I'm not really sure on the gamma grass range. I know my dad had read something about it and we've talked about trying to establish just a little bit, see what it does here. I think I'm a little west of where. The normal range is, but to be honest I'm not sure I could identify it if I walked out in the pasture. I'm just not familiar
Yeah, once you see it, and it almost, I don't want to say it looks exactly like johnson grass because it doesn't, but it would have some similarities to johnson grass or if you've ever seen shatter cane starting out young it's in the corn family gamma grasses. So it's got a lot of similarities as far as leaf structure. It's obviously smaller, but, and I, yeah, I'd say your area, Oklahoma, there probably were some varieties down there, or Some ecotypes that would have ranged there.
I think I don't want to misspeak on here, but I know there's a couple southern, yeah, Oklahoma, Texas, there's some ecotypes that come from that region.
Oh
but, yeah
I know we, we've talked about it and it's always been something I gotta research. I gotta look at Dale Strickler's book, see what it says.
Yeah, that's a good
And I haven't done it yet.
And that's one thing with the native establishment. I, I talked to Dale quite a bit before I did the game of grass cause I knew he was one of the big gurus on it. And he told me to inoculate the seed and I can't think of the name of the stuff I use, but I got it through him. But I did inoculate the native seed cause they have, obviously being, Taking stuff out of crop ground, the microbial community isn't what a prairie is, so that really is supposed to help that initial establishment period.
I think in his book he's got a side by side in it of stuff that he inoculated and didn't inoculate on gamma grass, and I will, for what I see from mine, I didn't leave a strip that I didn't inoculate, I just inoculated it all, but I'm pretty pleased compared to some other establishments I've seen in my area
No, very good. Yeah. I, my, my dad will see something or I'll see something. So we're always talking about something else we got to try. And sometimes I'm like, let's just put the brakes on it and just do what we're doing. But I know we've talked a lot about gamma grass and seeing what it does here. And we don't, most of our land here my dad's place is all improved varieties. That's. It's not any natives. Most of my lease land there is natives on it.
A lot of broomstedge and a lot of just Johnson grass. So I graze a lot of that.
Okay. Yep. I don't have any Johnson grass and I'm, I don't, it looks like it can pour on some tonnage, but I'm a little bit scared of this stuff. So I'm glad it's not something I have to face yet, but
It is, right now it's one of my favorite grasses.
yep.
gets It's late summer, that patch of johnson grass, one place I have, like the north half of the property is johnson grass mainly. And I can graze that as hard as I want. And doing my rotations, and before I even realize it, I'm ready to go back there. It's amazing how much foliage it'll put up, put out there for you. Now of course you gotta be very careful about grazing it, and for the most part. I've not had any trouble and I say for the most part, I haven't had any trouble.
But I grew up and my dad had trouble grazing ginseng grass and we lost some cows. That's always in the back of my mind because I'm too poor to lose cows. Laughs They are, yes, yeah. Kody, it is time for us to move on to our famous four questions sponsored by Kencove Farm Fence.
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They're the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. And our first question, What is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
yeah, that's I read a lot of old journals just about So I don't know if it's a grazing grass resource necessarily, but you like to see what the ecological context of our area was pre settlement. That's the template. I think it's never going to be like it was, but if I can mimic some of those systems of my grazing, I, some of the old Lewis and Clark journals and there's some others from my area you can find and then anything from Wendell Berry. It's he's a big agrarian writer.
I can't say it's necessarily grazing grass again, but he's all about community and bringing stuff back to the farm. So I really enjoy reading his stuff as well.
I need to read his work because his work gets brought up and I haven't read it and it's really sad. It's really a lack on my part. I need to read some of that.
Yeah, I recommend it. It's, yeah, The Unsettling of America was written in the 70s and he's called what's happened in the last 50 years pretty, yeah, that book forecasts a lot of what happened in
Oh, yeah.
I'd recommend it.
Kody, our second question. What is your favorite tool for the farm?
Definitely a side by side. So again, I'm an efficient farmer, so I like getting places fast and without walking as much as possible. So I've done a lot of walking as a kid and I really enjoy the gator that we got on the farm.
I'm about to transition. I do most of my setting up fences and stuff by walking.
yep.
But I've got a knee that has decided that it wants to hurt once in a while. So I'm about to transition to a side by side or a four wheeler to put up fences.
Yep I've been pretty stubborn for a lot of years and after we finally got one, I'm not looking back,
oh yeah. I keep pricing them and prices scare me. I haven't jumped on anything and of course I'm always looking on Facebook Marketplace for a bargain. And my wife is usually quick to say, you know how to fix that? And sadly my problem is I'm like, nope, but I think I can figure it out.
Yep, yeah for, save a couple thousand dollars, you can do a lot of research on YouTube.
Exactly, yeah. Our next question Kody, what would you tell someone just getting started?
Yeah, get involved with some local farmers that are doing it or find someone, even if you have to drive an hour or two bounce ideas off of guys that have been doing it, cause if they can save you some headache Mistakes, I've had a lot of guys that have helped me keep from making mistakes and I made a lot of mistakes that I've hopefully been able to help other people not make network wise. I would just definitely network and then don't be scared to jump in and try it.
Even small scale is still a great learning opportunity. Don't get yourself hung out, but just go out there and try it. We need more people on the land,
I think all that's great advice building that network, figuring out people in your area go to conferences so you can find who they are, because went and listened to Alejandro Calderillo just a couple months ago, and I met someone two I was going to say two miles, he's not, he's, he would be six miles from me, but I'm like, I didn't even know you were there, where you been hiding?
Yep. It's amazing what kind of people come out of the way. You start doing something that's different and it's people that are a lot closer to you have been doing it for quite a while, but you never knew it cause they were either too scared to talk about it or they were just in their own little area doing
Or out of the way where you don't go. Yeah. So get out there and network. I love the advice of getting started. Nothing gets finished if you don't start.
Yep. Yep. So you just get the ball rolling. That's the big one.
And lastly, Kody, where can others find out more about you?
Yeah, so I'm on most social media. I'm on. TikTok and X now, I guess instead of Twitter, I think I flerdy grazers my handle on both of those just since I got cows and sheep, I thought that was a cute name or whatever, but and then I'm on Facebook is just Kody Karr and Instagram is Karr family farms. So I like to throw a bunch of pictures of the farms and my kids being honoree on the farm on there. um, I probably, but yep that's probably the easiest places to find me and yep.
If anyone's ever got any questions, I'm happy to tell them how I've messed stuff up before,
wonderful, Kody. We'll put those links in our show notes, and we really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today.
Yeah, thank you, Cal, for having me. This has been pretty fun. Like I said, I've enjoyed listening for a while, so I appreciate you reaching out and having me on.
Wonderful. I appreciate you listening, and I've enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you.
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