e128. Reducing Labor to Ranch More Efficiently with Tom Krawiec

do not violate the graze period or the recovery period

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.

Tom, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass podcast. We're excited you're here today.

You're excited with every guest you have. So, you must be just thrilled with me.

I I love just getting to talk to all these wonderful people out there doing great things. And just to highlight some of them, because some of them aren't highlighted. Some of them have a book but others, but get the word out about people. It does make me very excited.

Yeah. Well, and you know what? I find it it just gets my me thinking in a different way. It's Why not try that and just put on someone else's cap for a little bit and you get to listen for an hour. Huh. I never thought of it that way. Hey?

It is great. Well, Tom, to get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation.

Okay. Well, you know what? I I grew up in Oil Patch. I grew up in an oil town. My parents had a trucking company, oil field trucking company. But my heart wasn't there. My heart was with my relatives. Both of my parents grew up on farms. So I got to spend a lot of time in the summers on on relatives farms. And that's where my love was.

Oh yes.

Learn how to custom graze, well, learn how to graze. And then yeah, and then took Rancho for Profit in I think it was 2003, first time. And then, yeah, I think it was 2005 we both took it. And then we joined EL for a few years, executive link. Yeah, and then Yeah, and then expanded to, the custard grazing operation. We ended up having renting 5, 500 acres and running 3, 000 yearlings in summer with one or two summer students. That was it.

Yes.

Yeah. And then that was just ranch managing. I need to get something back for myself and do my own thing. So that's what I'm looking at right now. Haven't been able to find a ranch, but I just decided to actually, a few weeks ago, I'm just going to start. I started out with 373 acres and six to seven years, I had 5, 500 acres and 3000 heads. So I'm just going to do it again.

yeah, that was a

he had just started calving,

him

yeah,

able to go over and help him.

He had just started calving, and when I got there, the calves were just starting to scour, and I just, like, I've never had to deal with scours, I've been so scared of it. But I just, the skills that I've gained over, 20 some years I just started doing it. I just, like the next day I had the cows onto fresh ground as an example. Yeah. And it was although it was good for him, it was good for me too to realize I gotta step up and get, I gotta find some land and get back ranching.

Oh,

It's just a place to make money.

Yeah

yeah. So that's what I'm I expect, I've already put some feelers out, so I expect next summer I will be, I'll be back ranching, and yeah, I'll be happy. But, one thing about this I did have the opportunity to write my book, and I think had I not been ranching, or, sorry, had I still been ranching, I would not have had the opportunity to write the book because the job that I had in the oil field, I I was working nights, and I was all by myself.

Well, I kick around the idea of writing a book and I'll be honest, it won't be near as good as yours or informative as yours. But I love that idea. But then I think about the time and effort to do it. Writing a book is, you just don't sit down and you have a book. There's a lot to it, and it takes a large amount of time to do it. So it's impressive you put together a book, but sounds like working back in the oil field gave you the opportunity or the time to be able to do that.

Yeah, I went to, if I was I was at home all the time, I would not have had the motivation, I know that. Cause there's too many distractions, and yeah. And you know what, writing a book, yeah, it's a lot of work, and I'm proud of it. But at the end of the day, it was just sitting down and writing a couple pages. Even if I just sat down and wrote a couple pages a day,

Yeah.

that's two pages closer. It did take me two, two years from the first time I started writing till it got out on Amazon. It was two years. So,

Yeah. Well, very good. I was telling you before we started recording, I'd purchased your book last January. And when we first made contact, I was thinking, yeah, I read that last January, I enjoyed it. And then I start going through my books, and I'm like, and I got a few books then, because I'm a terrible book buyer. Or maybe I worded that wrong. I'm a really good book buyer.

A terrible reader?

well, actually, I read a fair amount. I've read Two and a half books this week. So I

Holy crap!

But I buy faster than I can read.

Okay.

book, so when I went and pulled your book, I'm like, oh, I haven't read this book. So that's one of the books I read this week. Past two days, I sat down and read it. I really enjoyed it. I wish I'd read it as soon as I got it, even though

I know

months ago.

that's embarrassing that you didn't.

I know, right? Yes, but I really enjoyed it. So you sit down to write it. And you start thinking about all this. What was that process to get it out? Was the thinking just to outline the way you do things? Did your process go in another way?

Okay, well I'm going to be very I'm just gonna be very blunt. I'll tell you. So what happened was grass management was my passion. I don't know why but I just fell in love with it. And so then, and I learned quite a, I learned a lot of things. And then it was about year five. Definitely five. By year six, I definitely knew that I was not improving the soil.

ha. Oh yes.

Yeah. Okay. I was doing four times better than in terms of grazing than people around me. And, but when I was really looking at it, I was not, I had hit a plateau and I was thinking, huh, there's something here. And I wasn't able to talk to ask anybody who knew how to get past that. And then I started to realize they didn't know either. And here I was writing articles, I was getting invited to talk to, different places. And I felt like a hypocrite because I didn't really know.

Oh

steel one is much heavier. So why not just buy the, yes, it's more expensive, but they're not going to balk as much about using it. And it's just, once I got things set up that way, that it was very easy. Then I was able to expand and we, it was much easier to expand the custom grazing operation. So, in no time at all, we went we were at a 3000 head and it was just like, how did that happen?

Oh, yes.

And we only had one or two summer students. Realistically, we had between the two of us, we had six hours of work a day.

Oh,

So, with that many animals based on the template. So, we had six hours of work, so we'd get up. We usually would stay up late, go to the lake, or play poker with the neighbours or something. So, we wouldn't get up too early. So, but we'd leave the house about nine o'clock, nine thirty, or sorry, ten o'clock, nine thirty, ten o'clock. And then, we'd each go move a herd. We'd be back, about noon, we'd have an hour and a half lunch. And then we'd head out again.

Time to do it for a tenth of that many cattle, or even a five percent of that. So, what really made that difference so you were able to do it so quickly?

you know what, honestly, I just, I had to ask myself, can a 12 year old do this? That, honestly, Kel, that's all that I had to do. And it was just Heather and Tiffany. And I had to think, can they do it? So I just started asking myself can a 12 year old do this? And I still do that today in everything I do. I ask myself, can a 12 year old do this? And if they can't, I change it, or I stop doing it. And then, and it's amazing, like you can, your life just becomes so simplified.

Oh,

Rapidly, and it's not a big deal.

I know when I think about my own farm and what I'm doing. So we have here my dad's farm and mine. Mine's on lease land, dad's on land he owns. We have semi permanent paddocks. We open the gate, cows, I move them that way. Super easy. My cows, I go over and I string poly braid every day. And do it. It doesn't take too long.

Can I stop you right there?

yes you can.

Okay. Cause I know exactly what you're talking about. Okay. It was not Greg who said that it was his his interns who said, talked him into that.

Oh, that's right. You're right.

Yeah. So, but Greg is in an interesting different situation than the rest of us. Greg has a reputation. And his reputation is long enough and he's, his knowledge is wise enough. He has people clambering to come and be his,

Oh, yeah.

not apprentice, but his intern. Okay. So he has that workforce. If he did not have that workforce, those fences would be there. Do you take my, do you take my point?

Oh, yeah. I agree. And

So the, you have the flexibility, but you have to give up something.

Right.

So now you're going to have to pay for that flexibility with labor. So are you going to pay for it, or are you going to be like Greg and you have interns that are, wanted to come to your place? So there you go.

Yeah and that's an excellent point. And when I think about it, I have, I told my wife, I've got numerous notebooks here where I've drawn out those, these paddocks that I'm going to put up. And then when I get time, I hear that about Greg's interns talking him into it, and he talks about how he can manage it better. That, it causes me to hesitate. In reading your book, you really talk about those paddocks and what they do for you on, time management, saving your time.

Correct.

And can you explain to our audience a little bit why that is?

Okay, well there's something that gets missed. This, I know the daily moves are designed to get ultra high stock density. Okay. Okay. Now again, my belief is we need to get our labor down first. Because if we don't get our labor down, we're going to get burnt out and we're going to quit.

Yes.

Okay, our kids are going to be resentful. So we got to get our labor down first. Once we have that, then we can start doing these other things. But they're down the road. Okay, so if we want to get to, don't start moving out every day. Get the labor down, but what I have seen it's a whole system. So what I have seen is, once you put together animal behavior, so you get the animals to start acting, behaving as a herd. As a mob,

Yes.

you get that ultra high density without any fencing, because they move that way. Bob Kinford just did a post on he taught a course in, in Saskatchewan and he was talking about there's a hundred heifers there, and that's the way that they moved. And that's my experience. And it's not just, I've had, like on the cover, you've noticed the cover of my book?

Yes.

Yes. Okay. So there's, in that mob there, there's 200, head of cattle, different classes. There's 350 ewes and about another, what, three or four hundred lambs in there. There's 80 hogs and about 20, 25 horses. Every one of those animals was part of the mob. And they knew that. And once I got them all trained to do that, it was, it's amazing. And not only that, they all just stuck together. Not only that, what they did for the soil was phenomenal.

oh, yeah.

without beating yourself up. And then you think you're a failure and it's just not caducive for good mental health.

now. I completely agree. And a lot of times whenever I'm talking to someone and we talk about daily moves, they're like, well, how much, well, just for instance, my dad, he is so against it. I hate to say it that way. He doesn't see the benefit. He's like, you just put too much labor into it. I have to agree, I spend more time moving my cows than I do moving my dad's cows because I open a gate and they go through.

I didn't. It's not important. When you have, it's not important. The, again, I don't want to, I don't want to go to the grass management part but, I want to keep the grass vegetative and I call it grazing in the sweet spot and I honestly think that's the key and that's how we're going to make it to this other level. of grazing. Yeah, and that we don't know about yet. I've seen it but generally I don't think we've seen it, and so that's why people are balking about it.

Oh, yeah.

Like, Andre Vosim talks talked about that his his master's and PhD students were sitting up in the tower, calculating how long it took a cow to take a bite. Those tall grasses, they have to ball that up. It takes a long time for them to ball that up. And then your nutrition decreases as you get there. So, I see all those pictures right now and I'm just like, oh, shit, they're way too late. But

yes.

Anyways, I'm not sure if I answered your question or not but again, I don't, it's not the size, it's the timing.

So, and you mentioned two, two sets of times there, your grazing period and your rest period. So how do you know what those are?

Okay. But really to get there, to get to that level, you have to get your, have your labor down. So,

one, one thing just on the labor part, in the back of your book, you have your Ranching Hacks, just a couple pages of them and one of them is one that we do that. I love that. I don't know why more people don't. I tell people I'm a efficient farmer and you understand efficient farmer is a lazy farmer with good pr. So I'm an efficient farmer.

yeah, it's

Yeah, I love those types of things that reduce the labor. You're not trying to sort all your cows and introduce more stress. You're doing something very simple, sorting out those particular calves, then you're letting nature take over and those moms come up there and you just get them back in the next day.

You bet. It's just like, in the spring when you're calving, there's a system called the Sandhills method Where you sort off pears.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. Like I've been to I think three places that do that. The amount of stress when they're sorting off pears is crazy.

Oh yeah.

Why not just move the whole bunch? Then they're all onto fresh ground. I've been doing that since 2005 because I've been scared of scours. Like past, I've just been, Like when I went this spring and I saw the calves are starting to scour, I just like, holy shit, what am I, got myself into, but I just got them on fresh ground and every three or four days, I just moved the whole works onto fresh ground and the cool thing about it is they learn how to move.

Oh yeah.

So I better answer this question quick about the graze period and the

Oh, okay.

okay. so. What I discovered by luck just trial and error, was that in the latitude of Athabasca, Okay, in Alberta, at that latitude, but this is just an example, and it's just for that latitude at that, at the first rotation. The graze period is about 36 days. Okay, and that has been consistent for since my first time in 2000, it just, it's, I figured that out. And that's just an example. That's not going to be your area.

so so you're keeping them in that paddock for that graze period and then you're moving on and you calculate that grazing period in your example to be three days because on day four, they're going back and grazing new growth.

Exactly. Yeah. And again, I've had a few people ask me about, well, 35 days is enough. No, this was just an example. Like, what I put in my book, I thought I made it clear, but obviously I didn't. It's just an example of that latitude at that time of year. So in 2021, we had I was grazing in this, at this area as well, and we had extreme heat and extreme dry. Well, our graze period went to six days.

Oh, yes.

I thought the grass had gone dormant, but I did that strip test, and by day six, they stopped in the first strip. So the grass did stop growing, it just slowed right down. And so then, that's what I did. I just changed my I was able to change my recovery period, or my graze period, and that adjusted my recovery period.

Oh, yes.

Because each time you stay an extra day in that gray, in that paddock, you have what, 13 paddocks, well then that's 13 extra days.

One more question on that graze period. Before we go back and talk a little bit more about your mob grazing. You said there, grass had slowed down, so you did another test to find out how long the graze period should be, and that's six days. How often are you checking to see how long that graze period is? Do you just do it when you see a change or how do you determine that?

Just when there's a big change. Yeah, just when there's a big change. Now a part of that is because I have So, I know over, the course of 24 years, I know what the recovery period is. But if like in 2000 or in 21, that was a huge change and it was something I hadn't experienced before. So now I have to go and check my reference. Yeah. And then the other thing that goes along with that is I stumbled on this idea of 13 paddocks and it was just by luck.

Right. Yeah.

So, I'm not sure if I make that explain that well, but somehow it just works. And, that way you don't get a recovery period that's too long. Because, once you let grass go into that stage 3, it has done its job for the year. And my experience is that you lose at least 50 percent of possible production on the like of the regrowth

Oh, yes. Yeah.

Because it's done its job already so

One thing you mentioned there is talking about 13 paddocks and the graze period, rest period. You mentioned your grazing chart. Does that, help save time at all? How do you feel about the grazing chart?

If you're gonna do a good job It's a must That's how I feel about it. I still do it today. I've did my first one in 2000 and I've never If I'm grazing I'm using a grazing chart because you can't keep track particularly if you have multiple herds, you can't keep track, and it's very easy to get fooled by our graziers eye.

Oh, yes.

Because you think, oh yeah, that looks good. Well, you go to your grazing site, oh, we're already, might be already at 40 days recovery. We have to get moving, and get that grass clipped. Because it's not going to grow anymore. It's done its job. It's just gonna, it's just gonna flower.

Now, you mentioned there, Your grazer's eye, you're going out there looking, but then you're checking that with the chart. Are you following the chart pretty religiously?

I'm following my recovery pretty religiously. How's

Oh, okay.

okay. So my grazing chart is done in pencil. And yeah, I do not violate the graze period or the recovery period. But yeah, but it doesn't matter if I say that I'm going to be on this day of this paddock. It's not a big day as long as I'm in. I'm not violating the graze period or the rest period.

Oh, okay. Yeah. And do you are you constructing that grazing chart with estimations of when you'll be grazing somewhere for the whole year? Are you just in transparency, Tom, I've not used a grazing chart. I've seen some. I've thought I should use them. I go out there and look at the pasture and think, okay, here's where we're going. But reading your book and thinking about my herd and what I'm doing with my herd, it's a little bit easier because the way I rotate them.

I'm not even going to tell you that you need it, because I've told so many people and it just goes off deaf ears. And no, people aren't using it. And that's the reason that they have the results they do. You

version? Or how do you do it?

know what, I wanted to go electronic, and so I've tried out some, and for some reason, I don't know if it's because I've, I started with paper cause it's a pain in the ass having to go and erase all these little marks, right?

Yes.

I couldn't find a computer one on the screen that I can see the whole season.

Oh yes.

So for me sometimes, I need to see that whole season and I don't know why I messed around with it one summer with the electronic and I wasn't able to get it so I just used the paper one.

And I know the, I downloaded, I have an electronic version of a grazing chart. But my problem is using it on the screen. I can only see a portion of it. And so I was like, no, I'm not doing it.

And that's what I was doing. Like I downloaded some from oh I forget that guy's name, he He gives a, the, on pasture magazine each spring he gives the you can order free

Yeah, I think, Troy Bishop.

Yeah, you bet. Good charts, but I couldn't see the whole, what I need, all of it that I need to see on my screen. So anyways, they're good charts and they're exactly like my paper charts, just, I don't know. Anyways, move on.

Well, one thing I didn't mention about your book, and this doesn't really relate to any of this, but we mentioned Troy Bishop, and we mentioned on pastor. Even if you don't get anything from your book, but you just go through and pick all the resources you mention in the book, that would be tremendous right there. You Walt, Higbert? How do you say his last name? Higbert?

Oh yeah, Walt I can't remember.

Yeah him and some others, I have

No Whit Hibbard.

Oh, Whit

yeah, he's from Montana.

Yeah. I have those pulled up in tabs because I wasn't familiar with him and I pulled it, pulled or did a search so I can look it up. But you list a tremendous amount of resources in your book that if someone were to just go through it and go through and get those resources, that would be an education in itself.

Well, that's where I got my education. I've heard, you know what, I talk about it. I think you might've remembered in the forward there or wherever I wrote it. Hardly any of these ideas are mine. Sure, yeah, there's a few, but there's very few that are mine. And I just, I feel, I, I've been plagiarized before, and I don't like it. So, I make a point of, this wasn't my idea. This is who I got it from, and so I make a point of doing that. But yeah, I read a lot.

It's a tremendous amount of resources in there, besides what information you're giving that's valuable.

I think a big thing I'm proud of the book. And a big part of the reason that I'm proud of the book is a lot of the stuff that I do is based on research things that I've heard. So I went and tested it out and I kept going. I'll give you an example. So you had you had my buddy, Steve Kenyon on here a while ago.

Yes, it did.

Steve. Okay. So Steve and I have been pretty close on the same journey. He is two years ahead of me, but we've been pretty close on the same journey, doing the same thing, custom grazing on leased land. And so we've gone out, shared a lot of stuff together, and one thing that we did was we bale grazing. That's what you were talking to him about.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, and I just want to mention, so Steve and I bale graze the same way in that intense way, and we figured out a few years ago that if you grazed 100 cows for 100 days, you could improve I think it was 13 or 14 acres of land, of pasture, you could rejuvenate.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, and then And when we're talking rejuvenate, we're talking like a four to six hundred fold increase in, in grass production. So, I read this article by Jim Gare. She wrote it in the, on, in On Pasture. And it was about all the nutrients that are a bale of hay has when you roll it out. And I was just like, oh, you should try it and read that article. It is fascinating. How many nutrients you're putting in the soil.

Yes.

okay? When we, when our pastures get down to a certain level, they need a kickstart. And so that's where you need a four to six fold increase. Now that's the difference between rolling out bales and bale grazing. For some reason, the bale grazing you get that four to six hundred percent increase in one year. I, like I've documented where I kept good records and, bale grazed one year we had 46. I might have used that example in the book too, I'm not sure.

Oh,

We ba we bale grazed that winter. And the next winter we had 200 stock days per acre.

now one thing you mentioned, that, that is a tremendous increase, and one thing you mentioned there, that when we bell graze, sometimes we get that area where stuff doesn't grow real good that first year, and you mentioned doing, grazing with your high density or your mob or putting your mineral feeder in that area, so hooves are stirring up that ground a little bit, so you get growth sooner. Yeah.

The only time that I've seen that that you get these big patches where the grass isn't growing, is when you don't have your grazing under control.

Oh, yeah.

When you don't have your the animals don't even have to be super mobbed up. They just have to be a little bit contained, and you have to just go through your rotation. And I remember there was one place we had real shitty hay for the winter. So then we had more Of this piled forge from the winter. I just put the mineral tub out there each time we went through and just that hoof action of walking through, just loosen things up and there you go.

Yeah,

But the, yeah, but if you have that big ring where not, there's no growth, that's a reflection of your grazing

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, Tom, it is time we transition just a little bit and move on to our overgrazing section.

Sure.

on the same thing. We're talking about bale grazing, but in converse to bale grazing, what if you stockpile some forages? And that's our topic today for our overgrazing section. So when we talk about stockpiling forage, what are you talking about?

Well, the end goal is high volume, high quality. Okay? So, in terms of quality, I want at least 13 percent protein, and high 60% TDN. So for, that's for quality.

Yes.

okay, and Then for volume, I want a hundred at least 150 to 200 stock days per acre in that paddock. That's for the high volume the way that you get there you have to start with that goal in mind right as soon as your first day of grazing and That's the way I start and I want to get around I want to get everything clipped and I want to keep everything clipped don't slow down. Yes, you're going to have some forage that's going to go into stage 3, into a reproductive phase.

Oh

For stockpile. And now, again, this is going to be an example specific to the latitude of Athabasca. My experience. The forge that you want to get stockpiled, you need to clip that by no later than August 7th. Because at our latitude, the killing frost, where the general killing frost is, there won't be enough time for that forge to grow. So, you'll have good quality, but you won't have, you won't have high volume before a killing frost.

how far is that in advance of your first frost or your killing frost?

I wanna say six weeks.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Because there's two things at that time of year you're, the forge is growing slower, very noticeable difference. After that first week of August 'cause the daylight hours are getting shorter here, so then your growth slows down. So then you know, your recovery period lengths lengthens. So. Are you happy with that explanation?

I think that's a great explanation. One thing I'm curious about, Yeah. But It's not auen. In your area, what are you stockpiling? What varieties of grass is it?

Whatever's there, man.

Whatever's there.

Yeah. And the thing that I find once you get this type of grazing the varieties, like it changes. All those plants are in, like, seeds or whatever are in the soil and once you set up the environment so that they can express themselves, they just pop out and here they are and you don't know where the hell they came from.

And do you, are you stockpiling that? And when you say stockpiling, that's, you're leaving it on the plant, you're not going through cutting it or anything.

Correct. Correct. I have in the past, I have had Pretty much straight alfalfa, like a 80 percent alfalfa field.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, and I wasn't going, I knew what was going to happen if I left it. So I did swath that, but like clovers and grass, I don't bother.

Oh,

just let it stand. But if it's alfalfa cause if you let it stand, the leaves are going to freeze and fall off.

Oh, okay.

So I just hired someone to come swath it and we basically swath grazed hay. And it worked great. One

Now one thing when you're, that far north and you're grazing stockpile, you're going to have to deal with some snow. How's that affect your grazing of stockpile?

Well, to tell you the truth, the biggest thing, you need to have quality and you have to need to have volume. Okay? Once you have that, I'm actually not sure what the limit is for what cows can go through. 2006, that was before I had my iPhone. I did not take a picture and I am. I think we had four, close to four feet of snow

Oh,

and that the cattle were digging through. Now this was swath grazing. It was a, it was oats, cereal, okay. but there was a volume there and there was a quality there. So they just went and trucked through and it was like a grader came and furrowed those rows.

You mentioned if you'd had some horses in there, you could put them in there.

if you'd had some horses, why horses? Actually, I think he's from Wyoming and he was up in British Columbia named Pan Phillips, and he wrote about that's what how they had these Dried out meadows in the winter and that's what they wintered their cattle on but they ran the horses with them The horses opened it up for the cattle

Yeah.

Yeah, one of my little dreams before I die, I want to train cattle To paw through stow. They certainly have the physiology

Oh, yes.

When you think about it, like a cow pawing at you, if she's mad, that's the same physiology that she would need to paw snow. So, one day I will get that figured out. I'll get a herd that's, of cows that know how to do that.

There you go. Yes you know for me snow's not that big a worry, but I know a lot of people north of me snow's a big problem

You bet. Well, and you know what, I have a video of ranch that I was on. I was watching these cows in what the heck. Oh, and I was doing stockpile grazing stockpile. And I saw these cows walking and they were just all in a tight mob. And I was wondering what the hell? I just could have the.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is interesting and one thing in your book You have a lot of links to videos that's available to go with your book

Yeah. Did you check those? QR codes?

I have not yet

Oh my gosh, that's just rude.

I had to hurry

That's rude

this, so, I I will check them out, though.

You should, because you know what, I have a couple I was gonna mention, I have a couple videos in there. About how to save time, you're talking about moving. Okay, so so I've trained I started out training animals With a bell I had two bells and now I just use a whistle Different type of whistle and so I have a video on there and I Knew that we're gonna be later in the season. We're gonna be going into some bush paddocks So I trained the, there's 300 finishing heifers there.

Oh, yes.

Okay, normally that would be three or four cowboys with a couple dogs and another cowboy on a quad, a minimum of an hour and a half. I know that because I've seen it. And so there's,

well.

yes, so there, there is a little, just a little snippet of, save some time.

Oh,

And it does take long to train them. Another thing there, I have another video, it's the WAVE video, it's how to move these newborn animals. Okay. And, like earlier in this interview I said this idea of can a 12 year old do this? It's just always in my head on everything, and it's just make, if I have to do labor, I want to really evaluate whether it's worth it or not. So have you ever been, where you have a calf that's, a newborn calf that's sleeping and it doesn't want to get up?

Oh, yeah. Win.

Win. So there you go.

Very good, Tom. Tom, it is time for us to do our famous four questions, sponsored by Kencove Farm Fence.

I really like Kencove. They have a lot of good products. I we, yeah, we don't do a lot, like, I don't know many people up here that use Kencove, but I tell you, those products that they have in there are good products,

Oh, they are. I agree.

and I'm not getting paid by them for anything, I tell you that, but I, it just, I wanted to let you know that I really like their products.

Well, very good. Yeah.

Kencove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass podcast and graziers everywhere. At Kencove Farm Fence, they believe there's true value within the community of graziers and land stewards. The results that follow proper management and monitoring can change the very world around us. That's why Kencove is dedicated to providing an ever expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant.

Our famous four questions, our same four questions we ask of all of our guests. So our first question, what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?

Well, what I call the bible, grass productivity by Andre Vassin. That's where it all started, everybody Who has anything to do with it, that's where it started. Bwahahahahahahaha! Eeee,

so. Yeah.

it's funny.

Our second question, what's your favorite tool for the farm? Oh

The versatility is unsurpassed. You have a well trained horse and the things that you can do with them. I've used my horse in the winter.

Yeah. Oh,

a horse is the more you use it, its value increases.

the better it is, yeah.

Yeah, and a quad or a, side by side, the more you use it, the value decreases. It's just a win all, all around.

a very interesting way to look at it because the horse's value appreciates while a quad or side by side they're going to depreciate in value. Great way to look at that.

You bet. Yep.

Our third question, Tom, what would you tell someone just getting started?

I don't know how to word this. Don't read so much. Cause it's, we get too caught up in, and I, I was there too. We get too caught up in all these things that we're supposed to do. Make sure you're like, keep your labor down. Yep.

you're speaking there is analysis paralysis, to borrow a real estate term. You just get there, you're getting all this information, but you really gotta go do it.

Yep. I don't spend too much money doing it. I know what that's like. I spend a lot of money on, things that I didn't need to do. And I think we missed the real point of it. Like just this moving every day. Or four times a day. What are we really trying to accomplish there? And can we accomplish it differently?

Yeah, very good. And Tom, where can others find out more about you? Oh,

My website isn't, still isn't perfect and but it's simply ranching. ca, but you can google ranching like a 12 year old and you can find my book. I'm, I was planning on doing getting more social media to promote my book. However, I realized that's not really what I want to be doing, man. I want to be ranching. There's still quite a few things that I haven't accomplished yet. And I need to get back ranching to do it. And so that's really where my focus is going to be really for the next 18 months.

appreciate you coming on and sharing with us

glad to see you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I know I did. Thank you for listening, and if you found something useful, please share it. Share it on your social media. Tell your friends. Get the word out about the podcast. Helps us grow. If you happen to be a grass farmer and you'd like to share about your journey, go to grazinggrass. com and click on Be Our Guest. Fill out the form and I'll be in touch. We appreciate your support by sharing our episodes and telling your friends about it.