Grazing cows isn’t only for dry cows, heifers or beef cattle anymore. An increasing number of dairy producers are pasture grazing the milking herd. Aside from premiums for certified organic or 100% grass-fed milk, there are other benefits to moving cows onto pasture.
Rotationally grazing pasture in a no-till system enhances soil health. Labor needed for cleaning stalls and hauling manure, and for harvesting, mixing and feeding rations can be used elsewhere. Converting cropland to pasture can reduce fuel and equipment costs.
But incorporating milking herd rotational grazing doesn’t look the same for all farms. How much pasture is a part of the diet, whether other feed crops are fed or grown on-farm or not, and how the grazing pastures are managed all vary.
Small, low-input, intensive grazing
Abbie Corse, sixth-generation dairy farmer of Corse Dairy Farm in Whitingham, Vermont, a featured webinar presenter for Regenerate America, a campaign seeking to recreate the farm bill to focus on soil health, explained that her family’s low-input farming philosophy is focused on “farming the way the land dictated, and not the other way around. I grew up thinking you moved fencing every 12 hours and came to realize over time that was, in fact, not the way a lot of dairies are being run.”
But on many grazing-based dairies, you do.
During the 1960s, her grandfather discovered that cows left to their own devices don’t effectively or efficiently graze pastures. So he began to provide them limited grazing areas, and control when they moved to new areas, utilizing wooden fence posts and steel wire.
“When they had a huge area, there’s a lot of waste. They could cherry-pick the grasses,” and he wanted to control that, she said.
When cows are contained in managed paddocks, moved before they graze too low and enough rest for forage regrowth is provided to paddocks, both soils and cows benefit.
“We’re constantly working to improve upon these systems. It’s much more managed even than it used to be,” she said.
They’ve been certified organic since 2008. Their milking herd receives between 60% and 70% dry matter intake (DMI) from pasture, well above certified organic standards, and even in southern Vermont, at 2,000 feet in elevation, they are able to graze for 165 days, much greater than the minimum of 120 required.
They do feed grains. But they are primarily making milk from their 54-cow milking herd – the maximum number of lactating cows the land can support – using managed, rotational grazing. The herd is 50% Jersey cows, along with Holstein, Red & White Holstein, some New Zealand genetics and crossbreeds.
“We do give our cows grain. Our pH is a tricky thing. For the cows’ nutrition, we still do have to feed them some grain to make up for the deficiencies in that regard,” Corse said.
The soils on the farm are upland glacial soils and are wet, rocky and acidic, and the wind is strong, blowing away any exposed soil. The pastures are all in permanent sod and are never tilled. They use a custom perennial seed mix, which relies on species that naturally grow well in their soils.
Newly converted fields are seeded in August and allowed to rest for the first season, then are cut back with a sickle mower, leaving the biomass on the pasture. They will slowly increase grazing intensity.
“The converted paddocks have to rest for a year,” she said. “We’ve really found, in trying to develop that perennial root system, that it's absolutely critical to let the land rest for that year.”
Their soil organic matter now averages 7% and goes up to 11% in some pastures. They’ve found that bale grazing is a great way to repopulate thin pasture areas.
“We farm with as few inputs and as little energy [usage] as possible,” she said. Cattle lanes, established with Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) funding, were key to getting the cows onto more of the pastures efficiently.
Solar pumps move water from a spring into water tanks. Gravity-fed lines bring water to every paddock, which are managed with step-in fence posts and polywire. They are working on adding silvopasture to the land. Shade and fodder should improve both milk quality and yield, and add biodiversity to the farm.
Grazing is a lower-input, lower-cost manner of farming. The farm is a part of the Dairy Grazing Apprentice program. Trained dairy-grazing apprentices have the experience, skills and business plans needed to start a grazing dairy and not be saddled with a debt load they’ll never get out from under, Corse said.
“It’s really difficult to learn how to farm without the experience of farming,” Corse said. “Land access is so impossible; it’s incredibly expensive. The capital costs to starting a farm are expensive."
Conventional herd grazing
Dairy farmer Tom Cook of Cook Dairy Farm in Pewamo, Michigan, is a conventional dairy farmer. He added grazing for the milking herd 20 years ago. He feeds his dairy herd a total mixed ration (TMR) with supplemental baleage and pasture grazing. He utilizes 220 acres of pasture for his 300 cows and grows 230 acres of corn, 60 of soybeans, 20 of wheat and 100 of alfalfa for his fed rations.
“I utilize a lot of the same technologies as a conventional dairy, but I also incorporate the grazing,” Cook said during a presentation for the American Forage and Grassland Council.
With 30 paddocks, those closest to the barn are the smaller paddocks for the milking herd, with larger and more distance paddocks for other cow groups. He clips milk cow pastures in midsummer at 4-6 inches in height, wrapping up the refusals as baleage, being mindful of moisture content and botulism risks.
“This is a way of keeping your pasture well managed and getting more feed in the winter months,” Cook said.
Pastures are renovated with a no-till drill. To eliminate problem weeds, he will plow and reestablish with either a sorghum-sudangrass mixture in summer, or a 90-day, short-day corn silage planted in spring before reseeding back to permanent pasture in October.
“Corn silage is a great crop to incorporate into any dairy farm ... even a grazing dairy farm,” he said. “A lot of my fellow graziers didn’t agree with me in years past, but they are starting to come around to my way of thinking.”
He also plants corn silage in a double cropping or cover cropping, either after first cutting alfalfa or prior to a fall planting of triticale and peas for harvest the next spring. Cook’s milk cooperative now provides financial incentives for cover cropping and soil health studies, promoting environmentally responsible dairy farming practices.
Cook is part of a grazing dairy benchmarking group and keeps close tabs on his financial health. He knows his operating cost of producing a hundredweight of milk – just paying the bill for milking the cows – as well as the total cost, which includes depreciating assets, a salary to the dairy farmer and a 5% return on equity. That cost is the “true cost of producing a hundred pounds of milk on my dairy farm,” he said.
Grazing the lactating herd isn’t only for organic dairy farmers anymore. The movement to graze the milking herd is gaining momentum across the dairy sector.
