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farming with animals

Winter Grazing in a Rotational Grazing System

in 2023/Grow Organic/Livestock/Spring/Summer 2023/Tools & Techniques

By Stacey Santos

Spray Creek Ranch, located in Northern St’at’imc Territory near Lillooet, BC, has operated as a cattle ranch since the 1880s. Over the past decade, Tristan Banwell and his partner Aubyn have managed the land and transformed it from a traditional cow-calf operation to a diversified, regenerative organic farm with cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, horses, and a trusty herd of guardian dogs.

One of their key practices is rotational grazing— frequently moving cattle through pastures to allow forage to recover and regrow. It’s a practice they started at the end of their first summer at the farm, and they immediately saw the value in being able to control the cattle’s impact on the land

In a recent episode of Organic BC’s Organic Innovation Series, Tristan took viewers on a journey through a year on grass for their cattle and shared winter-specific tips, techniques, and equipment.

Benefits of Rotational Grazing

Rotational grazing offers big returns when it comes to plant, animal, and soil health.

Plant health: When animals munch on plants without giving them a chance to grow and redevelop their leaf area, the plants are weakened and forced to recover from their root reserves instead of using their photosynthetic capability to grow. With rotational grazing, the goal is to move the animals before they take that second bite, and then backafter the plants have recovered.

Animal health: When animals are frequently moved from pasture to pasture, they have fewer chances to ingest and complete parasite life cycles. And there’s a nutritional benefit too: animals preferentially graze all of the highest quality forage first (a bite off the top of every plant) and if left in one location, over time they’ll eat poorer and poorer quality forage and their nutritional plane will decline. But if you move the animals frequently, they’ll escape this longer period of decline and will have improved health and more consistent weight gains thanks to a consistent supply of nutrient-rich regrowth.

bit.ly/organicbcpodcast50 Under a rotational grazing system, cattle distribute their manure evenly throughout the farm, resulting in increased soil fertility. And, plants that have more extended rest periods grow bigger and deeper roots, which increases organic matter in the soil.

When to Start Rotational Grazing

Spray Creek Ranch starts when there’s enough growth in the spring to turn the cows out and start grazing, and typically a little earlier than general recommendations. By setting back some of the forage growth, they’re able to stay ahead of the growth, which will be mature and seeding out before they know it.

They start in the area with the most residual left over from the previous year to balance out nutritional needs, giving cattle the opportunity to have a bite of new spring growth and a bite of dried out stockpile (a technique that also reduces the “green fire hose” effect caused by high-protein spring feeds!).

As the forage quickly grows in May and June, the cattle are still moved frequently but the paddock sizes become smaller to ensure the cattle are clipping off about two-thirds of growth in each paddock as they go.

July and August bring lots of nice green growth, but lots of mature grass as well. This is an opportunity to make a deposit into the soil. With frequent rotations in tight paddocks, everything that’s not eaten is trampled down to feed the soil. In mid-August, the cattle are brought to Spray Creek Ranch’s mountain grazing lands, where they’ll stay until October. With no cattle on the farm, the pastures are able to regrow as much as possible and ideally remain in a vegetative state as they go into fall dormancy. When the cows return from range, the winter stockpile grazing program starts, with cattle grazing primarily on dormant season grasses. If they run out of stockpiled forage or the snow gets too crusty and the cattle can no longer graze through it, they’ll be switched to hay.

Stockpile Grazing

There are a lot of reasons to do as much stockpile grazing as possible, but the biggest reason is cost savings. The highest expense in a typical cattle operation is winter feed costs. Every day that your cattle are grazing in a field that you didn’t have to use a machine to harvest or feed, you save quite a bit of money.

The goal with stockpiling is to go into winter with as much stockpiled vegetative forage—tall grass that hasn’t yet gone to seed—as possible. But it doesn’t just happen!

“You have to plan for it in advance, and planning for stockpile grazing starts during the growing season,” says Tristan.

During the high growth period in the summer, the fields are grazed or hayed to keep the plants in vegetative growth. That’s different from the typical goal of going into the winter with as much hay as possible, so at some point you need to stop grazing the field and let it regrow and stockpile.

A good time to start stockpiling is early to late August. If you start too early, the grass will grow large but then go to seed and the quality of the forage will diminish. The ideal is to go into winter with a tall, vegetative sward of grasses that haven’t gone to seed yet—tall enough that it will hold up in the snow and be visible to the cattle.

Equipment

Tristan uses the same electric fencing equipment in the wintertime as in the summertime: a quarter-mile geared reel (with a hook on the end to energize the polywire) and a battery powered hammer drill with a long masonry bit to put the posts into the frozen ground.

For more tips and crucial considerations on electric fencing for rotational grazing systems, be sure to listen to episode 50 of the Organic BC Podcast, in which Tristan interviews fencing expert Axle Boris of Fencefast: bit.ly/organicbcpodcast50

Bale Grazing

Once stockpile grazing needs to be stopped, either because forage ran out or conditions aren’t permitted anymore, you can shift to a technique called bale grazing.

Rather than rolling out bales of hay for the cows every couple of days, set out bales in a grid pattern across a whole field in one go—laying out one to two months of feed—and picking a field that will benefit from a fertility boost from the residual hay and cow manure.

“Since we don’t use fertilizers, being an organic farm, we like to put the fertility back on the field that it came from,” says Tristan.

Other perks of bale grazing are that you don’t have to go out in inclement weather (you can pick a nice day to set out bales), you don’t have to fire up your tractor when it’s minus 35, and you can easily go away for a period of time.
There are cost-saving benefits from the producer side as well—moving bales around is expensive!

Winter Watering Systems

Spray Creek Ranch is lucky to have gravity fed irrigation systems running off two mountain creeks behind the farm. They use this network all throughout the farm in the summertime.

In the winter, they have a few natural water sources, including a warm spring, but they’ve also installed a few automatic waterers, fed by a three-quarter inch water line deep in the ground to prevent freezing. To help keep the plumbing system toasty, Tristan keeps the water trickling with overflow running into a pit drain—a technique that works well with gravelly, sandy soil. At lower temperatures, he also uses a water heater and trace cable along the pipes.

Always a Work in Progress

There’s so much complexity in diverse farms like Spray Creek Ranch that use agroecological systems of farming.
“Sometimes I think about our farm, that’s been a work in progress since 1880,” says Tristan. “We’re never going to be at the end point. There’s always more we can learn. We’re always iterating, adapting, and observing the outcomes of our management choices. When you’re rotational grazing, every single day is a chance to observe the animal impact on your systems, and every year is a chance to set goals for how to improve it.”

Learn more by watching episode four of Organic BC’s Organic Innovation Series featuring Spray Creek Ranch: Winter Rotational Grazing Systems: youtu.be/QMlZvYteZfc

Watch more videos from Organic BC: youtube.com/thisisorganicbc

Rotational Grazing & Methane Reduction

Charlie Lasser runs Lasser Ranch, an organic ranch just outside of Chetwynd with 900 head of cattle on over 5,000 acres. He’s a pioneer and leader in the organic community and continues to innovate his practices, including feeding seaweed to his calves!

Calves burp out about 400 litres of methane each day. To combat these powerful emissions, Charlie feeds seaweed to his young stock, which reduces methane in their systems and helps the animals gain more weight. A win-win all around not just for producers, but also for the climate and the planet.

Learn more in episode five of Organic BC’s Organic Innovation Series: youtu.be/RZW28V05vcU

Stacey Santos is the Communications Manager for Organic BC. She lives, writes and gardens in the beautiful and traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples, who are now known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

This project was supported by the BC Climate Agri-Solutions Fund. Funding for the BC Climate Agri-Solutions Fund was provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada through the Agricultural Climate Solutions – On-Farm Climate Action Fund.

Featured image: Tristan Banwell with winter grazing cattle at Spray Creek Ranch in Lillooet. Credit: Spray Creek Ranch.

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Biodynamic Farm Story: The Grass is Not Greener

in 2023/Grow Organic/Organic Standards/Preparation/Soil/Tools & Techniques/Winter 2023

By Anna Helmer

Misty rain on wet snow. This is the image I conjured for myself last summer every time it went to 40 degrees, which was many times. As a cooling vision, it is recommended. Mind you, now that I seem to encounter it every day, I find it a less enchanting experience. I am not actually complaining, though. Nothing like blue sunny skies to ruin a good day off inside.

Biodynamically, the higher latitude northern hemisphere winter is an important time for our soil as it is sealed off from the activity of the growing season. The plants are dead and decaying and no longer syphoning energy from the soil and the sun’s rays take a less direct path to earth. Cultivation plans are theoretical to the max. It’s a relaxing time for us as we really aren’t needed.

The winter soil is far from inert, however. Different types of energy (I am still in the process of sorting this out) are accumulating, perhaps balancing (the preparations 500 and 501 help with this), and certainly strengthening. We see ample evidence of this important activity, even if I’m unable to explain it completely.

Think of plants like garlic, nettles, and fall rye. The development of their robust, healthy roots takes place all winter: strong indication of life in the soil. In spring, the overwintered rye plant, supported by its roots, will enjoy some immediate riotous growth as soon as the snow melts. Anyone who has fought to knock down fall rye before crop planting can attest to its early-season vigour. And just look at that garlic greenery shooting up like a strong pillar, almost like a crystal.

Nettles, sometimes up even before the garlic, are imbued with fresh and strong wintery energy and here’s a bonus: we can get at it! The young plants are edible, and they make a powerful tonic for young seedlings. Gathering nettles for both eating and making compost tea has been on the spring to-do list for yonks—and by that, I mean for as long as there have been growers. Rudolph Steiner bemoaned the near-universal loss of folk wisdom in agriculture, but this gem seems to have survived, likely because it was so demonstratively helpful.

It is common practice on all sorts of operations to make a pass with the rotavator just before the snow falls—just enough to kill the forage and expose it slightly to soil. The result we see in the spring is a field almost ready for potato planting, so much of the cover crop has been incorporated. If that fall cultivation isn’t done, we must expect to have a very busy spring on the tractor making several passes with rotavator, spader, disc and harrow to prepare a seed bed that will likely be of lesser quality. The winter soil is more powerful than all that equipment.

So, while all those forces are wanging around down there, and we are welcoming excuses to stay inside, our farm application for proper Biodynamic certification is being initiated. We have been in and out of certification over the years. I hate to say it, but we are biodynamically-certified fickle. Very touchy. Historically, if we get our knickers in a knot, we are out. O.U.T. Out.

The last time we threw in the towel on certification was several years ago, when tractor use came up as an issue. The main theme of Biodynamics is that the farm is striving to become a complete entity, capable of providing for all its needs from within the property. Tractors, and their accoutrements, are obviously off-farm inputs, and there are schools of Biodynamic thought and practice that reject their use. We are not one of them. I don’t want to farm without at least two.

By way of comparison, organic certification is a more straightforward defense of our farming practices. Get the field numbers and acreages sorted out and keep a printed copy of the CGSB standards and permitted substances at the ready, alongside a binder containing the complaint log and compost records. Do a reasonable job of talking about cover cropping, be diligent in seed sourcing, keep the invoices organized, and that’s it. Mostly.

Biodynamic certification is a different story. I feel like I am back at university walking into an exam for a class I skipped too much. I can tell I am going to have to stammer my way through some very uncomfortable question and answer sessions. I feel challenged, intellectually.

The main opposition to our successful application will likely be our lack of livestock. Biodynamics come out strong on livestock, particularly cattle, as domesticated ruminants are exquisitely unique in their ability to consume the plants that have been enlivened by Biodynamic practice. They deliver the subsequently energized manure necessary to not only grow more plants but improve their quality and quantity. It is in this way that Biodynamic farms eschew the use of any sort of purchased soil amendment or plant fertilizer. The yields are robust and increasing because the non-physical forces emanating from the universe are contained in the soil, then focused on the growth of the crops. Cattle cause the cycle to perpetuate.

Which is fine if you want to keep cattle. We do not. Instead, we are using extensive cover cropping and turning the cull potatoes into useful compost for the non-potato crops. It is this conversation that makes me tremble the most. Am I going to be able to convince a Biodynamic inspector that potatoes too, are vessels for the energy of the universe which can be returned to and multiplied in the soil?

I foresee a long period of transition.

Anna Helmer farms with her family and friends in the Pemberton Valley. helmersorganic.com

Featured image: Garlic roots develop in cold winter soil. Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.

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All Dressed Up & Nowhere to Go

in 2022/Livestock/Spring 2022/Standards Updates

Ready for Growth, Small-Scale Meat Producers are Limited by Access to Processing

By Julia Smith

The Small-Scale Meat Producers Association recently completed a province-wide survey of the small-scale meat producing sector in which we heard from 708 operations representing 2,110 producers across all 27 regional districts of the province. Eighteen respondents reported being certified organic, and 15 of these were located in the Okanagan.

The survey identified that small-scale meat producers in BC tend to have very diverse operations, and are practicing a range of land management techniques. Of the respondents, 97% reported using at least one of the following practices to steward their land:

  • multiple species grazing (43%)
  • intensive grazing (38%)
  • regenerative agriculture (38%)
  • no-till farming (36%)
  • diversified forage (36%)

It will be interesting to see if these types of land management techniques become even more popular given the rising costs and supply chain issues associated with more conventional methods and inputs.

Not surprisingly, the biggest obstacle preventing the growth of the small-scale meat industry in BC was access to slaughter and butchery services. While this has proven to all but stop the industry as a whole in its tracks, it hits certified organic producers even harder, as there are very few, if any, certified organic abattoirs or butcher shops offering custom services to small-scale producers.

Chickens at UBC Farm. Credit: Hannah Lewis.

There is a little wiggle room: it is possible for a processor whose facility is not certified organic to complete an “Organic Compliance Declaration” in which they agree to uphold the certification requirements for a producer. However, it is unlikely that most processors would be willing to accommodate this. Processors are completely booked up months (often over a year) in advance without having to jump through any additional hoops.

At a time when it is extremely difficult for anyone to book slaughter and butcher dates for their livestock, organic producers are faced with the added burden of needing their processing facilities to comply with their organic certification standards. Survey respondents reported that they often can’t even reach their abattoir on the phone. It seems unlikely that a business that doesn’t even have time to answer their phone would be willing to entertain the extra steps and paperwork required to serve the certified organic market.

Even if the butcher is willing to take these steps, they are only allowed to cut into basic raw cuts if the product is to remain certified organic. Products of further processing, such as sausage making or smoking, are not able to remain certified organic unless the facility itself is also certified organic. Furthermore, not even the raw cuts can be labeled as certified organic by the butcher unless their facility is also certified organic. The producer themselves must take that meat home, unpack it and label everything to remain in compliance.

Happy pigs. Credit: Small Scale Meat Producers Association

It seems unfair that a producer who complies with the necessary production and animal welfare standards to achieve organic certification should not be able to market that product as certified organic due to insurmountable obstacles in the final step of the process. It may take three years to finish a certified organic steer and a matter of hours to process it.

The new Farmgate Plus slaughter license has the potential to offer some hope. 41% of survey respondents indicated that they are interested in pursuing a license which would allow them to slaughter up to 25 animal units (AU – 1,000 pounds of live weight = 1 AU) per year on their farm or ranch. This license is for slaughter only, and the carcass needs to be butchered at a licensed cut and wrap facility. Unfortunately, 25 AU isn’t likely to be enough volume for one operation to justify the expense of setting up a certified organic cut and wrap facility, but perhaps if there were enough organic livestock producers in a community, they could come together to solve this piece of the puzzle.

Profitability was another challenge identified by the survey and one where organic producers will certainly be feeling the pinch with rising costs and limited availability of everything from feed, to fuel, to fertilizer.

Overall, producers reported that they would like to grow their businesses and that market demand far exceeds their current production capacity given processing challenges. There is tremendous potential for this industry to make a significant contribution to food security and the economy. Given the undeniable need to move toward more environmentally sustainable production methods, the need for growth in the organic sector has never been greater.

To find the survey report, learn more about SSMPA and join as a Producer Member for $35 or as a Supporter Member for free, visit smallscalemeat.ca

Julia is a founding member and currently serving as Vice-President of the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association. She farms and ranches in the Nicola Valley where she raises critically endangered Red Wattle hogs and beef cattle.

Feature image: Turkeys on pasture. Credit: SSMPA.

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Grazing the Way for Small Scale Meat

in 2021/Fall 2021/Grow Organic/Livestock/Marketing/Organic Community

By Ava Reeve

Drive down any rural road in this province and you’re sure to pass cattle on the range, a flock of sheep, or mobile pens for pastured poultry. Small-scale livestock production has a long tradition in BC, and has been reinvigorated in recent years with practices such as rotational grazing and regenerative agriculture that allow for significant meat production without industrial practices. Demand also seems to be growing for local and sustainable meats.

But are there really enough of these small producers to play a serious role in BC’s economy today? And how much potential does this industry have for the future?

Associations representing commercial livestock producers collect data on their own members – those producing over 300 hogs with BC Pork, for example. Commodity producers also enjoy the benefits of their association’s advocacy, and commerce support from marketing boards.

Meanwhile, producers selling directly to consumers, raising multiple livestock species, or simply operating at a smaller scale have lacked a collective voice in provincial conversations about agricultural policies. And little is known about the current scale and potential capacity of these producers.

Credit: Small Scale Meat Producers Association.

The Small-Scale Meat Producers Association (SSMPA) aims to address both of these issues. In spite of a diversity of livestock types and sizes of operations, the organization says that its members are united by operating without the supports of the existing commodity associations or marketing boards.

SSMPA was established by a group of farmers and ranchers in 2017, and its membership now includes representation from all livestock sectors. “The Small-Scale Meat Producers Association represents British Columbia farmers and ranchers who are raising meat outside of the conventional, industrial system,” reads the SSMPA website home page.

This might include a pork producer raising 200 hogs per year, and all poultry producers who sell direct to consumer. It can also include cow-calf operations that process a few cull cows for sale to friends and neighbours, even if they otherwise primarily sell at auction.

It has also succeeded in becoming recognized in consultations and conversations with the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, such as in the development of changes to on-farm slaughter licensing that the province recently announced.

Julia Smith of Blue Sky Ranch near Merritt is the President of SSMPA. “We’re happy with the regulatory changes,” she says of the announcement. But, she notes, “There’s more work to be done to build a thriving small-scale meat industry.”

Including Smith, SSMPA’s founding members were selling their meat products directly to members of their communities, rather than through a marketing board or distributor, and feeding communities in the process. And their experience was that their industry was growing.

Suckling piglets. Credit: Small Scale Meat Producers Association.

Smith raises a rare heritage breed of hog as well as a small herd of cattle on pasture. Selling directly has helped her see better margins than many commercial producers, where processors and retailers realize the lion’s share of the profit.

The demand for her product has been enough to enable Smith to grow her operation, from raising just two pigs in her first year, to running a farrow-to-finish operation with fourteen sows and two boars just four years later. She has supplied meat and other farm products to hundreds of British Columbians and currently has a waitlist for both meat and breeding stock.

Smith says this experience is repeated across the province. “We know that a small-scale operation can contribute to food security and the local economy. What we don’t know is the cumulative potential of producers like this spread all over the province – or their specific barriers to reaching that potential.”

She says information like this hasn’t been available because the right questions weren’t being asked. This summer, SSMPA launched a comprehensive survey of meat producers. She says the resulting information will help the organization define its policies and priorities to support these producers moving forward.

The province seems to agree that the industry has promise; many of the new changes to the slaughter regulations had been advocated for by SSMPA for years. Smith believes the number of producers that could be affected by policies like this is in the thousands. And they should all be giving their two cents to SSMPA.

“Everyone who processes at a provincially-inspected abattoir or on-farm should be participating in this survey,” she says. “Tell us: What is your path to growth? What obstacles do you need to overcome in order to reach your goals?”

At Blue Sky Ranch, Smith’s own goal was to produce just under 300 hogs per year. But the operation met with processing roadblocks at 125 hogs.

“We’re not the only operation that isn’t reaching its full capacity,” says Smith. “SSMPA is using the survey to document this. We want to know what would happen if we could create the conditions for successful operations across the province. For example, how many abattoirs would need to be built before producers could book the slaughter dates they need, with enough reliability to scale their businesses?”

“We’re connecting the dots, but without data to prove our case we won’t get the resources and support to let our industry thrive.”

Smith emphasizes that this survey is an independent project. “SSMPA is a producer-led organization and our mandate is to look out for producers,” she says. “We’ve gone to great lengths to protect the anonymity of survey participants and we will not be sharing survey responses or any other raw data with government, or anyone else.”

For an added incentive SSMPA connected with BC-based fencing company FenceFast, which has offered a $25 discount to every current producer who participates. Smith says FenceFast recognized the potential. “Really, this is just an example of the ripples of impact that can come from growing a locally-based industry like this.”

She adds, “We might be surprised at the opportunities being squandered because of challenges that are within our capacity to address. Even producers might be taken aback. We hope that there will be findings in our report that invigorate and inspire producers with a vision of what could be possible. We have so many people who want to enter this industry. Imagine the impact if these producers will have a fair chance at success.”

The survey is open until September 10, 2021 and can be accessed at smallscalemeat.ca/survey or it can be completed over the phone by appointment at 250-999-0296. SSMPA can also be reached at info@smallscalemeat.ca.

SSMPA is conducting regional focus groups in mid-September to dig deeper into potential solutions to the problems identified through the survey. By early 2022 they will be releasing a report on their findings, and announce how they will ensure that their own programming is geared to meet the needs of its membership.

Producers – and all supporters of local and sustainable meat production – are invited to join SSMPA by signing up for a membership.

Ava Reeve is the Executive Director of the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association, where she gets to pursue her passion for the sustainable practices that result in a high quality of life for both livestock and people.

Featured image: Spray Creek Ranch Cattle. Credit: Small Scale Meat Producers Association.

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Biodynamic Farm Story: Coping Without Cows

in 2021/Grow Organic/Marketing/Winter 2021

Anna Helmer

Lament: No in-person farming conferences and meetings this winter. No chance encounters in the Trade Show, no delightful perusal and purchase at the silent auction, and no (insert acute pang of nostalgia here) food and drink. I regret all the ongoing unfinished conversations with people I see only annually but think about all year—friendships that are continually enriched with shared stories of farming. All this seems lost to me online.

Solace: The online versions will quite likely result in luxuriously languid hours spent sprawled in a chair with tea
and cookies enjoying edification by interesting presenters. That experience, I believe, can be replicated. And there will likely be benefits yet unrecognized—easier to attend? Less driving? Certain efficiencies achieved?

Admission: Farming conferences can be quite boring; by which I mean, nice and boring. Being bored is an aspirational state for me, and farming conferences often deliver. I find it very relaxing. I hope they don’t get too efficient.

Get on with it: I am avoiding talking about what I intend to write about. The theme for this edition of the BC Organic Grower is: Seeding Wisdom: Collaboration & Relationships. Suitable seed beds are necessary for successful seeding and blah blah blah extend the metaphor yourself.
Uncomfortably for me, certain sage seeds are right now being deliberately picked out and set aside and the chickens have come home to roost in the form of cull potatoes.

For if there is one bit of wisdom a Biodynamic (or any) farmer would share, it would quite possibly be: keep cows. Cows process things like grass and cull potatoes into valuable usefulness. Grass and cull potatoes might otherwise be useless clutter. Cull potatoes, for example, claim valuable space, bins, and effort, and on a seed potato farm they need to be disposed of so thoroughly that they won’t regrow. Cows excel at this task, daily devouring large volumes in slobbery bliss. Well, we don’t have cows right now and we aren’t getting cows anytime soon. Ergo, wisdom kicked to the curb, problem still exists and getting bigger.

Now I have to build a compost heap that will digest potatoes. The plan is to layer potatoes, old hay, and dirt all winter long. The potatoes will, I think, freeze and thaw a few times in there and turn to mush. I hope the hay will create some pathways through that muck before it totally rots too, which will allow air, worms, microbes, and fungi to spread through and decompose everything. This is not a scientific explanation of what will happen.

No one is coming to me for scientific wisdom, right? Just checking.
I have some other things to throw in there: eggshells that I have been accumulating all summer, and, of course, Biodynamic Preparations 502-507. In the spring, once the root-houses are cleared of potatoes, perhaps the nettles will be up and I’ll cover the pile with all I can get. Finally, in a nod to the wise Biodynamic practice of a million farmers in India, I’ll cap it with a layer of fresh cow dung.

This is the step I am most excited about. I just miss so much the smell of fresh, happy cow manure and I am poised to poach the poop of a few local herds. One of them grazes on an airy grassy knoll with a stupendous view of the local massif, Mount Currie. Surely cows with that perspective will produce some very energizing manure. Another is the herd of a valued mentor. She is the one who taught me that if you don’t want to get behind in farming, you have to do a farming job every day. Even when you don’t want to. Even when there is a thunder-snow rainstorm going on. Especially then.

I am going to spread this manure by hand. That’s how it’s done.

Anna Helmer is going into winter in the Pemberton Valley with no lack of plans.

Feature image credit: Helmers Organic Farm.

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Organic Stories: Lasser Ranch, Chetwynd BC

in 2020/Climate Change/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Livestock/Organic Community/Organic Stories/Summer 2020/Tools & Techniques

The Lasser Legacy: Raising Healthy, Nutritious, Environmentally-Friendly Cattle

Jolene Swain

Charlie Lasser’s plan was to retire at 100. Just three weeks short of his 89th birthday, he’s been considering extending that to 110—there’s so much to learn and so much knowledge to share when it comes to raising cattle, and he’s just not quite finished.Farming is part of Charlie’s DNA. Coming from a long line of Swiss ranchers, he finished up with school in grade nine and bought his first work horse when he was 14. “I never went to school long enough to learn that there are things you can’t do,” says Charlie. Running a team of horses by the time he was a young teen, he earned money mowing, ploughing, raking, and hauling hay to make the next investments towards having his own land to farm.

Over the past 70 plus years of farming, Charlie has had his share of side hustles in local politics and public service. “You have to get out there and help people, that’s what life is all about,” says Charlie. From the longest-serving mayor of Chetwynd (22 years), to founding or serving on numerous boards and councils, including BC Hydro, Northern Lights College, Lower Mainland Municipal Association, the University of British Columbia, the Chetwynd Communications Society, and even the local thrift store, it seems he’s done a little of everything. But his true calling and passion has always been farming, and it was important that anyone he dated understood that.

When he met his life partner Edith, she not only understood Charlie’s draw to the land, but came from a ranching background herself, and knew just as much about cattle as he did. Together, they made a great team—too busy farming and surviving to argue: “We used to laugh, we could never remember when we had an argument. It was hard work starting out, and we had to work together to survive.”

Edith passed in 2016, after 62 years and three days of marriage, and it is clear that she is dearly missed. After many years working at the family dairy in Pitt Meadows, Charlie and Edith brought Lasser Ranch in Chetwynd in 1971, and moved the family up in 1974.

Dream team: Charlie and Edith of Lasser Range. Credit: Rod Crawford

Charlie is known as one of the early pioneers of the organic industry in BC. “When I was young, everything was organic, that’s how we farmed,” he says. When commercial fertilizers came to market in the ‘50s, he sprayed once on their farm in Pitt Meadows, and didn’t like it. He’s been setting the standard for organic cattle ranching ever since.
“The land and earth is like a bank account, when you build it up, it will produce and you can live off the interest,” says Charlie. “If you use fertilizer, your land becomes a drug addict, it has to have that commercial fertilizer or it will not grow.” According to Charlie, it might take a bit more time at first to build up your land, but the returns are fantastic. Fellow organic pioneer in the fruit industry and good friend Linda Edwards knows Charlie as someone always eager to try something new. “He made money as a cattle farmer, and more importantly, he had a good time doing it,” says Linda.

Of course, farming has changed a lot since Charlie’s ancestors ran cattle in the 1400s, and even since Lasser Range was established back in 1971. Antibiotics were discovered, a game changer for the dairy industry. Horses, once relied upon to round-up cattle, have been replaced by smaller and more numerous pastures in a practice and a grazing style now known as management-intensive grazing. And finally, amongst organic, grass-fed, and animal welfare certifications to name a few, it seems that Charlie might be on a mission to grow what he suspects will be the world’s most environmentally-friendly and nutritious cattle with his latest new feed ingredient. Call it a hunch.

Actually, it’s more than a hunch. Dr. John Church and his team at Thompson Rivers University discovered that organic grass-fed can supply an extra 30-40 mg of healthy omega-3 fatty acids per serving than conventional or ‘natural’ grain-finished beef.1 In this study, over 160 sources of beef were sampled from grocery stores on Vancouver Island, and one sample stood out from the rest when it came to healthy omega-3 fatty acids. The source of that beef? You guessed it: bred and raised on Lasser ranch. But there’s more to the story. These cattle had been grass-finished at Edgar Smith’s Beaver Meadows Farm near Comox, BC. Upon further investigation, Dr. Church found that there was another interesting component of the nutrient rich beef: storm cast seaweed. Now, in collaboration with farmers like Charlie and Edgar, they are digging deeper into the nutritional differences of meat from cattle fed seaweed from an early age.

Feeding seaweed to cattle may not only lead to beef that is more nutritious, but also better for the planet. Cow burps and flatulence are well known for adding methane, a greenhouse gas that traps considerably more heat than carbon dioxide, to the atmosphere. While the number of cows on the planet is a contentious topic these days, reducing the methane production in individual cows might be a step in the right direction.

Charlie Lasser (right) with Ron Reid on the COABC Vanguard of Organics panel in 2018. Credit: Michael Marrapese.

Not all seaweed is created equal. It turns out that certain strains can reduce methane output by up to 60% in live animals. And that’s not all. According to Charlie, who has started feeding Smith’s seaweed to a select group of weaned calves on his ranch, not only are methane levels reduced, but the calves getting seaweed snacks appear to be putting on more weight than their gassy siblings.

Dr. Church and his team at TRU are working on a detailed microbial community analysis of the rumen to demonstrate that the seaweed product is able to shift activity away from methanogenic bacterial species found in the digestive tract, towards those that benefit from excess hydrogen, resulting not only in reduced methane, but an increase in production. This could confirm Charlie’s observations that adding seaweed to the diet results not only in a reduction in methane but also, an increase in beef production. But is the market ready for a low carbon footprint ‘Sea Beef’?

Feeding seaweed to cattle is not new. Coastal ranchers in places like Japan and Scotland have historically fed seaweed to their livestock. Conveniently, Charlie’s cows appear to be big fans of the variety of invasive red seaweed, Mazzaella japonica, harvested and baled by Edgar. “Once they get used to that seaweed, boy they go for it,” says Charlie. Other species studied down in California are not quite so palatable and require grinding and mixing with molasses to convince the cows to eat. Mazzaella japonica shows a lot of potential, but Charlie says “there’s a whole plethora of other seaweeds” that Dr. Church and his team are eager to try.

While we’re just now adjusting to what the global Sars-CoV-2 pandemic means for our food system, farming strategies that tackle climate change and food security have always been important to Charlie. “I want people to remember that we worked the land, and took care of the land, we didn’t abuse it,” says Charlie. “With this virus, everything that happened before will be changing, our whole way of life will be changing. As a result, you’re going to see more people concerned about organics, and more people concerned about where their food comes from and how it is raised.” By the time you read this, he may have already celebrated his 89th birthday. On that day, and the days to follow, you’ll find him out checking on the cattle, experimenting, and learning—willing and eager to pass his lifetime of knowledge on to the next generation.

Jolene Swain farms at WoodGrain Farm, a wilderness farmstead in the Kispiox Valley north of Hazelton in the unceded lands of the Gitxsan First Nation. Here she has spent the last five seasons growing organic vegetables for two local farmers’ markets and an increasing array of seed crops available through the B.C. Eco Seed Co-op, as well as helping get the hay in for the milk cow and small flock of sheep. Jolene works off-farm as an organic verification officer and consultant, and is the Central & Northern BC Land Matcher for the B.C. Land Matching Program delivered by Young Agrarians.

Feature image: Cattle on Pasture at Lasser Range. Credit: Rod Crawford.

References:
1. Canadian Journal of Animal Science, 2015, 95(1): 49-58, doi.org/10.4141/cjas-2014-113

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Bringing Plants and Animals Together for Soil Health

in 2019/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Livestock/Soil/Spring 2019/Tools & Techniques

Crop-Livestock Integration at Green Fire Farm

DeLisa Lewis, PhD

What do the North American Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the current global experiences of climate change have in common? Of course, both are understood as environmental disasters with humans as major contributors. But, if you answered with either ‘farmers’ or ‘soils,’ or more ideally, both, you’d be hearing a celebratory ding-ding-ding right about now.

For farmers and their soils, however, the ‘answers,’,in the form our day-to-day management are not so simple. Environmental historians have uncovered a picture of the Dust Bowl that is also less simple than the above equation, (e.g. Worster, D. 2004; Cunfer, 2004). True to the story I would like to tell here, these historians do focus on some of the challenges of long-term management of soils. Geoff Cunfer, an environmental historian of the Great Plains, found just how much ‘manure matters’ and asserted, “Through 10,000 years of farming on five continents by hundreds of diverse human cultures, only a handful of solutions to soil fertility maintenance have emerged” (Cunfer, 2004: p. 540).

What I’ve learned from reading environmental and agricultural history accounts, as well as reviewing the findings from long-term agricultural research studies1 is that careful, and regionally specific considerations of soils and climates are key nodes for fine-tuning systems. Perhaps more importantly, farming operations, including organic ones, have become increasingly specialized with livestock and manure here and vegetables over there. The lessons from history and long-term agricultural research, point towards diversity, and combined strategies for soil fertility or soil health.

I did not reach a place of digging around the archives or agriculture research station reports until I had close to 15 years of practice with soil management on certified organic vegetables farms. My farming systems experience to that point was within specialized, vegetables-only operations where I managed the soil preparation of the fields as well as windrows of compost with the front-end loader on my tractor.

When I arrived in British Columbia to learn more about the science behind soil management practices, some of the immediate lessons learned centered on the very different soil types, climate characteristics, and economic and cultural realities here. I now have just over a decade of ‘living here’ experience in the Coast-Islands region of BC, and am moving into year five operating our family-owned farm in the Cowichan Valley. That background is meant to highlight that I am still learning, and what I want to share for the purposes of this article on soil health and climate change, is my journey so far with integrating livestock with vegetables on Green Fire Farm.

Although coping with ‘too much and too little’ available water is not new to farmers in the Coast-Islands regions of BC, frequent and extreme weather events do present a new set of challenges. Faced with the demands of producing high quality product in competitive markets, and rising costs for farm inputs, we decided to pursue a number of different strategies to meet the goals of farm profitability, risk reduction, and (my personal favourite) soil health.2 The overall strategy is diversification, both in the fields and in terms of different revenue streams for the farm.

The soils and climate of our farm are well suited to a mixed farming operation, with Fairbridge silt loam soils3 and a Maritime Mediterranean climate. The soil landscape would be described as ‘ridge and swale’, with differing slopes and mixed drainage patterns interspersed through the fields. The drainage limitations of these soils and the erosion prone sloping areas are key pressure points for early spring and late fall field soil preparations. Though I have attempted to address some of these potential challenges to soil health with carefully timed tillage,4 and the use of a spader to reduce mechanical disturbance, the loss of production from one to two weeks at both ends of the growing season can be a costly hit to our farm profitability.

With that in mind, I see necessity as a driver with my decision-making around farm enterprise diversification. I did not arrive on our farm in the Cowichan with all the knowledge or skills required to integrate livestock with our vegetable production, but I did arrive with a keen interest in learning what mix of systems could optimize the opportunities and limits of our farm’s unique mix of soils, climate, and markets. Nearly five years in, we grow and sell a diverse mix of annual vegetables, perennial fruits, hay, and pastured pork. In recognition of the limits to my own management capacity, the addition of each new layer of complexity to the system is small and incremental.

I braved the unknowns of bringing in weaner piglets in the first season because we did not have enough irrigation water at that time to set up the vegetable systems that were most familiar to me. We began our learning with pastured pig systems with a total of eight piglets.

Last spring, we found another certified organic farm in our valley who were ready to sell their small herd of four lowline Angus beef cows. With their mentorship and guidance, I’ve added a system of ‘modified’5 intensive grazing to our pastures. In addition to purchasing the cows, our investments were increases to our electric fencing equipment used with the pigs, additional livestock watering tanks, and a used set of haying equipment.

This spring, I plan to set up smaller paddocks using the electric fencing where I want the cows to terminate the overwintered cover crops. This would be my ‘holy grail’6 system for putting in practice both soil health principles and climate friendly strategies, and much additional research will be needed to evaluate the return on investment and to quantify the contributions to soil health or climate impacts mitigation.

Currently, I have more questions than answers with respect to a full assessment of how this crop-livestock integration performs on our farm. As one part of our response to that, we will be expanding our record-keeping systems in an effort to learn our way towards an evaluation. Connecting our farm efforts to the work of others as recorded in the pages of this magazine, Corine Singfield7 and Tristan Banwell8 are both carrying out promising on-farm research focusing on livestock integration and MIG. Stay tuned for more details!

DeLisa has two decades of experience managing certified organic mixed vegetable production systems. She was lead instructor for the UBC Farm Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture from 2011-2014, and her teaching, research, and consulting continue with focus areas in soil nutrient management, farm planning, and new farmer training. Her volunteer service to the community of growers in British Columbia includes membership on the COABC Accreditation Board and North Cowichan Agriculture Advisory Committee.

Endnotes
1. Examples of long-term agricultural research include > 100 years at Rothamstead in the U.K., Morrow plots and Sanborn Field (USA), > 40 years at the Rodale Farming Systems trial
2. See the ‘science of soil health’ video series published by the USDA NRCS, 2014
3. See the BC Soil SIFT tool for mapped and digitized information on your soil types and agricultural capability
4. Conservation tillage is recognized as a ‘climate friendly’ and soil health promoting practice, and there are many variations on that theme as farmers and farming systems. I use the term ‘careful’ tillage to emphasize attention to monitoring soil moisture conditions to reduce soil physical and biological impacts, and as an overall effort to reduce the number of passes with machinery. Not to be missed, in a discussion of soil health and climate friendly farming practices, are two recently published growers focused books on the no-till revolution in organic and ecologically focused farming systems. See what Andrew Mefford and Gabe Brown have to say in the recent issue of ‘Growing for Market’ magazine.
5. Management Intensive Grazing defined as emphasizing ‘the manager’s understanding of the plant-soil-animal-climate interface as the basis for management decision’ in Dobb, 2013 is a promising, climate friendly practice for BC growers. I use the term ‘modified’ to signal that I have not yet achieved the daily moves or high intensity stocking numbers often associated with MIG. Our paddock rotations have evolved to reflect our immediate needs for lower labour inputs and less frequent moving of the animals with their paddocks.
6. See Erik Lehnhoff and his colleagues’ (2017) work in Montana for an interesting review of livestock integration and organic no-till in arid systems.
7. See Corine Singfield’s article on integrating pigs and chickens into crop rotations in the Winter 2016 issue of the BC Organic Grower.
8. See Tristan Banwell’s article on Managed-intensive grazing in the Winter 2018 issue of the BC Organic Grower.

References
Badgery, W., et al. (2017). Better management of intensive rotational grazing systems maintains pastures and improves animal performance. Crop and Pasture Science.68: 1131-1140. dx.doi.org/10.1071/CP16396
Bunemann, E.K., et al. (2018). Soil quality – a critical review. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 120:105-125. doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2018.01.030
Cunfer, G. (2004). Manure Matters on the Great Plains Frontier. Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 34: 4 (539-567).
Dobb, A. (2013). BC Farm Practices and Climate Change Adaptation: Management-intensive grazing. BC Agriculture and Food Climate Action Initiative. deslibris-ca.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ID/244548
Lehnhoff, E., et al. (2017). Organic agriculture and the quest for the holy grail in water-limited ecosystems: Managing weeds and reducing tillage intensity. Agriculture. 7:33. doi:10.3390/agriculture7040033
Pan, W.L., et al. (2017). Integrating historic agronomic and policy lessons with new technologies to drive farmer decisions for farm and climate: The case of inland Pacific Northwestern U.S. Frontiers in Environmental Science. 5:76. doi:10.3389/fenvs.2017.00076
Richards, M.B., Wollenberg, E. and D. van Vuuren. (2018). National contributions to climate change mitigation from agriculture: Allocating a global target, Climate Policy. 18:10, 1271-1285, doi:10.1080/14693062.2018.1430018
Telford, L. and A. Macey. (2000). Organic Livestock Handbook. Ontario: Canadian Organic Growers.
Worster, D. (2004). Dust Bowl: The southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Province of British Columbia, Environment, M. O. (2018, May 09). BC Soil Information Finder Tool. gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/air-land-water/land/soil/soil-information-finder
Explore the Science of Soil Health. (2014). USDA National Resources Conservation Service. nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/soils/health/?cid=stelprdb1245890
Singfield, C. (2016). Integrating Livestock into Farm Rotations. BC Organic Grower. bcorganicgrower.ca/2016/01/integrating-livestock -in-the-farm-rotations/
Banwell, T., Tsutsumi, M. (2018). Organic Stories: Spray Creek Ranch. BC Organic Grower. bcorganicgrower.ca/2018/01/organic-stories-spray-creek-ranch/

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Healthy Soils Yield Resilient Operations

in 2019/Climate Change/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Livestock/Soil/Spring 2019/Tools & Techniques/Water Management

Three case studies examine soil management practices in the face of climate change

By Rachel Penner, BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative

Improving soil health is one way producers can increase the resilience of their operations in the face of climate change. The BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative (CAI) has supported multiple projects, with funding from the provincial and federal governments, evaluating practices to maintain or improve soil health. Case studies in three regions of the province offer some practical takeaways for farmers looking to adapt to changes in climate.

Okanagan: Adding Compost and Reducing Irrigation

Climate change is expected to increase average temperatures and lengthen the growing season in BC’s Interior, enabling cherry producers to expand production northward and grow crops at higher elevations. However, expanding production may be limited by challenges with managing soil pathogens and by water availability.

A three-year research project focusing on cherry production in the Okanagan resulted in two key findings: 

  • adding compost to old and new orchards helped maintain soil health
  • reducing post-harvest irrigation by 25% did not impact fruit yield or quality

Gayle Krahn, the horticulture manager at Coral Beach Farms, participated in the project. “It’s through these trials that growers gain the confidence needed to invest in mulches,” says Krahn. “As well, the results from the deficit irrigation studies gave us a good handle on how much water we need in our orchards. Climate change could affect our water supply, so we need to be mindful of our water usage while ensuring we can continue to grow healthy crops.”

Louise Nelson with the Biology department at UBC Okanagan led the three-year experiment. Researchers monitored the effects of compost and mulch applications, comparing results with controls in two new and one established orchard, and assessed the impacts of post-harvest deficit-irrigation.

The study, completed in 2018, revealed that adding compost to cherry orchards had the following impacts on the soil:

  • increased soil organic matter, total carbon and nitrogen, other mineral nutrients and pH
  • increased percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in leaves after two years
  • increased fruit firmness and stem pull
  • tended to increase total nematode abundance in soil
  • tended to decrease plant parasitic nematodes in plant roots and soil
  • decreased colonization of roots by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

“I would definitely recommend that growers invest in compost as it helps build soil structure, reduce moisture loss and keep soils cool during summer heat,” says Krahn. “The result is increased root growth and a healthier tree, which equates to growing quality fruit.”

The study also found that a 25% reduction in post-harvest irrigation had no impact on fruit yield and quality, stem water potential, tree growth, or leaf mineral content, giving producers greater assurance that they can safely decrease water usage in their cherry orchards post-harvest.

Delta: Using and Maintaining Tile Drains

Climate projections indicate that winter rainfall will increase and extreme rainfall events will double in frequency by the 2050s in BC’s Fraser River delta. This increase in moisture could prevent farmers from getting onto waterlogged fields, either to plant or to harvest, and could also increase soil erosion, nutrient runoff, and damage to crops.

However, effective spacing and maintenance of tile drains can increase the ability of producers to work their fields.

A project in Delta, completed in July 2017, evaluated practices for improving on-farm drainage management as a way to adapt to wetter spring and fall conditions. The project, led by three researchers in the Faculty of Land & Food Systems at UBC in collaboration with the Delta Farmers’ Institute, the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust and local farmers, set up demonstration sites on two fields and monitored practices across a total of 30 fields in multiple locations.

The results of the two-year project indicated the following:

  • Using tile drains in vegetable crop fields increased workable days by 8% and by 14% when pumps where also used. (The impact was negligible for blueberry fields.)
  • Drain tiles spaced at 15 feet allowed soil to dry faster in the spring than drain tiles spaced at 30 feet.
  • Cleaning tile drains resulted in 12 extra workable days per year at a cleaning cost of $10/additional workable day/acre.

Central Interior: Practising Management-intensive Grazing

Management-intensive grazing, a practice that involves planned grazing and rest periods for pastures, is a context-dependent practice that can vary from one rancher and pasture location to the next, making it difficult to test the impact it has on soil.

A four-year project in BC’s Central Interior, completed in spring 2017, compared grazing practices and used traditional soil sampling methods, plant community composition and remote sensing to measure soil carbon. Results confirmed that management-intensive grazing increased soil carbon, which has important implications for soil health.

“What got me interested in grazing-management practices was the enthusiasm of the ranching community,” says Lauchlan Fraser, a professor at Thompson Rivers University who led the project. “I wanted to see if some of the claims that were being made held up.”

The data showed that, for intensively managed pastures, total carbon was 28% greater and organic carbon was 13% greater when compared to extensively managed pastures. It is widely agreed that this stored carbon is linked to soil health, and a fact sheet for the study stated that: “Benefits associated with greater soil carbon include soil moisture retention, erosion control and species biodiversity.”

These outcomes were experienced by the producers who participated in the study. All the ranchers reported that they saw improved soil moisture retention, which would help them cope better in a drought year. They also thought the practice would work as a tool to control invasive species and improve plant and animal diversity, both important contributors to resilient grazing systems.

“It would be worthwhile to follow up with doing the research required to test how biodiversity and soil moisture are influenced,” says Fraser.

While carbon sequestration is primarily associated with climate change mitigation, the project’s final report found additional implications for climate change adaptation: “Flexibility of electric fencing, and actively managing cattle on a daily basis, was identified to be an adaptation strategy, since a rancher is able to adapt his or her practices based on conditions which vary from one year to the next,” says Fraser.

Project Funding and Detailed Reports

For all three of the projects, funding was provided by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia through the Canadian Agricultural Program as part of the Farm Adaptation Innovator Program delivered by CAI.

Complete project results and fact sheets can be found on the CAI website at:

bcagclimateaction.ca

Rachel Penner is the Communications Specialist for the BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative. She grew up on a grain farm in southwestern Manitoba, received her journalism diploma in Alberta and spent time as a writer and editor in Saskatchewan. She now resides in Victoria, BC, where she works and volunteers as a communications designer and strategist.

Feature photo: Farm field in Delta, BC. Photo credit: CAI – Emrys Miller

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From the Chilcotin Wildfire Front: A Rotational Grazer’s Story

in 2018/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Livestock/Summer 2018/Tools & Techniques
Wildfires scour the landscape around Riparian Ranch

Shanti Heywood

This story first appeared on the Young Agrarians website.

Protecting my home was just something I had to do. People keep commenting on how brave I was—but I like to think everyone has some grit inside of them somewhere to fight when they have to. My heart goes out to those who have lost their homes and those who are still fighting to save homes.

We bought 256 acres of cleared but poor quality (and consequently, affordable) land out in the middle of nowhere. My husband wanted to live off the grid and I grew up off grid, so it wasn’t a huge stretch buying this place. With technology these days we have a lot more creature comforts available off grid than I did as a kid in the ‘90s.

The only catch was my hubby has a company down in Burnaby so I’m up here by myself 90% of the time learning to do a lot of things I never dreamed I’d be doing. Since the land needed improving and was not fenced we bought some solar powered fencers and step in posts and got to work. With affordable solar fencers, the voltage isn’t that much, so you really have to work with the psychology of the animals. If they’re not satisfied they will just leave. Solar fencers definitely let you know if your animals are happy in a hurry.

I moved them last year every 24 to 48 hours, and I saw a good deal of improvement. This year we dedicated a lot of time to fencing. I would only move them once per week but it still did what it was supposed to do.

The forage stayed green a lot longer than the ungrazed areas despite extreme drought conditions. Once the fire started I kind of knew we were in a good spot. Some of my friends, bless their hearts, were heavily involved in helping people evacuate livestock. They were quite insistent that I should get my animals out of there, but I refused. They’re as much my coworkers as they are livestock and they had as much of a job to do during the fire prep as I did.

I put my cows and horses in the hay field (the only area that had not yet been grazed…lots of fuel growing in peat soil) and started to move the step in posts closer to the forest every time they had finished a section. The fire danced around me for a month and finally made a pretty decisive b-line for me. Once the fire started to come I moved the posts back to the grazed area so they wouldn’t burn and set up a second water source in case the first source had fire near it. I moved the animals’ loose mineral tub back to where I thought was safest so they knew that was the best area to hang out, and that was that.

Intensively grazed pasture stopped the spread of fire
Intensively grazed pasture stopped the spread of fire

We watched the fire come in on all sides in one wild night. There’s no way I can describe the power of this fire so I’ll just give a rundown of what happened. August 11—I kind of knew it was the day the fire would come. Five weeks of waiting, watching, and preparing. That morning I got my chores done early and headed inside for a nap. I woke up in the afternoon to roaring fire on three sides and hot—I mean HOT—wind.

My neighbours Becca and Darrel showed up not long after. Darrel was worried about a cabin in the woods, Mikey’s cabin, and wanted to go check that the pump was still running. He went one way and Becca and I went the other way to break a dam upstream to let more water in to the creek for Mikey’s pump. There we are, two girls sitting in the mud listening to the roar of the fire behind us. Once we started heading back we quickly realized the fire was already almost at my property and became pretty worried about Darrel. He never made it to Mikey’s pump because the fire was already in the surrounding forest. We all figured the cabin was a pile of ash.

Another neighbour, Robert, showed up at that point, as did the one and only guy we had ever seen from Quesnel (who is supposed to be managing this fire). He quickly left. There wasn’t much we could do. We stood and watched the flames come in on all sides, completely surrounding us and cutting off all exits.

Once the fire had come in close I turned the waterfowl and billy goat loose and went in to the field that the goats and dogs were in. I called them all out of their huts as I was worried the roofs might catch a spark and led them to the sprinklers. They seemed to understand what I was showing them, as they never walked back in to their huts that night. I was not concerned about the cows and horses out in the hay field. We do managed intensive grazing, which proved very effective at stopping the fire in its tracks. I was pretty confident they were completely safe.

Then the smoke came down on us and for most of the evening we were choking on smoke and couldn’t see a thing. We had a couple little hot spots in paddocks and pastures throughout the night but they either burnt themselves out or were put out.

About midnight the fire calmed down on the Northern side and much to our surprise we heard the buzz of Mikey’s pump in the distance—the cabin had survived. The water from the dam had finally made its way down to us so we used it to put out a few fires and wet certain areas down. At the end of the night we all stood in awe of what had happened and what was still going on. Robert cut his way through my driveway to get home and we headed to bed. Darrel stayed up to keep watch.

The next day my husband finally was able to make it home and the fire ripped through two of our neighbour’s properties (they both made it). We weren’t able to be there for either of them but we cut our way through and went to help as soon as we could. Later that evening Robert’s wife Mamie said, “Who’s even going to believe this? Two people in their mid ‘60s running around with hoses fighting a wildfire.”

The fire burnt right up to where they had grazed and stopped. It was very hot and burnt pretty much anything in its path including green marshes and willow bushes. In one spot where I had just grazed but didn’t move the posts back to the grazed area the fire actually burnt the hot tape but not the posts because the cows had reached under and grazed around them.

Peat soil is quite notorious for burning underground for months…even through the winter…but for whatever reason the field appears to be just fine. My poor neighbour who owns another part of this field about two km away is still battling underground hot spots in his peat soil and he had the fire pass through one day after me. We’ve been over a few times to help him put out spots and move hay.

We have major wolf problems in the winter so fencing and LGDs (livestock guard dogs) are actually more important than this fire ever was. I shocked the heck out of the structure protection crew when I told them my puppies in training were more important than their hoses and I would NOT move them out of their field. Never a dull moment around here.

Horse and cows happy to be safe and sound!
Horse and cows happy to be safe and sound!

None of us are able to get fire insurance due to our remote off the grid locations, so of course we all stayed to fight. We have been spending every day since checking on the properties and putting out little hot spots. It won’t be something I will ever forget, nor will this area ever look the same within my lifetime.

In the end, we didn’t lose anything to the fire. There’s no damage other than a few singed fence posts and of course my canoe I forgot about until we had gone to break the beaver dam when the fire was here. All the prep I did made it a fairly easy experience and the people that stayed with me of course helped immensely. I was never very good at studying for tests in school but this one I feel like I did my homework and was pretty well prepared for.

The fire is still blazing to the East of me. I can see plumes of smoke rising as I type this but for the most part we are safe. It’s never a dull moment here but I think it is safe to say this was one of the most exciting.

facebook.com/riparianranch

Shanti Heywood manages Riparian Ranch, an off grid ranch in the Chilcotin working towards providing humanely raised meat and livestock in the most natural and peaceful setting possible.

All photos: Riparian Ranch/Shanti Heywood

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Animal Behaviour and Stockmanship

in 2018/Livestock/Spring 2018

Or: How to Never Have to Chase Sheep in Circles Around a Paddock Ever Again!

Sara Sutherland

Many people believe that sheep are stupid. Even people who have never worked with sheep tend to think that sheep are stupid. Broadly speaking, there are two categories of things that sheep do that make people think they are stupid. Firstly, sheep mob together, follow each other, follow the bellwether up the steps to the slaughterhouse, and generally show a lack of independent thought. Secondly, sheep scatter, run the wrong way, get out of fences, and when you get almost all the sheep into the pen and close the gate one will inevitably spin around and run out just before you get the gate closed. (If you think about it, this isn’t fair—dumb if you do and dumb if you don’t!)

When you work closely with sheep, you begin to realize that they also show signs of intelligence. Sheep will watch when you fix a hole in the fence, then go and check if it’s really fixed. Sheep will teach each other to get into a feeder that is supposed to only let lambs eat. A researcher in the UK, Keith Kendrick, studied facial recognition in sheep. Sheep would push the button beside the photograph of a sheep they knew, a flockmate, instead of a sheep they didn’t know. They could recognize over 30 individuals, and remember for at least three years after the last time they had seen the animal in the photograph!

So if sheep are so intelligent, if they have this capacity for recognition and learning and memory, why do they do stupid things?

Sheep don’t have a lot of natural defences. They don’t have sharp teeth, they don’t have long fangs, they don’t shoot lasers from their eyes (fortunately). Because they are prey animals, they are highly motivated to avoid being eaten. The most dominant sheep in a flock is not the leader, the most dominant sheep is in the middle where it is safest. When there is a group of animals of similar size running past each other, it is very difficult for the predator to focus on one individual. If you have ever tried to catch an individual sheep out of a flock, you know that you really need to stay focused on one individual in order to be successful. Statistically, a sheep in a flock of twelve is less likely to be eaten than a sheep in a flock of three. So sticking together, circling, and following each other are not caused by stupidity. In fact, they show a sophisticated understanding of statistics!

What about when sheep scatter and run the wrong way? Every animal has a “personal space bubble” or “flight zone”. When you step into their flight zone, they move away. The size of the flight zone varies. The biggest factor affecting the size of the flight zone is habituation—how used to you the animals are. To reduce the size of the flight zone, habituate your sheep to your presence. They are intelligent enough that if you walk through their paddock regularly they will recognize you and become gradually less wary of you. If you step into their flight zone behind their shoulder, they will move forwards, in front of their shoulder they will stop or turn around. Always be aware of where you are in relation to the animal. Why does one sheep spin around and run away from the flock when you go to shut the gate? She is motivated to be close to the other sheep until you step into her flight zone, then she is highly motivated to gap it. So take your time, let them all move into the pen, then watch the outside sheep and move into her flight zone behind her shoulder as you slowly shut the gate.

There are between breed and within breed variations in the size of the flight zone. There are no naturally “bad” breeds though—animals of any breed will habituate with regular calm handling. Animals that are stressed or in pain will have a larger flight zone. You should keep this in mind and not expect them to react the same way they normally do when something is wrong. Sheep in a smaller group will be more reactive than sheep in a larger group. They type of stimulus will also affect the size of the flight zone. The most effective stimulus for getting sheep to move is something that is novel—something that they haven’t been exposed to before. It doesn’t need to be especially loud or annoying, even a plastic bag on the end of a stick works well until they get used to it.

If animals get really stressed, it takes them a period of time to go back to behaving normally. Think about the last time you had a near miss in traffic, and how long it took for your heart rate to go back to normal! So if things really turn to custard, walk away and let them relax and come back 20-30 minutes later (providing it is safe to do so).

Unlike dogs, sheep predominantly use vision to experience their environment. Sheep do see differently than we do. They see things moving on the horizon better than we do, but large things close-up not as well. They see greens and yellows better than we do, but reds and blues not as well (so don’t use them to help you chose your wallpaper). They see vertical bars on a gate better than horizontal ones—if your sheep keep banging into the gate maybe they don’t see it well.

You can tell it’s a Perendale because of the short little ears and because it’s on the wrong side of the fence

When you are designing handling facilities for sheep and cattle, whether it is a set of pens and races or just a couple of gates in the corner of the paddock, use these principles to make it easy for the animals to do what you want them to do. Set it up so that they can circle and stay close together. Make sure they can see where they are going; for example, make sure that you are not running a race into a blank wall. When you are moving animals, use their flight zone and balance point. Don’t chase them around in circles—you will only make them stressed. Habituate them to a handling facility by running them into it a couple of times before you do anything stressful or painful to them in there. Look through a race from the sheep or cow’s eye level to try and spot anything likely to make them baulk as they run through. Sudden changes from light to dark, shadows, reflections, and hanging flappy things are common issues that we might not notice that make sheep or cattle not want to run.

Why is this important? Firstly, if you are set up to use the animal’s natural behaviours instead of working against them you will get the job done more quickly. Secondly, you will get the job done more safely. People can get injured by sheep and cattle, and if you are stressed because you aren’t well set up to handle animals you are more likely to do something dangerous like roll the motorbike or tell your partner you don’t like their cooking. Thirdly, stress makes animals more likely to get diseases. So if you are set up to work with the animal’s natural behaviour instead of against it, you will find your animals are healthier, you are safer, the work is done more quickly and more easily, and you might find that actually sheep aren’t as stupid as you thought!

Sara Sutherland is a large animal vet in the North Island of New Zealand, specializing in sheep. She’s from a large family farm in Quebec with meat and dairy sheep, and currently not only provides vet services for farms from 20-2,000 head of sheep but also conducts research and hosts workshops on management for farms in the region.

Photos: Sara Sutherland

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