Management Intensive Grazing

Farm Profile: Tony and LeVonna Uekman

Uekman Family Farm

Quitman, Arkansas

(501) 589-2349

Tony and LeVonna Uekman run from 60 to 120 head of stocker cattle on 65 acres of pastureland at Quitman, Arkansas. Quitman is located in Cleburne County in central Arkansas, about 50 miles north of the state capitol at Little Rock.

While LeVonna was raised on a cow-calf and commercial fish farm in Lonoke County, Arkansas, Tony is a “city boy” from North Little Rock who had never farmed before. But he enjoys the country lifestyle very much. They’ve owned their farm at Quitman about 10 years.

Like most cattle producers in the U.S., the Uekmans raise cattle part-time and work off the farm for main income. Both are agents with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

Grass farming: The Uekmans view themselves as grass farmers, not cattle producers. Grass species on their farm include rye, crabgrass, Bermuda, fescue and legumes. They have found that MIG naturally encourages plant diversity.

The Uekmans were reluctant at first to convert their farm to rotational grazing under the belief that it would cost a lot of money and require them to work harder managing all those mini pastures. But as they discovered, management intensive grazing (MIG) is “easier” in the long run. It has enabled them to enrich their family life and enhance the quality of their farm, while boosting beef output and family income.

“I would recommend this for anyone that’s already in the cattle business. Or thinking of going into it,” LeVonna says.

And Tony adds, “The hardest part is saying, let’s try it. After you try it one time, you’ll notice that it’s a lot easier and you can run more animals on your farm. I suggest everyone try it in stages. We tried it on twenty-five percent of our farm, and as you can tell we’ve done one hundred percent since.”

LeVonna explains the impact on forage between management intensive and continuous grazing systems: “Cattle will normally eat the plants that they like best. Every time there’s a little bit of re-growth, they’ll go back and nip leaves off and keep them nipped off. The grasses they don’t like will get really tall and ahead of them, and then they won’t eat them. Eventually they will stress those plants that they like so much, so that root reserves become stressed and the plants die, and weeds and undesirable grasses will take their place. And so you see real uneven grazing where you have real high grass that they don’t like, and what they do like is eaten to the ground. In management intensive grazing systems, paddocks have a more manicured look because you can force cattle to eat everything. They eat the young tender weeds right along with the grass.”

The vigor and height of the above-ground part of a grass plant often reflects the condition of the root system, LeVonna explains.

“If you let your grass get too short and if there’s not enough growth on top, you can’t collect that sunlight to make those roots grow that would give you more leaves,” she says. “And so you want to have enough leaf area left when cattle leave that pasture, so that you have a quick re-growth.”

The Uekmans are paid by commercial cattle brokers to “contract graze” groups of stocker calves on their farm.

The current carrying capacity of the Uekman farm varies with the seasons, weather and grass growth. The Uekmans run an average three groups of stocker cattle a year. In the spring, they usually run around 120 stockers as Bermuda and orchard grass fields are overseeded with ryegrass. But in summer and droughty weather, the stocking rate averages 66 head.

“When we receive our cattle, they’re already preconditioned on a neighbor’s farm and he holds them for four to six weeks, and they get all their shots, and are over the stress of being moved. We’ve not seen many health problems, and I think a lot of that’s due to the rotational system and getting fresh grass, and having good water sources. The cattle stay healthier.”

Each batch of stockers are kept anywhere from 90 to 120 days.

“Their length of stay depends on what weight they are when they come in, and what weight we’re taking them to. Typically they try and bring them to us around 550, and we take them up to 750 to 800 pounds,” LeVonna says.

Benefits of MIG

Why they call it ‘MIG’ “They call this management intensive grazing because a lot of it is based on your management decisions,” LeVonna says. “You have to go out there and look at what grass you have and what‘s coming up, and determine how much feed you want to go into an animal, based on what kinds of gains that you want to make. And so, there are a lot of thought processes going on. It’s really not that labor intensive. A lot of it is using your thinking skills to decide what’s going to be best for your cattle and for your land.”

The Uekmans list some of the benefits of Management Intensive Grazing they have experienced:

• MIG enables you to better convert a cheap natural resource called grass into the high value product called beef. As you rotate cattle to fresh pastures, they “top graze” on the best part of the forages for higher energy and protein intake, and so weight gains and animal health naturally increase. “Right now we try and put the cattle on the grass when it’s five to six inches tall and take it down to a couple of inches,” LeVonna says. “ We like them to top-graze and not have to eat the more fibrous undergrowth.”

• MIG enables the Uekmans to achieve better land management. Pastures are created with temporary fencing not on grids but on the natural contours of their land for fuller grazing use and conservation. They make wiser use of marginal land and are able to better protect water sources from erosion and contamination. They have been able to develop a wildlife buffer and so land for hunting also.

• With MIG, the Uekmans have witnessed a greater diversity of forages and an improvement in the organic matter of their soils. Populations of “soil livestock” such as earth worms and dung beetles have increased. Manures are better distributed as cattle are moved through the pastures. As a result, soils stay in better balance and they use less fertilizer.

• Because cattle are moved often on the Uekman farm to new forage and drier ground, they seldom experience foot and hoof problems. And because the grass they graze is higher in length, cattle do not graze near the ground and so have fewer parasite problems. The taller grass enables cattle to get a good mouthful with nearly every bite, and the increased vitality makes it easier for them to ward off disease and the effects of stress.

Water systems: Cattle are given limited access to a pond on the Uekman farm. This helps to control erosion to pond banks and also gives the cattle less time to hang around a water source – which means more grazing time. A well and system of water lines with “quick disconnects” provide water to tanks in the series of temporary pastures. The goal is to not walk the cattle too far to water or grass so they walk off pounds of beef. Tony Uekman says, “You really don’t want them to walk more than seven or eight hundred feet to water because they’ll tend to graze closer to the water system, especially when it’s real hot, and dry. In the wintertime when they don’t drink as much water, it’s not as critical.” The Uekmans have established watering spots that are not more than 400 feet apart. With moveable water tanks and in ground plastic pipe, they service four paddocks every four hundred feet. “We use hundred gallon water troughs, and floats on the troughs so they automatically refill as cattle drink. The floats also prevent the troughs from over-filling,” Tony says. Shade factor: Shade for the cattle to relieve heat stress is an issue the Uekmans are working on. As LeVonna says, “We only have a couple of areas of trees, and so when the summer is real hot, that is a stress factor for our cattle. We have planted trees on two portions of the farm and are also considering constructing some mobile shade structures.”

Fencing: Permanent electric fencing is used on the farm perimeters, seven permanent pastures and lanes of the Uekman farm. They use temporary electric fencing, which is 1-strand high tensile (12.5 gauge) wire, to create up to 40 mini pastures on the farm. Most pastures are between one and two acres in size. Polytape is used to create gates. “Most people want everything squared off, they like all their fences straight, but we run everything on the contour to match the lay of the land,” LeVonna says. “That allowed us to break out our north facing and south facing slopes and we wanted to do that because things grow differently on the north and the south sides. The south side warms up a lot quicker in the spring, but it also gets hotter and drier. And the cool season grasses like it a little cooler, so we planted them on our north facing slopes because they grow so much better there.” The Uekmans recommend that beginners use temporary electric fencing so they can more easily make changes and improvements in the fencing system layout. As cattle are moved through the fencing system, producers see how it can be improved for more efficiency and improved grass growth.

Developing a ‘grazers eye’ Judgments concerning pasture growth and rotations are made daily. Beginners can use what is called a “forage stick” to measure forage height and quality. With experience, farmers will develop a “grazer’s eye” as to when cattle should be moved into and out of a pasture. After grazing, pastures on the Uekman farm are rested an average 40 days in dry weather, and 20 days in wetter seasons such as spring. “The season in a year determines your rest period,” LeVonna says. “In the spring, things are growing really fast, we have lots of moisture, and pastures may only need fifteen to twenty days rest. But in the hot, drought season, the grasses grow a lot slower and they may need forty or forty-five days rest in between grazing.”

Uekman farm notes
Years in commercial operation: 10 total. MIG practitioners for 6 years
Total acreage: 80 acres. 65 acres are in grassland, with the remainder planted to forest buffers and wildlife plots.
Soil type: Linker, fine sandy loam with rolling hills of 3-8% slope.
Climate zone: 7
Equipment: ATV, hay equipment, bushhog, electric fencing system
On-farm facilities: No barns, but working pens for loading and sorting animals. We have 3 ponds and a well that provide water to cattle.
Labor: Tony, LeVonna and their son, Trey, do all the labor.
Weeks/year in production: Our weeks per year in production vary. Sometimes we run cattle almost year round, if we have a lot of hay and are unable to sell it at a good price. Sometimes we run 2 sets of stockers - a spring set and a fall set, with no cattle in Aug, Jan, Feb.
Certification: Pesticide license.
Markets: Contract grazing and do not have to market our product when we are running stockers. Hay is sold locally.
Types of forages: Bermuda, crabgrass, fescue, orchard, clover, ryegrass, vetch,
Special expertise: We did raise pastured poultry a couple of years ago, and did well with it and liked it. However, the processing plant we used is no longer in operation and we do not have the time to process birds on farm.