Grazing Management Strategies Class on KMOT-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

Grazing Management Strategies Class | Video

Andrew Keller

1/6/2009

Winter usually doesn`t have ranchers working from sunrise to sunset. Because of this spare time, farmers in Dickinson have the opportunity to learn about developing pasture-forage management plans.

In May, Drew Erhardt will be in the real world. He`ll graduate from Dickinson State University and he plans to head back to the family ranch in Center to help his dad with 400 cows. He`s taking his final week of winter break and learning management techniques that could help him in the cattle industry.

"It opens your eyes to the biological side of it. They say you can go out and look and assess with your eyes. Well, that`s half of it, but then you can come back in here and understand why that grass isn`t growing back and what`s causing the biology of the grass to do that, and that kind of stuff," Erhardt says.

It`s part of the 12 month livestock, pasture, forage management planning course that DSU and NDSU offer. A team of instructors will explain the basic principles and concepts of land and resource inventories, rangeland ecosystems, grass growth, and effects of defoliation, among many other topics.

"It`s a good opportunity that ranchers want to improve the efficiency of operations, substainability of operations, improve vegetation on their places and learn how to manage it ecologically," says Toby Stroh, an instructor for this course.

"What we`re actually able to do is improve the income to be comparable to an actual city job, so animal agriculture is not a low income occupation," Lee Manske, who`s also an instructor, says.

They both say that the wealth of the produce starts with the nutrition of the land. And using science, they can find the best ways to improve the soil, thereby increasing the farmer`s wealth.

"It`s important for us to understand that we are in the beef business to produce beef, and the way we do that is with grass. And if we don`t manage our grass, we can`t produce beef," Erhardt says.

The course started this afternoon and will run through Friday. They`re using Geographic Information Systems software to plot out the grazing management plans.

BACK TO DICKINSON STORIES

Search News Stories

BACK TO NEWS HOME

Sister Stations: KFYR TV in Bismarck, KUMV in Williston, KQCD in Dickinson