Any type of water source except rural water can run high in salts. Stock dams are more susceptible than other sources but even wells and spring fed sources can be toxic.
SDGC Blog
In March 2023, the South Dakota Grassland Coalition put on Grazing Management Workshops where participants presented their grazing concerns.Those concerns were then addressed by local ranchers and agency personnel.
Recognizing the importance of public awareness about the benefits of South Dakota’s native plants to the state’s agricultural economy, Governor Kristi Noem has proclaimed April as Native Plant Month.
The Grazing School Follow-Up Range Consulting Program was designed to help you implement the tools and techniques you learned at the grazing school. It’s one thing to learn the principles, but putting them into practice can be overwhelming. We’re here to help.
Assessing pasture forage is a key step in planning grazing strategies. The grazing stick utilizes simple plant leaf height measurements in inches. For every inch of growth, the grazing stick estimates how many pounds of dry plant material are available. This number is then represented as pounds per-acre, per-inch of growth.
…increasing the health of the soil, which in turn, increases the health and vigor of your plants while hopefully reintegrating warm season, native grass improved plant diversity or increasing plant density. The increased plant diversity helps our insect and bird populations.
That first summer we rotated fifty yearlings through six winter pastures. Two years later we were moving 250 yearling steers every two to three weeks through 800 acre pastures. This rotation took us into August when we normally sold the yearlings. We were able to keep the yearling open heifers all summer instead of selling them in the spring.
Linda Gilbert, the most recent addition to the South Dakota Grassland Coalition’s board of directors, isn’t new to the cattle industry. Linda was raised alongside cattle and horses in western South Dakota. She inherited the land ethic of her father Ken Halligan, a lifelong cattlemen and land steward. A veteran of the cattle industry and …
Linda Gilbert: Managing Grass with Cattle, a Little Water, and Plenty of Good Ideas Read More »
The holistic goal setting on your ranch acts like a filter to help you make decisions and point you in the right direction. It grounds you and helps you avoid impulsiveness and miss steps you might regret.
By Mary A. Scott The 2018 Rosebud Area Youth and Adult Range Workshops were held on Tuesday, July 31st in a pasture near Rosebud, SD. Attendees in the Adult Workshop started out the morning with the Tabletop Rainfall Simulator showing runoff and infiltration from different samples of local native range plant communities. The continuous season …