Quantify your Stocking Rate Upside: Holistic Land Planning Made Real

Holistic Land Planning projecting stocking rate has often been based on hope and a prayer. Holistic Managers do increase stocking rates and I have seen grazing planning double stocking rates. It's like getting a free ranch without increasing overheads!

But if you flip doubled stocking rates to your banker, an investor, or a potential business partner, your conversation will be shorter than a calf's tail born in a Rocky Mountain January blizzard. How do we quantify our intentions? With a projected stocking rate grounded in data.

Some holisticators think stocking rates have no upside limit. They ascertain that if we are anal about planning and implementing our grazing planning, the upward spiral of increased yields will climb like a beanstalk up a cumulous cloud. Good on ya'.

But let's say you're a young woman who has demonstrated the ability to heal soil and repair ecosystems with the management of livestock. How does she pitch her case for equity in a ranch without a means of quantifying increased stocking rates? Or for that matter, a fifth-generation, first-born, young man outlining a capital infrastructure development? The cost of under or over-estimating the potential stocking rates is real.

Blind spending on infrastructure, without an idea of the future, increased forage supply borders on malpractice.

However, it is easy to quantify the present state of our ecosystem function and the potential upside. The requirement for a successful journey requires clarity in knowing where we are and where we want to be. In Holistic Management this is wrapped into our holistic context. Our Whole Under Management includes our historical stocking rate and the land's ecological function. Our Future Resource Base describes how our land base will look, with rivers connected to the floodplain, diverse grass, forb, shrubs, trees, and thriving soils. Two simple steps bring foundational numbers to the plan.

Know your baseline. Use Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) to quantify the level of your ecosystem function. EOV provides state-of-the-art ecological function monitoring. EOV will also provide the actual production and animal days per acre available now, at this site. Combine this data with the best historical actual use grazing records as possible.

Quantify your potential production. In the United States, many of us have access to the Web Soil Survey (WSS). Other countries may have an equivalent tool. There are instances where the WSS doesn't align with reality when ground-truthed, but that is the exception and not the rule. The WSS can inform us of our potential production.

The WSS data defines the production of each soil type in a poor, average, or excellent year. For example, the soil 48-Sinkson-Thermopolis association, as seen in the WSS format in Figure #1, says we have the potential to produce 800 pounds per acre in an average year. If we take one-half, that equals thirteen animal days per acre (ADA). (800 pounds / 2 = 400 pounds harvested / 30 pounds / ADA = 13.33) The maximum upside potential on the soil type will be thirteen ADA.

More importantly, it defines the species composition we can expect to see as our soils heal.

Figure 1

Properties that have been season-long grazed or rotated without planning for plant recovery, will most likely have a lower composition of the high-producing plants and higher populations of weeds and low-producing plants. For example, in Figure #1, the significant impact on future stocking rates will be in our species diversity.

For example, our EOV data may document that we have 70% bare ground, rabbit brush, and only 5% Bluebunch wheatgrass, with 25% Prairie junegrass. The EOV visual square estimates 35 yards X 35 yards = 1225 yards squared / 4840 sq yards/acre = 3.95 ADA. Most likely, the actual use data will be in this ballpark, which means we have an upside potential of 325% from 4 to 13 ADA.

While the WSS proposes that healthy soil and management, can shift our species composition to 35% Bluebunch wheatgrass, that change may take years. Don't be disheartened. We will get significant increases in production on our way to changing species composition, including the following.

By increasing stock density, we will utilize many overrested plants, both in consumption and as mulch to cover the soil. See a 10-15% increase in stocking rate over 1-3 years.

Reduced time of grazing and longer recovery periods will improve plant vigor. See a 10-15% increase in stocking rate in 1-3 years.

Greater soil disturbance, covering soil surface, and longer recovery periods will create germination sites and increase plant density.

Consider what adding one plant per square foot, or 43,560 plants per acre, adds in production to your ranch. You’d see greater than a 20% increase in SR in 5-7 years.

Planning timing so we don't graze in the same area in consecutive years will increase plant diversity, allowing us to realize a 10-15% increase in SR in 5-7 years.

Finally, long-term implementation of high disturbance and long recovery periods will return the plant community to the higher-producing species prevalent in the soil survey, gaining a 25-50% increase in stocking rate in 10-20 years.

Let's say we have 3,000 acres in this example. That means we begin with 4 ADA X 3,000 = 12,000 ADs. The upside potential of 13 ADA X 3,000 acres = 39,000 ADs.

Now let's assume we custom graze 700-pound yearlings for 130 days or 91 animal units. We can graze 132 head to begin (130 days X 0.7 AU = 91 AU. 12,000 ADA / 91 AU = 132 head yrls).

But the upside potential is (39,000 AD / 91 AU = 428 head! Even if we had planned to double our stocking rate at 264 yearlings, we are well below the potential. At 15 gallons/day / AU for stock water, we will need 6420 gallons per day, or a delivery of 4.5 gallons per minute. Not to mention storing at least twice that much water.

Thinking through the practical management of 132 head vs. 428 head brings about a different perspective when planning infrastructure. The issues are compounded if we plan for 30,000 acres vs. 3,000. Suddenly, we are looking at more than 4,000 head.

Our Holistic Land Planning needs a realistic upside and the WSS can provide a reasonable target.

Join us at the UVE learning site on Sept. 25-29 to quantify your stocking rate upside and make Holistic Land Planning real.