Once the northwestern producer pulls up his worn coveralls, steps into heavy-duty snow boots and reaches for his thick winter gloves, he leaves the warmth of his home to brave the harsh, cold season to put out a bale of hay for his cows. As the cold melts into spring, he’s left with a manure-filled mess before the next cycle of calving begins. But what if there was a way to mitigate the mess and reduce labor necessary in those low-temperature months? 

Charles Totton, Totton Angus Ranch, says swath-grazing fills those needs on their Chamberlain, S.D., operation. 

“It takes a lot less work and diesel fuel if you only plant and swath versus cutting silage or baling and hauling the bales,” he says. “Probably the best thing about it is the manure is back on your field where you took the forage off.”

The practice

For Totton and his operation, there’s a system in place for swath-grazing. 

“We plant what we call cane, but it’s a sorghum; and we drill (plant) it, and we try to drill it kind of thick and kind of late in the season to keep the size down for better grazing,” he explains. “Then we try to swath the cane as late as possible. Generally, we graze into February and windrows will still be green on an average year.”

Garland Dahlke, their eastern neighbor in Iowa, says swath-grazing can be a viable option for producers in a variety of winter environments. The research scientist in the department of animal science at Iowa State University has seen the practice used in the Western United States and Canada, as well as in Iowa. 

He explains the timeline for the practice can take up to a few months, but saves time in the long run. 

“What we’ve been doing is planting the sorghum in June or July. We may have a crop on that field beforehand and we can take that off as grain,” Dahlke says. 

He notes cereal grains like triticale or rye work great to swath in cooler climates, but warmer-season grasses like pearl millet and sorghum tend to do better in Iowa due to the hot, dry summers. 

“With sorghum, we may cut once at the end of July for baling or chopping if there is a lot of growth, and soil moisture facilitates regrowth, the regrowth is then used for swath-grazing,” Dahlke explains. “We’ve been cutting it around Thanksgiving time to early December, prior to the first sizable snowfall.”

They rake the mowed forage into windrows that are large enough so the cows can find them when the snow gets deep. Depending on weather and forage needed for cattle based on the time of year, Dahlke says the timeline of cutting and swathing may change. 

“Usually it’s mid- to late December when the cows are moved from cornstalk residue to where they’ll start grazing swaths,” Dahlke explains. “The first years we did it, we grazed through February and did OK. Now the cows are out on swaths through most of the calving season, which starts in mid-March.”

At Dahlke’s, they’ve started calving season with cows on swaths and stalks for the last two years. Keeping the cow’s health top of mind, he explains using swaths alone wouldn’t meet the mother’s nutritional needs during parturition and milking.

“We’ve supplemented those cows that last three weeks of their third trimester prior to calving,” he says. “Sometimes we use corn gluten feed or something of that nature, and we just pour it right on top of the swaths that are out there.” 

When the cows have cleaned up all the swaths in one area of the field, Dahlke says it’s easy to move them.

“We give those cows a new swath to graze every two to three days,” he notes. “We have a Gallagher tumblewheel fence that we set up in the fields where they’re grazing, and we’ll roll that ahead and give them about two to three more days of grazing on fresh swaths.” 

Totton uses a similar approach when moving cattle to a new area to graze. 

“The cows we find after a month, they get bored because they’re eating monoculture,” he says. “So then we figured out if we might move electric fence once a week and then go feed them a couple times towards the end of the week, they have a little different variety of feed.”

Manure management

Totton appreciates the control he has over manure by using swath-grazing. Trying his hand at innovation, the producer has implemented something new for this year’s swath season.

“We planted a male sterile hybrid, and it won’t pollinate itself, so it won’t actually set seeds on,” he says. “If you don’t set seeds on, the nutrition will stay in your stock instead of going into the seedhead.”

In theory, Totton explains how both the cattle and land benefit from the use of this hybrid. After digesting the nutrients, the cattle will then defecate manure back onto the soil and replenish the nitrogen and minerals originally taken out because of the deeper-rooted swath crops planted. 

“It’s about as close to a sustainable practice as you can get because most of your nutrients wind back up on the land,” he adds. “A lot of people tell you cane is hard on your soil. Well, it’s actually good for your land, because then other plants can use the nutrients that cane brought up from way down there.” 

Avoiding the hassle of hauling manure is a pro in Dahlke’s opinion. He says on the land at Iowa State University where they swath-graze, manure is spread evenly throughout the no-till ground. 

“When you feed a round bale, you always get a pile of hay that they don’t eat, with a pile of manure around it,” Dahlke says. “Here manure is spread out pretty evenly, the swaths are cleaned up pretty good, so resuming a no-till corn-bean rotation is only a matter of waiting until the soil dries and pulling the planter out.”

He explains manure piles also make for a dirty first dose of colostrum for the calf. 

“Using swath-grazing when the calf is born and nurses on the cow for the first time, the calf doesn’t get a mouthful of manure because a lot of times when you feed cows round bales and stuff, the cows tend to lay near that round bale and they lay in the manure and they get a little dirty underneath. If they’re in the feedlot, it’s even worse,” Dahlke adds.

He says fewer calves have been treated for scours as a result of swath-grazing. With less time, labor and resources used during calving season, he says they’ve been pleased with the practice. 

“We haven’t pulled a calf yet from swath cows, and they hit the ground running,” Dahlke says. “It’s been a nice feature that we’ve found, too, that these calves have been turning out really good.”