4 Good Pasture Principles

It can be a seemingly insurmountable challenge to balance the grazing needs of your herd with the necessity to maintain pasture and forage growth. If only there was a formula to strike that perfect balance between allowing your goats to get the nutrition they need while sustaining plant growth for future grazing. We have good news! There is a clear path to harmony when it comes to grazing.  

Today, we’re talking to Dr. Woody Lane, a livestock nutritionist and forage specialist and consultant, who's the owner of Lane Livestock Services and the author of three books on forages, grazing, soils, and livestock nutrition. In this episode, Dr. Lane delves into the world of management intensive grazing, a nuanced extension of rotational grazing. 

Dr. Lane details the four basic principles you need to implement in order to get the most out of your forage growth and grazing.  He also tackles the common question “how many goats per acre?” with a simple, yet brilliant, task you can perform to answer that question with precision for your specific land and herd. As a bonus, Dr. Lane reveals the reason it has been such a challenge to comfortably address that question in the past. 

See full show notes here >> https://thriftyhomesteader.com/good-pasture/

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Transcript

Introduction 00:03
For the love of goats. We are talking about everything goat. Whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, we’ve got you covered. And now, here’s Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann  00:17
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode. I am joined today by Dr. Woody Lane, a livestock nutritionist and forage specialist and consultant, who's the owner of Lane Livestock Services. He's also the author of three books on forages, grazing, soils, and livestock nutrition. And he's a former State Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin. And we are going to be talking about something that never gets enough attention, whether you're raising goats or any other kind of livestock, and that is pasture. Welcome to the show today, Dr. Lane.

Dr. Lane 00:51
Well, thank you, Deborah. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me to be on.

Deborah Niemann  00:55
I love your book, Capturing Sunlight. And I noticed Section One has a subhead, which I think is just fabulous. It's “The Marvel of the Rumen.” Which if people don't know what the rumen is, it is just--I just think it's the coolest thing ever. Can you tell us, what does that mean, really?

Dr. Lane 01:14
Well the rumen is, you know, I mean, we have arms and legs, and animals have legs and heads and stuff, and a rumen is an organ. And people are kind of familiar with the fact that goats or cattle or sheep have what they call four stomachs, one of which is the classic stomach that we have. The same thing. It's very acidic, and et cetera, et cetera. But in--in animals like goats, over time, they evolved so that that particular organ split into four different parts. And one part, well, without going--one of the parts is much larger than the others and that's the rumen. So it's actually part of the entire stomach. That's like upstream, if you will, if you think of the gastrointestinal tract as a long tube, the stomach is right there and, you know, the tube. But then downstream from the stomach is the small intestine, which is, you know, the intestines. But upstream, that's where these other parts are. And the rumen is a large part of that. And basically, what the rumen does is before feed gets into the stomach and the small intestine, it sits inside the rumen and rots--ferments. It's another way of saying rots. It ferments without oxygen, the same way what happens in a septic tank, except it's more complex, and it's differently complex. But basically, it's--it's a big house for microbes. And in today's world there is a huge interest in the microbiome in humans, you know, you read about that all the time. Well, their microbiome is the large intestines at the end of the tube. Well, what's going on in the large intestine in humans goes on in a much greater sense of what happens in the rumen in an animal. And what that is primarily designed to do is to digest fiber, because we can't--we can't digest fiber--animals, humans, dogs, cats, even cattle, sheep do not excrete the enzyme to digest fiber. And fiber means cellulose and its cousin hemicellulose. And these are very long, large molecules. And you need a certain enzyme to break them up called cellulase or hemicellulase. And we don't create that. However, rumen bugs–bacteria do. And so effectively, the rumen is a large house, a fermentation sack, for all these microbes. And when fiber goes into it--hay, silage, grass, whatever--they specialize in breaking down this fiber and extracting nutrients from it that the animal can absorb, and therefore get nutrition. So effectively, the rumen is a very highly specialized organ for extracting nutrition from fiber. We have a smaller part of that, as we all talk about eating fiber, well, we can't--we don't have the enzymes to break it down–but it goes down into the large intestine, and some of it is broken down there. And you know, we absorb stuff and there's a lot of research going on about that, and that's called the microbiome. The rumen is a much larger part of that for those types of animals that have rumens. And you know what the, you know what the biggest ruminant is? 

Deborah 4:22
Ummm…[laughter]

Dr. Lane 4:23
Well before we get to that, animals--to ruminate means “to chew cud.” A ruminant is an animal that chews cud. So, therefore, what that does is part of the stuff that's in the rumen comes up, gets more chew, goes back down. That is a very important part because it adds a lot of saliva to it and buffers the rumen’s pH and all that type of stuff that goes on. But it has to go up and down the throat, the esophagus. All right. Well, now I'll come back to the question. What's the largest ruminant?

Deborah Niemann  04:51
Is it the giraffe? 

Dr. Lane 4:53
Yes. 

Deborah 4:54
Oh, I got it right!

04:56
Just think about that for a moment though. [laughter]

Deborah Niemann  04:58
Yeah, that’s a long–that's a long esophagus.

05:02
Yeah, really. And it wouldn't be really cool for the giraffe to put his head down just to do that, because not in lion country you don't. So, that is an intriguing concept. But it's the same concept though. You know--sheep, cattle, goats, deer. Elephants are not ruminants because their fermentation sack is at the other end. It's like the microbiome. It’s the huge--it's a huge, large intestine. Like a horse has a huge large intestine. So ruminants are animals that can chew their cud. You might think, Well, what about animals like llamas and alpacas? Well, there's a specialized--they're not ruminants, per se--they're not listed, you know, biologically as a ruminant. They're called tylopods, which is, you know, South American camelids. But they have a rumen. Instead of a four compartment stomach, they have three compartments, so. But they do the same, exactly the same type of thing. So a rumen is a very specialized organ. It also can do things because its microbial population can take some things that are not protein, like urea, or just some waste, you know, various types of nitrogen compounds, and convert them into protein. So that's why we can feed a protein block to animals, because that'll have molasses and urea in it, and a goat, for example, can convert that into protein, and then absorb the protein. And, you know, just like they had, you know, a steak or something. And also a rumen acts as a kind of a barrier to some toxins. You know, there's a lot of toxins in this biological world of plants, and the bacteria and protozoa in the rumen sometimes, not always, but sometimes can break those down so that they detoxify the things before it gets down into the stomach and small intestine. Whereas a horse, for example, is very liable, for example, mold in moldy hay. It's classic. It's one reason that that red clover is not liked, well, compared to–compared to other types of forages for hay for horses, because horses are particularly susceptible to mold toxins, mainly because it comes in–it goes in–the feed goes into the mouth, goes down to the gullet, right into the stomach and small intestine and they get full blast of what’s ever in there. Whereas a goat, it goes into the rumen first and then things change. And then by the time it gets down to the stomach and small intestine, some of these toxins are detoxified. So it's safety. So the rumen is an amazing organ. And, in addition, goats, cattle, sheep also have a large intestine. So basically, there's two parts to its gastrointestinal tract that are designed for fiber. So these animals like goats are exquisitely designed to extract nutrients from fibrous treats, and fibers, meaning grass, leaves, trees, whatever, whereas we can't. So they can do something that we can't. And then, of course, we can get the products from the goats.

Deborah Niemann  07:53
It is so cool. I always love that explanation of, it's not nutritious to us, but it's nutritious to them, and they–their body is able to digest it and get valuable nutrition from it. So, the first real question I want to ask you is one that I know you've heard many times, I've heard it many times. And people always think this is such a simple question, and they're expecting a really short answer, like maybe even just, you know, three or four words. And we both know, this is like probably the simplest question in the world with the most complex answer. So, I'm not actually asking you to answer this question but to explain why this is such a challenging question to answer. And that is, how many goats can people have per acre?

Dr. Lane 08:42
It's actually a simple question, but our system has been designed in the United States to make it complex. Is that a good answer? 

Deborah 08:50
Keep going.

Dr. Lane 08:51
Oh, well, all right. If you, if you, and I've heard this here and other places of course, if you go and get anything from the extension service, NRCS, or whatever else, a recommendation on how to graze, what does it say? That you put the animals out when the–when the grass is about nine inches and take them off about three or four inches, right? Or some combination of that. Maybe depends on the species. Maybe it's perennial ryegrass, you might put them out at seven inches, take them off at two inches, etc. Tall fescue will be different, and alfalfa is different again. But they'll say go out and how many inches to do this, take them off at certain inches, right? That's what you always read and hear. Now my question as a nutritionist is how many inches does a goat need to fulfill his nutrient requirements per day? Let's take a lactating doe in early lactation, say two months after she kidded. How many inches of grass does she need to meet her nutrient requirements? Well, I've asked that question in many, many workshops. And the answer is always the same. I get this deer in the headlight look, because you can't answer that question. You can’t say, I've got–I've got five acres, thirty goats, how long can they stay out there? You can't answer that question. Or I've got–I've got twelve goats, how many acres do I need to keep them out there for a week? You know, very different ways of phrasing the question you asked. 

Dr. Lane 10:16
Well, the reason is a problem in the US. If you have to balance a diet for a goat, first thing you do is you have to say, how much do they eat? And then in that package put as much protein and energy that they need to fulfill their requirements because the requirements are listed in tables. And they–the package that they eat is their daily intake. In pounds. So our recommendations, and the way we work it, is the amount of stuff in pounds, yet the agronomic recommendations are in inches. That's why things are complex. Because you don't have the tools to combine them. There are tools, we just don't use them in the United States. That gives you an introduction to that answer. And when I teach courses in workshops and courses in pasture management, that's the opening for what is ultimately an entire course, but certainly at least one or two three-hour sessions of classes on how to make this thing work. But I can explain it pretty quickly, in a general sense, and it's in my books. It's in a lot of detail in Book One, and how to do that. But effectively, what you end up doing is you actually measure how much stuff is out there on a pasture. Instead of inches, how much feed is out there in pounds? All of a sudden, if you know how many pounds are out there, and you know how many pounds an animal eats per day or, and multiply that by the number of animals, you can have an estimate of how much it takes per day to feed those animals. Instead of inches, I don't care about inches, except a little bit, we now know a lot more about parasites so we want to leave a certain amount. But that's part of it too. Because how we look at it is this, we see how much is out there total. And we call it mass, and you know mass and amounts are the same thing. It's your, you know, your mass is 130 pounds. That's how much you weigh. “Your mass” is the physics class way of saying how much stuff there is. So the total amount out there–total amount of pounds is total. That's everything out there right to the ground. When you're grazing, you're not going to do that. Unless you're going to renovate the pasture and you just want to do that. But normally, you're going to leave some. Well what you leave is called the residual. How much do you leave when those animals leave the pasture? How much you're going to leave there. You know, when you're making hay, it's very, very little. When you under-graze, use a lot, whatever. But you’ve got to leave some; you're not going to scalp things. So you got the total mass. And then you got the residual mass. And the stuff in between is what's available for food, for feed. And that's called the available mass. 

Dr. Lane 12:59
And when you calculate the available mass, then you can go back and say, Okay, here's my animals, let's say they need 100 pounds a day–it's in dry matter–they need 100 pounds a day to fulfill their herd’s requirements for the day. And I've got 1000 pounds out there. So therefore I got 10 days of feed. If I keep them out there for 30 days, I'm going to scalp the ground. And I know this before I open the gate. So if we work in terms of mass–of the amounts that's out there in the pasture–then we can, we can relate that to how much the animals eat. And it doesn't have to be in three decimal places, you’re taking guesses. And not only taking guesses, but when you do that, you change the size of the pastures by electric fence. So if you have a pasture that says oh, that's, that's much too big. So you can bring the fence in to make it smaller, which gives fewer days, but that's maybe what you want. You have all that flexibility based on how much is out there. Well you can't make those judgments, at least intelligently, if you're talking inches. And that's the way they do it in New Zealand and Australia, England, France, Brazil. Use a calculator. It's–and the thing is once you become good, once you do it a bunch of times, your eyes are pretty good at making judgments. I mean, when you, when you look at a goat, a doe, and you are estimating her body condition score, how do you do it? You put your hand on her right? And you use visual. What you’re really measuring is how much subcutaneous fat she's got. But you're not taking a measurement of subcutaneous fat, what you're doing is you're, you're using your hand and making an estimate. And after a while you get pretty good at it. What you're doing is you're calibrating your hand. Or in cattle, you don't put your hands on cattle, you look at them. But you don't really want to put your hands on cattle, but you look at them and you can–and then their scoring system of one to nine. Okay. And you can say, oh that's a four and a half. That's a four or five or seven. What you end up doing is calibrating your eye in cattle and your hand in goats or sheep. Well, when you make enough measurements, you learn how to do this with your eyes on a pasture, and you can look at that pasture and go, Oh, there’s 2500 pounds of dry matter out there, per acre. And if you're off, I mean you move the fence and you're off, you'll get feedback right away because there's too much left, or I had to move it faster because I was wrong. And you're training your eye. 

Dr. Lane 15:21
And the way we do that, in our classes and in our forage groups and stuff, is we take a square, make a square a foot by a foot. Actually, it's a foot by eleven and a half inches, because then the calculation is just you add two zeros. But you–and that's in my book–how to do that. You take a square, you can build it fancy, or you could take a, you know, a cardboard box, flatten it out and cut out a square. I used that for years. It's very simple. You cut out a square of 12 inches by 11.5. And then you take that square and put it down on the ground and cut everything to the–to the ground with shears and make sure they're good shears that they actually work well otherwise, you get very upset. And you take it to the ground. And then you dry it in a–in a microwave. You take off the tare of the bag. Use a paper bag, not plastic, but a paper bag. Put the stuff in there and dry it down so that the weights–and you're measuring the weights on a postal scale in grams. And so you, you measure it until–till the weights stop moving. The weights go lower and lower as you dry it out. And then finally you stop and then take off the tare of the weight of the bag. And that's how much grams of forage that were out there per square foot. And then if you do it by 12 inches by 11.5, let's say you get 21 grams of forage out there, not including the bag is 21 grams of dry matter. And if you have this little square out of 12 inches by 11.5, all I have to do is multiply it by 100. And that's how many pounds of dry matter per acre. It was that straightforward. So if I have 21 grams out of that microwave stuff, then I've got 2100 pounds of dry matter per acre. That one hint though, is make sure that you tell everyone in the house that you're going to do that because the smell is pretty intense. And don't do it the day before Thanksgiving. So, and that gives a number, and that number tells you how much feed is out there, then you make your judgment go, I'm going to leave 1000 pounds. So say I start out with 2500 pounds of dry matter out there, I'm going to leave my residual 1000 pounds, which means I've got 1500 pounds of dry matter above the residual. That's the feed I've got. That's how much that's going to be grazed in that–in that acre. And then I can figure out, I’ve got x number of animals and do a little calculation. It's not hard. Initially, it seems very confusing. You do it once or twice and it makes all the sense in the world. And it's in my book. I have–the last 25 pages of that book is written as a textbook, because it was written as a chapter in the ASI handbook. And I have a copyright on it so I can use it in my–for my own book. And it explains in a textbooky-type way how to do things. The rest of my books are these different essays and they tell about the same thing in different ways. But in the last 25 pages of my book, it just lays it out, I mean bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, just like a textbook. So that's, that's the reason why it seems so complicated when you ask that question, because you're trying to relate how many inches of stuff to how many pounds the animals need, or will eat? And you can't do that. So that's a long-winded answer to what seems to be a simple question. But when we get the tools to do it, it's very straightforward.

Deborah Niemann  18:45
Right. And I think what you've just illustrated is why that answer is going to vary from one farm to another farm. 

Dr. Lane 18:52
Sure, absolutely. 

Deborah 18:54
So that's why–that's why there's not one single answer because every farm has different forages, different conditions, different animals, different everything. So.

Dr. Lane 19:06
And it’s–that's absolutely right. And in different times of the year. Say for example, you've got pastures, you got pastures and it's early May, then you come back to it in mid-August. They're not going to be the same stuff. Firstly, different stuff might be growing, and certainly at different speeds. And it depends on, on which way the pasture is facing. Is it facing south where it heats up more? Is it facing north? Is it a little bit shady? Is it well-drained? Or is it not well-drained? It's got heavy soils, so therefore it's–it retains the heat for longer. I mean, it's a cooler soil because it's wet. I mean, it's–and then different species will grow differently. Depends on the time of the year. Well, that's fine. Of course. So what you do is you take the measurements at different times of the year, and the idea is you take measurements like that and you train your eye so you can walk out there and go, oh, there's about 1000 pounds. That’s not enough stuff out there for feed. No, I better not. I better put them in somewhere else or on the neighbor's land, or something like that. And you could do that. And the idea is, what we do is we would take this square, put it down, dry it down, as, as, as an exercise, and then go, okay, here we have a number, let's say it's 2500 pounds an acre. But everybody has seen that square where–maybe we’re taking some pictures of it or whatever before we cut it. Now we know what 2500 pounds looks like. Now we're training our eye. We're not being graduate students where we take 30 of these little squares and take an average. No, no. That's not–that's for research. What we need to do is be able to train our eyes so that we can look at a pasture in a straightforward way, take a reasonable estimate of how much is out there, and equate that to how much the animals need per day and take an esti–and then calculate how many days. And you can do that before you open the gate. 

Deborah 20:58
Yeah, that is awesome. That is way more detailed, and like the best answer I have ever heard anybody give to that question. So I can see why–

Dr. Lane 21:08
Thank you.

Deborah 21:08
I can see why people love your books so much because this is so practical and so useful. One of the biggest things I see with people doing rotational grazing is that they think that they need a lot more land than they really do and that they try to put, like, a small number of animals in an area that's really way too big. Can you talk a little bit about that and the importance of moving them more quickly?

Dr. Lane 21:36
Yeah, move them quickly. End of question. Actually, it opens up a very, very important part. There are four basic, I think, there are four basic rules to good grazing. Number one, well, you have to realize how forages grow. All right. And without a whiteboard or–I usually when I’m teaching classes or workshops, I like–I usually, I love to use a whiteboard because I can draw things. I'm like the poorest drawer in the world so people make fun of it. But I still can draw lines. And imagine how forages grow with the–with the x-axis being time. So you know, as you see it, and then the y-axis is being how much is out there. And what happens is forages grow, not in a straight line, but in an S curve. Initially, they don't grow very fast, because they got only a couple little leaves in there. And then–then as they get more and more leaves, they grow faster and faster. So, so the curve starts out kind of slow. And then it picks up speed, like–like goes really fast per day. And then it gets to a certain point and starts to even out at the top, and you have basically a large s. That's how, how they grow over time. Well, that S is in three parts. The first part is that low part. The second part is this very steep part where it's–every day is putting on a lot. And then the third part is the top part where it's kind of, it's still going up, but it’s going up very slowly. It’s an S. And those parts are called phases: phase one, two, and three. Phase one is that slow start part. Phase two is this fast stuff that goes on every day. I mean fast every day, it's adding a lot. And then phase three, it's starting to mature. It's slowing down. It’s still adding more stuff, but per day it's not very much. The thing about it is phase one, phase two, phase three is absolutely critical, because that's what's called a forage growth curve. And that brings us back to grazing–when you put the animals in, and when you take them out. And the best grazing, you put them in at the top of phase two before that, that curve starts to flatten out. You put them in phase two at the top of it, ideally, and you leave them in there until they're at the bottom of phase two. Because you don't want to get into phase one, because that's a slow recovery period. If you get into phase one, because you're going to come back on that piece of property, well, you want to come back when there's enough forage there. But if you go into phase one on that previous way through, it's going to take an extra two weeks to get up there, or ten days. So over the course of every time you cycle, it's taking an extra ten days to get up to where you want to graze. Well, three times through the cycle, you've lost a month of grazing. So that brings us to the principles. One of the main principles is stay in phase two growth. That's your most efficient. It is highly nutritious. We don't have to worry about nutrition when you're in phase two growth. The nutrition goes down when you get more mature. That's number one. Number two, leave enough residual at the base. Don't go into phase one, and that also means you don't go down into–towards the ground. You leave a few inches. So that's–that's the second one. Leave enough residual. Protect that residual. The third one is protect the regrowth which is the residual. Because what regrowth is, is when you graze a plant–have you ever, have you ever mowed a lawn and then watched the grass and saw how fast it was growing? 

Deborah 24:58
Oh yeah. 

Dr. Lane 24:59
Like watching paint dry, right? But, you know, okay, when you mow a lawn or you graze, how many days does it take before you start to see new green shoots out of those plants?

Deborah Niemann  25:12
It seems really quick, like just within a few days. 

Dr. Lane 25:14
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I mean, we, we see it in five or six days. Four or five days. Depends on the–on the type of plant. It depends on the grasses, and it depends on the moisture, of course. I mean, you know, and it depends on the time of year. But I'd say five days. All right, if you have animals on that place, right there in that little paddock or whatever, and they've grazed it, and they're still there after five days, and they're walking around, they’ve got nothing else to do except look for food, right? What are they going to eat first?

Deborah Niemann  25:45
The soft, sweet, tender stuff that is sprouting,

Dr. Lane 25:49
Which is your regrowth. Which is exactly the type of plants you want to keep in that field, usually, because the other one is coming back for us. And yet you're putting selective pressure against them by grazing those–that regrowth. So one of–the third principle of good grazing is protect the regrowth. Which brings us to another main principle is get your animals off the field within five days. If you have animals on that field, or pasture, whatever that is more than five, six days, then those animals are going to be eating regrowth. That has major implications. Because there are all sorts of grazing strategies. You put the–put the kids out before the does, or, you know, or you first you–first you put does and then cattle and you multi-species graze, whatever else, and you do this, or maybe you put turkeys out there. I don't care. You name it whatever you want. And that's an academic thing. And that’s very–they're very good strategies, however you do it. I want to protect the regrowth. I want animals off that little piece of property in five days. Doesn't have to be half a day. But the maximum is five or six days. I can put different species. They're all off it in five or six days. Now, let's say a dairy farm, for example, moves animals twice a day anyway. So their breaks might only be a half a day's worth. Okay, that's natural for that type of–but if someone's grazing goats, you know, and they're not moving them every, every 12 hours, they're moving, moving them–they have meat goats, for example. Well, put them out there for four or five days. That's fine. And, and how much they put out there depends on how much is out there, you know. You made the calculations. But whatever it is, you don't want them more than five days. So that's, that's a basic rule. I call it the five day rule. So those are basic, some basic rules of good grazing. And it's–they're relatively easy to apply. Oh, one other one that makes good sense for grazing is the minerals and water stay with the animals. So when they move, the–a little mineral feeder or water, a hose is your best friend. You can have 200 feet of hoses out there without any problem at all. Just have risers somewhere and have clean water coming to them. And you can use them. You know, I've seen, you know you can get a plastic or rubberized water place to feed. And you can use a Hudson valve in there that will automatically stop the water from coming in with a hose. You can build that thing very easily. I can't build anything and I was able to make it work. So you put a Hudson valve in with–in a water trough. We're not talking about a big water trough. This is rubberized–small rubberized thing. You could put 100 goats out there without any problem at all. And have that and you can move it around. It's very easy to move it around. Pick it up and walk over, you know, 100 yards, whatever. So there's ways of doing it. But if you have the goats always go back to the barn–unless there's predators or something so they go back to the barn–what that means is they're also eating on the way back and back and forth. And they're putting pressure against those paddocks or against those forages. So, by being able to keep the minerals and the water with the goats, then you have this unit that is moving under your control around, around your farm. And you're always protecting the forage. 

Deborah 29:11
I love that.

Dr. Lane 29:12
Because kind of what it amounts to is that, yeah, you're a goat farmer, you're raising goats. But you're also a grass farmer. And the goats are your harvesting units. And you might love them and you name them and whatever else. That's great. And you've written in your books about caring for them, etc. But you're, as I say, you're capturing sunlight in this grass and “grass” being the large term for all forages. And in goats it could be, you know, more than grass. It could be browse. But you're always protecting that because that's what you're really growing. So, that's– that gives kind of a long-winded answer to your question about how, how, how to graze.

Deborah 29:53
Oh, I love that. That's really good, because I–my suggestion has always been there's probably going to be some trial and error in the beginning, you know. Look at what you think they can eat in five days, set up your fencing. And then, you know, if they haven't eaten it in five days, you probably should move them. And you know, like, move them to a smaller area next time. 

Dr. Lane 30:14
Right. Exactly right. 

Deborah 30:15
But I love the fact that, like, you gave people, like, some good math that they can do, you know. They can actually make some measurements and stuff to figure out to get a better idea of what to do, like you said, before they even open the gate.

Dr. Lane 30:29
And it's kind of really important to recognize what you're doing when you're moving the fences. You're allocating feed. That's what you're doing. You're not saying, well, here's my, you know– big operations in Oklahoma and Texas, we're going to have permanent paddocks, of course. But–but they're doing the same thing in their own way with cattle, and they're moving different paddocks. It's a larger scale. Principles are still the same. But with the people raising goats, what they're normally doing, you have electric fence, you can set it 10 yards further out or not. And you can quickly get feedback going, uh-oh, I left too much there this time. And next time, move it a little closer, and the goats are training you really well. All right. And the other thing is, it's kind of like a basketball game. You can learn the basics of dribbling, and shooting, and all your plays, and whatever else, okay. You learn that. That's what they do, you know, when they do the practices. But you actually get in a game. You're using those principles, but everything is flexible, because things are changing. And every year is gonna be different, because the weather is different. And then it's built on the previous years, how good or badly you handled the forage. So, you know, you got more weeds or less weeds, and whatever else you got, you know, all this type of thing. You may have more animals or less animals. So, but the principles stay the same. And you've heard of the term management intensive grazing. And, as opposed to–it's different than rotational grazing. Rotational grazing, you got this set up, you go, I’ve got to go X number of days in each cell, and I'm gonna come back in 32 days or whatever else, or 60 days. That makes, actually people do that it falls apart. It's a lot of extra work. And you don't get a whole lot of, a lot of–if you’re doing it that way, you don't get a lot of increase because it’s a lot of extra work. And the reason you don't is because it's, it's too structured. Plants don't grow according to structure. They grow according to what time of year it is. I mean, a wait period of 30 days before you get to a place may work really well in August would be a disaster in May. So what you have to do is move fence according to where the plants, how the plants are growing. What happens if you fertilize a place? Suddenly you get three times the amount of growth. Now what? Or just part of what you fertilized? So you get to that part, you're going to move the fence a lot faster. That's okay. What you do is you allocate feed according to the principles, and you move things around. And then management intensive grazing is not the classic rotational grazing, which you could put on a blackboard or whiteboard and have these little boxes and say every 10 days you do this or that. No, no, no. What you do is you move fence. And it's not– and people think management intensive grazing, for example, it's just animals moving in these small little groups, and they're moving very quickly into, into, like, I don't know, every six hours or two hours. Whatever, whatever they're thinking, No, it's not that at all. It's not intensive grazing animals always. Goats always graze intensively. It’s intensive management. It's a thinking person's way of approaching managing the forages with those animals. I've never seen a goat go to a–with some clover, and get up there and go look at it and step back going, nah, I better wait on that one. It doesn't do that. They're gonna go at it full blast, period. And it's our job as managers to use that to where we want them and how long we want them. And with all that, underneath that is the principles of forage growth and response. And we are adapting our grazing to match that, given the principles of good grass growth and good soil health. That's, again, another long-winded answer. But it's in my book in all sorts of different perspectives of that from both books. And I find it fascinating.

Deborah 34:21
And that’s a wrap for today’s episode. The interview with Dr. Lane ended up going more than an hour, so we decided to split it into two episodes for you, and this seemed like a natural stopping point because, after this, I started asking Dr. Lane some specific questions that I got from my Goats 365 members about forage and stuff. So, we’re going to do a bonus episode with the second half of this episode. That will be next week. I know we have normally been doing every other week lately, so you get a bonus episode next week where Dr. Lane is talking about warm season grasses including sorghum sudangrass which has some potential toxicity issues, and then he answers my favorite question which is “what is the best kind of pasture for goats so where you can stop worrying about them dying?” So be sure to join us next week for that episode. 

Deborah 35:16
And that’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to hit the “subscribe” button so that you don’t miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit ForTheLoveOfGoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/ LoveGoatsPodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now!