Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

The rise in land values, lack of available pasture and drought stress to pastures in South Dakota and surrounding states have cow/calf producers looking at alternatives to pasture grazing.

As a result, producers are beginning to question the viability of drylotting their cows for a portion of the year, if not year-round.

South Dakota State University Miner County Extension livestock educator Jim Krantz says the farm bill program has encouraged farmers to break up more pasture and use it for crop production.

"A key player in this potential ‘drylot movement' is the fact that most farmers have benefited immensely from the record calf prices since 2004," Krantz said. "They are trying to find ways to maintain cow numbers at the same time as pasture rents are escalating and pasture and hayland are being converted to crop ground."

He also says pasture rents have gone up significantly.

"I think the average in Miner County is $37, but we've got guys paying $50 an acre," Krantz said.

Drylotter Tyler Pedersen of Rock Rapids, Iowa, says the main reason he switched to drylotting his herd the last two years was the limited amount of pasture available in his area.

"We've got more cows than we've got pasture for so we need to make a difference and make it work," Pedersen said. Pasture rent in the Rock Rapids area, Pedersen says, ranges anywhere from $45 to $65 per acre.

SDSU Extension beef specialist Cody Wright says drylotting cows is one way to keep costs down and utilize some cheap feeds.

Producers can use feeds like baled cornstalks and wheat straw and blend them with distillers grains or corn gluten to create a diet that will meet the needs of a cow.

"With a cow that's in midgestation, you can go and feed her cornstalks and modified distillers grains and probably get that done for maybe as little as 50 cents a day or less, depending on what kind of pricing you've got in freight and whether or not you're using your cornstalks or someone else's," Wright said.

Producers can also tailor diets specific to cows in various stages of production. Drylotting may also make it easier to manage multiple groups of cows.

"You can tailor make your diet to meet her needs and not spend any more money than you have to overfeeding crude protein," he said.

Wright says drylotting cows is very likely a cheaper alternative to renting pasture, especially if producers are looking toward a year-round system.

If producers put up good silage yields and use less expensive feeds like those mentioned earlier, they will probably come out ahead.

But, Wright cautions if producers buy grass hay, a protein supplement and every other feed, then it will probably become less advantageous.

Wright warns producers to keep in mind the management needs of cows in a drylot, especially in the spring and summer months. In the spring, worry about mud; in the summer, worry about dust.

"There's a lot of health issues. That's probably the biggest challenge as it relates to maintaining cows in a drylot year-round," Wright said.

Pedersen, who calves in March and April, says in his experience, the mud has been the bigger health problem.

"A lot of spring rain makes it difficult. When you get all that mud when the calves are little, it adds a challenge," he said.

Pedersen combats the mud by laying down more cornstalk bales for bedding in attempts to keep them dry.

The winter is probably the easiest time to maintain the cows in the drylot. Once the Pedersens have the corn combined in the fall, they run the cows on cornstalks for about three months and then return them to the drylot.

"It's actually easier in the winter because the calves aren't on them and you just have the cow to work with," Pedersen said.

Wright says bedding will help to overcome the mud, but suggests having a mound in the lots to get them up out of the mud.

Drylotting cows does not necessarily have to be done in a hardcore feedlot setup, Wright says. It can be done in a small pasture that a producer wants to keep the cows in or a handful of acres, rather than the whole thing.

"The biggest thing is if your goal is to get the cows off the pasture, then by all means fence it off and don't let them have access to the rest of the pasture because they may still go out and try to find green roughage and continue to abuse the pasture," Wright said.

"So your best bet is to put up a temporary fence or get them into a sacrifice pasture where they can be fed and you know they're going to beat up the pasture beyond belief, but you're willing to accept that because it's going to be good for the rest of your pasture," he said.

Wright reminds producers that drylotting cows year-round is a larger labor requirement than having them on pasture.

Depending on how large the herd is, producers may be able to just feed bales of hay and keep a feeder full all the time.

"But if you're using silage and you're doing just strictly daily allocations, you have to be there every day to feed so there's not as much flexibility t i m e - w i s e , " Wright said.

In herds where feed needs to be fed every day, Wright says investing in a TMR mixer wagon will be worth the money.

"Daily allocations have to be very, very tightly controlled so the scale's going to be absolutely essential," he said.

In Pedersen's experience, his calves in the drylot have not weaned as big as calves from pasture. He sells all of his calves at weaning or within a month of weaning and he still feels that drylotting instead of renting pasture works in his operation.

"I feel that it does and you don't have to pay the pasture rent," Pedersen said.