Success Story 

Grazing program provides greener grass

Whoever said the grass isn’t always green on the other side of the fence, hasn’t visited the John Spain farm in Northwest Arkansas.

Over the past 18 years, the Spain's have converted their property into a well-defined, well-managed rotational grazing program, resulting in a 100 percent increase in production. When they changed to the management intensive grazing program, they saw another 91 percent increase in production.

“We decreased our acreage under the rotational grazing program to 300 acres, but were still able to maintain 130 cows. The new grazing program increased cow size and allowed us to sell some hay,” Spain said.

When their feed bill steadily climbed as their production climbed, the Spains decided to switch to managed intensive grazing. Before the change their grain expenses exceeded $20,000 a year.

“We started small and cheap,” Spain said. “We converted a 24-acre pasture into four, six-acre paddocks, using the least expensive wire and posts we could find. I had 65 cows in each herd, so the six-acre paddocks gave me a stock density of 11 pairs per acre.”

Now the Spain's run 65 fall calving cows and calves, 55 spring calving cows with calves, 47 yearlings and 52 “salebarn type” cows on 219 acres of forage. One hundred fifteen acres of this is Bermuda, clover and annual ryegrass, divided into 19 separate paddocks and over seeded each fall with rye.

“I provide the cows with approximately three days of grazing per paddock and make a complete rotation over all paddocks every 28 days,” he said. “The cows enjoy moving to new forage every few days and since the cows are confined to smaller areas, it makes it easier to check on them. Now my pastures always look like a golf course.

“The willingness to practice flexibility not only helped us get where we are today, but it will take us where we’re going tomorrow,” Spain said.

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