BREESE, Ill. — The first in a series of quarterly webinars designed to help livestock producers improve profitability through better forage management and grazing practices included topics such as forage selection for summer grazing, strategies to improve pasture recovery and tips for building winter stockpiles. The “Grow and Graze” webinar series, which debuted on June 17 and continues in September, is sponsored by the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition (ILGLC) and offers real-world strategies from experienced farmers and technical experts in a peer-to-peer format. 

The webinar series is funded through the ILGLC by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to Logan Karcher, a livestock producer and director of producer programs for ILGLC. In introducing the series, Karcher directed producers to an online forum, the Illinois Grazing and Forage Hub (www.grazingforage.com), where questions can be addressed to forage experts from around the state. The Hub is paid for through a USDA grant and supported by experts and advisors at the University of Illinois Extension and elsewhere. 

“We’re creating a space where producers can share what’s working in their grazing systems and help one another make more informed, profitable decisions,” Karcher said

The debut webinar featured insights from Karcher, Dan Sanderson of Pasture Grazed Regenerative Farm, and David Kleinschmidt of Progressive Agronomy Consulting. Among the many topics discussed, the three producers exchanged thoughts about the ramifications of feeding ewes, lambs or livestock on forage that goes from a completely dry hay ration to a washy, green grass at a time of peak lactation.

“I’ll actually save some of my stockpile from the previous winter and use that as some of my first pastures that I turn out to. So they have, obviously, the green lush grass that’s growing new from the spring, but also a lot of dry matter from some of that old stockpile of grass,” said Karcher. “They actually utilize that very well, so I’ll try to have at least a week worth of grazing like that.”

Karcher also recommends feeding out some dry hay in addition to green grass. “I tried this…and they actually ate the hay way more than I thought they would have. So, that was kind of a different thing to see them eating all that hay on green grass. They didn’t have the runs like they would have, and stayed full, and really did pretty good for me,” he said.   

Sanderson said he tries to use cover crops as an early spring graze to help transition his livestock from dry feed to green grass after calving his livestock in April and May and lambs in mid-June, with varied success. A Clare, Illinois specialty farmer that raises halal pork, ewes and other niche livestock, Sanderson said he frost seeded red clover wheat that was to be grazed after the 2025 harvest.

“They always have dry hay out in front of them. They’re controlled as to how much green grass they get; I move them every day or two, depending on the situation. For the cattle, we planted a diverse cover crop mix, but most of it winter killed. They had a nice stand of volunteer wheat, so we started out the season on that,” he explained. 

Kleinschmidt, a Vandalia, Ill., producer known for his practical guidance on forage selection and soil health who started his consultant business in 2018, said he would be ready to begin cutting wheat by the first of July. This would have put him a week to 10 days behind last year’s pace due to excessive spring precipitation. 

“This kind of really drives home the message of being adaptable to your environment throughout the growing season,” Kleinschmidt said. “I’d say we started getting a lot of rains around the 10th of April. Grazing out on stock fields with those cover crop annuals we would have seeded the fall before can oftentimes be very challenging. There’s a lot of opportunity for pugging up fields awful bad and maybe causing some compaction issues. 

“For times like that, I know that a lot of guys that are venturing into this might try to do some sectioning off their fields and maybe just move cattle with a polywire every three or four days or something like that to give them a bigger area than just daily moves to avoid that high density grazing in a really tight area.”

Water supply restrictions may present a challenge to this strategy for some producers, Kleinschmidt added. Though Kleinschmidt noted that his farm had received more than an adequate amount of precipitation in June, Sanderson, a northern Illinois producer, reported his corn was “rolling up” from lack of moisture and rainfall. 

The initial Grow and Graze webinar also focused on grazing cover crops effectively, breeding prep for higher conception rates and benefits of multi-species grazing. The next ILGLC Grow and Graze webinar is scheduled for Sept. 16. For more information and additional free resources, visit grazingforage.com.