Laying Down Roots

Short-Duration Grazing and Native Grasses

Long recognized for his expertise in native grasses and rotational grazing, Dalton Merz is building a living example of these practices at Darrs Creek Farm. (DTN/Progressive Farmer photo by Clay Coppedge)

Dalton Merz was born in one drought and retired in another one. It's what happened in the middle that helped him become a range conservationist, now using everything he once spent his days teaching others on his own living demonstration farm.

Born in 1943 near Albert, Texas, Merz grew up as a Gillespie County farm boy. His parents raised Angora goats, wool sheep and cattle, in addition to growing peaches and small grains. There were also deer and turkey in a time and place where hunting and fishing were as much an act of necessity as recreation.

Merz left the farm, got a degree from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) and went to work for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for 36 years, starting in 1967. He approached his work with the heart of a farmer, the dedication of a scientist and the drive of a conservationist. He was interested in native grasses and eastern gamagrass, both of which he felt could be used on rangeland.

Gaining a reputation as an expert in the establishment of native grasses and rotational-grazing systems, he's often been at the center of some of the state's highest profile environmental stewardship programs. Merz has worked with operations as diverse as the Betsy Ross Grassfed Beef operation and the wildlife-oriented Solana Ranch, and environmental stewardship award winners like Vick Ranch, in Lampasas County, and the Tenroc Ranch, in Bell County.

Looking back, Merz is not sure the landowners he has worked with would have had the same level of success had it not been his luck to have had a large part of his career take place in a rainier time for the region. "I was born in '43. I was a drought baby," said Merz, who now lives at Darrs Creek Farm, in Bell County, Texas. This is where he's put to use all he learned over a career as a range conservationist and rangeland-management specialist.

"When I went to work in '67, we had above-average rainfall conditions my whole career until after 2003, when it started drying up," he recalled. "If I had worked the last four years or so, and had people plant this grass, we would have had failure after failure after failure. I'd be real reserved when we have these dry cycles about spending that much money on native grasses, or any other kind of grass for that matter."

The game changer, Merz said, was 2011. A healthy 7-acre stand of his beloved eastern gamagrass, which he has helped establish on ranges and pastures all over the state, died that year. It was the driest and hottest single year in recorded Texas history. Temperatures hit at least 100°F for 90 days in a row during that summer. Rainfall for the year averaged 14.89 inches.

The field where the grass died is marked by a draw that creates a mini-wetland. It was dominated by sumpweed. Merz got rid of the sumpweed but saw that everywhere it had grown, the eastern gamagrass, and some switchgrass, had died. The other native grasses are still there.

That year marked a turning point. It was the first time Merz had seen native, warm-season grasses die in a drought, underscoring that even though these forages adapt well to harsh conditions, they are not invincible.

Merz brought his know-how to his own land and house in 1986. He started with a broken-down place and about 100 acres. He was looking for something that needed work, and he got it.

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A USDA 319 grant of $10,000 helped cover costs for restoration. The money represents a small fraction of what he said he has spent on the land in the ensuing years. But the grant came with something more important than dollars -- it came with expertise and a timeline.

"What's really valuable about working with the government is you get a five-year contract. You write out a plan. You have a schedule, and you get a technical person to help and show you how to do it."

To get the land like he wanted, Merz used controlled burns, put down phosphorous and planted native grasses and hegari, a forage sorghum popular with wildlife and cattle. He put his 10 Black Angus cows on 2.5-acre plots and utilized the short-duration grazing system he advocated when he was with the NRCS. It took a while for the natives to take hold -- two years for the switchgrass, three years for the indiangrass and four years for the big bluestem.

"Cattle like the natives, and so do sheep and goats," he said. "That's the first thing they'll go to. But the native grasses decrease quickly under continuous grazing.

"You have to use a short-duration system with these grasses, or you'll lose them."

Today, that place Merz renovated, Darrs Creek Farm, is an example of the practices he helped other landowners adopt during his career. He shares what he's learned by hosting Extension tours and demonstrations for current NRCS personnel, as well as youth groups.

"We bring them out here and go through the place, explaining what everything is and its characteristics," Merz said. "It's pretty neat to show this to the young people and see them learn. Nearly everything we did when I was with NRCS worked. It worked because we had rain. If your career starts when you have a drought, it makes it so much more difficult. I got spoiled working when I did."

Asked if 2015 is a good time for landowners to consider establishing native grasses, Merz said he believes it's as good a time as any if that's the long-term plan. Seed costs are high because of the drought, but the cattle market is good. He warns against expecting a cattle operation to cover all the expenses, however.

"If you plan on making money from planting grass like this and have cows pay for it, it ain't going to work," he said. He advises anyone planting or re-establishing grasses, native or otherwise, to go slow.

"If you have a thousand acres, don't do a thousand acres at one time. Do a fourth of it," he recommends. "More than likely, two of those years will be successful. You may fail over here and over here, but at least you'll have half of it done."

In Merz's case, he admits the cost of transforming the land has been considerable. He estimates he's spent nearly $2,187 per acre on improvements. His contract with NRCS paid less than 5% of the total.

The changes he's made were about more than money, however. The payoff, Merz said, comes from having enough grass to hold the precious rain that does fall, even during a drought, and in ensuring the long-term health of the land.

"To me, stewardship is probably the key to the whole darn thing," Merz said. "You get this grass cover for the land. And when you get a big rain, that ground soaks it up and keeps it there."

That, this Texan said, is the real return on investment in land.

SHORT-DURATION GRAZING

The short-duration grazing system Dalton Merz employs is part of a larger philosophy known as rotational grazing, which focuses on periodically moving livestock to fresh pastures or paddocks. The goal is to allow forages time to regrow before they are grazed again.

In a continuous-grazing system, livestock graze without restriction. If not managed properly, this can result in overgrazing, which will increase weed pressure and decrease desirable forage. Plants that are repeatedly grazed without sufficient time for roots to recover and leaves to regrow will die. A short-duration system allows plants that recovery time.

Merz moves his cattle from one pasture to another every 28 to 45 days, depending on weather and other conditions. In late summer, when plant growth slows, it takes about 45 days for a pasture to reach its peak forage condition after being grazed. On his place, and on farms and ranches where he has helped producers implement the system, he said forage production generally increases by about a third.

"What you try to do is rest that pasture," he said of his grazing plan. "Every 28 days or so, you get cattle in that pasture, and you leave them in a week or a few days. Then you move them to a pasture that's recovered from its last grazing."

The idea has been around for decades. Allan Savory, a farmer, ecologist and cofounder of the Savory Institute, is generally credited with formulating and popularizing short-duration grazing as a method that more closely mimics the behavior of natural herds that once roamed the grasslands. He now calls the process "planned holistic grazing."

Merz cautions that producers should take many things into account before implementing any type of grazing system. Stocking rate, forage growth and the cost of adding fences and watering systems at each paddock have to be considered.

"Everybody I have trained on how to manage these grasses ... I tell them to learn how to manage one field at a time and do it right," he said. "There's a learning curve that goes with it."

(VM/CZ)

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