A series of conferences for dairy farmers took place around New York State from January 13th-18th. The conferences were made possible by the Cornell Small Farms Program, the New York Pasture Association, and the New York State Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative. All of the meetings featured David Surprenant and Larry Shearer as keynote speakers but the meetings also included presentations of interest to local farmers in each of the areas. In this article, I will discuss some of the presentations that took place at each of the locations.

Delhi: Pasturing in Pennsylvania, More than one way to success with pasture
The Delhi meeting included a presentation by Paul Cerosaletti on a tour they took to visit some Pennsylvania dairies using pasture and a panel discussion with two successful Delaware County farmers that use pasture.

Paul described the purpose of their tour of the Pennsylvania farms was to see visit a few extremely labor efficient farms that are using some different techniques in their grazing than we are familiar with in New York. The farms toured were Shady Maple Farm, a 200+ cow Jersey farm owned by the Risser family in Chambersberg, PA, and the Cove Mountain farm, a 225 cow crossbred farm managed by the Moyer family. Paul said that both farms were notable for the amount that they supplemented the cows on pasture and their labor efficient milking systems. The Risser's have only 100 acres of pasture for over 200 milking cows and supplement them heavily with a total mixed ration of corn silage, BMR sorghum sudangrass silage, wet brewers grains, and grain to avoid over stocking their pastures. The supplement totals nearly 40 pounds of dry matter per cow making pasture just a supplement to the TMR. The Risser's milk in a swing 18 parlor that allows 210 cows to be milked by two people in 1.5 hours. The Moyers have about 1 acre of cow per pasture but also feed a fairly high level of supplement. In their case, they use a "one-shot" ration fed free choice in the milking parlor at an average of near 30 lbs per cow. "One-shot" consists of many non-forage fiber sources such as beet pulp, soy hulls and citrus pulp, by-product feeds, and a low level of ground corn. The Moyer's milk in a swing 16 milking parlor. Both the Risser's and the Moyer's use the Dairy Master milking units from New Zealand that have larger bore inflations and a heavier teat cup shell. Although he raised some concerns about the amount of feed both farms were importing onto a limited acreage, Paul said the two farms provide a perspective on labor efficient grazing farms that is not often seen in New York.

The panel discussion featured two Delaware County farms, Chris and Judy DiBenedetto and Paul Deysenroth, that are doing well using different approaches. Chris and Judy milk 65 cows on 125 acres which the cows graze most of in an average year. The had a little over 17,000 pounds of milk sold per cow last year and feed around 18 lbs per cow per day of a pelletted grain along with some dry hay during the grazing season. The pastures consist of both a hillside with native grasses and hayfields that are brought into the rotation as needed after being mechanically harvested. Paul Deysenroth milks 40-45 cows on 125 acres of cropland of which 40 is always used as pasture and the remainder is used as needed. Last year, Paul sold 24,200 pounds of milk per cow feeding up to 27 lbs of a grain mix consisting of distillers, corn, soybean meal and roasted soybean meal and 7-12 lbs of hay. Paul feeds grain three times a day and the cows generally graze for around 4-5 hours in the day and 8 hours at night. Despite the different feeding programs, Chris and Judy's grain purchases were 22% of milk sales while Paul's were 21% of milk sales. The two farms point out how two different management styles can both use grazing to get to a similar end point.

Cobleskill and Cortland: Pasture Forage Quality Project 2002
At the Cobleskill and Cortland conferences, I gave presentations about the pasture forage quality project I conducted this past growing season in South Central New York. The project involved taking forage quality samples from 7 farms on a regular basis throughout the growing season and then reporting the results on a website, www.grazeny.com. The presentation summarized the results from the project and explored differences in forage quality between farms. The main factor influencing forage quality in 2002 was the extremely hot and dry conditions in July and August. Of the farms sampled, roughly half experienced such severe drought that they were unable to graze from some period of time in August. The other half had enough scattered showers to graze uninterrupted. The difference in weather conditions led to highly variable forage quality, especially in terms of crude protein, during July and August. The project also identified differences in forage quality due to maturity of the grass, soil type and soil fertility, and species of the pasture grasses and legumes. A full report is available on www.grazeny.com.

Belfast: Three farmers describe their selection programs
The Belfast conference included a panel of local farmers who discussed the selection criteria they have used to build their herds. All of the farms use pasture and strive to keep things simple but they each have specific criteria they are looking for and different methods of getting there.

Gary Button and his son milk 70 cows in Jasper, NY and they have changed from all registered Holstiens to cross-breeding with a variety of breeds including Normande, Scandinavian Red, and others with a goal toward improving components and breeding efficiency. In selection, Gary looks for longevity, good feet and legs, and good lifetime production. He doesn't cull any two year olds and has recently devised a system called "total running profit" to make culling decisions. "Total running profit" looks at all of the costs for each individual cow in terms of feed, vet, breeding, and more and compares it to the income brought in by that cow in milk.

Dave Wesche has a 40 cow dairy near Angelica, NY and his criteria are mostly based on cows that have performed well in his herd through time. He has a Holstein herd and probably won't cross-breed. Since he milks in a pipeline system, Dave wants a taller cow with a tight wide udder. He is also hoping to improve his components and he picks from the top 50% net merit bulls with an emphasis on cows that are plus 50 pounds in fat and protein. He isn't as concerned about milk production, though. For choosing replacements, Dave raises 8 heifers a year chosen from dams that have performed well over the years (especially those that have needed a minimum of services per conception). Another thing Dave shared was his record keeping system. At the beginning of the growing season, Dave draws a map of the entire farm and then writes down the date in each field as it grazed or mechanically harvested. Dave finds this record keeping system has been quite helpful to him.

Jim Youngers has a 65 cow dairy in Arcade, NY that is striving to be fall seasonal with cows calving in September, October and November. Toward this end, he has been saving the first 15 heifer calves born in the fall for the past 4 years. He uses the Select Sires mating service and, in addition to timing, he is also looking for good feet and legs, udders and components. He has also done some cross-breeding and has found that many of the crosses have fallen into his fall window more readily than the pure bred Holsteins. His main culling criteria are somatic cell, feet and legs, old age, and disposition and he commented that he is willing to keep around lower producing cows that consistently breeds well and has a nice disposition.

Carthage: Renovating Pastures and Plant/Herbivore Interactions
The Carthage conference included presentations on renovating pastures and plant/herbivore interactions. Nate Leonard of FiL Agritech detailed the reasons and methods for renovating pastures. For converting cropland to pasture, Nate recommended heavy doses of manure followed by conventional tillage and seeding rates of 15-20 lbs of grass seed per acre. He believes that high seeding rates followed by aggressive clipping and light grazing of a new seeding in the seeding year are the keys to forming a dense stand. For converting hay ground to pasture, Nate recommends aggressive grazing management and nitrogen. He also recommends overseeding with white clover and believes that more aggressive management shortens the transition time from hayfield to pasture. Nate believes that intensively managed pastures need to be renovated on a regular basis as less productive begin to invade through time. He expects most stands to require reseeding every 6-8 years. In terms of species, orchardgrass and ladino clover are Nate's preferred species with improved, endophyte-free tall fescue running second. He views ryegrass, reed canarygrass, mountain brome, and meadow fescue as unproven at this point but may be worth a try on small acreage. He also suggests alfalfa may be useful as a "drought buster" that would be mechanically harvested most of the time but could be grazed in a pinch.

Darrel Emmick, the New York Grazing Lands Specialist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, discussed plant herbivore interactions. He said that plants and animals both need and impact each other. Animals impact plants by eating them, treading on them, and by adding nutrients to the soil that the plants use. Plants can be toxic and provide a certain quality and quantity of nutrients to animals. Darrel also related that animals are sensitive to many different characteristics of plants including their physical appearance, aroma, and quality and that they use these characteristics to make decisions about which plants to eat and how much of them they consume. He emphasized that animals develop an eating behavior and that positive experiences with a given plant increase intake while negative experiences decrease intake. Darrel shared a few general rules of thumb to use what is known about grazing behavior to maximize pasture intake and animal production. First, the easier it is for animals to consume what they need, the more they will be likely to maximize their intake. Second, animals like to have access to a variety of things to eat so that they can balance the nutrients and toxins of each species to consume what they need. However, they need time to learn about new species so enough acreage must be allotted to each different pasture type to allow them to graze it for several consecutive days.

Chateaugay: Infrastucture to support successful grazing
At the Chateaugay meeting, Rich Redman, District Conservationist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service in Clinton and Essex Counties, discussed his experience helping farmers design and implement infrastructure for grazing the past 15 years. In particular, he discussed the value of drainage of barnyards and good fences and water systems for making grazing work. Rich showed slides of farms he has worked with that had very muddy laneways and barnyards that made it hard to successfully graze. With NRCS technical support, many of these farms were able to reshape their lanes and barnyards to improve the drainage. Rich also talked a little about the evolution of NRCS technical support for grazing. Initially, NRCS didn't have much funding to help implement grazing and the support was mainly in the design of grazing systems. In the past few years, especially with the Agriculture Management Assistance program, NRCS has been able to offer both design and cost-share assistance to farmers. However, Rich related that the specifications have gotten much more stringent and the systems more costly to implement.