Ranchers use adaptive grazing to restore soil health

Strategic chaos

Ten years have passed since Meredith Ellis gave up a landscaping career to take over managing her family’s cattle ranch, the G Bar C Ranch near Rosston, Texas, northwest of Dallas. “I realized that what my dad had been doing for years by protecting our 3,000-acre ranch was critical to our future as a society,” she says. “I realized that the most impactful thing I could do was to go home and become a rancher, just like my dad.”

Ellis began fine-tuning an orchestrated, adaptive, multi-paddock method of grazing she calls “strategic chaos.” The goal is to build soil, sequester carbon, and, in short, improve a grassland through livestock grazing. Along with improving plants and soil, the ranch’s 2023 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Region IV Environmental Stewardship Award suggests she’s on the right track.

“Everything we do on our operation is based within the context of our goals,” she says. “Rather than abiding by set practices, I manage according to soil health principles. The bottom line is that we’re constantly monitoring, so that we abide by these principles.”

To accomplish that, her strategies flex according to forage growth, terrain, soil type, season, and weather. She adjusts grazing and management to address differing needs of soil and forages.

She divided the land base into 58 barbed-wire-fenced-in pastures, ranging from 1 to 500 acres. Portable polywire fencing further subdivides pastures into smaller grazing paddocks. She moves cattle out of a paddock when forages and cattle have mutually benefited from the grazing period.

To ensure cattle have enough forage to graze year-round, Ellis grazes some native grassland in early June, to set up the pastures for winter grazing.

“The native grass in June will be about boot-top high,” she says. “We’ll just lightly graze it then, taking about a third of the plant. That stimulates the grass to produce greater growth, which we harvest with the cattle in fall and winter. At that time, the cattle will eat some of the forage and trample the rest into the ground, which ends up being compost for the soil.”

Building biodiversity

Plant species’ increasing diversity also influences her grazing management. “We’ve documented hundreds of plant species on our property, and all require differing levels of grazing disturbance,” Ellis says. 

To help evaluate differences in forage growth across the ranch’s varying ecological zones, Ellis conducts biodiversity surveys in May and October. At each survey point, she marks out 1 square meter and evaluates species and forage health, documenting her visual observations with photos. She inputs data gathered at the site — including historic and current grazing practices — into an app called PastureMap.

“It’s a tool that helps me make informed decisions about forage availability and whether or not I need to cull cattle,” she says. “But nothing replaces human observation.”

Protecting forages from overgrazing and ensuring that grazed plants have plenty of time to recover have helped Ellis keep her herd of 175 beef cows intact despite three years of drought. “We’re seeing plentiful grasses and forages at a time when many ranchers in our area have had to sell cattle,” she says.

Grazing planning

Like Ellis, Tucumcari, New Mexico, rancher Tom Sidwell has seen the forages of his JX Ranch withstand drought in response to his multi-paddock “grazing planning” adaptive grazing system.

Sidwell has managed the 7,000-acre ranch with his wife, Mimi, for the past 20 years. In recognition of their stewardship practices, the Sidwells received the 2023 New Mexico Leopold Conservation Award.

“All of the ranch was overgrazed when we came,” Sidwell says. After controlling invasive species, improving water distribution for cattle, and managing grasses for better health, forages and soils have improved. As a result, the ranch’s carrying capacity has doubled.

The ranch encompasses seven main pastures, bounded by five-strand barbed wire. Two-wire electric cross fencing splits the pastures into 33 grazing paddocks.

The Sidwells graze their 200 cow-calf pairs as one herd, year-round. Like Ellis’, their system lets them graze paddocks in a flexible sequence, accounting for changes in weather, moisture, terrain, season, and forage growth.

During the growing season, each paddock’s grazing periods average three to five days. Rest periods typically run 90 to 130 days; the longer the grazing period, the longer the rest period. In some paddocks, Sidwell stockpiles grass during the growing season to provide forage for cattle during the dormant winter season.

Sidwell annually photographs forage growth at multiple sites. The photos document progress toward his goal of covering bare ground with forage.

He also conducts annual forage assessments across the ranch. “Every fall, I do a forage assessment to see if we have enough forage to graze through the following year,” he says.

From multiple points, he hand-clips forage from within a frame measuring a square yard. After weighing the forage and estimating the amount available — from a take-half, leave-half rule — he calibrates the total availability of grazable forage across the ranch and converts it to animal grazing days. “If it doesn’t look like we have enough forage to sustain our current herd size, we’ll reduce cattle numbers to fit forage availability,” he says.

The process helps him plan for drought by de-stocking in advance rather than afterward. The system prevents dry-condition overgrazing conditions from stressing plant roots. Such stressed plants regrow slowly when moisture returns.

“We’ve been able to keep a good standing crop of grass across the ranch,” Sidwell says. “And the grass rebounds quickly after a drought.”

While the Sidwells’ measurements for soil organic matter provide only baseline data from earlier testing, visual evidence of improving soil health is evident. “Soil has definitely stabilized and improved,” Sidwell says. “We see a diversity of grasses and less bare ground because litter covers the soil surface. Because of that, the soil microbial community has got to be improving.”

Water infiltration also has improved. “Water soaks into the soil, resulting in less runoff,” he says. “That helps our aquifer. We engaged a specialist to measure the level of water in our wells, and she found that compared to previous measurements, the water levels in wells had increased as much as 3 feet. Our watershed is certainly in much healthier condition than it was when we came to the ranch.”

Carbon sequestration 

The soil also sequesters carbon. Measurements suggest their soil contains 4 tons more carbon per acre than soil from conventionally grazed grassland, Sidwell says.

Ellis also has documented her ranch’s carbon sequestration level. In 2019, she participated in a pilot project the Noble Research Institute and the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium conducted on her ranch. Researchers from those sustainable agriculture consulting firms measured carbon sequestered in soils and subtracted methane emissions from cattle, as well as fuel-use emissions and applied fertilizer inputs.

“Initial data modeling shows the entire ranch was annually sequestering a net 2,500 tons of carbon,” Ellis says.

That rate reflects rotational grazing practices less intensive than those she has practiced recently. Near-term follow-up measurements stand to better reflect her current grazing system’s effects.

Both ranchers report increasing profitability. The Sidwells, who add value to a portion of their calf crop through beef direct marketing, earn $40 to $45 in gross income per acre. “Our operating expenses come to $16 to $17 an acre, leaving us about $28 to $29 an acre in net profit across our 7,000-acre ranch,” Sidwell says. Initial infrastructure costs tallied $34 an acre, amortized over the last 20 years.

Ellis reports net profitability has increased by 40% as her grazing system’s effects become increasingly evident. “We’re building climate resilience into our landscape that can help us withstand drought, as well as flooding,” she says. “This resilience lets us cut down or eliminate the need for purchased inputs. We’re less concerned with how big the check is at the end of the year. We’re more focused on cutting out expenses, and raising grass and beef as naturally as possible.”

Building soil health

When managed livestock grazing allows grazed plants plenty of recovery time, cattle and other ruminants fulfill the critical role of building soil and vibrant grasslands.

Grasslands and ruminants evolved in unison, and healthy grasslands depend on a grazing impact balanced with forage availability. “A lot of grasslands that are not grazed become degraded,” says Jeff Goodwin, director of Texas A&M University’s Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management. “But it’s not the cow — it’s the how.”

Like ranchers Ellis and Sidwell, Goodwin says multi-paddock adaptive grazing systems effectively strengthen plants and heal soil. In short, such systems typically provide evenly distributed and often increased grazing pressure along with plenty of rest for plants.

“Plants use energy from the roots to build leaves,” Goodwin says. “After grazing, it takes time for that plant’s leaves and roots to fully recover to pre-grazed condition. We want both the plants’ leaves and roots to fully recover before cows come back to take another bite. The recovery process can only happen during the growing season.”

Healthy plants’ increasing root mass decays, contributing to building organic matter. “The surface litter being broken down by soil organisms also contributes to organic matter,” Goodwin says.

Soil microbes play a huge role in this conversion process. The microbe community depends upon livestock-deposited dung and urine, and the grazing activity stimulates microbes.

As organic matter increases, resulting from this balanced grazing activity, so does soil carbon. “Organic matter is 58% soil carbon,” Goodwin says. “Cattle help to upcycle plants into organic matter and its carbon.” 

Increasing soil organic matter also improves water infiltration. Root channels and stable soil aggregates permit water to better infiltrate soil. “By improving organic matter, the ground holds water longer,” Goodwin says. “This adds to drought resiliency on grasslands.”

There’s no set formula for devising an adaptive grazing strategy that benefits soil and grass. The system simply has to fit within three contexts for an individual ranch: ecological, economic, and social.

“Regenerative management is about operating within the contexts that are best for you, and it’s also about implementing the soil health principles as you develop your system,” Goodwin says. “There are a number of rotational strategies that can work.”