NH News - "Beef From Hogs" And The Hayfield Call"

MAY/JUNE 2003

Beef From Hogs

Information compiled
by John Dietz

What to do with huge amounts of hog manure? Grow grass for beef cattle.

A massive operation involving 90,000 hogs in southeastern Manitoba is turning native quackgrass pastures into high-protein forage for nearly 5,000 feeder cattle.

On the Robert Krentz farm near Steinbach, Manitoba, manure from sows and feeder pigs in 43 separate buildings is spread on quackgrass pasture at the rate of 10,000 gallons an acre. That application rate, Krentz said, is equal to about 100 to 125 pounds of nitrogen per acre.

Feeder cattle on heavily manured quackgrass on the Robert Krentz farm near Steinbach, Manitoba.

On that land he is rotationally grazing 4,800 feeder cattle at a one-per-acre rate. “The quackgrass is absorbing and sucking up everything it can get,” Krentz said, “and the cattle are turning it into beef. We’ve done trials with up to 400-pound rates (nitrogen equivalent) applied each year for four years. It doesn’t seem to be a problem for the grass, and that stand is unreal.”

Such high rates of manure every year would probably kill most standard forage mixes within three or four years, Krentz said. He believes it could even hurt quackgrass if the fields suffered a prolonged dry period after application.

Rain Makes It Work

Rain is therefore a big factor in making these high manure applications work. With 25 inches of rain in a normal growing season, this region is the wettest in Canada between Ontario and British Columbia’s west coast.

“If you applied this much manure and didn’t get rain,” Krentz said, “in two weeks the grass could all be gone. It would come back, but it would be set back badly. If we had more rain we could grow more quackgrass and produce more beef. We fertilize the whole farm with the manure the hogs produce, but we could use more.”

As is, the manure-borne nutrients are absorbed quickly by the grass. Krentz said the quackgrass absorbs more than other forages. Test wells in the area have shown no sign of the nutrients leaching into the water table.

Robert and Jody Krentz

He notes that in North Carolina, which enjoys 40 to 50 inches of rain each year, they aerate a pasture twice a year and spread it three times. The grass he recalls seeing in that area was “thick as hair on a dog.”

Sufficient Land Base

“It’s strange to say, but my hog buddies are asking me already if I want to take on more land,” Krentz said. “They don’t want to be involved with cattle, so they ask if I would rent or lease land from them to run cattle. They want to produce more product but need a bigger land base for the manure.

“My brother Gordon and I grew up on a dairy. My father was 56 when we moved here in 1969. He wanted to have a beef ranch. Now I’m 45 and living his dream. Gordon is 60, and he’s a half-partner in the farm,” Krentz said.

The brothers started Evergreen Land and Cattle Company, Ltd., in 1975. By the early ’90s they had built up one of the largest cow-calf ranches in southeastern Manitoba on low-value land that was subject to flooding.

Hog manure was first applied to a section of poor land about a mile from the Krentz home in 1996. Results of that application were impressive. “We were cutting hay (mostly quackgrass) on there before I had yearlings on it,” Krentz said. “The hay was so tall and so thick that when we drove over the swaths the hay wrapped around the driveshaft of the pickup and had to be cut loose. It took 10 days of drying before I could bale that hay.”

Cattle Control Growth

He has since avoided that harvest problem by getting feeders on the crop early. “If cattle clip it off all the time, you never run into that headache,” he said.

He later participated in a production trial with 23 other forage producers in the region. “When the results came back, we had the highest level of forage production among all 23, and with quackgrass. It did four-and-a-half tons per acre for us that year.”

By 1998 the brothers were putting up hog barns. Year-old feeder cattle replaced the cow herd. Tired hayfields and pastures were sown to quack- grass-based mixtures. The mile-square 640-acre sections were divided into eight or 10 pie-shaped rotational grazing paddocks each.

Today, as many as eight new hog barns have been built on each section. Each barn or barn cluster is fenced off from the yearling cattle. In the middle of each section is a watering site and corral handling system that is able to hold more than 600 animals as a single group. The watering site has gate access into each paddock so the cattle can be moved easily from one to the other.

Cattle are rotationally grazed on grass that has received 10,000 gallons of hog manure per acre.

Frequent Cattle Moves

Krentz described how the cattle are moved: “My kids, with two four-wheelers, can go out there, shout, and the yearlings will all start running to the center, following a donkey that’s with the herd. When it’s hot, all the cattle are in the center by the water anyway.

“Once they’re inside and bawling, you hook onto the cattle oiler with a four-wheeler and move it. They follow that oiler. They know we’re taking them to new grass, right now. When they go through the oiler’s curtain-like fabric, they’re into the new pasture.”

During the first part of the grazing season, herds are moved every three days. “We want to get the grass grazed and then get them out. Once we nip the top off a plant it takes about 30 to 40 days (for it) to reshoot,” he said.

Stocking rates vary through the season depending on acres available, the thickness of the grass, and the weight of the animals. The highest usage was 625 yearlings on 550 acres last year. The animals weighed about 700 pounds each when they were put on the grass following one to two months in the Krentz feedlot.

Daily Gains up to 2.3 Pounds

The average daily gain for 4,800 head was 1.8 to 2.0 pounds per day in 2001. The grazing season that year was about 165 days. The highest producing group averaged 2.3 pounds gain a day.

By mid-August the grass is growing slower, and each paddock is grazed out to a week or more so all the grass is fed before the cattle are sold again in the fall market.

Denton, left, and Cody Krentz talk over chores with their father, Robert Krentz.

For security reasons, most lenders require ownership of a land base surrounding a hog barn. Environmental regulations require secure, long term access to sufficient acreage for manure disposal. A 6,000-sow operation may require access to 1,200 acres of land.

Because of the heavy applications of manure, Krentz is monitoring soil health. “Microorganisms like manure, but only to a certain level,” he said. “In theory, you could have a great crop and still kill your microorganisms. I can’t tell you yet if the product is good for the land itself, but I have a trial on the test plots to determine what the microorganisms are doing.”

This intensive livestock development also has benefits for local taxes and local employment. Each new hog barn, some valued as high as $9 million, is contributing to the municipal tax base. As a group, the barns have generated about 100 new full-time jobs.

Krentz now describes himself as a grass manager. “If we manage our grass right, we’re selling ourselves 20 percent protein with every move to a new paddock. Rain or shine, we’re harvesting it in number one condition every time. As long as we don’t lose money on the cattle market, that quackgrass is paying us a good return on investment.”

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