If grazing is not the answer to your problems, you’re asking the wrong questions. The No. 1 good practice for beef cattle operations in my region of the country is to feed less hay, because hay costs two to three times the cow grazing forage herself. Here is how I would go about doing it.  

Stocking rate

Does your forage base support the number of cows on your farm?  If you are feeding hay more than 100 days per year, I would argue it does not. If not, are you managing grazing or do cows have run of the whole farm? Installing even a simple rotational grazing system can do wonders for forage productivity. 

The idea is simple. Cows prefer higher quality forage. When they have access to a large area, they will repeatedly graze the same plants, keeping them short, while ignoring others. In this system, there is no rest for your high-quality forages.  Breaking pastures into smaller areas allows you to incorporate rest periods into pastures.  

The second benefit of breaking large pastures into smaller areas is that it forces cattle to graze less selectively. When that happens, we increase forage utilization rate. Continuous grazing systems (cows grazing the same pasture year-round) only harvest a quarter to a third of the forage produced. 

We use the term “harvest efficiency” or “forage utilization rate” when describing the proportion of forage in a field grazed by a cow. A simple rotational grazing system will increase harvest efficiency from 25-40%. 

That is 60% more feed that ends up in a cow’s mouth. Further intensification of grazing management will raise harvest efficiency above 40%. Missouri pastures are not that big. Spend a few hundred bucks on some polywire, step-in posts and a solar fence charger (if you do not have access to electricity).  

When there is too much grass

One of the deceptive aspects of tall fescue pastures is that we have too much grass for about 60 days and not enough grass for the next 300 days. At least, that is the way most folks frame forage management, which leads down the rabbit trail of iron disease. 

I define iron disease as being invested in assets that depreciate. Think about hay production for a second. It takes a lot of equipment to swath, rake, bale, store, transport, feed and have cows waste hay. I estimate it costs three times as much to feed hay as it does to make cows graze. Don’t buy that new piece of hay equipment in 2025. Invest in fencing and water infrastructure to allow cattle to graze hay ground or to improve your grazing system. 

Why do we even run cows?

At the risk of being shunned, I will make a bold statement. Using 100% of a farm’s carrying capacity on a single beef-cow-focused enterprise is a terrible business model. It takes significant asset investment and capital, and each cow produces about 0.85 calves per year, if everything goes right. We have gotten too specialized in our cattle management. 

The question should be, “Why is 100% of our carrying capacity taken up by something that might produce 40% of its body weight per year as saleable product?” 

I am of the opinion that we could do a lot of good on farms if we thought about splitting carrying capacity between cows and growing cattle. It is much easier to move growing cattle on and off the farm. You could increase stocking rate dramatically when forage is growing rapidly and move the animals off during times of poor forage growth (summer slump and winter). 

There are many custom grazing arrangements that could be made to bring cattle on the farm during the spring and fall when forage is growing. You do not have to go out and risk the market moving against you when buying stocker cattle. Graze someone else’s stocker cattle. Graze someone else’s cows. Do the math on whether custom grazing someone else’s cows generates more revenue than your current cow herd. I’ll bet you can graze them cheaper than they can feed hay.