Grazing Alfalfa

Early last month, I wrote several blog posts about the extremely dry autumn we were experiencing - and about the possibility that we'd need to sell some sheep because we were short on forage. Our friend and fellow Grazing Geek, Nathan Medlar (yes, we really do belong to a group called the Foothill Grazing Geeks - a small group of ranchers interested in all things related to grazing) read my blog and called to say he had 40 acres of alfalfa near Pleasant Grove that a farmer wanted him to graze. Did we want to graze it with our ewes? Nathan said he hated to think we might have to sell sheep.

We ran a few numbers comparing buying hay versus hauling the sheep to the alfalfa (about 35 miles away) versus selling sheep. Unsurprisingly, buying hay was the most expensive option. At first, selling sheep seemed like the most economically viable option - we'd get income from the sale, and eliminate the need to buy feed or haul sheep. But when we looked at this option more carefully, we realized the income would be offset by the loss of future earnings - in other words, selling ewes this fall would mean that we'd give up income from the lambs they'd have in the future. While we wouldn't need to pay to graze the alfalfa field, we would have the expense of hauling the ewes there and back, the expense of hauling drinking water to the sheep, and the expense of checking on the sheep several times a week (Nathan's herder, Nilver, would feed the livestock guardian dog and check our fences daily). We decided to haul the sheep to the alfalfa.

Many large-scale sheep producers in California (and elsewhere) use alfalfa stubble as a key source of forage during the late fall and winter. Grazing dormant alfalfa helps reduce weed pressure and insect pests (like alfalfa weevils). In California especially, access to alfalfa stubble (a highly nutritious forage) allows producers to lamb in the fall - most lambs are born in the late winter or early spring, so fall lambs give California producers a marketing advantage. Since we've never had access to alfalfa (until this year), we lamb in the late winter and early spring to take advantage of the grass that Mother Nature grows for us!

But grazing alfalfa is not without risk. Since alfalfa can be very high in protein (and since an alfalfa field typically doesn't have much variety forage-wise), it can cause bloat in sheep - a potentially fatal condition. Alfalfa is typically grown in the Central Valley on leveled fields, which means there isn't much in the way of shelter or windbreaks. And valley soils are often heavier than our foothill soils, which means they don't drain as readily. Given these potential problems, I asked several sheep producers who have more experience grazing alfalfa about their management approaches. I learned that:

1. We should take bloat seriously. We were advised to use bloat blocks, high quality trace minerals, and grass hay to guard against this condition. And we should only move the sheep onto fresh alfalfa in the early morning or late afternoon - after they'd been grazing - to avoid over-consumption.
2. We needed to reinforce our electro-net fencing during stormy weather. Without a windbreak, storm winds can rock the fencing and loosen posts if the fence isn't reinforced. With nothing between the sheep and Highway 99 but another 40-acre field, keeping the fence up was critical.

We moved 115 head of sheep to the 40-acre alfalfa field on November 17. Our first paddock was about 9.5 acres - and it took the ewes 9 days to graze it. The next paddock was approximately the same size, but the sheep consumed it in just 6 days. Since the forage quantity was similar, we assumed that the sheep were adjusting to this feed. We'll finish the last paddock this Wednesday - when we'll ship the ewes back to the foothill rangelands where they typically spend the winter.

Early on in this experience, I realized that we were doing something that most commercial sheep producers in California were doing - moving sheep to alfalfa. I even tweeted that I felt like a real California sheepman. And there is some truth to this - like many of our friends (and predecessors), we're moving sheep to the forage (rather than forage to the sheep). But I also realized that we're part of a grazing community. Nathan and his wife Kaitlyn have been incredibly gracious in allowing us to graze this resource. Their generosity allowed us to keep all of our bred ewes - and all of next year's replacement ewes. Our "membership" in this community - the Foothill Grazing Geeks - has allowed us to keep our flock intact.