#12 Is Wasted Hay the Best Way to Build up Fertility

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching where our goal is to maximize your profitability while you improve your land the fastest.

I have long read and heard that unrolling hay and leaving much hay residual is not waste but good for your soil with many teachers telling ranchers to use unrolling hay to build fertility in poor areas. While this may be good advice if hay is used efficiently, due to concentrating manure and urine, many have mistaken this for building a fertility program based on wasteful hay feeding, which for me is a mistake as I am going to explain.

Now, I am going to talk about building soil humus. Soil humus is your soil’s real fertility, and unlike available nutrients, it stays around for a very long time, how long? Up to a hundred years! So, it pays to build up humus.

Let’s start by defining that humus is the stable fraction of organic matter that cannot be further degraded by the action of microorganisms. This also means that organic matter, while valuable, is not all humus but only a fraction of organic matter is really humus. We need to remember that soil life is always digesting organic matter and is the reason why it fluctuates while humus is more stable. For example, compost needs to have a minimum of 3% humus content to be considered good compost.

I have been building fertility in soils with livestock for a very long time, observing what makes plants grow healthier and better or not and have learned what makes a soil in good hearth or vitality compared to one that is not. A very poor soil will be evident when seedlings require fertilizer to grow well. This means that humus is generally very low, and no stored nutrients are in the soil to help the seedlings establish.

My Total Grazing students know how humus in their soils are formed and how to grow more of it. If you want to watch a video explaining how, you can go to my YouTube channel under Real Wealth Ranching and look up for the video called “The primacy of living roots in forming soil organic carbon”. There you will learn that our soil’s organic carbon is formed mostly from the decomposed bodies of microorganisms that live around the living roots feed by root exudates and the amount of root exudates depends wholly on the leaf to stem ratio of the forage plant. This represents around 80% of the total humus production. Such research is new, around 6 years old.

This is a great breakthrough, as before, most people accepted that humus was built by litter or forage residue and animal manure, bodies, etc. But that only makes up a small % of the humus created per year.

We have been mining humus formed a long time ago and we must start building up humus in our soils to achieve soil health and much higher and cheaper production. Humus not only is a moisture, microorganisms, and nutrient reserve or storehouse, but it also warms up soil faster in spring and keeps it warm longer into the fall. It also buffers pH and releases nutrients on demand which allows for a much higher quality forage for your livestock than with synthetic fertilizers.

What does this have to do with unrolling hay to increase our soil’s humus?

Well, first, hay is a very expensive fertilizer! Unrolling hay in the field to feed cattle and allow some to be trampled, defecated and urinated on will grow more grass for a certain period, yes, but how long? Depends on temperature of your environment, with hotter environments giving shorter time effect and lower temperatures giving longer time effect. The important thing is to know that the extra growth we get from unrolling hay is from the humic acids released when the hay decomposes as there is very little real humus produced, per acre, when trying to fertilize with expensive hay.

With today’s beef and hay prices it makes much more sense to have the hay used as fed, with as little waste as possible, instead of fertilizer, and to grow more humus by doing total grazing where you avoid overgrazing and increase the leaf to stem ratio of your grasses which is how you can really start building humus in your land.

Another very important factor in humus building is to have fat and strong roots in your forages. By doing total grazing you ensure that the correct rest period is observed which allows your forage plants to grow deep, strong roots. Roots get fat in the stockpiled area that is an integral part of the total grazing program which also allows you to save big money on hay feeding, up to $200 dls per cow per year.

The amount of fat, oils, we can produce per acre per year will determine how much humus we create per acre per year. Our forages contain oil which increases when photosynthesis is enhanced by high leaf to stem ratio. When doing correct total grazing and all plants are consumed close to the ground it also means that the stems are consumed, and this allows the regrowth to be much higher in leaf and more of them. I know that many insist that leaving residue is good for the plant but, the stems left behind by a lower efficiency harvest continue to respire depriving the plant of the energy needed for a vigorous regrowth of leaves. When the stems are consumed with the leaves the energy stored in the crown and fat roots by the previous longer rest period will be ready to be used when conditions for rapid growth are in place. My total grazing students have observed this and are reaping the rewards of much more forage production in their farms and ranches.

We need to remember that green leaves produce energy through photosynthesis while stems consume energy by respiring. The difference between energy produced and energy consumed is the energy left for production and for fattening roots.

Most humus is produced by plants high in photosynthetic activity which have had the time to grow fat roots. This means plants that have a high leaf to stem ratio! Which type of grazing will give a high leaf to stem ratio? Will selective grazing, where stems are rejected by cattle and stay attached to the plant? Or Total grazing where stems are consumed by grazing?

Which type of grazing, at the high stocking rates required for profitability, will give a longer rest period to grow deep and fat roots?

Selective grazing, by definition, means a shorter rest period than total grazing. How much shorter? From 2 to 3 times shorter. And this means a lot in terms of how much leaf per acre and humus per acre is produced!

If you are a student of Total Grazing, you are observing this in your own ranch or farm.

Conclusion and take way points:

1. Good quality hay is best used to feed livestock with trampled hay a very expensive fertilizer with the humic acids effect short to medium lived depending on temperature. 

2. Not all organic matter is humus. Humus is the stable fraction of organic matter that cannot be further degraded by action of microorganisms.

3. Most humus, our soil’s real fertility, is built by the decomposed bodies of microorganisms fed by root exudates with their last digestion being carried out by fungi.

4. The amount of humus created, per acre per year, depends on the leaf to stem ratio of the forage and the length of the rest period.  Total grazing gives both, higher leaf to stem ratio and longer rest periods.

5. This leaf to stem ratio is wholly dependent on the type of grazing and the type of grazing or harvest efficiency determines how long is the rest period. With total grazing giving the highest harvest efficiency which gives the longest rest period.

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