Real Wealth Ranching

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 va...

Welcome to this podcast of Real Wealth Ranching where our goal is to help you reach maximum profitability while your land improves the fastest.

I am Jim Elizondo and today I will speak about how to use Total grazing to increase our productivity and stocking rate while at the same time make sure we avoid overgrazing that does so much harm to pastures and ranges.

Many cattlemen confuse overgrazing with an efficient harvest by the cows. Nothing further from the truth, we need to consider how the plant functions and how livestock graze if we allow them to do their will. When we leave livestock in a paddock for more than one day, they start to select the best species and parts of plants that they prefer. This means that the best or desirable species will be consumed all the way down to the ground and the undesirable species will be avoided allowing them to take over your field. We need to remember that plants compete above ground for sunlight and below ground for nutrients and water. B...

Transition from Selective Grazing to Total Grazing.

Most cattlemen allow their cattle to do selective grazing where cattle select the best regarding forage species and parts of plants while leaving behind as residual the undesirable species and stems, as they prefer leaves. This is the main reason that the undesirable species take over a field or paddock. Besides, the residual that is left behind inhibits the regrowth of leaves for the next grazing as those stems continue to consume energy by respiring which weakens the roots or crowns. We need to remember that competition between desirable and undesirable plants occurs above and below ground. Above for sunlight and below for water and nutrients.

The consequence is a lower harvest efficiency and less leaf production per square yard, acre or hectare. This also means less humus production as humus is formed by the bodies of the microorganisms near the roots of the plants that fed on root exudates created by the plant, these root exu...

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo of Real Wealth Ranching and today we are going to consider how to save on hay when feeding it out.

You may think, isn’t it better to feed the soil with hay? Isn’t that a way to increase humus content of our soils?

While rotting hay may give some temporary surge of grass growth due to its organic humic acids being released, it is a very expensive way to increase soil humus as most soil humus is not produced by litter being degraded in the soil, but it comes mainly from the decomposition of the microorganism's bodies and these microorganisms are fed by the plants root exudates which in turn depend on the leaf to stem ratio in the plant. We know we can affect the leaf to stem ratio in the following regrowth by doing Total Grazing as my Total Grazing students have been doing with good success. Remember: green leaves produce energy through photosynthesis while stems consume energy through respiring.

It is important, therefore, to use your high-cost hay the ...

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching and today we are going to talk about "How to make sure cattle don’t get out of electric fences under dry conditions".

I hear from many people that electric fences do not work well or are not very effective. This usually means that when conditions are ideal the livestock respect it but when conditions are difficult, they get out and exasperate the farmer.

In my own experience, when I am off the farm, my helper will tell me that the electric fence failed or that the livestock got out and when asked the reason, I only get a blank stare from them and sometimes I believe they are convinced that electric fences are not reliable or do not work, period.

Well, let me tell you, One wire electric fence is very cheap, durable and should be enough if we pay attention to details.

They are so cheap to install and to maintain, to the tune of 3 to 10 times lower cost than barbed wire or wire netting that they make absolute sense to me. And...

Transcript 

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo, and this is your Fat cows, Fat wallet Podcast where we bring you the information to help you get the best results.

Today’s podcast is 5 steps to stop spending on synthetic fertilizers.

In this podcast I am going to tell you how to gradually wean your land from the high cost of synthetic fertilizers without losing your shirt in the process. I will give you some success stories that you may relate to and tell you my own process and success.

As you will see, avoiding synthetic fertilizers use is important for the health of your soil, the health of your livestock and for your profits. It is not only saving money by not using them, but it is also your future productivity that will increase as the humus in your soil increases by using low-cost biological methods instead of chemical methods!

When I bought my first farm, having graduated as an Agronomy Engineer, I immediately started to apply synthetic fertilizers to have higher productivity immedi...

I wanted to invite Matt Robbins to the show because I knew his journey is going to motivate you and push you to the exact steps you need to take action.

He has superb genetics, better and leafier pastures, great body condition in his cattle and work/life balance.

You see, after doing rotational grazing (all kinds of it) since 2001, he has been doing Total Grazing for 2 years and just this recent year he has implemented what he has learned in the program. 

Without those things that he learned he wouldn't be able to be where he is today. He was missing a few critical things that really improved the productivity of the land, the health of their cows and their own wellbeing. 

Want to know what they are? Listen to this great podcast episode with Matt. He shares what were the most important steps he had to take to get the results he now has.

I asked him what he wanted to say to people who were in the fence about enrolling in the program and this is what he said, "Save yourself all th...

I am Jim Elizondo and this is Fat Cows, Fat Wallet.

Today’s topic is, “Make better use of the grass you already have”.

One of my mottos is to always work with what you already have. If we are always thinking about when I have better grass, when I improve my cattle genetics, when my land is improved and so on, when I have more rain, when I have a better year, less work, and the list goes on and on. If we are waiting for the perfect moment, it will for sure, never come.

So today we are going to talk about using what you have. Make better use of the grass that you have right now, at this moment.

Now, you have been listening to me for a while and you know that I always, always say that what determines profitability is the number of productive animals you can carry at a low cost per year.

What I also mention is that a long time ago, myriads of animal species in nature used to graze it all and now, we use electric fences and high animal density with our cattle to achieve the same.

T...

Hello, welcome to the Fat Cows, Fat Wallet Podcast. I’m your host, Jim Elizondo, creator of Real Wealth Ranching. I am a real rancher with over 30 years of experience on regenerating the land and significantly improving profits on my own ranches and with my consulting clients on MANY different environments. My passion is to help ranchers to achieve the same. If you’re an ambitious farmer or rancher who’s looking to maximize your profitability while improving your land the fastest, you’re in the right place. Let’s get started.

I got a question for you. Have you already implemented the Total Grazing Program? Doesn’t mean if you have taken my courses, I have plenty of people with good results who have used what I have published online. I’m getting straight to the point here. But listen, we are at the end of 2021, so I think I’m at the liberty to say that if you’re a regenerative rancher or an aspiring one, total grazing will change your life. I’ve been in the regenerative space for a ...

 Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching

Today we will talk about Total grazing and adapted genetics/selection guidelines.

When we start to implement the process of total grazing in your land you may need, for better results, to use adapted genetics with correct selection guidelines. Then, what should we do? Only total grazing? Or at the same time implement adapted genetics with correct selection guidelines?

The good news is that this doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, I want you to consider how this two big subjects' impact or can impact your cattle business. You will come out of this podcast with a decision. Will you implement total grazing and use adapted genetics/correct selection guidelines? Will you only do total grazing? Or maybe a little of both?

I’m going to say up front: to achieve the best results in our ranches/farms it is important to increase our grass production using low-cost biological methods, increase our harvest efficiency to get more cow day...