Farming Video | Kelly Garrett’s Rotational Grazing Success with Summer Mix in Iowa

20 Jun 252m 31s

In this video, Kelly Garrett of XtremeAg walks us through his intensive rotational grazing efforts at “Grandma Donna’s” farm in western Iowa. Kelly shares details about their summer mix of sorghum Sudan grass, buckwheat, bayou kale, cowpeas, and spring peas—aiming to improve soil health and boost feed production. He discusses the transition away from atrazine, the benefits of improved soil structure, and how this mix is outperforming expectations.

00:00:00 Hi, this is Kelly Garrett from Extreme Ag. We're standing over here at the farm we call Grandma Donna's, where we've got the intensive rotational 00:00:07 grazing going on. Uh, Carl's out here right now. He's drilling out buckwheat bayou kale cow peas, 40 10 spring peas and sorghum Sudan grass. 00:00:18 About 60% of what's in this mix is sorg sorghum Sudan grass. We have pastured it down here pretty tight the way you can 00:00:26 see this time, trying to allow the, the summer mix to, to germinate. Carl's out here right now drilling it in. 00:00:32 Really good chance of rain coming tonight. So we're kind of scrambling to try to get as many acres drilled as we can. 00:00:38 We got about 40 here in this pasture to do, uh, 35 or so at the next pasture. We moved the cows to the back. 00:00:45 Uh, this is really going, uh, very well last year. I was happy to try it again, but I didn't feel that the growth we had in the grass last 00:00:54 year was quite up to my expectations this year. I would tell you that the growth we've had has exceeded my expectations. 00:01:01 Uh, you know, TJ told me the more years we do this, that the soil health will improve. Um, we also took atrazine out of our chemical mix, 00:01:09 so this hasn't had atrazine for two years from now on the fields we go to, you know, we'll put this in following corn. 00:01:15 Uh, there's no atrazine. We wind grove has changed our mix. Again, I just can't express how happy I am out here 00:01:21 with the amount of feed we have. We've chopped extra and piled up the feed because I, I figured 00:01:27 that we're gonna have to supplement the grass. Now, we're not into the 1st of July yet. We've got two hot old months to go 00:01:32 through here in Western Iowa, so I still might have to supplement the grass, but holy cow, do we have feed? And it's lush, it's green. 00:01:40 Uh, I'm excited to put this to corn next year because of the soil health, things like that. And, uh, just really to see what's going on here 00:01:47 and how we're improving the soil, how, how we're improving the ROI of this farm. Uh, my grandma and grandpa would really be proud. 00:01:56 As you can see here, cheese, let 'em graze it down tighter than we normally do. But now there's still some cover here, armor on the soil 00:02:03 as we say, so it doesn't dry out so fast. And to protect the soil, Carl's drilling it in with our John Deere drill 00:02:09 and, uh, I'm excited to see what comes up. The sorghum should provide a lot of feed. The other plants and things in here will, 00:02:16 will provide micronutrients, the sorghum will provide protein. Things like that is a big improvement over the, uh, 00:02:23 standard broan grass that we've always had 00:02:24.465 --> 00:02:25.865