How Does Crystalyx^® Pencil Out for Grazing Distribution?

As we continue our theme of demonstrating how Crystalyx^® pencils out for a return on your investment, we will next look at using Crystalyx to help manage grazing distribution in your pastures. The idea is that, in addition to using the supplement to provide daily nutritional supplementation to your cattle, we will use it to manipulate the grazing of your herd into areas they would not typically frequent. We once referred to this as having your supplement “multitask.”

Any lazy old cow will quickly consume the grass next to a water source, creek or other riparian area. Distance from water and steepness of grade tend to cause cattle to overgraze forage around water tanks, creeks or ponds. The trick is to get the cow (and her calf) to walk away from that water source and graze other pasture areas that they tend to avoid. These would be uplands and remote sections of your pastures that are not very close to water sources. Such areas can be found in huge pastures in the western U.S. or in smaller, irregularly shaped pastures in the eastern U.S. that are not well watered or may have steeper areas that cattle avoid.

The original research

Ridley Block Operations worked with Dr. Derek Bailey, while he was at Montana State University at Havre, to quantify the grazing distribution effect of various self-fed supplements. Most of the findings were among the first reported and peer-reviewed data using GPS collars to track the cows’ movements 24 hours a day for one to two weeks at a time.

If you Google “Bailey and Welling grazing distribution,” you will find more than 40 articles that cover much of the work we did with Dr. Bailey over two decades ago. It would take days to read all this work, but I can boil it down for you.

A synopsis

Over the eight years or so that we tested the grazing impact of various supplements, we initially only compared Crystalyx against no supplement at all. Later, we compared it against other self-fed and even hand-fed supplements. While there were probably eight or ten interesting points in the data each year, here are the major findings:

1. In two weeks, you can harvest 15% of the available forage within a 600-yard radius of a set of Crystalyx barrels. Now, this would require 100–200 cows, as it is 233 acres, and the area can be a half a mile or more from your water source. This means that, many times, this is forage that will go unutilized by your herd.
2. The effect is additive. If you leave the Crystalyx there for four weeks, you will approach 30% utilization of the forage. You can definitely overgraze an area with this technology, so planning your barrel placement well is essential.
3. This will work in the fall and summer, but it is more effective in the fall. In the fall, the Crystalyx supplement is more attractive than water (yes, you read that correctly).
4. Research conducted on the Grand River National Grasslands in northwestern South Dakota, during the summer, with Crystalyx^® Crystal-Phos^® 8 showed similar grazing improvements with naïve cattle.
5. Cattle graze their way to and from their visits to supplement. They do not lick on the supplement and then just leave the area to go back to a riparian area.
6. Cattle do not stop eating Crystalyx because the ambient temperature is too cold, but they may avoid Crystalyx barrels when the windchill is severe. Try to place barrels out of direct winds when the weather is very cold.
7. Cattle consuming 0.7 lb./hd/d of Crystalyx^® BGF-30™ had similar weight gain as cattle fed 1.7 lb./hd/d of a range cake (forage was abundant). This was measured from October to January in Montana, 50 miles from the Canadian border.
8. Crystalyx was much better than salt alone at coaxing cattle to graze underutilized rangeland.
9. A higher percentage of the herd visited Crystalyx protein and mineral supplement barrels than visited conventional dry minerals.

So, what does all this data mean for your pocketbook?

If you have at least 1,000 pounds of forage per acre to start with — and that will not look like very much forage to many of you — and you see 15% utilization in two weeks across the 600 acres I mentioned in #1 above, that equates to 17.5 tons of forage you will not have to purchase. In better pastures, you can harvest more than that. For 200 cows, that will cost you one ton of Crystalyx. If the cost of 17.5 tons of purchased forage is $200/ton, the total value is $3,500. If your Crystalyx costs you $1,400 a ton, then you have an ROI of 2.5:1 “just” on the forage savings. You get two weeks of nutrition for free.

If you had to buy more pasture at $30 per AUM (that would be $3,000), you would double your money in 14 days. Again, Wall Street can’t compete with that, and they are certainly not giving you free nutrition for those two weeks.

Drought?

Much of the country is coming out of a drought, but when drought reappears, remember two things about Crystalyx:

1. Crystalyx can move your cattle far from water, to graze grass that might not usually get grazed in a drought.
2. Once the cattle are on that grass, the protein in Crystalyx can increase the digestibility of low-quality forages by 10%.

That increase in hay/forage digestibility alone could be worth 30¢/hd/d (based on $200/ton hay). That is about 2/3 of the total cost of Crystalyx protein supplements/hd/d.

Last point: Crystalyx is a self-fed supplement

We should not forget that Crystalyx is a self-fed protein and/or mineral supplement. It will give you these grazing distribution advantages while you are working on something else. A properly stocked set of Crystalyx protein supplement barrels should last about 14 days. Crystalyx supplements that average ¼ lb./hd/d intakes will last closer to three weeks. This all equates to very little labor, time and equipment expense to supplement and move your cattle to underutilized pasture areas.

One of the owners of a cooperating herd during the Montana grazing studies was a wildlife professor at Montana State. He was often quoted as saying, “Crystalyx gives you three benefits: One, it is a self-fed supplement; two, it helps distribute grazing in your pastures; and three, it is a nutritional supplement. Any two of those easily pay for the supplement, and the third is just a bonus.”

Let Crystalyx multitask on your ranch!