We are thrilled to release this video on the Heifer Grazing Compass, featuring our friends Scott Mericka of Uplands Cheese, Ron Schoepp, and the cows of Schoepp Farms. Through development of this tool, we’ve learned that grazing heifers is cost-effective. The Heifer Grazing Compass allows producers to plug in the numbers specific to their operations to see for themselves how much they can save with a transition to grazing.
“We built the Heifer Grazing Compass to help farm service providers and farmers understand the cost and labor savings of raising heifers on pasture,” says John Hendrickson, one of the developers of the tool (and narrator of the video).
Using a “no free lunch” axiom, this video calls into question spending extra time and money to grow, harvest, buy, store, and transport feed. Why do that, when you could decrease labor and feed costs while still getting your cows fed? Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch, the narrator posits. “It’s called grass.”
Plus, with cows on grass, the manure spreads itself!
Hendrickson sees the benefits of pasture-based agriculture not only for individual farmers but for rural communities. “Grassland agriculture protects soil and water resources while benefiting the farm’s bottom line,” he says. “ It also lets cows be cows! They are born to eat grass.”
In case you or your neighbor needs a nudge to try a free tool to evaluate best heifer management practices, we hope this video does the trick.
Plug in your numbers. See how much you can save.
Thank you to our Compass video team of Finn Ryan, John Hendrickson, Jim Munsch, and Alex Steussy-Williams for bringing this to fruition.