SRM offers tool to help with grazing decisions
The Wyoming Society for Range Management (SRM) held its annual meeting and banquet on Nov. 4-6 at the Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center in Casper.
Participants attending the three-day event had the opportunity to participate in training, networking and educational breakout sessions.
During the second day of the conference, SRM Director Candidate Dave Voth brought a ranching perspective to SRM’s program Good Grazing Makes Cent$ (GGMC).
Voth is a ranch manager from northeastern Nevada who also runs a herd of his own cattle and is the Nevada section president for SRM.
Background
Voth was not born into the cattle industry, but he knew early on it would be the career path he would pick.
“I have always been interested in raising animals, and for no particular reason I was called into the cattle business,” he stated. “As I have gotten older, the more I realized how much ranching meant to me.”
A few years ago, Voth accepted the challenge to turn a large ranch around and recognized, to keep a ranch functioning, there must be a combination of key concepts.
“Those concepts include animal production and animal performance, along with an understanding of ecology and financing,” he mentioned. “If a rancher can’t stay in business, all of the ecological work done means nothing, as the property will be sold and split into smaller parcels.”
Being able to understand these key concepts and implement them is part of being successful, but having the right digestible information is why SRM created GGMC.
“Through the program I can speak to other producers who have tried unique and progressive treatments and see how I can use some of those things and what may or may not make sense on my place,” Voth said.
GGMC
GGMC aims to provide practical, applicable and economically-feasible range management solutions which can ultimately improve productivity of the land and the bottom line of the ranch through conversations between scientists and ranchers.
“GGMC offers me a chance to ask questions in an interactive forum which can connect me to people in the academic world and bring it into a situation where I can use it on my own landscape,” Voth said.
The multifaceted program provides numerous deliverables for ranchers to quickly and easily access information on topics ranging from how the history of land impacts today’s management decisions to best determining grazing intensity, duration and timing.
GGMC’s innovative program was designed to provide a forum for collaboration, community and coordination between rangeland scientists and those who apply the science such as ranchers, farmers and land managers.
“We want to deliver digestible, valuable and trustworthy content through a creative process,” he mentioned.
Each month, a new subject will be dissected through an e-newsletter; YouTube videos with experts; a live, interactive Facebook group and SRM journals and articles.
“Members will drive the content to best meet the needs of the range stewards utilizing the information. There will be multiple avenues to submit questions and connect with range scientists for solutions or other ranchers with similar experiences,” Voth added.
Particularly in the Facebook group, participants have the ability to get answers to their toughest range management questions in real time.
He continued, “Our newsletter has a ‘submit a question’ option which will then be directed to experts or even covered in depth in future editions.”
Melissa Anderson is the editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.
