Innovative Grazing Program Facilitates Outreach and Implementation to New York Livestock Producers

a solar powered pump delivers gravity-fed water to five drinking stations on Richard Bossard's Steuben County, New York, dairy farm

 For years, Richard Bossard, a dairy farmer in Steuben County, New York, wanted a better watering system for his cows. With hilly pastures and only one watering tank at the lower end of his fields, Bossard found that on hot days his 35 dairy cows, after descending for a drink, were often reluctant to return to the pasture.

With the help of the Finger Lakes Grazing Advocacy Program, a SARE-funded project that provides multi-agency educational and technical support to New York graziers; the New York State Environmental Protection Fund; and the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority; Bossard was able to modernize. He installed a new well, a 1,100-gallon reservoir, and a solar powered pump. Gravity-fed water now reaches five drinking stations throughout Bossard’s land and has the potential to reach over 100 acres of pasture.

Initiated in 2002 and encompassing eleven counties of the Western Finger Lakes region, the grazing advocacy program is coordinated by the Finger Lakes Resource Conservation and Development Council and utilizes the expertise of grazing advocates to work with producers to improve their pasture management. The project grew out of the recognition that prescribed grazing is a profitable and environmentally sound management system for livestock systems, particularly in the Finger Lakes area, which is characterized by rolling topography and many lakes.

cattle grazing on Richard Bossard's  dairy farm

The use of grazing advocates to complement the work of Cooperative Extension and NRCS is not new. Richard Winnett, NRCS’s coordinator assigned to the Finger Lakes RC&D, and program coordinator for the grazing advocacy program, both based in Bath, New York, had seen this system working in other parts of New York, as well as in Pennsylvania and Vermont. Many producers had contacted him about grazing. “As we did not want to increase the workload demands on NRCS and Cooperative Extension, we went out on a limb and decided to apply for money to fund these positions to demonstrate an alternative information delivery system to graziers.”

Hired in 2002 with money received from the SARE grant, two grazing advocates, John Wildeman and John Wickham, developed plans for individual farming operations. Some producers, like Bossard, were already using rotational or prescribed grazing and wanted to improve their management. Other farmers were looking to convert highly erodible fields or improve the efficiency of the forage in their existing pastures.

Richard Bossard (left) inspects corn on his farm

"In each plan the advocates and farmers looked at the potential for installing laneways,  improving watering systems, and watching forage quality and quantity," said Wildeman, former NRCS-District Conservationist of Steuben and Schuyler Counties. “In most cases everyone improved their management in two or three of these areas and I think we’ve made a significant contribution toward protecting water quality.”

To ensure that each plan met New York-NRCS guidelines for grazing systems, NRCS staff trained Wilderman and Wickham and provided them with access to soil maps and other resources. Aligning the plans with the grazing guidelines was required for the producers to receive NRCS technical assistance, but also served as a crucial stepping stone for providing background information for grant applications for State and federal programs. Of the 70 farms that have received grazing plans from the program, almost half have received funding assistance for installing improvements through the New York State Environmental Protection Fund, the NRCS Agricultural Management Assistance Program and NRCS- EQIP.

“A watering system was always my goal, but there was no way I could have done this on my own,” says Bossard. Like most of the other producers, he only had to match 25 percent of the cost, which allowed him to install not only a new watering system, but laneways of filter fabric and gravel between the paddocks. The laneways allowed him to split 13 pastures into 26, reducing the amount of mud the cows track back to the barn, thereby helping to decrease the levels of mastitis.

Winnett estimates that the 70 farmers who have received plans represent about 25 percent of the potential grazing population in the 11-county region.

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Last June, NRCS New York awarded the Finger Lakes RC&D Council a $25,000 grant to continue the grazing advocacy program that will be funded with another $60,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in 2005. “We never envisioned the project growing like it did,” said Winnett.