Eel River Delta Said To Be California's Napa Valley of Grassland Agriculture
Excerpts of Article taken from the Stockman Grass Farmer dated January 2007, Vol 07, #1
Staff Report
..Another stocker grazier who has diversified into grass-finishing is Jay Russ of Ferndale. His family were pioneers into the area immediately after the Civil War and at one time owned 250,000 acres in the area. Today, the Russ family owns 10,000 acres of mountain range and 600 highly developed grassland acres in the Delta. These 600 acres are planted to perennial ryegrass and white clover, subdivided into four acre paddocks and are Certified Organic.
The Russes run 300 Hereford cows in the adjacent mountains and grass-finish the calves on perennial ryegrass and white clover for Bay Area beef marketers. The cows are bred to Tehama Ranch Angus Bulls, calve in April and May and wean in November. Most of the calves are harvested in the subsequent May to August period. In addition to their home-raised calves, Russ custom grass-finishes cattle for inland ranchers and also brings in "load-up" stocker cattle for the spring lush. These load-up calves are used to increase the stocking rate to 2.5 beeves per acre.
"We can put 200 to 300 pounds of gain on a stocker calf in 60 days during the spring lush," he said. These stocker cattle typically go out weighing around 900 pounds to Midwestern feedlots. However, the Midwesterners say beef cattle from the cool coastal regions suffer mightily when they hit the heat of the interior of the country and are typically heavily discounted. Also, due to twisting mountain highways that restrict the use of 53-foot-long trucks, transportation costs are very high. Both of these factors are driving coastal graziers toward more intra-region grass-finishing. "I think we will increase to 1500 to 2000 head of grass-finished animals a year with just our current graziers (in Ferndale)." Russ said.
DRY SUMMERS AND WET WINTERS
While boasting of 40 inches of rain a year, the Eel River Delta has a June until October dry period that requires irrigation. However, unlike much of inland California, the Delta's summers are cool and perennial ryegrass grows well in the summer with irrigation. (Cool-season grass growth largely stops at 87 degrees F.) Also, there is no significant drop in performance due to heat lignification of the grass.
"On most days here you can add the daily high and daily low together and they will roughly equal 100 degrees," Russ said. (For example, a high of 60 and a low of 40 would equal 100 degrees F.) This high level of summer performance is the Eel River Delta's greatest "unfair advantage." The Russ Ranch recently began installing K-line Irrigation to replace their high-labor side roll units. They have 80 acres of K-line currently in operation and are plumbing in another 70 acres this winter. "We can irrigate 40 acres in 20 minutes. That's half the time of our old units," he said.
Some of his paddocks are naturally sub-irrigated as the water table is only two feet below the surface and rises and falls in concert with the daily ocean tide. Of course, no place is perfect and the Delta's excellent summer is offset by a rainy winter that can turn the region's heavy clay soils into a major pug-fest. "We can graze calves all winter but not the heavier cattle," Russ said. "January to March we have to keep the heavy cattle on sacrifice areas and feed them to protect our pastures."
The typical Delta combination of energy-containing, spring-cut ryegrass haylage and high protein alfalfa hay (Moore uses alfalfa pellets) can produce finishing level gains (1.7 lbs per day) throughout the winter. "The Eel River Delta is the easiest place to finish cattle year around (on an all perennial system) in California," Russ said.
Reprinted from The Stockman Grass Farmer Magazine, the grass farming publication of North America.
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