Minerals, Marketing, and Management: Diving into Week 2
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
This past week, I have learned that a lot of running a farm is about how to make profit outside of just the farm. My hosts have had an extremely busy week running their other businesses in town. For them to have a farm, they have had to discover other income opportunities beyond their livestock sales. I also got the opportunity to use the tractor and learned why my host minimizes tractor equipment use and uses regenerative agriculture practices. They made that choice after watching the soil health decline and the only option for saving their farmed fields was to buy more and more expensive equipment. I also got to learn to mix minerals for cattle and recognize signs of copper deficiency in cattle.
I am curious about pasture health given my work over the past week. I believe their fields may need to be fertilized with compost or some other natural remedy to stimulate some growth and help the grass conquer weeds in the area. They have some ideas of why a bigger ranch is not a good idea, and I believe that larger operations can make a huge profit if managed correctly. I would also challenge the idea that cows chew on wood and plastic out of boredom. I believe that this behavior could be a sign of a deficiency in cattle. Often times, this behavior is caused by a phosphorous deficiency. I also spent time this week hand removing weeds and am curious to know why we don’t try using their sheep for weed control on several other parts of their property, such as along the driveway or under solar panels. I believe that doing this may be a better use of labor and could help pasture grasses grow back.
There are also several things that came up this week that I would like to learn more about. I would like to learn more about care and feeding plans for their chickens. Also, why don’t they build permanent fences if they always use the same rotational grazing pattern? And how do you know if there is enough grass in a pasture to feed cows for a certain amount of time?
Lastly, this week I also got to run some orders of processed sheep and beef to several customers. This experience taught me how to use customer interaction to support a business. Talking to clients and connecting with them over shared interests on your operation can increase sales and the trust they have for you and your products.
| Submitted by: Teagan Halsey Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team |
