RANCHER ALEJANDRO CARRILLO RESTORES THE DESERT WITH LIVESTOCK, MIMICKING THE MOVEMENT OF WILD HERDS
Livestock management rarely imitates nature. But ranchers who practice holistic or “rational” management are a benefit to the land, not a burden.
“We have everything together. We have the cattle. We have the horses. We have the donkeys nearby. We have the sheep and the goats. So they all form a big group and those mobs are moved, in my case, twice a day in the morning and the evening.”
--Alejandro Carrillo
HART HAGAN: So what would you like to see on a larger scale? How can people adopt your methods? People who want to get started, maybe maybe philanthropists or existing ranchers want to utilize your methods, how do they get started?
ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: I think what are you doing, Hart, is so important, which is awareness and also education. Part of that education is to understand how nature works, because if you ask me, “Alejandro, just tell me how, how does this work?” I will tell you it pretty much works by mimicking nature. I mean it’s really not rocket science. We’re just mimicking nature.
HART HAGAN: So we mimic Nature by rotational grazing, or holistic planned grazing, and this involves fences and, you know, mob grazing and then rest periods. So, explain how that works and what are some of the do's and don'ts with rotating your animals?
ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: I would change the word “rotational” to “rational” grazing. I like rational because it’s a thinking process. So, we're dealing with so many variables in nature. Even though you have a plan, you never get through the whole year on the basis of the plan. If it rains too much, if it doesn't rain, you're constantly adapting to the current conditions.
So we bunch our livestock like a mob. In my ranch we have everything together. We have the cattle. We have the saddle horses, the mares. We have the donkeys nearby. We have the sheep and the goats.
So they all form a big group and those mobs are moved, in my case, twice a day in the morning and the evening. So they are bunched together using electric fence and they are moving constantly. It’s that movement. We are mimicking nature.
I think for many years we didn't have much of a problem until the arrival of the barbed wire fence when we stopped the movement. It was nice just to put the cattle out and get the product from the cattle.
But now we understand that by placing an animal and not moving the animal, it will be detrimental to the pasture land. Because in one way, you’re over grazing certain plants on the same pasture, and on the same pasture, you will be over resting other plants. And at the end of the day, both plants are going to die. Both grasses are going to die, one because it’s using the reserves and then it’s trying to grow and you graze it again. And the other because it doesn’t have enough exposure to grazing. Remember that plants evolved with grazers. So they need each other. The grasses need the grazers.
The other very common problem we have seen is that most ranchers are getting too soon back to the same pasture that they grazed. It depends where you are. It could be six months in the western US or it could be 20 days in tropical areas, we need to give the plants more rest period.
It is not rocket science, but it takes a lot of observation and education.
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Food for thought: Assuming these management methods are good for the land, the water, the wildlife and the animals, how can we support it? We can 1) inform ourselves by studying this content, 2) buy food from regenerative farmers and 3) share this content with farmers and policymakers.
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