Nowakowskis Don't Worry When Their Cows Are in the Corn

By Ron Johnson, Dairy Editor
Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:29 PM CDT

Lenny Nowakowski

The cows are in the corn!

Okay. So what? That's where they're supposed to be.

Yes, at Lenny and Julie Nowakowskis' Polish Ponderosa, the cows really are supposed to be in the corn - at least some of the time. The Nowakowskis, Waushara County dairy farmers near Berlin, let their cows into the corn as a way to provide extra grazing during the so-called "summer slump." It's during that slump when moisture is short that many pasture grasses turn brown and stop growing.

But letting the 65-cow milking string eat a few rows of standing corn each day for a few weeks extends the grazing season of what little grass is growing. At night, the Nowakowskis move their corn-munching cows back onto grass.

This is no regular corn. Instead, it's a high-sugar silage corn. Nowakowski planted it June 15 - intentionally late - so the stalks would have lots of leaves but no ears.

At a recent Fox River Grazing Network pasture walk, he let some two-dozen guests see his cows-in-the-corn method in action. At one of the small cornfields, where his cows had already had access to many rows, he moved a single-strand electric fence back into the field to let the multi-colored crossbreds and Holsteins get to a fresh area.

Earlier, he'd knocked down a few rows of corn by driving a tractor over them. Knocked down, the corn plants would not short out the fence.

Even before he had the wire completely moved, the cows - plus Jerry the bull - were heading for the fresh corn at a fast clip. Once at the corn, the cattle pulled off mouthfuls of leaves, ate them, then pulled off more.

In the process, they do trample some stalks, but Lenny assured that they will go back later and clean up those. As proof, the ground where they've gotten to the corn other days is littered with the faded-green skeletons of stalks, but virtually no leaves.

"Look at them go after it!" remarked one pasture walk visitor. "There's no waste in here."

Besides giving them feed to stretch their grass, planting corn for grazing helps in pasture renovation. Last year the Nowakowskis removed from pasture production several acres that were not doing well and contained too much fescue and orchardgrass.

They ripped up that ground, sprayed Roundup and planted winter wheat. Their cows grazed the wheat, and then two crops of Sudangrass on the same ground. After that, the Nowakowskis planted turnips for fall grazing.

This year the rotation on that land has been to cow peas and oats. After that, one patch of ground grew Sudangrass again, while two others got the high-sugar corn. Again, all the crops were grazed.

Next year Lenny will reseed part of that tilled land to a mix of Kura clover and reed canarygrass. The rest will go to straight alfalfa.

"Everything I plant is for grazing, the dairyman commented. "If that (corn ground) was in grass right now, it'd be just as dry as everything else."

This year his cows got their first taste of the high-sugar corn Aug. 8. What with corn during the day, grass at night, and a total-mixed ration when grazing conditions call for it, the cows are milking about 63 pounds a day, Nowakowski said. He added that milk production drops a bit when his cows are pulled off pasture and later put back on it, since their rumen bacteria need to adjust.

To feed the TMR, Nowakowski places it in old tractor tires. When he wants to get more manure to other parts of the paddocks, he simply moves the tires.

Nowakowski also makes hay from some of his paddocks. This year he found a nearby dairyman who would custom chop for him. The result was his entire first crop chopped and stuffed into silage bags in just a day-and-a-half.

Julie and Lenny milk twice a day, but Lenny was lamenting the impending loss of his "excellent" Hispanic milker. They milk year round, but drop the herd to as few as 17 lactating cows during the winter.

It would be nice to not milk at all for a couple of months, Nowakowski said, but he noted that the family's medical insurance premium recently rose from $1,200 a month to $1,500. That makes it tougher to get by without a milk check for any length of time.

The dairyman was asked what he thinks of his crossbreds that can be a mix of five breeds - Holstein, Jersey, Normande, Norwegian Red and Swedish Red. His reply was that he is trying to "breed out" the Normande blood. He said the Normandes' marketability is poor and some of them have "ugly udders."

Cattle marketability is important because the couple sells 18 or so heifers a year. Grazing, the dairyman explained, lets him do that because his older cows stay in the milking string longer.

He credited much of the farm's success to his wife, noting, for example, "Julie does a super job raising calves. We've lost one or two in the last five years."

Bison, poultry

Besides their dairy herd, the Nowakowskis' 205-acre farm is home to 40 bison and hundreds of broilers and layers. They're all part of the Polish Ponderosa's direct-market meat-and-egg business.

This is their seventh year with that enterprise. Said Nowakowski, "I'm not going to pay for the farm with it. But it's extra cash."

The bison herd has been built from a bull and two heifers. Nowakowski said he and his wife look at them as something that might one day replace the dairy herd.

They butchered the first bison - a bull - last fall. Nowakowski said they shot it right in the pasture, to keep the animal's stress level low. Buffalo meat, plus chickens and eggs are available in the couple's on-farm store.

Like the dairy cattle and the chickens, too, the bison graze part of the farm's 140 acres of pasture. Buffalo are, of course, natural grazers.

"They're neat - just a neat animal," the farmer remarked. "Maintenance free. If they've got grass and water, that's all they need. During all the hot weather we had, they stayed right in the open, even though they had access to trees."

Indeed, the Nowakowskis tried giving their buffalo more than they need. But the bison turned up their black noses at it.

In addition to minerals and salt, they tried feeding the bison big bales of hay. Instead of eating the hay, the bison made a game of playing with the bale feeder.

"They banged it around, rolled it across the pasture and pounded on it some more," Nowakowski described.

But they do like corn silage. The Nowakowskis use that fact to deworm the bison, mixing the medicine into corn silage for a couple of days.

What's more, these bison like bread. The Nowakowskis get a truckload of unsold bread every once in awhile from a large store at Oshkosh. The bread is free and would otherwise go into a landfill.

Julie demonstrated the technique for feeding bread to bison during the pasture walk. She simply stood by the perimeter fence of one of their pastures, yelled to them, and lobbed a couple of halves of hamburger buns into the paddock.

From a couple of hundred yards away, the animals came thundering toward her, looking like a Fredrick Remington painting from the days of the Old West. At the fence, they butted heads over each bun. When the bread was gone, some took time for a quick roll in the dust before going back to grazing.

Julie and Lenny both know how ornery their bison can be. Lenny told pasture walk attendees how cow No. 33 ran up behind the farm's four-wheel utility vehicle and lifted the rear of it with her head - while Julie was on it. A broken taillight is a reminder of that incident.

The Nowakowskis use a leader-follower system with their buffalo. The dairy cows graze an area first. Then the bison follow, tightly grazing what the cows left.

"They're neat animals but they're hell on pastures," Nowakowski commented. "They want to graze it right to the dirt, almost."

The bison get six to 10 acres at a time. One acre or so doesn't work, the farmer cautioned, because that's simply not enough room for them to feel unconfined.

Nor do the bison like buildings. That's one reason the Nowakowskis outwinter them.

"They won't go in a building if you have one. They want to be free and out in the open," Nowakowski pointed out.

Lenny and Julie also outwinter their dry cows and heifers, but they have access to a building.

So far the Nowakowskis have only been butchering an excess buffalo bull or two. The calves, born mostly in May and June, reach a live weight of about 1,200 pounds after 30 to 32 months on grass. They dress out at around 600 pounds.

Grazing good fit

Nowakowski asserted that grazing has been a good fit for his farm. Julie and he made the switch in 1993.

He ticked off a list of grazing advantages: More profit, a better way to farm on heavy clay, less fuel used, less money spent on fertilizer, healthier animals, smaller feed bills.

"For me, it's just a hand-in-glove fit," Nowakowski declared. "I love it."

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