greener PASTURES

Ranchers are using adaptive grazing to restore soil health while increasing profitability. 

- Raylene Nickel

These specific approaches to rotational grazing — named by the ranchers who created them — are built so grazing cattle help build healthy, resilient soils and vibrant grasslands.

Strategic Chaos

Ten years have passed since Meredith Ellis gave up a landscaping career to take over managing her family’s cattle ranch, the G Bar C Ranch near Rosston, Texas, northwest of Dallas. “I realized that what my dad had been doing for years by protecting our 3,000-acre ranch was critical to our future as a society,” she says. “I realized that the most impactful thing I could do was to go home and become a rancher, just like my dad.”

Ellis began fine-tuning an orchestrated, adaptive, multi-paddock method of grazing she calls “strategic chaos.” The goal is to build soil, sequester carbon, and, in short, improve a grassland through livestock grazing. Along with improving plants and soil, the ranch’s 2023 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Region IV Environmental Stewardship Award suggests she’s on the right track.

“Everything we do on our operation is based within the context of our goals,” she says. “Rather than abiding by set practices, I manage according to soil health principles. The bottom line is that we’re constantly monitoring, so that we abide by these principles.”

To accomplish that, her strategies flex according to forage growth, terrain, soil type, season, and weather. She adjusts grazing and management to address differing needs of soil and forages.