This month I’ve been reading two great books, Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West by Christopher Knowlton and Built To Move by Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett. The keen insights into ranching and the cattle world that Cattle Kingdom brings to light have been fun, interesting and parallel our work at Ranchlands.

This book tells of the rise and fall of the open range cattle era, which happened over a short span of 25 years. It intricately describes that time—boom towns, cattle drives, cowboys, cattlemen, ranchers, gunfights, and range wars—details that make the author’s case of how this era of American history defines our culture today.

A friend who came fishing at the Paint Rock sent me the book recently, almost a year after he visited. Little did I know that out of the blue one day I would receive an authentication of sorts, or a storied documentation by someone who spent a great deal of time researching and writing about the same thing that Ranchlands holds true and has made a centerpiece of its mission. That is, the American cowboy and ranching culture as a cornerstone of who we are today as a people. The premise of the book thereby underlines the importance of perpetuating ranching into the future. 

It is interesting how things change over time but in their essence also remain the same. As Knowlton describes in the book, ranching was once an economic bubble fueled by opportunistic adventurers and businessmen exploring and leveraging a wide open and wild frontier with cattle. Today though, the same cattle industry is a very difficult business and, much of the time, a solitary lifestyle that does not really compete economically with other industries. Yet at its core, ranching remains a vital, romantic lifestyle with an enthusiastic following that transcends ordinary everyday life. 

The legacy of the open range era is the people who live on the land today, making it their home. Yes, there have been atrocities brought about by greed and ignorance, but the net result has been the creation of a large body of people spread out across the American West—ranchers making a living on a working landscape, who care deeply about the health of the land and who depend on it to support the thing they care most about, their children. And even though raising and grazing cattle is not productive economically relative to other endeavors, it can support the ecologically important practice of managing large landscapes through grazing—a natural disturbance the same as wild ungulate grazing, water, fire, or wind, with which grasslands have evolved over millennia. 

This spring, across all of our properties, each team is focusing their attention on the process of growing and grazing forage and cattle. This means we are spending a great deal of time planning and observing, sitting together around a table creating detailed grazing plans, walking in pastures, observing what plants cattle are eating, and considering all of the aspects of grazing for the livestock, wildlife, and the land. The end result is a detailed plan that charts the day-to-day movement of all our herds throughout the growing season, determined by the needs of wildlife, cattle, natural resources, infrastructure, and people. Key components of our grazing planning process are ensuring that there are critical rest periods for the plant communities, that wildlife and livestock nutritional needs are met, that there is adequate drinking water, identifying ecologically sensitive areas and a plan for each, prioritizing human needs such as time off and skill levels, and appropriate stock densities. In all, a seemingly endless array of factors all must be considered for a positive outcome.

The Paintrock Canyon Ranch in Wyoming

This entire process is built around the idea of emulating the dynamic between the great herds of grazing ungulates and the land—a natural symbiotic relationship with which the land has evolved. This relationship has driven the function of the ecosystem processes such as water and mineral cycles, energy flow (sunlight), and plant succession to support both the land and the animals’ needs. As I write this, crews on all the ranches are on horseback, bikes, and trucks, going out early each morning to carry out the plan that we have meticulously created.

It rained all night here on the Paint Rock Canyon Ranch. Our team, working out of a camp, just moved a large herd of yearlings into what we call the Red Wall pastures last week. They are out moving the cattle on horseback this morning in the rain, maintaining the herd in specific areas. Portable fencing is also used for drift fences to ensure the landscape, as a whole, is functioning as best as possible. In addition to the yearling herd, we have a cow herd on the irrigated pastures around HDQ. Stock densities are much higher and there are a lot of elk and deer that can knock down the electric fencing overnight, so we are checking the fence right now as well. On the MP, Frying Pan, and Chico, watering systems designed to deliver a high volume of water that will support big herds are being checked first thing to ensure there is enough water for the day. While we are out checking water and fences, we look at the cattle as closely as we can for any ailment that can quickly get out of hand due to the high concentration of cattle in each herd. 

Summertime in the Red Wall Pasture on the Paintrock

This kind of grazing has many names that have changed over time since its inception by Allan Savory in the early 80s: the Savory method, intensive grazing, rotational grazing, time-controlled grazing, and more. Today the buzz word is regenerative grazing. However, in my experience, the best word is “intensive management,” because it takes such highly focused plans to prevent a small thing from quickly becoming a big thing problem. 

Grazing is the core of what we do. Not only does it produce beef, but it produces conservation. The processes of grazing cattle and its ecological effect across the American West will be the legacy that our generation of ranchers will leave behind as footprints leading to the future of a healthy world. The same, but different, than the legacy that the open range cattle culture left behind many, many years ago.