Level Up On Soil Health With Livestock

Tom Cannon turned to no-till in the late 1990s after watching his wheat dry up and blow away in the harsh Oklahoma wind.

- Courtney Leeper Girgis

He was 26 and managing the family farm on his own after an accident left his father severely injured.

In the early days of no-till, farmers who dropped their plows were cautioned against running cattle and other livestock on no-till fields to avoid compaction and pugging from hoof impact. However, cattle had always been a major part of Goodson Ranch, established in the 1890s by Cannon’s great-grandparents. Cannon needed to continue with stockers.

Running cattle on wheat pasture each winter tore up the ground in places. Even on better soils, as little as a half inch of rain could create problems. But Cannon learned he could prevent pugging and stock 50% heavier by pulling cattle off the wet cropland and putting them on refuge areas of bermudagrass until the crop recovered, usually two to three days. He also found he could make the soil more resilient with diverse cover crops and crop rotations. He gradually added corn, soybeans, milo, alfalfa, and cotton to the land, in conjunction with the cattle, which some seasons were his only profit.

It took 10 years for Cannon to see an increase of one percentage point in soil organic matter, which helps him address his No. 1 limitation: moisture. Had he known to intensify plant diversity and cattle management earlier, he believes he would have seen the same gain in just four years.

“As you increase your organic matter, you increase your water infiltration rate; you have less runoff; you have more nutrients stay where they belong,” Cannon says. “All that is sped up with cover crops and cattle.”