“Grass, the forgiveness of nature, her constant benediction,” intoned the 19th-Century Kansas Senator, John J. Ingalls. Albrecht could only add his “Amen” when reminded of Ingalls’ paean. “The cow,” Albrecht said, “is the finest nutritionist on earth. She knows more than the greatest Ph.D. on a college staff.” Albrecht echoes this sentiment in the papers assembled in this volume.
How did hay or grass perform when passed through the digestive tract of the test animal, be they rabbit, cow, horse, whatever? During his long career, Albrecht discerned a cause-effect response when producing high volume forage. The results he found in turn answered the dairy farmer’s quest for knowledge on an equally perplexing question, just how much is high dissolved solids hay worth?
Morrison’s Feeds and Feeding had no answers, Albrecht claimed, because laboratory tests are not biological tests. High relative feed values too often fail the fiber test, a test that condemns protein bypass, cattle cake and feeding schemes that seek to turn an herbivorous animal into a carnivore.
Pastures mean fiber. The absence of pastures often means disease. Albrecht’s papers seem to anticipate some of the developments reported in the pages of the Acres U.S.A. magazine since he passed from the scene in 1974. The refractometer was little used in agriculture in his time, but Albrecht expected development of a test that preserved the validity of the biological procedure, yet yielded immediate and valid results.
One such testing system dries hay to a zero percent moisture, then hammers it into powder. That powder is dissolved in deionized or distilled water. Shaken and filtered, the material is then ready for a refractometer readout.
Dan Skow, D.V.M., has himself enlarged lessons and stair-stepped to a lofty real science status on the shoulders of giants. His refractometer calibration runs from zero to 80. It is the feed with a value of 50+ that is a guarantee of increased production.
Quality pastures and hay crops are not the given expected by farmers who row crop the best land and reserve fragile soils for pasture and hay.
All the lessons presented so far lay the foundation and backbone for cows at grass. One of Albrecht’s correspondence associates was André Voisin, the author of rotation pastures and the book, Soil, Grass and Cancer. They had exchanged ideas, defined and launched investigations both at the University of Missouri and in France.
There are now two systems before the farmer and rancher. One relies on confinement feeding, what Albrecht called “the bovine concentration camp,” now suggested by later day university studies that linked nutrition to disposal problems for industrial wastes—even chicken litter, cow manure, rendered animal wastes and protein bypass based on soy. Confinement best represents the industrial model imposed on a biological procedure. But turning herbivores into carnivores begged the biological question and left unanswered the animal health requirement.
The other system relies on grass, “the forgiveness of nature,” as John J. Ingalls put it. Starting at the beginning of the last century, Albrecht and his colleagues proceeded to unravel the mysteries of grass, clover, alfalfa—all the legends, of course—and a bio-factory that suggested animal health. Farmers and scientists have been building on findings represented by those papers ever since.
Albrecht would have scoffed at industrial ads advising farmers to close down pastures for the purpose of row crop production. The farmer, it is argued, could grow more protein, yet the grower’s chore is not to feed the feedlot, but to keep a bottom line that invites survival. Even in the 1930s and 1940s, Albrecht saw that the raw materials producer was being manipulated into the posture of a miner, one who sold his fertility without the benefit of a depletion allowance.
For their value-added status, pasture outdistances row crop production for reasons at once apparent when reading the lines (and between the lines) of the papers in this volume.
Of all the hay crops, grass represents nature’s purest triumph. It avoids opening the soil to erosion, generally steps away from the conventional ignorance attending the use of pesticides, and cancels out many energy costs—all by animals simply grazing. If nitrogen and leaching remain as problems, the forgiveness of nature interdicts when reason is obeyed. The pastures Albrecht envisioned did not suggest high stocking rates and high nitrogen on confined areas. If all of agriculture offends nature, then it can be said that pastures are the least offenders.
During Albrecht’s last few years in retirement, his correspondence included communications with André Voisin, the father of rotation pastures. Voisin’s book, Soil, Grass and Cancer included Albrecht illustrations, and Albrecht gifted much of his library to this editor, Soil, Grass and Cancer included. It still invites study, as do these papers. The matter of pasture rotation is probably the one lesson universally accepted by graziers worldwide.
Results at Sanborn Field at the University of Missouri told Albrecht that some kind of legume is critical in the pasture mix, which in any case should include five or six species and wink at many weeds that seem to offend the psyche of mankind.
In our time, confinement of dairy cows and the resultant epizootics of Para-T bacteria or Johne’s disease has become an issue. The offending organism reportedly survives the pasteurization process and accounts for irritable bowel syndrome, and Crohn’s disease. Yet it has been established and recognized by dairy farmers that a lactating animal requires 3 or 3.5 percent of her body weight per head per day. A feeding system must furnish this amount, subtract 10 to 20 percent waste by trampling and cow platter contamination. This times the number of animals allows for computation of carrying capacity and the pasture payload has been computed.
Albrecht did not answer all the questions, but he posed many of them. A non-lactating animal can thrive on a rotation of a few days, perhaps as many as four. A lactating animal probably asks for a daily, and often a half day rotation.
On one point Albrecht remains in agreement with latter day scientists. Forage best transports nutrients to grazing animals and leaves in a cloud of dust dry feeds, fabricated feeds and all concoctions laced with industrial wastes that pretend to be micronutrients. Too many essential vitamins are quickly degraded in harvested feeds. This was established in feeding trials that served Albrecht as his biological tests. Poor pastures, starving animals, and resultant “infections” with brucellosis became a focal point of work of Albrecht and Francis M. Pottenger, M.D., researchers that became styled the miracle of the Ozarks. Indicated was the loss of nutrients whenever forage and feed endured a preservation process—grinding, silage, hay baling included.
Grass may be the forgiveness of nature, but grass is merely a metaphor for forage. Data contemporary to this publication date out of Effingham County Extension, University of Illinois, records results fairly consistent with the upper Midwest. These studies report a profit per acre of $80 for small grains (government deficiency payments included). Results for management intensive grazing include—dairy at $600 per acre; non-dairy cattle at $300 per acre, and sheep, somewhere between the last two numbers. Numbers become obsolete. Principles do not.
These papers ask many questions and stay on for the answers. With this book it is enough to invite eco-farmers to the intellectual feast Albrecht’s writings always provide.
— Charles Walters, Editor