The Cattle Contribution

Collaborations on conservation lead to ranching wins.

By: Abbie Lankitus

January 2022

North Dakota’s landscape was carved by glaciers, scraping the surface and leaving potholes like cleats to a muddy football field on Friday night. Filled with water and surrounded by grass, this land is known as part the Prairie Pothole Region, home to an estimated 2 million breeding duck pairs and 1.83 million cattle.

More than half of North America’s duck population migrates to the broader Prairie Pothole Region to breed and nest. It’s critical waterfowl habitat maintained largely through ranching.

“Rotationally grazing cattle is one of the best ways to manage this landscape for waterfowl, for other ground nesting birds, for the general public, and for ranchers themselves,” says Tanner Gue, a Ducks Unlimited biologist. It’s why he and many other Ducks Unlimited staff across the country work hand in hand with ranchers to collaborate on projects that benefit the cattle, land, water, and in doing so, the ducks.

The Key

Third generation ranchers, the Spickler brothers, run independent Angus seedstock operations near Glenfield, North Dakota, in the heart of the Prairie Pothole Region. Justin and his wife Sara run Spickler Ranch North, on the same land their grandfather purchased in the mid 1900s. Nathan and his wife Emily run Spickler Ranch South only a few miles from the homeplace.

“We live in the area where the tall grass and the short grass prairies meet,” Justin says. “It’s really, really good grass and very productive. There’s a wide species variety and we can raise heavy calves without supplemental feed.”

Justin says 90% of the grass they run on is native. He does rotational grazing in a twice-over system and his forage cropland is 100% no-till. He keeps cattle on sections three to four weeks and rotates.

Nathan manages similarly, grazing 25, 80-acre parcels every 10-14 days before rotating. His cropland allows him flexibility to manage his native grass effectively.

The grasses in this area evolved under the bison, growing after heavy grazing and relying on natural fertilizer. Grazing stimulates plant root growth and the nutrient cycle of the prairie.

The only way to mimic it is with cattle.

“Wetlands act like sponges, cleaning our water and decreasing the severity and frequency of flooding,” Gue says. “Grasslands do the same thing. By rotationally grazing perennial grasses and keeping our soils functional and healthy, it improves the soil’s ability to infiltrate water and reduces surface runoff. Grazing surrounding grasslands helps maintain wetland hydrology, functionality and biological value for waterfowl and hundreds of other species that depend on those wetlands.”

This natural cycle requires a focus on what’s beneath the surface.

There are five principles of soil health: minimize disturbance, keep it covered, living plant root, plant diversity and livestock integration.

“We cannot complete all five soil health principles without livestock,” Gue says. “Without livestock integration, folks trying to improve soil health hit a plateau. You can only build so much soil without getting cattle involved.”

According to Gue, profitable family ranches raising high-quality beef on the native grasslands is the best way to preserve a precious wildlife resource.

The Spickler brothers’ land management practices prove why.

“When I graduated from North Dakota State nearly 20 years ago, we were conventional tillage farming,” Nathan says. “But our soils were light and more susceptible to erosion so we shifted to a complete no-till system where it essentially functions and responds like the grasslands next to it.”

He tries to keep something growing on the land at all times, seeding alfalfa, winter rye, oats, barley, sorghum Sudan and millet. For species diversity and flexibility of grazing, he always seeds turnips, radishes or kale in the event that his primary crop fails or they don’t get enough rainfall.

“All of our tillable land stays tillable because it allows the flexibility of being able to rest our native grasses,” Nathan says. “If that land was native pasture, we wouldn’t have lush rye, turnip and radish with the fall rains we’ve got. We’d have a native pasture we’re trying to rest – especially in a drought year like this one.”

Progressive management requires added expertise, that’s where Gue provides assistance.

“At their request, we stepped in to help improve their ability to build soil, enhance management of important wetlands and perennial grasslands,” Gue shares.

Stewards of the Prairie

The partnership began in 2017 when Justin reached out to Ducks Unlimited after learning they had cost-sharing programs for ranchers.

Justin’s not new to collaborating with conservationists. He’s worked with Natural Resource Conservation Service to re-build several fences on his property through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The programs have been a tremendous benefit, he says. Especially early on in his career when he couldn’t afford to do it out of pocket.

When he began working with Ducks Unlimited, Justin was grazing residue with a single electric wire fence.

“When it would snow and the cows were not done grazing, but done with the stuff they really liked, I would have trouble keeping them in,” he says. “They’d also absolutely take every bit of grass on the adjacent pasture to get to water.”

The pasture surrounding the cropland was rented, so he, the landowner and Gue sat down at a kitchen table and came to a solution. In the end, Ducks Unlimited cost-shared the fence to separate the cropland and pasture as well as water tanks for grazing both.

A solar powered water pump and winter tank at Nathan Spickler’s ranch.

This story by Abbie Lankitus originally ran in the Angus Journal. 

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