Beef cattle, and the ranchers who manage them, play a crucial role in maintaining the health of the Sandhills’ fragile grassland ecosystem. This grassland includes more than seven hundred plant species and grazing animals such as cattle, deer, elk, bison, goats, and sheep; these plants and animals have evolved together for eons. The Nebraska Sandhills is a largely unadulterated landscape; its miles of windswept grass hills and low-lying meadows contain more cattle (500,000) than humans (23,776 in 2020). With more than eight billion people upon the planet, this relatively untouched landscape is unusual.
Much of our food is raised in a closed-loop monoculture, but Sandhills cattle live on and are key contributors to the rich and diverse prairie landscape they graze. Cattle dung fertilizes the soil and feeds insects and the millions of microbes that live in the sandy soil. Through manure, cattle spread seeds across the prairie landscape, enhancing the longevity of the diverse plant species. Cattle movement and hoof action enhance the nutrient cycle by breaking down plant organic matter so it is more easily integrated into the soil. This same hoof action creates space for raindrops to pool and absorb into the soil instead of running off. Even the biting action of ungulates stimulates plant growth, improving plant health. Grazing also prevents the succession of less desirable woody species, which can fragment grasslands, causing a decline in both flora and fauna.
The miracle cow produces food and milk by consuming forages that are indigestible by humans, while at the same time providing environmental benefits to grassland landscapes. Grazing animals not only contribute food to our world but, when properly managed, contribute to the overall health of the planet, because grasslands make up nearly one-third of the planet’s land mass, and properly managed grazing animals equals healthy grasslands, which act as a large-scale carbon sink.
Grasslands comprise about half of Nebraska’s agricultural land and are the foundation for one of the most productive beef economies found anywhere in the world. This beef economy is built in large measure upon Sandhills grass owned by private landowners, as there is little public land ownership in Nebraska. Preservation of the Sandhills biome relies almost exclusively on the stewardship of individual ranch families. Essentially, the rancher is in the business of converting grass to beef and therefore has an economic incentive to take care of both the grass and the cattle. A Sandhills cow and her calf live almost exclusively on native forages raised on the ranch, as large-scale mono-cropping is not possible on the sandy and fragile soils found in this area.
The Nebraska Sandhills went through a severe alteration in the 1800s as Native Americans and bison and other wildlife were eliminated from the plains. For nearly forty years, from 1860 to 1900, the Sandhills region of Nebraska was an empty expanse. Reports from that era indicate that without grazing pressure, the Sandhills grasslands began to deteriorate. European settlers viewed the region as largely uninhabitable. By the mid- to late 1860s, railroads reached across the country connecting the new settlements with the growing populations on the East and West Coasts. With the growing demand for protein, cattle operators began to procure wild cattle, principally from Texas, and drive them north to the railroads in Nebraska and Kansas. At some point, cattle from points south were further fattened on the open range of central and western Nebraska. Ranchers began to notice that their cattle did well on Sandhills grass and could even overwinter in the Sandhills.
The passage of the Kinkaid Act in 1904, which provided 640 acres of free land to ranchers willing to settle the less-productive western rangelands, started the settlement of the Sandhills region.
The ecology of the Sandhills dictates that its agricultural economy be built on beef cattle and the grass on which they live. Cropping systems are not a viable option on most Sandhills soils. Forage grows in upland pastures made up of rolling grass-covered dunes and low-lying wetlands with water percolating up from the aquifer, which often lies just a few feet below the ground’s surface. In the summer the cattle graze on the upland pastures, and much of the winter feed is harvested from subirrigated meadows.
Beef cattle in Nebraska live principally on grass, stored local forage, and crop residues. According to United Nations data, 86 percent of cattle diets around the world consist of forages and residue that could not otherwise be used by humans.
In Nebraska, calves live at their mothers’ sides for six to eight months, until they weigh 450 to 650 pounds, and then are weaned. Some of the heifer (female) calves are retained for breeding, while the balance of the heifer and steer (castrated male) calves move into the backgrounding or stocker phase. Weaned calves gain another 300 to 400 pounds eating principally grass and stored forages, prior to going into feeding pens for the finishing phase. The finishing phase usually takes place in confined feeding pens where cattle eat a diet high in protein and fat for approximately 150 days to bring them to their slaughter weight of 1,300 to 1,500 pounds.
Because grass plays such a critical role in underpinning the first two phases of Nebraska’s beef industry, there is plenty of incentive for cattle ranchers and other stakeholders to improve stewardship of the state’s grasslands.
Scientists affiliated with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Grassland Studies conduct interdisciplinary research, education, and service programs focused on managing livestock and wildlife on Nebraska grasslands. Since 1998 the center, along with the Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition, hosts the Nebraska Grazing Conference, a two-day event that serves to educate graziers on the best practices of range management. The university also operates several large-scale research ranches that document the efficacy of different grazing practices. Nebraska Extension hosts numerous workshops and pasture tours designed to assist ranchers in more effectively and sustainably using their grass and forage resources.
A growing number of ranches have implemented advanced practices that rotate cattle through a number of pastures during the grazing season in an attempt to approximate the patterns of large bison herds. The idea is to allow the grass to rest for a period ranging from thirty days to as much as a year, depending upon rainfall and pasture conditions. While there are significant capital costs in the fence and water infrastructure for dividing pastures, ranchers can generally run more cattle per acre by rotating them, while simultaneously improving pasture quality. Prior to the growing season, ranchers put together a plan based on last year’s grazing rotation, stocking rates, type and size of animals, and other variables such as soil moisture and weather forecasts. This plan likely goes through a number of iterations as the growing season progresses.
In addition to improving grass management, ranchers, veterinarians, nutritionists, and university researchers have made great strides in developing more productive cattle. Since 1980 the beef cattle herd size has dropped from 132 million cattle head to just over 90 million head. In that time, genetic and herd management protocols have increased the carcass weight by 30 percent, enabling the industry to produce 15 percent more beef with 40 percent fewer cattle. The result of these efforts is a cow herd with the lowest carbon footprint of any cow herd in the world.
As planet Earth exceeds a population of eight billion people, Sandhills ranchers and their cattle herds are leaders in producing high-quality animal protein on one of the most beautiful, largely intact grass-scapes anywhere in the world.