In April of 2024 I attended the “Cattle to Cotton” field day, hosted by the SC Forage and Grazing Lands Coalition on farmer Jason Carter’s property in Eastover, SC. Anybody in the agricultural or livestock community was invited to hear an update on an ongoing experimental project combining row crops, cover crops, and cattle.
Kenny Mullis intermittently brings his cows from his perennial pastures in Blythewood onto Jason Carter’s property to graze cover crops grown on Carter’s cropland. They both find this to be beneficial to their operations, and the “Cattle to Cotton” event was meant to allow the community insight into what is constructive about these mutual operations, encourage farmers to expand their land management strategy, and possibly initiate more of these less-common livestock-row crop collaborations within the local agricultural community.
As a hired writer for the Soil Health Labs, I’ve been brought into the world of agriculture from a soil health standpoint. This “Cattle to Cotton” field day was a helpful reminder to me that many farmers have years of experience through multiple generations and come from like-minded communities with calcified knowledge behind them. Sometimes when we speak on regenerative practices– whether it be no-till, cover cropping, or mixed-use enterprises such as this– it can be felt as an insult to this generation's worth of well-rooted tradition and practice. “Who are these strangers, saying I should ask my neighbor to bring their cows to my cropland?” “Why would I build fences, establish a water supply, build infrastructure for livestock- if I’m only a farmer?” “If I have pasture, why go to the trouble of transporting my cows somewhere else for part of the year?”
I watched the skeptics’ ears perk. One very attentive couple took a lot of notes and kept whispering things to each other. I looked at the attendance sheet– we had attendees from the South Carolina Forage and Grazing Lands Commission, the Farm Service Agency, the South Carolina USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service and Agricultural Research Service, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and small crowd of local farmers. I ate two donuts and stood in the back.
Kenny Mullis
Our Soil Health Lab team recorded an interview with Kenny about his and Jason’s land use collaboration. They had to call me over for the interview because I had wandered off, way in the back of their shot, trying very slowly to approach the cows.
“I graze the mamas and babies on perennial pastures and then I finish the steers on annual grasses. I plant twice a year, summer annuals and then winter annuals and try to graze them all year round,” explains Mullis of his cow-calf operation near Blythewood. So why team up with Carter and take livestock off his own pasture?
One advantage Kenny notes of bringing his cows to Jason’s property is that grazing becomes generally more efficient – Jason has the capacity to move the animals every day. “I just don’t have that capability at my farm, I’m not there to be able to do that, so the grazing is much more efficient here,” says Kenny. “Also, this system compounds the nutrient value. The manure and urine is more concentrated and supports the soil health.”
We asked Kenny how this operation has impacted his own land.
“It has been positive, because we’re taking the grazing pressure off and letting my pastures rest a bit,” says Kenny. “When I bring the steers down here, I’m able to move my cows and calves and let them eat some of the annuals I’ve planted and rest my perennial pastures a bit, and I’ve been able to feed less hay in those situations.”
In 2023, the second year of this grazing experiment, Kenny observed gains of approximately 3.2 lbs. per animal per day. He says after four seasons of investing in this tag-team operation, he’s learned more about effective forage, including that cool-season forage offers better nutrient value to livestock than summer annuals, and now feels more equipped to shoot for the ever-moving target of a productive, effective livestock operation.
Jason Carter
For much of the event, Jason stood in front of the crowd with Buz, wearing a little portable mic-and-speaker, explaining his operation, its logistics, its finances, and answering questions. A handout was passed around with the operation’s costs and revenues from recent years.
Jason began experimenting with cover cropping about a decade ago. Soon after, he started hearing about the benefits of having cattle on cropland.
“Of course, many years ago, that's what everybody did. You grow a cover crop, graze cattle on it, and then grow your cash crop. That was kind of the rotation when more people had livestock or cattle on the farm,” explained Carter to the group. “I wasn't necessarily looking to get back into cattle, but after hearing about the benefits of having cows going across the ground, the inoculation of microbes from the manure and the benefits of building the soils back up, Buz and I were saying it's a shame we’re growing all this cover crop out here and we don't have any cows.”
Going back about 20-30 years, Jason’s pasture where the current project is being undertaken was unmanaged weeds and Bermuda grass with some cross fencing. So, he took down the cross fencing, salvaged the better wire, set up a perimeter fence and a hot wire, and soon teamed up with the University of South Carolina and the Grazing Lands Coalition to receive a grant from the USDA-NRCS for their joint operation and demonstrate the positive impacts of intermittently having livestock on cropland.
Bringing livestock onto the operation also brought its slew of new responsibilities.
At first, there was concern that if a well quit or there was a problem at the water trough, that the cows would be out of water – now he’s set up game cameras that send intermittent photographic updates to his phone to monitor the water levels. “We are moving the cows every two days right now. The game camera has allowed me to monitor the water trough 3 times a day, so I don’t have to go out to check it. We have the 20 acres divided up in six total paddocks with a hotwire we pull across. There are 18 yearlings here now, normally we have anywhere from 20 to 25, and have had as much as 30 out here. Kenny has some calves that he just weaned, give them about a week then we’re going to bring them in here since we’re starting to see the grass grow a lot more.”
On his land, Jason applies no synthetic phosphorus or potash, and does not till or subsoil. He describes his soil pH to the group as ‘decent’, and plans to put out chicken litter, about a ton to an acre. Jason has observed that oats over cereal rye has made a difference in their cattle weight gains.
A member of the group asks: how does he know when to move his cows?
“It’s mainly going by looking at the height of the forage. You don’t want to graze any more than 50%, and, in a lot of occasions, I think we were grazing about 40% and leaving 60%. It can be a bit of a balancing act, because getting into mid-April, you’re going to really start to see this grass taking off. But you don’t want it to go too long where it goes to head. So, you want to try to stay ahead of it, keep it grazed down, and keep it in that vegetative state instead of going to seed.”
Near the end of the presentation, that skeptical couple from before raised their hand. They asked – “Since we’re row croppers, our aim is to improve our soil and our crop. Isn’t that a different aim from somebody running a livestock operation? Shouldn’t we perfect our cropping system before we bring cows onto the property?”
Jason just pointed to the numbers. He hasn’t put out fertilizer on this land since 2019. Livestock on the land mimics how forages were naturally grazed and how soil was naturally intermittently compacted. Jason has only seen improvements in his operation’s overall effectiveness since moving toward livestock integration.
“Mother nature put animals on the land, so I’m going to try that too.”
While the Cattle to Cotton field day from which this experience was recounted was from last year, the project is currently continuing in its final year through September 2025. A poor stand during the current year’s cover crop forage has stopped the cattle from grazing this Spring, but plans are in place to have them back in the Fall to get one or two more rotations through Jason’s pasture before the project ends.
To learn more about livestock integration on cropland, visit the “Livestock Integration” page on our website.
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