McClure Licking River Farms has added Cattle to the farm and we choose South Poll to raise grass-fed beef. Teddy Gentry the bass player for the band Alabama developed the South Poll Cattle breed. There are several reasons many regenerative ranchers chose this breed, but the first is their size. The heifers or cows weigh between 850 to 1000 pounds and the bulls may get up to 1200 pounds. This breed of cattle is lightweight, allowing them to be left on the pasture all season long.
You would not want to keep your cattle in a sacrifice lot in regenerative agriculture practices. This area is where you pin in the animals all winter and feed them hay. In regenerative agriculture, you would keep your cattle on pasture and move them daily to fresh grass. This will apply provided you are south of Interstate 70 and your climate permits. You must supplement their paddock with hay when you get snow on the ground.
South Poll Cattle Breed
Began using Barzona, Herford, and Senepole with Red Angus to create the composite South Poll breed. Many people follow Greg Judy Regenerative Rancher on Youtube. He has a herd of over 300 in Missouri and has over 100,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel. We are thankful for Greg as I consider myself a Youtube-educated farmer and his information shared has been invaluable.
It was a blessing to have met Roy Libbert, who sold us six bred heifers to start our herd. Roy will be at the South Poll booth at the Eco-Ag conference by Acres USA in Covington Kentucky December 5-8th. Roy will stop by the farm and give us some tips and advice. I met Roy last week to get the cows we bought from him. You could think of him as the cow whisper now. We also helped; however, we mostly just got in the way. Roy went into a 30-acre pasture, led 30 cows into a pen, then separated the six we needed to load up in 1 hour. I learned a lot just watching him on how to handle cattle.
We look forward to developing our herd and getting to know more people in the South Poll community. Like any farmer I have met, I find the charity of the farming community unparallel. They will tell you anything you need to know and many have plenty of You-Tube Channels to educate you. As McClure Licking river builds out the infrastructure they will get more active in telling our story about the farm. The biggest task at McClure Licking Farms is fencing water and farm infrastructure.