Calving in full swing for new Producer Progress family Farm and Ranch Guide: Producer Reports

McLEOD, N.D. - The calving season is just getting started for our new Producer Progress series family Mark and Eileen Huseth, who farm and ranch northeast of McLeod, N.D.

Their operation, a family-type business that also involves sons, Tony and Travis, is a combination commercial cattle and grain enterprise.

The family involvement on this farm dates back to 1918, when Mark's grandfather moved there, making this a fourth generation farm, and, according to Mark, the farm has always been a mixed operation with both beef cattle and grain production.

The cows are bred to calve in a 60-day period that stretches from the first of April to the end of May. The calves are weaned from the cows toward the end of October and backgrounded for a few months, with the calves, except for heifers being kept in the herd, being sold in February, March or April. There has been an occasional year when a few surplus bred first-calf heifers have been offered for sale, but most years the heifers stay in the herd.

The females are all naturally bred on pasture, however a few of the yearling heifers are synchronized each year.

One thing that makes the Huseth operation somewhat unique is their dependence on the Sheyenne National Grasslands for the majority of the summer grazing for their cattle herd.

“About 75 percent of the herd grazes on the Sheyenne National Grasslands from the last week in May until around November first,” Mark said. “However, sometimes those dates may be shortened up a little because of the pasture conditions. If the Forest Service, by their standards, determines the grass is becoming too short, they will order the cattle to be removed from the pasture at that time.”

The cropping side of the business mainly includes a rotation of corn and soybeans, with some alfalfa and oats included for forage purposes. Once in a while wheat will be added to the rotation, which they use as a source of straw for bedding purposes. Some of the corn is chopped for corn silage, but the majority is harvested as grain, which is either used for feed on the farm or sold as a cash crop.

The main activity at this time is centered around calving and getting machinery ready to go for field work.

“Even though April first was the official time to start calving we did have a couple calve on the 24th of March,” Mark said. “Right now we have about 80 calves on the ground.”

Since calving activities will occupy much of their time for the next 6 weeks or so, there isn't a big rush to get started in the field.

“We usually don't get started with planting until around the first of May,” Tony said, “and then we put the corn in first, followed by the soybeans.”

Most of the soybean acreage is raised under a no-till management system, but corn is produced under conventional tillage methods.

“Our soil conditions and terrain don't allow for us to use no-till on the corn ground,” Mark said. “There is some land that is low and wet in the spring and we need to go over it with a tillage operation to open up the soil, dry it out and warm it up.”

Farmers around the McLeod area are coming into the planting season with good moisture conditions, and fields are starting to dry out for spring's work.

“We had a lot more water standing around a week or so ago,” Mark related, “but, things have really started to dry out. We had snow cover over all of the fields this past winter. We started out with the ice storm around Thanksgiving that left us with about a two-inch covering of ice. Then we had two snowfalls, one with about six inches and the other of about eight inches that left a cover across all of the fields, and that pretty much stayed until we got some melting towards the middle of February.”

With the coating of ice, there is some concern that some of the alfalfa will have some winterkill problems, even though they are still trying to replace some alfalfa acreage that was lost to winterkill the year before.

“I know we will have some drowned out on some of the new seeding last year, but we will have to see if any winterkilled,” Mark said. “We lost most of the alfalfa stand the year before because of winterkill and re-seeded only part of that acreage last year. We intended to seed more acres this year, but we may have to seed a little more than we were planning.”

Before we conclude this first visit to the Huseth family we'll get to know the members a little better. All of the family works together on all aspects of the farm, although many of the mechanical repair jobs fall to Tony. He is a 1999 graduate of NDSU with a B.S. degree in Ag Econ. He is single and lives on a farmstead about three-fourths of a mile from the main farm. Travis is also single, lives at home and shares equally in the grain farm and livestock chores.

Eileen, besides her work around the farm, drives school bus for Wyndmere High School, a position she has held since 1990.

Mark attended NDSU and is two quarters short of a degree.

“I have always threatened to go back and take those two quarters, but so far haven't made it.,” he quipped.

He is a director of the Sheyenne Valley Grazing Association, the group that oversees the Sheyenne National Grasslands, and also is the current vice president of the North Dakota Stockmen's Association, after serving two terms on the group's board of directors. This fall he will become president of the association and figures to be away from home a lot of the time during that year.

“It will be nice to have these two guys (referring to his two sons) here to take care of things while I am away,” he said. “In fact, things might go better than if I was here.”

During our next visit, Mark will start explaining the importance of the National Grasslands in a rancher's operation, how the use of the grasslands is strictly regulated and how the grasslands play a significant role in the stability of those adjacent communities.