RIO — Even though Bob Breneman had about 25 people trailing after him, Breneman’s cows saw him walking down the lane and ran up to him.
“Hey, behave yourself, Red,” he said to a red and white spotted cow who is officially known only by her ear tag number, 146. Then to his visitors, Breneman confided, “Some people don’t like this cow, but I do.”
The opportunity to see Red up close — or get a hand rubbed by her wet nose — wasn’t the main reason for Wednesday’s pasture walk on the Breneman farm, in the town of Springvale near Rio.
Breneman and his wife, Karen, invited farmers and agriculture officials from Columbia and Dodge counties Wednesday for a close-up view of their operation, in which they graze 75 dairy cows and their calves on 240 acres. (The calves are kept on a separate paddock.)
For most of the year, the cattle eat what’s growing on the ground on which they’re standing — a mixture of plants that the Brenemans grow for that purpose.
The cattle are moved from paddock to paddock for maximum efficiency in grazing.
Joe Bollman, Columbia County Extension agriculture agent, said area farmers have typically hosted pasture walks in the late spring and early summer. The Brenemans had the event in late autumn, he said, partly to offer tips on running a grazing operation in cold weather.
Even in the winter, Bob Breneman said, some cows will stick their noses into the snow in search of grass. If they’re persistent, they might find some.
But, for the most part, the cattle subsist on corn, hay, silage and other feed that the Brenemans bring out to the pastures in the winter.
Cold weather doesn’t hurt them much, he said, though freezing rain is probably the worst weather for the cattle.
A grove of trees bordering the pasture land provides a natural windbreak for the animals. In case the weather is especially bad, there’s bedding for them in a nearby barn.
Not many years ago, the Brenemans had a climate-controlled confinement dairy operation.
“We were quite successful,” Bob Breneman said, “except that we were killing ourselves with work, and there wasn’t enough money coming in to fix and replace all the equipment that we needed.”
Karen Breneman said the family, like many farm families, was tied down to the demands of the farm.
“Now,” she said, “we try to make it as pleasant as possible, to give us time for other things, instead of always living and breathing the farm.”
A grazing operation takes less work partly because the cattle feed themselves from the plants in the paddocks and water themselves from a stream on the farm. Even in the winter, Bob Breneman said, the stream doesn’t freeze over because the water keeps moving fast enough.
One thing Bob Breneman said he’s given up is the exact measurement of how much each animal eats in a day.
And, instead of using hormones to prepare his cows for breeding, he waits until they’re in heat and has them serviced via artificial insemination, from sires that are genetically predisposed to a calm disposition — resulting in more serene cows.
“They’re still cows,” he said, “and you can get them upset, but they’re much easier to manage.”
The Brenemans’ over-wintering operation has an unusual feature: The breeding of the cattle is timed so that none of them will give birth to calves in January or February.
Typically, Karen Breneman said, calving starts in early March and tapers off in subsequent months.
Bill Paine, who has a grazing operation in Columbia County’s town of Hampden, said he was particularly interested in the types of grasses and plants that the Brenemans grow in their paddocks and which types grow best with which soil types and moisture.
Pasture walks offer an opportunity, he said, to get ideas from other farmers.
“A lot of it,” he said, “is about talking to people, and finding out how they do things.”
Asked whether they keep cows off any of their paddocks for a season to “rest” the land, Karen Breneman said they need nearly all their available acres to keep the cattle fed.
But Bob Breneman said the results speak for themselves, when other farmers compliment him on how healthy his cows look.
“People don’t know that grass can do that — properly managed,” he said.
ljerde@capitalnewspapers.com