06/07/07 Improving irrigated pasture productivity

The Nancy Cummings Center north of Salmon is the site for the Lost Rivers Grazing Academy. University of Idaho extension's Jim Hawkins is one of the practicing grazers who teach livestock operators with irrigated pastures how to increase productivity and forages while decreasing costs. HAWKINS "Any ground, whether its farm ground, they have crop ground, pasture ground, we can show them how they can essentially double their production on the same amount of acreage. Student-teacher ratio we try to keep that fairly low. That's why our enrollment is limited. We want to have the students feel like they got hands on experience and they also have someone there to help them walk through the whole deal." Next week, June 11th through the 14th, workshop attendees will have plenty of time to learn how they can apply classroom concepts into pasture improvement. HAWKINS "Spend about four hours inside in the morning and then another four hours out on the ground learning about what we talked about that morning." Hawkins says they have a lot of repeat customers, operators who have attended past workshops say they learn even more the second, third and fourth times they attend. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott