09/04/07 Grazing school

Today is the deadline to pre-register for the Lost Rivers Grazing Academy. The grazing school at the Nancy Cummings Center north of Salmon will be held next Tuesday through Friday, September 11th to the 14th and gives workshop attendees plenty of time to 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." That's the University of Idaho extension's Jim Hawkins. He is one of the grazers who teach livestock operators with irrigated pastures how to increase productivity and forage while decreasing costs. HAWKINS "Any ground, whether its farm ground or 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." Grazing academy enrollment is limited so that students feel like they get hands on experience and they also have someone there to kind of help them walk through sessions. They also have grazing lands consultant Jim Gerrish. Gerrish who will share two decades of expertise in beef-forage systems research. The 450 dollar fee includes a continental breakfast, meals and materials. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott