When the weather gets hot, cows are a lot like humans: They’d prefer the shade if it’s available.
At Pittsburgher Highland Farm in Mt. Pleasant Township, this is even more true. Farmer Mark Smith’s Scottish Highland cows have a coat that doesn’t help much when the summer weather starts to get hot and muggy.
“They have a lot of fur compared to the smoother skin of more conventional breeds of cow,” Smith said. “They heat up faster, and they need more water.”
Smith moves his cattle to new pastures each day, using temporary fencing across about 100 acres, and a lot of that decision-making is based on access to water and shade.
Through a recent partnership with Pasa Sustainable Agriculture and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Smith is in the process of adding more than 300 trees and shrubs. It’s a move he says will improve the comfort and nutrition for the cattle, as well as improve the farm’s forage and soil quality.
Smith partnered with Dana O’Connor in 2014 to establish a grass-fed Scottish Highland cattle and beef business at the farm. Since then, operations have grown to include additional Highland as well as Devon cattle, grass-fed sheep, pastured pigs, laying and meat chickens, honeybees and a growing agritourism component that includes overnight stays, tours and special events.
Smith is managing partner of the farm and became interested in adding specific varieties of trees to the grazing areas of the farm after meeting Austin Unruh of Trees for Grazers in Lancaster County and reading Unruh’s book about “silvo-pasture,” a specialized variety of agroforestry.
“In a nutshell, it combines appropriate types of trees with grazing,” Smith said. “In the conventional ag world, cows and sheep are fed grain and fattened up quickly. We’re kind of the opposite. Our animals graze naturally, our customer base wants grass-fed beef, and they’re willing to pay for it. So we explore anything we can do to improve their forage.”
Unruh developed a business around helping grass farmers extend their livestock grazing season and improve animal comfort during hot weather with strategically located, specific varieties of trees that offer added feed and nutrition from fruits, pods and leaf fodder. Additional benefits include improvements to soil condition and helping to control excess stormwater runoff as well as providing a shade canopy that gives cover to growing grasses and legumes consumed by the livestock.
When Smith and O’Connor first began developing Pittsburgher Highland Farm, several areas had been stripped for limestone, leaving behind arid soil that didn’t drain well.
“Winters and early spring seem to bring heavy rains and flooding, while summer and fall bring droughts, and it’s gotten steadily worse each year,” Smith said.
The addition of trees such as locusts, willows, oak and poplars in those areas will help offset those issues. In late April, work crews planted more than 250 trees and wrapped them to protect them from deer browsing. The majority are black locust and honey locust trees.
“Locusts are very hardy, and they really concentrated a lot of them in the strip mining area, which is very rocky with little to no topsoil in some places,” Smith said. “They had to use an auger to drill the holes to plant them.”
The initiative includes the creation of riparian buffers, natural plantings that surround creeks, filtering stormwater, protecting the creek embankments from erosion and improving water quality. To supply water for cattle, the farm is working with the Westmoreland Conservation District’s Agriculture Conservation Assistance Program to add water lines and provide additional water sources for their animals.
Dylan Heagy, Pasa’s agroforestry coordinator, said the goal is for everything to work together in harmony.
“If we can keep the trees protected until they grow, they’ll provide shade for the cattle,” Heagy said. “With enough trees spread out over the grazing area, we can keep cows from congregating all in once place, which will help keep soil compaction down. The shade from the trees will provide sort of a ‘microclimate’ that will allow the grass to retain more moisture.”
Smith said he’s excited to see the results.
“The trees can add forage for certain cattle: They drop leaves that are beneficial for ruminant animals like cattle and sheep,” he said. “We have to buy all our hay, so the more we can feed them from right here on the farm, the happier they are. If I can extend the grazing period even a few days into December, that’s a godsend.”