This four-day program will introduce attendees to the principles of management-intensive grazing (MiG), which can mean harvesting much more grass for many more days, reducing expensive hay feeding days.

The cost of the program is $525 for four days of instruction, materials, continental breakfast, all snacks and hearty home cooked lunches and dinners. A variety of accommodations are located near Salmon. Additional participants from the same ranch attend at a reduced rate.

The Lost Rivers Grazing Academy is sponsored by University of Idaho Extension and taught by grazing experienced extension educators Charles Cheyney, Scott Jensen, Shannon Williams, Christi Falen, extension specialist Glenn Shewmaker and C. Wilson Gray, as well as retired extension educator Jim Hawkins.  

The featured presenter at the academy is the internationally-known pasture expert, Jim Gerrish, of American Grazinglands Services LLC, formerly of the University of Missouri Forage Systems Research Center. Gerrish is well known around the world and is author of Management-intensive Grazing and Kicking the Hay Habit.

Ranch manager Mike Kossler and grazing manager Jerry Elzinga contribute their experience and perspective in implementing the principles of MiG at Eagle Valley Ranch.

The Lost River Grazing Academy is a mixture of classroom, laboratory and field exercises designed to introduce participants to the principles, and permit practice with the tools of management-intensive grazing of irrigated pastures.  

Participants work together in small teams to manage a herd of cattle. Grazing assignments change every day as the participants manage their herd to try to meet the target residual. Teams also work together solving portable electric fencing problems and building high tensile electric fencing.

Eagle Valley Ranch is operated by graduates of the Academy and has been developed as a MiG operation.

For more information, click here to email Charles Cheyney or call (208) 527-8587. The Grazing Academy brochure is also available online and the Academy has a Facebook page. 

—From University of Idaho Extension news release