Episode 21: Grazing School with Charlie Totton, Courtney Tyrrell & Bart Carmichael

Episode 21: Grazing School with Charlie Totton, Courtney Tyrrell & Bart Carmichael 

Think you know what your cattle will eat? Watch that certainty crumble when ten heifers meet a “weedy” paddock and turn it into beef and soil armor.

We sit down with Charlie Totton and Courtney Tyrrell, along with educator and rancher Bart Carmichael, to unpack the South Dakota Grassland Coalition 2025 Grazing School, a producer-led, hands-on training where students measure forage, set residue goals, build 24-hour paddocks, and come back later to see if the math holds.

Day one challenges assumptions and teaches grazing math to calculate forage consumption.  Day two explores alternatives across calving, nutrition, and herd health. Day three ties it all together into a written action plan you can take home and actually use.

The conversation gets specific: how to size paddocks based on measured forage, why leaving 1,000 to 2,500 pounds of residue builds soil structure, and how palatability shifts with growth stage and density. Then we test water. Using rainfall simulators and ring infiltration tests, the difference between living polycultures and compacted monocultures shows up in clean infiltration versus muddy runoff. With roughly 27,000 gallons per acre per inch of rain at stake, building organic matter becomes a practical water strategy, not a buzzword.

“Recovery” replaces “rest.” “Forbs” replace “weeds.” And “armor” replaces “litter,” reshaping the language that shapes the land.

We also get real about labor, genetics, and drought. Cattle are the tool, trampling, salivating, cycling nutrients, when directed with clear goals and daily moves. Trigger dates help you de-stock before the feed bill owns you, and the right cows—deep, thick, mobile, calm—perform on stockpiled forage without expensive inputs. The Tottons share how intensifying on 10 percent of their ranch during peak growth lets the other 90 percent recover, stretching grazing into winter and reducing both labor and input expenses.

Add mentorship, networking, and producer-led instruction, and you get a system that works in South Dakota, Arizona, or the Northeast, because principles scale even when practices change.

If this one hit home, share it with someone who’s ready to look a little closer at their own country. The real work starts when you slow down, measure, and listen. The land’s not broken. It’s just waiting on better stockmen.

Connect with Courtney Tyrrell and Charlie Totton:

Website: https://www.tottonangus.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tottonangus/

Bos Sires: https://www.bossires.com/tottonangusranch

Connect with Bart Carmichael and Principled Land Managers:

Website: https://www.wedgetentranch.com/

Bos Sires: https://www.bossires.com/wedge-tent-ranch

Website: https://www.principledlandmanagers.com/

Check out Bos Sires:

Website: https://www.bossires.com/

Bos Sires Catalog: International New Bos Sires Catalog (English)

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