Main Street, Lewistown, Montana

I was in Lewistown, Montana April 25 and 26 prepping for a summer project with Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Lewistown NRCS to train cattle to eat Canada thistle.  It always helps to meet with partners before the project begins to take a look at where we’ll be working and talk through what partners want to accomplish, and to make adjustments to the process based on the needs of the land owner and the cattle producer.

Some of our project partners: Heidi Olbert, Ray Beck and Laurie Zellar (Montana DNRC) and Grant Peterson, NRCS

For this project, we’ll be working with yearling heifers belonging to Kevin Comes.  They’ll move to Ray Beck’s pasture on May 28 where they’ll have a chance to get used to their new surroundings and graze down a bit of the new grass.  Training will begin on June 1.  Ray, NRCS Staffers, and Heidi Olbert from Montana DNRC will begin the 4-day process of introducing the trainees to new feeds.  I’ll help with thistle introduction and putting cattle in pasture June 5th – 9th.

Our project location

We used the "feed recipe" from my new book to order our supplies at the local feed store.

Stay tuned for more on this project!

Lewistown is a beautiful place. They say they are the chokecherry capital of the world. I also learned that they built over the river for a short stretch. You can visit the Montana Tavern to look through a hole in the floor and see the river flowing by.