Trantham's Sustainable 12 Aprils Dairy Grazing Program: A Top Farm that Almost Went Under

Subscribe to our new Food Farmer Earth channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/foodfarme... For more sustainable living stories, videos, and information, please visit: cookingupastory.com. Tom Trantham was one of South Carolina's top producing dairymen back in the 1980s. But he wasn't making much money. He ran a typical confined feeding operation and his feed bill alone ate up 65 percent of his gross income. Then something happened that changed his life. One day in April 1989 his cows broke out of the feeding area into a seven-acre field full of natural lush April growth—lamb's quarters, rye grass, a little clover and fescue. The next day there was a two-pound average increase per cow in milk production. Thinking maybe the cows were trying to tell him something, Trantham opened all the gates on his farm and began experimenting with grazing. Here is a pdf of the Planting and Grazing Guide for Trantham's 12 Aprils Dairy: http://www.sare.org/index.php/content... For more information, follow links on bottom of pdf to the www.sare.org website. Visit Tom Trantham's website, Happy Cow Creamery: http://www.happycowcreamery.com Cooking Up a Story-Bringing the people behind our food to life http://cookingupastory.com Cooking Up a Story channel on YouTube    / cookingupastory   Subscribe to Cooking Up a Story-receive the latest videos http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c... Daily Email Subscriptions http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mai... RSS Feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/CookingUp... Cooking Up a Story twitter   / cookingupastory   Cooking Up a Story- Facebook   / 6256669037   Food.Farmer.Earth- a journey of wide discovery about our food    / ffe   Subscribe to Food.Farmer.Earth-receive the latest videos http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c... Food.Farmer.Earth follow us on twitter   / foodfarmerearth   Food.Farmer.Earth join us on Facebook   / foodfarmerearth