Twodot Land and Livestock – Pushing Limits on the Northern Plains

Case Study

Howell, J. (2008) Twodot Land and Livestock – Pushing Limits on the Northern Plains. For the Love of Land. Chapter 23. 248-260.

Key Takeaways

This case study is an excerpt from Jim Howell's 2008 book, For the Love of Land: Global Case Studies of Grazing in Nature's Image.
Fourth generation Montanan rancher and second generation Holistic Management practitioner continues to push the envelope while simultaneous increasing profits, cultural well being, and ecological resiliency.
While still doing holistic grazing planning, in 2006, Zach pastured a fairly conventional four herds—three groups of yearlings (750 head, 440 head, and 500 head), plus a herd of 400 cows. In 2007, Jones invested in water development in order to combine all the yearlings into one big herd of 1,550 head. This herd was on Zachary’s 12,000 acres all summer (mid-May to mid-September), as well as a year round herd of 500 cows.

Summary

I first met Zachary Jones last summer. He was a participant in HMI’s Ranch and Rangeland (R&R) Manager Training Program, and we hosted his class’s final session up at our summer camp here in the mountains of western Colorado. Just prior to the session, I read about Zachary and his family’s ranch, Twodot Land and Livestock, in an article about “mob grazing”. That article made Zachary sound awfully smart, and I figured I better meet this guy. Prior to his arrival at our camp, I didn’t know he was enrolled in the R&R program, so when he stepped out of his little white car, all smiles and full of energy, and said he was “Zachary Jones from central Montana,” I was pleasantly surprised.

We had a great week of training, and I had the chance to begin to get to know Zach, and to pick his brain about their Northern Plains grazing operation. Zach is an ambitious, savvy young rancher in his late 20s. He’s married to equally sharp Shannon Agee (now Agee-Jones). They met as track and field student/athletes at Montana State University in Bozeman. Shannon was an All-American pole vaulter and Zach was a conference champion hammer-thrower. Zach grew up on his family’s 24,000 acres (9,700 ha) of beautiful rolling prairie, near the little town of Harlowton, and Shannon was raised in the more urban, but still distinctly western town of Helena—Montana’s capital.