2025 TESA Nominee Profile: BC—Duncan and Jane Barnett, Barnett Land & Livestock

Flexible management practices is key under dry growing conditions

Duncan and Jane Barnett have been working since the mid-1990s to improve management and production practices on their B.C. Interior ranch but realize there is no end game—it is an ongoing learning process.

They have implemented rotational grazing and improved management of sensitive riparian areas along water bodies on their second-generation ranch near Williams Lake, B.C. They are certified under the Verified Beef Production Plus quality assurance program, have studied and adopted holistic management concepts and applied regenerative agriculture as well as recommended range management practices.

"Over the last 30 years we have made considerable progress," says Duncan. "We've protected water sources on the ranch and have improved soil quality which has helped to increase forage production on hay and pastureland. We have researched and learned a lot, but every year we realize there is still more to learn. We apply some practice and then realize maybe we did that too early or perhaps too late. You hope to be perfect, but realize there is always something more to learn, always room for improvement."

Their good management practices which have benefitted the environment and helped them develop a sustainable ranching operation, even in the shadow of several years of very dry growing conditions, earned Barnett Land & Livestock recognition as the 2025 British Columbia regional recipient of The Environmental Stewardship Award (TESA).

In 1996 the Barnetts took over the 200-acre property about 35 kilometres east of Williams Lake that was purchased by Duncan's parents in 1973. It was mostly a hobby farming operation in the early days. As his parents were looking to retire, Duncan and Jane, who were ranching in a more remote area of B.C., saw an opportunity to buy the property, develop it into a commercial cow-calf operation and provide a home base to raise their family.

"It needed a lot of work, but we saw an opportunity to create the ranch we wanted," says Duncan.

Every single rock picked from fields is used to create the “rock dock”. The ducks love it!

Today, Barnett Land & Livestock has a 1,600-acre land base of deeded, rented and leased land that supports a 100-head Angus-cross cow herd. In more recent years, they have also been backgrounding their own steers and heifers which are pastured spring and summer to be marketed as yearlings the following August. The ranch also has an extensive Crown Land grazing tenure through the BC Ministry of Forests, although for the 2025 summer season, grazing has been kept to their privately owned and rented pastures.

Largely starting from scratch to build their cow-calf operation, the Barnetts have worked diligently over the past 30 years to incorporate management practices that benefit the environment, enhance animal welfare, have improved soil quality and in turn increased overall forage production on the land they use.

"Applying practices which have benefitted the environment, protected riparian areas, and enhanced wildlife habitat isn't just about being good stewards of the land," says Duncan. "Many of these practices have also benefited the health of our beef herd and overall production efficiency of the ranch, so there is also an economic value for adopting good management practices."

One of the first projects when they took over the ranch in the mid-90s was to fence cattle away from riparian areas along a creek that runs through the ranch and that surrounds a small lake that is also on their property. This fencing not only protected wildlife habitat and water quality, but there were peat bog areas where cattle could get trapped, and keeping cows out the mud also helps reduced the risk of spreading disease to nursing calves.

With a breeding program targeted to produce moderate-sized maternal cattle, the Barnetts have in recent years transitioned from February calving to an April/May calving season, which means that most years cows and heifers are calving under favourable spring weather. Many aspects of herd management focus on protecting herd health and enhancing animal welfare.

As newborn calves are born on pasture, for example, they are left undisturbed for at least a couple days, so calves can nurse, and mother and calf can develop a solid maternal bond. By day three or four, Duncan will catch the calves, apply ear tags, administer an early vaccination and apply the relatively new LidoBand castration rings to bull calves. Developed by Solvet of Calgary, the bands are impregnated with lidocaine, a local anesthetic which begins to release soon after application resulting in a pain-free castration.

The Barnetts have also adopted what is known as the Sandhills calving strategy, which involves moving small groups of cow-calf pairs to new or fresh pasture area soon after calves are born, to reduce the risk of the calves contracting scours. The idea is to avoid mixing newborn calves with calves that are several days or weeks older in a relatively confined area, which increases the risk of disease spread.

"We have developed a management focus aimed at avoiding scours and other calfhood diseases as much as possible," says Duncan. "Small groups of cow-calf pairs are moved to a fresh area of the pasture and provided meadow hay for bedding. We haven't used scours vaccines as the Sandhills system works well to keep calves healthy."

One other management change which benefits calf health and growth involved delaying weaning until calves are 10 months of age. "Since we are calving in April and May, those late-spring calves are still pretty small by October, so we decided to delay weaning until March. Also, I've never really liked the idea of cold weaning calves in the fall, separating them from their mothers and immediately shipping them to auction. It causes both cows and calves a great deal of stress."

A dugout and riparian area fenced off with electric fence

As he considered moving to March weaning, Barnett did considerable research including looking at studies done by the Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC). "There are certainly pros and cons but for our operations, the pros outweighed any negative affects," he says. The April/May-born calves will stay with the mothers through until March of the following year and then cows and calves will be sorted and separated with fence line weaning. At that stage it is a very low stress weaning experience, with very little bawling and cows and calves soon forgetting about each other within a day or two.”

After weaning, Duncan puts the steers and any market heifers not being kept for replacements on a hay and protein pellet ration until cattle are turned out on to pasture in late May. Ideally the steers will be marketed in August, although depending on the year and growing conditions they may be sold earlier—like in May 2025—as a means to conserve pasture.

Summer rotational grazing using electric fence.

Extremely dry and drought-like growing conditions in recent years have resulted in a number of management changes on the Barnett ranch. For many years, with favourable moisture they were able to grow forages for hay and to meet their winter ration needs.

"In the past few years, it has been so dry, we had to look at our hay fields and face the reality there really wasn't enough production to warrant cutting and baling our own hay," says Barnett. "So we have bought most of our winter feed, and we figured if we are going to haul hay around the country it might as well be good quality hay. So now in our winter bale grazing program we are feeding what might be considered dairy-quality hay to our cows and replacement heifers."

Barnett says while it "hurts to look at the bill for purchased hay", there are also benefits to using good quality feed. "Nutrition is 90 percent of the beef business," he says. "We don't want animals over conditioned, but we do want them well fed. It benefits overall herd health, contributing to what I like to call a happy and healthy beef herd. We also look at that high quality forage as contributing to our soil fertility program. Higher nitrogen and other nutrients from that feed are going back onto the pastures and hay land in the form of manure and urine and it's all helping to improve soil health and productivity."

The Barnetts, who are long-time practitioners of Holistic Resource Management, have been developing and refining a rotational grazing system for 30 years. On their deeded, rented and leased land they have developed a network of pastures that are grazed from late May through until mid-October. All pastures, including hay land, in recent years are supplied water through dugouts, culvert wells and portable off-site water systems. "I believe we use every type of portable watering system there is on our ranch," says Barnett. "We are always looking to improve water supply on all pastures to improve livestock distribution."

Although for management reasons cows, heifers and yearlings are at times pastured separately, Duncan tries to combine the herds on pasture when possible to increase numbers and grazing intensity. Higher density, short duration grazing reduces selective grazing and also helps to concentrate manure and urine on pastures. Also with winter bale grazing, they begin with placing bales in the furthest pasture areas to optimize cattle (and manure) distribution and then move feeding closer to home as winter and snowfall progresses.

As one of the founders of the Invasive Species Council of B.C., Duncan uses a number of tools to control invasive weeds such as hawkweed, knapweed and oxeye daisy, that if left unchecked in the dry growing conditions, will choke out desired forage species. "We have used every tool including hand picking, spraying with herbicide, and mowing to control the weeds," he says. "But one tool that works extremely well is to teach cattle to eat these weeds. With grazing pressure applied at the right time and duration, it can be quite effective."

The Barnetts pay close attention to grazing management, to avoid overgrazing of forages which is particularly important during several recent years of drought conditions. One of the reasons they moved to later weaning and backgrounding steers and heifers was to provide flexibility during the grazing season. They didn't want to build up the cow herd and then have to cut back on cow numbers in years of reduced grass production. "Running the yearlings gives us the flexibility to maintain our cow herd and cut back numbers if needed," Duncan says. "For 2025 for example, the spring was shaping up to be a dry growing season, so we decided to sell the steers in June which is earlier than we liked, but we held onto the market heifers and hopefully we'll be able to keep them until August—this system gives us that option."

Barnett says proper management of their land and water resources has helped them develop a productive and sustainable ranching operation, and the opportunity to raise their family.

They are proud of their three daughters who were actively involved in the ranching operation and have gone on to find their own careers, all with a connection to agriculture. Kate and her husband Bennett Foster are farming and raising cattle at Dropmore, near Russell, Manitoba; Heather is a veterinarian, who along with her husband Clayton Loewen ranch at Rapidview, Saskatchewan; and Lindsay and her husband Anthony Mallinson live at Rossland, B.C. With education in community development, she is also active with the Invasive Species Council of B.C.

"We've worked to ranch in harmony with nature, and it has been often said our goal was to take care of this land and hopefully leave it in better shape then when we found it," says Duncan. "As far as succession goes, we don't necessarily have family that is interested in taking over the ranching operation, but perhaps there will be an opportunity to work with some young person who's interested in agriculture, and we can somehow help them get started in this great industry."