Texas is known for its rugged landscapes and iconic, opportunistic, and problematic prickly pear. While these plants readily provide headaches to the grazing manager, oftentimes pear also serves as food and habitat for wildlife and is a native species on Texas rangelands. However, the South American Cactus Moth has been found and confirmed in five Texas counties.
[Read more…] about Prickly Pear and the South American Cactus Moth
Ranchers in West Texas frequently encounter a double-decker challenge with intense canopy coverage from honey mesquite and dense pricklypear in the understory. Synergistic broadcast herbicide applications are commonly employed to tackle these layered problematic, opportunistic, and abundant species. However, it is crucial to recognize the potential for unintended consequences on nontarget woody plant species. A recent study delved into the effects of various herbicide treatments on both target and nontarget woody plant species.
[Read more…] about Non-Target Woody Plant Response to Herbicides
StockSmart is a new decision support tool that is used for grazing management. StockSmart can be used to calculate stocking rates for cattle, horses, and sheep on any landscape.
[Read more…] about A New Tool for Calculating Stocking Rates: StockSmart
Patch-burn grazing is a practice that requires an understanding of the interaction of fire and grazing (pyric herbivory) (for more information check out www.theprairieproject.org). It divides a pasture into pieces/patches, with one burn rotationally each year. It helps control woody plant encroachment and provides high-quality forages. Despite these known benefits, the adoption of this practice by ranchers has been slow and limited. This study focused on the benefits of patch-burn grazing by estimating the costs and long-term economic benefits. Additionally, researchers compared patch-burning to traditional applications of prescribed fire burning fenceline to fenceline or an entire pasture at once with a 3-year fire return interval.
In the western portion of the southern Great Plains, grasslands are defined as “southern mixed”, with warm season or C4 mid-grasses being dominant and cool season or C3 short-grasses in less frequent densities. As woody plant encroachment increasingly dominates, the productive warm season C4 grasses begin to decline with less abundance on the landscape and even less productivity. Woody plant dominance also reduces plant diversity eroding heterogeneity in the mixed-grass prairie. Recently, researchers measured the effects of various combinations of spring clipping (mimicked cattle grazing) and prescribed fire treatments over an 8 year period on Texas wintergrass and buffalograss with the overall objective of reducing Texas wintergrass abundance and increasing warm season C4 mid-grass species and diversity.
Did you know that having goats in your pasture could potentially complement the existing cattle operation while boosting livestock productivity and plant community diversity? Goats normally prefer and preferentially consume various types of woody and forb species more so than cattle do, and that their presence in a pasture does not alter what the cattle preferentially select to eat.
[Read more…] about Impact of Goats on Cattle Diet Composition
Grasshoppers are in full force this year! Has that delayed your foliar herbicide applications on mesquite? If herbicide application success is dependent on optimal uptake through healthy, mature leaves, then what effect can varying defoliation rates have on herbicide efficacy of clopyralid, triclopyr, and clopyralid+triclopyr applications?
[Read more…] about Herbicide Efficacy Following Defoliation on Honey Mesquite
The Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council has published its second issue of Prescribed Fire Lessons Learned! The Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council takes submissions from practitioners on lessons learned from prescribed fires to assist producers, landowners, PBAs, and other prescribed fire professionals to keep improving season after season. This forum has been invaluable in learning from one another in hopes that mistakes or judgment calls turn into valuable lessons for all of us building and contributing to prescribed fire culture. Below are some highlights from this issue.
Prescribed fire is a management practice used to reduce woody plant encroachment on rangeland and maintain native perennial grass diversity and productivity. Prescribed fire effects on CO2 fluxes and their contribution to atmospheric CO2 is not well known. The study below discusses the effect of fire on net ecosystem CO2 flux above Prosopis glandulosa Torr. (honey mesquite) using the Bowen ratio/energy balance method (BREB), and to compare these fluxes to fluxes determined by an empirical model.
[Read more…] about CO2 Flux over Burned Honey Mesquite Savanna Rangeland
USDA has recently released their land value summary for 2023. Texas is located in the Southern Plains region along with Oklahoma.