Technology Helps Landowners Manage for Livestock

Lubbock – Landowners have a variety of high-tech and low-tech tools available to help them manage their acreage, large or small, for livestock, wildlife or both.

Some of these high-tech tools include global positioning systems and sophisticated mapping software. Also in play are plant-specific herbicides that can be applied either from airplanes and helicopters, or from compact spray rigs attached to all-terrain-vehicles.

Tools on the low-tech side of the equation can be as simple as a wooden yardstick imprinted with wildlife and range management tips, to the old grazing maxim of "take half and leave half" of any available forage.

More than 100 landowners, ranchers and grazers recently gathered at the Covered S, John Ward and Riley Miller ranches to learn how to use high- and low-tech tools as part of their conservation and land-use strategies.

Will Senn and his wife, Joan, have been working a conservation and land improvement plan on their Covered S Ranch near Justiceburg for several years. Their goal is to reclaim and diversify native vegetation, keep brush under control, improve grazing for their cattle, and promote healthy populations of whitetail and mule deer, quail, pronghorn antelope and other wildlife.

"Our main goal is improvement," Senn said. "We're working on improving our forages, water supplies and native vegetation so this place can support a high-yield cattle operation. We're also making conservation improvements for wildlife, but that benefits our cattle, too."

Coordinating improvements to benefit land, livestock and wildlife is where a conservation plan comes into play.

Kevin Wright, Natural Resources Conservation Service district conservationist based in Snyder, helped Senn enroll in the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Working with Jim Lionberger, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist, Wright and Senn put together a conservation plan designed to knock back undesirable brush and improve existing native forages and cover plants for wildlife.

"We used hand-held global positioning system units and ArcView software to develop a resource map of the ranch," Wright told workshop participants. "These GPS units are accurate to within 3 or 4 feet. We can plug-in resources such as fences, water sources, etcetera and generate a layered map that helps the landowner with their management plan."

With such maps in hand, landowners can better plan improvements – such as brush control to open up grazing space or brush sculpting to improve critical wildlife areas. Lionberger told workshop participants that large, privately-owned acreages are well-suited for wildlife management.

"There is an aesthetic benefit in it, and there can be an economic benefit in it if you plan to lease the acreage for hunting or other uses," he said. "Mesquite and cedar are the most common brush species that landowners target when they begin managing land for wildlife."

He advised landowners to target undesirable brush with specific control treatments that won't damage desirable brush that provides food and cover for wildlife.

"You want to provide and promote plant diversity," he said. "A good rule of thumb is to maintain 40 percent brush cover on improved land. Clearing undesirable brush in large strips is a good way to attain that percent cover, especially if you are managing for
whitetail or mule deer.

"These strips should be wide, say 100 or so yards, and can be straight or wavy. Leaving mottes of brush is another option. Whether you use strips or mottes, remember that low-growing brush plants are important for all wildlife. You can cut, trim or sculpt tree branches and leave them leaning or trailing the ground to supplement low-growing cover if necessary."

J.F. Cadenhead, Extension range management specialist based in Vernon, showed participants an all-terrain vehicle equipped with a 25-gallon spray tank, pump, hand sprayer and folding boom sprayer. This spray equipment is designed for all-terrain vehicles and is available at some farm supply stores for less than $400, he said.

"Extension's Brush Busters program has a series of brush control brochures available to help you control brush with individual plant treatments," Cadenhead said. "It's important to know some basic tips on herbicide handling. Store them properly – don't subject them to freezing or hot temperatures.

"When you're putting a tank mix together, make sure the chemicals are well stirred," he said. "Most tank mixes require the addition of a carrier liquid such as water, or perhaps a diesel-in-water emulsion. Adjuvants/additives are used to increase either the effectiveness of the spray application or the activity of the herbicide-carrier mixture."

For example, one adjuvant may be an emulsifier designed to help the water mix with an oil such as diesel. Another "additive" might be a non-ionic surfactant that would help hard water mix with various herbicides, and also reduce the surface tension of the leaves being sprayed so the herbicide can be absorbed through the leaf surface, Cadenhead said.

"The chemical label will tell you how to mix products, which carriers and adjuvants to use and where and how to use the products safely," he said. "Brush control is a long-term process. You may not see immediate results.

“A properly applied treatment for pricklypear cactus, for example, can take two or three years to provide good control. No matter which brush species you are targeting, remember to put the herbicide where it belongs...on the foliage for a leaf-spray recommendation, not on the trunk. Follow the label recommendations on how, when and where to apply the product."

Dr. Ron Sosebee, professor emeritus with Texas Tech University's department of range, wildlife and fisheries management, told participants that timing is the key when applying herbicides to brush. "When you make a treatment is more important than your choice of labeled products," Sosebee said. "The environment – air and soil temperatures – must be right, so the plant will take-up the product.

"That means spraying when the target species is in its vegetative stage. The best time to spray annual species is in mid-spring, no later than mid-March. There are two application windows for perennial species: the rosette stage, before the flower stalk emerges; and after the reproductive stage, when the plant has finished fruit/seed development.

"Most perennial brush, including mesquite, yucca, and pricklypear, is very susceptible to herbicides in the post-reproductive stage of growth, he said.

"With pricklypear that generally occurs when neighboring trees are shedding their leaves," Sosebee said. "The target times for mesquite control are the last week in May and the first two weeks of June. With yucca, it's right after flowering.

"These are the times when these species are physiologically responsive to their environment and the herbicides you choose to apply."

The South Rolling Plains Range Education Workshop was a combined effort of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texas Department of Agriculture, the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative, the Association of Texas Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and the Big Country Resource Conservation and Development Area.

Here is a list of resources that can help landowners and ranchers with their land management decisions: