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Certain varieties of grain crops can perform well in dry conditions and can help conserve moisture. Likewise, certain cover crops help farmers and ranchers conserve soil moisture. Look for crops that work in your specific climate and that might provide a market advantage. For example, cotton is a significant water user. Texas accounts for 45 […]

Cover crops, seeded between or amid cash crops, contribute a variety of conservation benefits for water and soil. For water, they offer a triple bonus. A living cover crop traps surface water. When killed and left on the surface, cover crop residue bumps up water infiltration and lessens both erosion and evaporation. When incorporated into […]

Think of the soil as a sponge: it absorbs and holds water, and it reaches a point where it’s full and cannot hold any more. Unlike a real sponge, though, you can change the amount of water that soil can hold through the way you manage your soil. However, you are somewhat limited by your […]

Hope for the Best, But Plan for the Worst Recent rounds of severe drought across western rangelands have brought home the critical need for management strategies during times without rain. For many, the knee-jerk drought strategy becomes a desperate attempt to keep the number of livestock stable no matter the lack of feed. After all, […]

There’s nothing sexy about monitoring, but there’s probably no other single action that will keep rangelands healthier than checking vegetation. Measuring annual livestock use, documenting climatic and other potential impacts to the vegetation and watching the long-term trend in range health will do more to suggest management actions than any other use of a rancher’s […]

For most of the West’s livestock grazing history, riparian areas were considered sacrifice areas – dung piles deepened under shady conifers, livestock trampled the deep-rooted sedges that held streambanks in place, and willows provided scratching posts until the branches broke off. Today, range managers realize sacrificing riparian areas means potentially fouling clean water, increasing the […]

Grazing forage kochia and calving later in the season are just two examples of reducing feeding costs for livestock. In other places, producers feed protein supplements, augment with cheap grain such as wheat mids or use mineral supplements to increase livestock distribution in a pasture. Amanda Hancock works to find ways to extend fall grazing […]

Fall and winter grazing helps range plants by allowing them to rest during the growing season, and then be grazed while they are not trying to restock energy to leaves and roots. Livestock tend to graze more shrubs in the winter, so producers gain forage on shrubby rangelands, too. However, winter forage often will not […]

Range plants – the grasses, forbs and shrubs that predominate on arid landscapes – have adapted to the seasonality of rainfall and temperatures. On warmer rangelands that typically receive summer rains – the Great Plains and the Southwest – the warm-season native plants mostly grow in July and August. In the Great Basin and along […]

Producer Profile: Steep Learning Curve Pays Off Fourth-generation Nevada rancher Agee Smith thought he knew the 35,000 acres that comprise his family’s ranch like the lines on his palm – until he attended a Holistic Management (HM)TM workshop in Elko. “That was a changing point in my life,” says the co-owner of Cottonwood Ranch. Smith’s […]