GSL Range Research Update

Drs. Mitch Stephenson and Jerry Volesky Author

09/02/2020 Added

22 Plays

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Drs. Mitch Stephenson and Jerry Volesky discuss current range-focused research projects at GSL.
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[00:00:01.410]Hello, today I'm gonna be talking about
[00:00:03.040]some of our Rangeland Research that we're conducting
[00:00:05.470]at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab.
[00:00:07.780]My name is Mitch Stephenson.
[00:00:09.100]I'm a Range and Forage Management Specialist
[00:00:11.060]based at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center.
[00:00:13.740]And then my co-author and also speaker Jerry Volesky,
[00:00:17.330]is also gonna be giving some updates.
[00:00:19.420]And he's out of West Central Research and Extension Center
[00:00:22.660]in North Platte.
[00:00:25.570]We have a number of research projects currently going on
[00:00:28.270]at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab.
[00:00:30.870]The first two that I'm gonna talk about deal
[00:00:32.780]with grazing management and also burning on subirrigated
[00:00:36.420]meadows.
[00:00:37.500]And so we're looking at early season burning
[00:00:40.020]and how that affects subsequent...
[00:00:41.190]Your subsequent hay production.
[00:00:43.100]And also looking at the timing and intensity of grazing
[00:00:46.010]in the fall and winter on subirrigated meadow hay regrowth
[00:00:50.330]and then how that affects the subsequent year hay
[00:00:52.460]production.
[00:00:54.980]Next, I'll talk about some long term vegetation monitoring
[00:00:57.660]plots that we've been establishing at Gudmundsen
[00:00:59.950]as well as other ranches throughout the Sandhills.
[00:01:02.620]And then going into some of the work that we've been
[00:01:04.660]conducting with GPS tracking to look at modeling
[00:01:07.430]livestock grazing patterns across different scenarios
[00:01:10.950]in the Sandhills and other examples.
[00:01:14.780]Travis mullenix and I are working on some GPS
[00:01:17.460]and accelerometer data to define cow/calf relationships.
[00:01:21.030]And we're particularly interested in looking
[00:01:23.360]at how some of those relationships are affected
[00:01:25.920]by differences in milk production by those cows.
[00:01:30.350]And so we're using the accelerometers essentially
[00:01:33.140]like a Fitbit to track behaviors.
[00:01:36.780]And so we're able to look at things like whether
[00:01:39.410]they're grazing, whether they're nursing,
[00:01:41.340]whether they're resting and look at how that varies
[00:01:44.910]depending on some of these differences in their cow.
[00:01:49.230]And then lastly, Jerry is gonna be talking about some
[00:01:51.260]precipitation and plant production research,
[00:01:54.860]some long-term data that we've collected over the past
[00:01:57.230]15/16 years at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab.
[00:02:02.990]So the first study that I'm gonna talk about
[00:02:04.767]and the question we were really looking at is how does
[00:02:06.810]burning early in the growing season influence hay production
[00:02:10.130]later in the year?
[00:02:11.430]And so this was a question that was brought to me
[00:02:13.520]by a few producers and they were asking,
[00:02:16.640]what do I do with this excessive standing dead
[00:02:18.520]and litter material in these pastures in areas
[00:02:21.370]that either we couldn't hay, because it was too wet,
[00:02:24.280]or maybe in areas that we graze, but we didn't graze
[00:02:27.250]at a high enough stocking density so they ended up being
[00:02:29.570]quite a lot of biomass left behind.
[00:02:32.450]And so the picture on the left here shows an example
[00:02:35.610]of a meadow here on the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab
[00:02:39.140]that had quite a lot of biomass left in the early spring.
[00:02:43.180]And so we set up a study where
[00:02:46.170]we set up blocks where we burn these areas,
[00:02:48.410]relatively small areas,
[00:02:50.070]but we collected all the standing dead and litter material
[00:02:52.480]in early May, and we had about 3700 pounds per acre
[00:02:55.810]is what it would have been equated to.
[00:02:57.240]And so we had three years that we burn
[00:02:59.870]these different plots, or we either we mowed them,
[00:03:02.930]or we left them with no treatment, so our controls.
[00:03:06.990]And so we move this around so every year we did a different
[00:03:10.610]location where we replicated this study within the meadow.
[00:03:14.540]Burning and mowing usually occur during the first week
[00:03:17.110]of May.
[00:03:20.173]And then we would fence off half of that plots,
[00:03:25.470]so the goal here is so cattle were grazing
[00:03:28.100]within this greater meadow area early in the growing season,
[00:03:31.660]so from early May until about early July,
[00:03:34.380]or excuse me, early June.
[00:03:36.060]And so we thought, well, they're gonna be out here grazing
[00:03:38.710]anyways, let's just see how burning and mowing early
[00:03:42.080]and then having access to grazing would affect it,
[00:03:45.640]or burning and bowing early, and then no grazing
[00:03:48.280]would affect it.
[00:03:49.520]So we did that just by separating those out
[00:03:51.830]and so when cattle were pulled off in early June,
[00:03:55.730]we would go out, we'd clip all the plots,
[00:03:58.030]so we could determine a utilization rate,
[00:04:00.260]and then we would go back in August to see
[00:04:04.510]the end of season biomass that was out there.
[00:04:07.860]And so what we found is that in June when we pulled
[00:04:11.640]cattle off, typically that the burn plots were grazed
[00:04:15.600]at a higher utilization than our control plots
[00:04:18.210]and we expected this.
[00:04:19.370]The research would suggest at many other locations
[00:04:22.640]that if you burn an area cattle are gonna be attracted
[00:04:25.150]to that succulent regrow that comes back on those areas
[00:04:29.670]and they also don't need to dig through all this standing
[00:04:32.590]dead biomass as you can see the controlled plots here.
[00:04:36.210]Quite a lot of that biomass that dead biomass is still there
[00:04:39.590]and so they have to kind of sort through all that to get
[00:04:41.680]down to the grass and so on the grazed compared
[00:04:44.560]to the ungrazed we found there was about 75% utilization
[00:04:47.540]on the burn plots, about 45 ish percent utilization
[00:04:53.280]on the unburned.
[00:04:57.560]So jumping into our August bio mask clipping.
[00:05:00.850]And so one of the interesting things that we found
[00:05:03.210]was that the treatment, whether we burned or we mowed,
[00:05:07.180]did not have much of an impact on biomass production
[00:05:10.530]on either the grazed or the ungrazed plots.
[00:05:12.997]And so these are...
[00:05:14.130]This is the average production for total live,
[00:05:16.850]cool season graminoids.
[00:05:18.150]So that's cool season grasses, sedges and rushes,
[00:05:21.630]a warm season grasses forbs.
[00:05:23.820]And then you need dead material that might have been still
[00:05:26.530]there in August.
[00:05:27.520]And so really the only differences that we found
[00:05:31.050]between our treatments were with our dead plant material,
[00:05:34.600]where we found that there was quite a lot more dead plant
[00:05:37.810]material as we expected in our controls compared to whether
[00:05:40.990]we burned or we mowed it.
[00:05:42.940]And so really from this, we were able to conclude
[00:05:46.550]that early season burning can be a viable tool for managing
[00:05:50.480]subirrigated meadows without any effect
[00:05:53.120]on hay production in mid-August.
[00:05:59.350]We did see that if the plots were grazed though,
[00:06:02.050]the grazing tended to have more of an influence
[00:06:04.560]on the biomass later in the growing season.
[00:06:07.040]So if it was grazed in May to early June,
[00:06:11.150]so regardless of the treatment burned, controlled or mowed,
[00:06:15.860]we tended to see a reduction in the amount of biomass
[00:06:19.393]that was out there.
[00:06:20.410]So for our total live biomass,
[00:06:22.800]it was about 1500 or so pounds per acre less
[00:06:26.750]on the grazed compared to the ungrazed.
[00:06:31.000]But we did see a slightly higher crude protein and TDN
[00:06:34.280]on our vegetation for the grazed compared to the ungrazed
[00:06:37.150]plots, but it was kind of variable.
[00:06:39.710]And we didn't get a really clear picture that trade off
[00:06:42.440]even though other research would suggest that
[00:06:44.760]if you graze early, it'll set back and have more vegetative
[00:06:48.640]plant material later in the growing season.
[00:06:50.960]We didn't see a lot of that but we saw a slight increase
[00:06:53.880]in crude protein.
[00:06:55.770]But we definitely saw a reduction in the amount of biomass
[00:06:59.130]that was out there so there's a trade off there.
[00:07:05.080]So our next question was how does timing and intensity
[00:07:07.810]of grazing on meadow regrowth influence subsequent year
[00:07:10.390]hay production and so common practice that is...
[00:07:14.270]That we do at Gudmundsen and a lot of ranches do
[00:07:17.360]is they'll go out and graze that regrowth on those meadows.
[00:07:20.350]It's a high quality and a fairly good amount of biomass
[00:07:24.710]that's usually there in the fall and winter.
[00:07:27.390]We had between 2000 and 3000 pounds per acre on our plots
[00:07:30.980]typically.
[00:07:31.940]And so we wanted to look at this in terms of what if we
[00:07:36.730]grazed in the fall, that was before a really hard freeze
[00:07:40.760]so the plant material was still actively growing,
[00:07:43.570]or what if we grazed in the winter that was post freeze
[00:07:46.210]after that vegetation had primarily gone dormant,
[00:07:50.040]as you can see in these pictures here on the left.
[00:07:52.880]And then so we added in another treatment to this of looking
[00:07:56.280]at if we grazed too heavy, so we're trying to get about 75%
[00:07:59.150]utilization that's intake and trampling,
[00:08:02.120]and also moderate about 50% grazing, 50% remaining
[00:08:06.440]out there in the paddocks.
[00:08:07.650]And so we put a number of these paddocks out,
[00:08:11.550]replicated it four times
[00:08:14.839]and we use some of the sedge officially to cows
[00:08:17.970]to graze these paddocks at the different times
[00:08:21.290]and at the different intensities.
[00:08:22.750]And then we came back the following July and we select...
[00:08:25.940]And we sampled on those different plots.
[00:08:30.210]So jumping right to the data of two years,
[00:08:32.150]so we collected data in 2019 and 2020.
[00:08:36.140]And so this is the biomass of grass
[00:08:39.920]in the subsequent year after we grazed
[00:08:42.020]and so really what we found is that we have about
[00:08:44.380]500 pounds per acre less when grazing occurred in the fall
[00:08:48.040]compared to the winter.
[00:08:50.280]They were both similar with our control,
[00:08:52.970]though that had no grazing.
[00:08:54.800]But it was about...
[00:08:56.890]It was still less numerically
[00:09:01.202]in the pre compared to the post...
[00:09:03.910]To the control and so there appears to be an influence
[00:09:08.140]of grazing before that grasses has gone dormant.
[00:09:11.340]And we think this is likely due to those cool season
[00:09:13.700]grasses, still actively growing,
[00:09:16.420]still actively using some of those carbohydrate reserves
[00:09:22.910]that are then grazed and that shuts off.
[00:09:25.050]And so, there appears to be a difference in whether you wait
[00:09:29.520]until after those grasses have gone dormant.
[00:09:32.850]But our heavy versus moderate grazing really didn't appear
[00:09:35.980]to have much of a difference as you can see,
[00:09:37.700]they're fairly similar within those time periods.
[00:09:42.460]We did see a difference in the amount of subsequent
[00:09:44.670]year standing dead and litter though which we expected.
[00:09:48.490]But we had about 800 to 1000 pounds per acre less
[00:09:52.490]dead plant material when grazing occurred in the fall
[00:09:55.050]or winter compared to not grazing at all.
[00:09:57.850]So there's still quite a bit of standing dead and litter
[00:10:00.090]out there, if you just leave that regrowth
[00:10:03.100]out on the meadows.
[00:10:04.400]And this is where we did pick up a difference between
[00:10:07.130]the moderate in heavy grazing, where we found that heavy
[00:10:10.250]grazed plots had about 43% less dead material
[00:10:14.220]than our moderately grazed plots.
[00:10:17.910]And so this plays, all plays into that meadow management,
[00:10:20.360]it also plays into that hay bale that you're gonna
[00:10:22.480]be producing the following year.
[00:10:24.710]And some things to think about, we plan on collecting
[00:10:27.890]a couple more years of data.
[00:10:29.840]The goal of this is to really look at those cumulative
[00:10:31.910]effects.
[00:10:32.743]And so if we're grazing it this way,
[00:10:35.910]for multiple years back to back,
[00:10:38.130]how does that influence that hay production
[00:10:41.150]during the subsequent year.
[00:10:44.290]We started a study in 2019,
[00:10:47.340]looking at monitoring on Rangelands,
[00:10:50.060]and we selected three pastures in the eastern part of GSL
[00:10:54.180]to participate in this program.
[00:10:56.560]And what we were doing with this is looking at variables
[00:11:00.630]on Rangelands that we can measure and track over time,
[00:11:04.270]and across different grazing management strategies
[00:11:06.970]and across different regions of the Sandhills.
[00:11:10.660]The first thing that we looked at was percent ground cover.
[00:11:13.140]And the way that we did this was we had multiple places
[00:11:15.770]where we looked at a single point on the ground across
[00:11:17.890]our transects.
[00:11:19.270]And so for the three pastures at GSL,
[00:11:21.730]what we found is that they add about 50 to 70% litter,
[00:11:25.490]about 15 to 20% bare ground and about 15% to 20% live basal,
[00:11:30.180]the base of a vegetative plan.
[00:11:32.680]And so but this was variable depending on our sites,
[00:11:35.550]and as we're able to look at a lot of different things
[00:11:39.030]based on differences.
[00:11:41.980]We also looked at frequency of occurrence
[00:11:43.700]and so we had a frame that we would lay down
[00:11:45.950]at a number of locations across our sites that are transects
[00:11:50.264]and we would have presence or absence of different species.
[00:11:53.430]So if it was present, we recorded it.
[00:11:55.510]And this gives us an indication of how frequently
[00:11:58.160]we observe different plant species across our study size.
[00:12:02.600]So as you see here, little bluestem was very frequently
[00:12:05.440]observed in one of our pastures, as well as sedges,
[00:12:08.130]scriveners rose of grass, stiff sunflower, sampling salmon,
[00:12:11.240]and so on.
[00:12:12.270]And so this gives us an idea of what species are out there
[00:12:16.490]and how frequent they are.
[00:12:18.810]We also wanted to look at the amount of biomass
[00:12:21.680]those different species are contributing.
[00:12:23.470]And so this is a method called dry-weight rank.
[00:12:27.990]It's semi qualitative so it's based on visual observations,
[00:12:31.270]but it gives an estimation of what's contributing the most
[00:12:35.030]of the biomass.
[00:12:35.980]And so in pasture two here, we saw that little bluestem
[00:12:39.850]was about 30 to 40% estimated amount of that total biomass.
[00:12:44.990]What surprised us a little bit was the amount
[00:12:46.630]of stiff sunflower that was out there.
[00:12:48.610]And then needle and thread, scribners rose grass
[00:12:51.900]each had about nine or 10%, and so on.
[00:12:55.190]And so this has really given us a good picture
[00:12:57.560]of those plant communities across these.
[00:13:01.140]So this study is looking at it across 10 different ranches
[00:13:04.540]spread throughout the Sandhills.
[00:13:05.820]We actually are moving farther to the east here this year,
[00:13:08.760]where we have 90 to 100, Upland Sands Ecological Sites
[00:13:12.610]that we've put monitoring locations at.
[00:13:16.210]We've seen about 100 different plant species.
[00:13:18.970]Of those about 72% are forbs and shrubs,
[00:13:22.300]which was really important as we look at biodiversity.
[00:13:27.160]In 2020, we did extensive testing for soil health data,
[00:13:30.660]looking at microbial communities,
[00:13:33.670]looking at soil organic matter, soil structure,
[00:13:36.890]a lot of these variables that we're adding into this study.
[00:13:40.040]And in the future, we hope to look at some satellite imagery
[00:13:42.400]data to look at that things across the whole pastures
[00:13:45.830]in terms of bare ground and perennial vegetation.
[00:13:48.220]And so if you're interested,
[00:13:50.340]there's a BeefWatch Article Title of what should my pastures
[00:13:52.940]look like.
[00:13:55.540]And the last thing that I'm gonna talk about
[00:13:56.860]is some of our GPS tracking to model grazing patterns
[00:13:59.900]and so this is the study that we are collaborating
[00:14:02.650]with the USDA ARS out of Fort Collins on.
[00:14:05.730]And what we're really looking at is can we model
[00:14:08.720]the Sandhills in terms of their topographic position.
[00:14:11.440]And there's some tools that we have available
[00:14:14.060]that we created this topographic position index of pastures
[00:14:17.930]here on the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab.
[00:14:19.970]And it basically identifies whether that position
[00:14:22.770]is in the lower area, the middle would be like slopes,
[00:14:26.430]and then the upper areas, which are dune tops and ridges.
[00:14:33.530]And then we have GPS tracking data.
[00:14:36.180]We've collected quite a bit over the years at GSL,
[00:14:40.010]and so we're able to overlay these use map patterns
[00:14:44.810]with the topography and create what we call a resource
[00:14:48.880]selection probability function.
[00:14:51.080]And this resource selection probability function
[00:14:53.920]is the estimate of the true probability of use
[00:14:56.910]of a given pixel.
[00:14:58.340]And so as we look at these maps,
[00:15:00.820]as you see the darker red is an indication that that pixel
[00:15:05.720]is going to be used in a higher degree
[00:15:08.180]than other pixels within the same pasture.
[00:15:11.550]And so if you look, the blue dots represent water sources
[00:15:15.160]as you expected, there's going to be more areas around
[00:15:18.080]the water that those cattle are grazing.
[00:15:19.830]So it's gonna have a higher intensity.
[00:15:22.040]But with the use of the topographic position index
[00:15:24.680]and our grazing, GPS tracking, we're able to look at this
[00:15:29.760]in terms of how does this equate to the different
[00:15:33.040]topographic positions within a pasture.
[00:15:35.900]And so if you look at the darker pink color in these images,
[00:15:40.880]that's typically our low lands.
[00:15:42.480]And so they're gonna have a higher probability of use
[00:15:45.430]than some of our uplands.
[00:15:47.030]And so we can create these maps across large areas
[00:15:51.690]that would help us in better understanding
[00:15:54.550]where we're going to see that higher grazing pressure
[00:15:57.300]and how can we think about different strategies
[00:15:59.880]that would alleviate pressure in some areas
[00:16:01.910]or adjust where that pressure is going in different years.
[00:16:07.840]Now these graphs here show,
[00:16:10.520]basically what we're trying to accomplish in a graph form.
[00:16:13.760]And so, if you think about a pasture having a grid system,
[00:16:18.730]and every grid is about 625 meters squared spread across
[00:16:22.800]those pastures.
[00:16:24.510]And so on the x-axis here,
[00:16:26.670]that's the signal, it goes from zero to 20 to over 200.
[00:16:30.020]So basically, that's the relative frequency
[00:16:33.361]of the cattle grazing on those areas.
[00:16:36.140]So zero to 20 is not grazed at all, hardly,
[00:16:40.120]over 200 would mean that those grades are grazed
[00:16:44.090]at a really high rate.
[00:16:45.970]And so on the y-axis, we have percent of the pasture.
[00:16:49.960]And so if you think about this, in terms of that red line,
[00:16:53.130]so that red line is how those grids stack up
[00:16:57.280]compared to the whole pasture.
[00:16:59.190]And so if we have a lot on the left side of a graph,
[00:17:02.400]that means that there are a lot of areas in that pasture,
[00:17:05.020]that are only lightly being grazed.
[00:17:06.137]And if we have a lot on the right side of the graph,
[00:17:08.580]that means there's a lot of those grid pixels
[00:17:10.810]that are being grazed very heavily.
[00:17:13.670]And so if we look at Gudmundsen, for example,
[00:17:16.580]we really see that there is a skewed left to that.
[00:17:19.660]Meaning that there are a lot of places in those larger
[00:17:22.060]pastures that aren't being grazed.
[00:17:24.150]But then there are also a spike at the greater than 200,
[00:17:28.600]where they have some areas that are being used very heavily.
[00:17:31.750]And this is typical what we see in a low stock density
[00:17:34.650]large pasture areas as what we expected.
[00:17:38.130]Now we also have data from the Barta Brother Ranch
[00:17:40.440]and these are smaller pastures, higher stocking density.
[00:17:43.770]They're managed in a rotational...
[00:17:46.727]Fairly moderate rotational system for pasture
[00:17:49.210]for rotation, but the small pastures especially I think,
[00:17:53.130]have an influence on this.
[00:17:54.510]And as we see this, it shifts it to the right more
[00:17:58.090]in terms of how those cattle are grazing.
[00:18:01.060]So they're grazing more to the center.
[00:18:03.730]Now, this is a normal distribution
[00:18:05.710]and so we this what we would expect if it's a fairly uniform
[00:18:08.840]distribution across the landscape,
[00:18:11.110]that most of our points would fall between that 80 to 140,
[00:18:17.300]right in that middle part of the graph.
[00:18:20.220]And so if we look at the differences between these pastures,
[00:18:23.670]GSL tend to be skewed a little bit more left,
[00:18:26.710]Barta Brothers tend to be be more towards the middle
[00:18:31.070]part of this figure.
[00:18:33.230]And so, more towards that uniform utilization.
[00:18:37.790]And so the research here suggests that there may be some
[00:18:40.840]opportunities to look at this more look how different
[00:18:42.970]management might affect grazing across the landscape,
[00:18:46.200]and really give us more insights
[00:18:48.490]of areas that are heavily used and areas that are lightly
[00:18:52.340]used.
[00:18:53.173]And so this is a publication that we did in conjunction
[00:18:56.070]with sites across the west, New Mexico, Idaho and Colorado,
[00:19:00.020]and other places.
[00:19:01.050]And so, we're hoping to look at this and glean
[00:19:03.750]more information on how cattle utilize different pastures
[00:19:07.530]and how we can predict where they're gonna utilize
[00:19:09.460]it in the future.
[00:19:12.800]Afternoon, this is Jerry Volesky,
[00:19:14.290]Range and Forage Specialists
[00:19:15.700]at the West Central Research and Extension Center
[00:19:17.890]in North Platte.
[00:19:18.880]And Stephenson is gonna briefly cover some of our range
[00:19:21.760]and pasture conditions and what we've been seeing here
[00:19:24.760]in 2020.
[00:19:26.990]This is a Drought Monitor from August 11 and as you can see,
[00:19:30.280]in Nebraska, the Western part of the State,
[00:19:32.810]Southwest, South Central and the Northeast
[00:19:36.360]have some different levels of drought conditions.
[00:19:40.270]Our neighbors to the West, Wyoming and Colorado
[00:19:43.370]pretty much statewide have varying levels of dryness
[00:19:46.720]or drought taking place.
[00:19:48.990]This map here is presenting the percent of normal
[00:19:52.290]precipitation since April 1 are basically our growing
[00:19:55.520]season so far.
[00:19:57.060]And you can see in the areas of red that really
[00:20:00.102]are relatively to what we saw on the Drought Monitor
[00:20:01.860]very dry conditions but then also,
[00:20:04.750]the bullseye almost very wet conditions in parts
[00:20:08.090]of Southeastern Cherry County, Brown Rock,
[00:20:11.660]Blaine Counties right there in the middle of the state.
[00:20:15.430]Now this is a similar map from July 1,
[00:20:18.230]and that trend has somewhat continued
[00:20:20.330]it's a little bit more irregular in terms of areas
[00:20:23.570]that have received rain fall since July 1.
[00:20:28.990]This table here shows the GSL precipitation through July
[00:20:33.050]of this year.
[00:20:34.270]And the two key things are both April and June are quite...
[00:20:38.510]Quite dry.
[00:20:39.740]And then on the opposite end of the spectrum,
[00:20:42.540]both May and July were a bit above average
[00:20:45.130]in terms of monthly total precipitation.
[00:20:49.270]Now here's a table of our mid June production
[00:20:53.590]on upland range both at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Lab
[00:20:56.610]as well as at the Barta Brothers ranch.
[00:20:59.900]So in 2020, at Gudmundsen,
[00:21:03.241]we have actually a bit above average of the cool season
[00:21:05.770]grass and sedge production,
[00:21:07.700]likely bolstered by that above average rainfall in May.
[00:21:13.230]Overall then the total grass and forbs and shrub production
[00:21:18.880]was about a long term average here in 2020.
[00:21:22.840]At the Barta Brothers ranch, the wet location,
[00:21:26.400]cool season grass production, excellent at over 1100 pounds
[00:21:30.440]per acre.
[00:21:31.850]And the total production at Barta Brothers at mid-June
[00:21:34.950]was 1700 pounds, which was about 500 pounds
[00:21:38.870]above the long term average.
[00:21:43.410]Now...
[00:21:45.670]So it's really a tale of extremes across Sandhills
[00:21:49.190]in terms of these drier and wetter areas,
[00:21:51.990]of course in the dry areas, so we like to expect
[00:21:55.610]reduced upland pasture production and maybe your pastures
[00:21:59.600]are looking a little bit shorter here now in August,
[00:22:03.080]than you'd like to see and then and likewise
[00:22:05.480]in those subirrigated meadows in the dry areas.
[00:22:08.960]So rainfall is important, and so it's likely
[00:22:12.220]that you probably had less hay production than you might
[00:22:15.310]normally see.
[00:22:16.920]Now on the other hand in these wet areas,
[00:22:19.050]again, we're seeing some reduction in hay production
[00:22:21.900]because of extremely wet meadows and standing water
[00:22:25.500]in some places.
[00:22:31.870]It's also interesting to note that again,
[00:22:34.460]in the wet areas on some upland sites so where we have
[00:22:38.310]introduced swales, we call them are really close depressions
[00:22:41.580]that with the excessive rainfall for the past two years,
[00:22:45.150]we have a lot of standing water in these sites
[00:22:47.800]and these are not subirrigated, it's just an accumulation
[00:22:51.030]of water over the past couple of years that has basically
[00:22:54.200]flooded some of these inner doodle sites.
[00:22:57.630]So with that, I thank you for your time
[00:22:59.910]and feel free to contact me if you have any more questions
[00:23:03.600]or would like to discuss any other range or pasture
[00:23:07.830]types of situations.
[00:23:09.160]Thank you.

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GSL Range Research Update

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