A PROBLEM of steadily increasing importance to almost every owner of live stock in the range States is the problem of improving and efficiently managing native pasture lands. Indirectly, but not less surely, it affects the meat and wool industries and every consumer of their products.

For many years in the West there was room for the expansion of the range stock industry. Large areas of unused grazing lands awaited the coming of the stockman. [Actually, they were already being used by the buffalo, elk, antelope, etc., but do go on... -ASC].  Only part of the pasturage which nature had provided in such seeming abundance was utilized by the herds which grazed in the western country. But this is no longer the case. From the desert to the line of perpetual snow there is now little unused range. Grazing, too, has in most cases been unrestricted, with consequent injury to the forage growth.  This has gone on until it is evident that, to maintain the production of even the present number of live stock under the range industry, run-down ranges must be improved and an efficient system of native pasture management worked out. In short, it will be necessary not only to build up the range lands, but to keep them at their maximum carrying capacity once that is done. There is urgent call for such measures now, but this call will become steadily stronger as settlement advances into the stock country and range pasture is needed for the farm herd to supplement the pasturage and feed crops produced on the cultivated land.

A very few figures will show the magnitude of the pasture problem west of the Mississippi. There practically all of the land in farms classed by the census as unimproved, some 252,000,000 acres, or more than 60 per cent of all such land in the United States, is of value for grazing and in use by stock. Of the public lands, some 110,000,000 acres within the National Forests carry live stock, mainly as summer range.  Outside the National Forests, practically all the public land, not less than 800,000,000 acres, is used for grazing purposes.  All told, then, the problem of improving and maintaining native pastures in the range States extends, in a broad sense, to something over 660,000,000 acres of land—nearly one and one-half times the area in the United States that is cultivated and cropped.

What has taken place, and is still taking place, on many of the privately owned native pastures is a gradual but steady decline in their carrying capacity. [Interesting, this same land supported massive herds of buffalo and other large animals for hundreds of thousands of years without degradation, yet in less than 100 years, these jokers managed to wear it out. -ASC]  Data collected by the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station show that in that State in 1910 the average area of grazing land required per steer was 3.80 acres and in 1914, 6.55 acres, an increase of 72 per cent. Along with this go a corresponding increase of 81 per cent in the pasture rent per steer and a decrease of 24 per cent in the income per acre. Kansas has 2 acres of pasture land to every 3 acres cultivated and cropped.  Though largely unsuited for cultivation, these pasture lands have reached a total valuation of approximately $400,000,000 for grazing purposes. This figure gives some idea of how important, from a money standpoint, is the problem of bringing the lands back to their former degree of usefulness and keeping them there.

What is true of Kansas is in all probability true of other western States where large areas of privately owned pasture lands have been in more or less continuous use for spring and summer grazing. This would not necessarily be the case, however, with private pastures in connection with farms in the range States, where the unimproved part of the farm or ranch is used in late fall, winter, and a short time in spring to supplement public domain and National Forest range, with the result that the stock are off the private pastures during a good portion of the growing season and the vegetation has a chance to mature and so to stand heavy grazing in fall and winter. Where this is so, the unprotected public lands must be looked to for a comparison with the private pastures which are used throughout the season each year.

The average carrying capacity of the 300,000,000 acres of public lands outside of the National Forests is to-day probably 25 per cent below what it was originally. That this estimate is conservative can be told by the degree of improvement in forage crops and increase in carrying capacity which follows restricted grazing or total protection of the range.  The lands used for grazing purposes within National Forests are gradually being brought back to something like their original condition by the grazing management which has been developed during the past 10 years. Between 1907 and 1914 the average acreage per animal was reduced about 14 per cent. As a matter of fact, the average increase in carrying capacity of ranges which were run down in 1907 may be set at not less than 30 per cent. In many instances the lands now bear several times the amount of vegetation which existed when they were first placed under management.  Decrease or increase in carrying capacity is the direct but not the only measure of deterioration or improvement in a pasture. The character and amount of vegetation has a great deal to do with the producing capacity of the lands and with the control of mud-laden flood waters which mean damage, or even destruction, to lands and improvements further along the drainage.  Evidence of such damage, varying from shoe-string rills to gullies and large washes, is common enough, not only on the unprotected public lands, but on the rolling and hilly privately owned pastures. With decrease in the cover of vegetation, rapid run-off and erosion is increased, and the surface drainage carries off not only the much-needed moisture but the soil as well. While the damage thus brought about is generally realized in a vague way, the tendency seems to be to underestimate it, just as it is the tendency to neglect the pasture lands as things which can take care of themselves.

CAUSES OF PASTURE DETERIORATION.

Overstocking and premature grazing go together as the most direct causes of deterioration in western pastures.  Lack of well-distributed watering places and unnecessary or improper handling of the stock, though less important than overstocking and premature grazing, often operate to bring about a marked reduction in carrying capacity.

   Upon the public lands outside of the National Forests, and upon the National Forest lands before they were placed under management, the only limit to the number of stock grazed was usually the number available. No consideration was given to the matter of carrying capacity. This same practice continued to some extent even after the lands passed to private ownership and were placed under fence. The more common practice on private lands, however, has been to put on all the stock that the range would carry and turn them off in fair to good condition, in the belief that if the stock came off in satisfactory shape the range was not overstocked or injured. This is true, provided the season of grazing is limited so as to give the vegetation a chance to do more than merely produce a few leaves, which are eaten as soon as they are long enough to crop. It is not true if the stock are turned on the pasture lands as soon as there is enough green feed for them to live on and kept there, to the apparent capacity of the pasture, as long as they can remain in fairly good condition. The fact that this has been the method followed accounts for the decrease in carrying capacity of many private pastures, when the owners believed that the lands were not overstocked. Animals which are allowed to graze the green feed of the choice forage plants nearly as fast as it grows may, for the time being, get enough to eat, but to rob the plants continuously of this foliage robs them also of their laboratory for manufacturing plant food, and they are gradually starved out of existence. The change, perhaps, is not noticeable during any one year, but in a period of 5 or more years the better forage plants are greatly reduced, if not killed out, and their place taken by less desirable grasses and weeds.

The condition of the stock, therefore, is not in itself a safe way to judge whether a range is overstocked or not.  It works well enough on winter pastures which have been protected during the growing season, and it works moderately well on National Forest ranges where the stock are not put on until the vegetation is well along in its short period of growth. It can be used also on spring and fall pastures where the stock are taken off early in the growing season and put back after the vegetation has matured. It does not work, however, where the stock are on the pasture to its apparent capacity during all or the greater part of the growing period of the main forage plants. Where this is the case the number of stock must be reduced materially below the number which can be kept in good condition, if the pasture is to be kept up.

Until a few years ago premature grazing was generally understood to mean grazing in early spring, while the ground was still soft enough to make it certain that a great deal of the vegetation would be destroyed or badly injured by trampling. It is now realized that this is only a limited view. If the maximum stand of forage plants which are naturally dominant on a pasture is to be maintained under annual grazing, it would seem that the land should be grazed only after approximately the time of year when these plants mature their seeds. This, however, is not practicable. Therefore, to approach it as nearly as possible consistent with the whole plan of live stock, farm, and pasture management is the problem to be worked out. When the season of grazing that will give the vegetation the greatest chance to grow, consistent with the profitable handling of the stock, is decided upon, then, and not until then, can the number of stock a given pasture will carry be consistently estimated. It should be determined finally by careful observation of the range, not the stock, over a period of from 3 to 5 years.

Lack of well-distributed watering places, each with ample water for the stock which may drift to it, results in overgrazing and excessive trampling around the watering places which do exist. The area of pasture injured in this way will depend upon the distance between water and upon topography. At best there will be slight damage, especially in cattle pastures. In extreme cases observed on cattle range in comparatively level country the denudation or material decrease in vegetation gradually extends outward from the water a distance of at least 6 miles. On many of the smaller private pastures decrease in carrying capacity due to this cause may seem negligible. It operates, however, to reduce the average productiveness of the whole pasture, just as small uncultivated spots bring down the average yield of a cultivated field, and efficient management must take it into account.

WHAT IS BEING DONE TO IMPROVE NATIVE PASTURE LAND.

If run-down pastures or ranges are to be brought up to their original or maximum productiveness, they must, of course, be seeded to forage plants. This must be done either artificially with seed available on the market, or by managing the pastures so they will reseed themselves with the better species of existing native vegetation. If artificial seeding were economically practicable, as it is in the case of cultivated lands, the depletion of pastures would be a matter of less concern.

For many years the United States Department of Agriculture has conducted experiments in artificially reseeding worn-out or run-down native pasture lands in the West, but practical results are limited to a small acreage of lands where soil and moisture conditions are very favorable, and even on such lands it is frequently a question whether the increase in forage, or the saving of time in securing revegetation, will justify the expense of seeding.

The improvement and maintenance of the forage crop, then, must be accomplished largely through management which will meet the requirements of the desirable native plants so that they can maintain themselves and reseed as often as necessary. The gist of the whole matter is that the requirements of the vegetation which makes up the forage crop on the pasture lands must be studied and taken into account in working out a system of grazing management.

Studies of this kind were undertaken by the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1907 on depleted ranges of a National Forest area in northeastern Oregon, with the object of developing a plan of using the range which would harmonize the requirements of the vegetation and the requirements of successful livestock management in the greatest possible degree. The requirements of the important range forage plants and the essential factors, including grazing, which affect their growth and reproduction, were carefully studied over a period of 5 years.

With the data thus secured, a system of grazing known in the Forest Service as “deferred grazing” was planned and put into effect on a practical scale. It was found, for example, that approximately one-fourth of the grazing season remained after the important range plants had matured seed. Accordingly, an area equivalent to one-fourth the carrying capacity allotted to a band of sheep was protected against grazing until the important plants on it had matured seed. After seed maturity the first year the area was heavily grazed, so that the sheep might aid in planting the seed by trampling it into the ground. During the second year, or during the first season after a crop of fertile seed was produced, the area protected the first year was again protected until after seed maturity, when it was only moderately grazed in order to give the seedling plants from the first year’s seed crop a chance to develop a good root system before they were subjected to trampling. Where the vegetation at the beginning was vigorous enough to produce a crop of fertile seed the first year, the one-fourth of the range selected for reseeding was protected until after seed maturity for two seasons only. It was then grazed early in the season, and another one-fourth was reseeded by keeping the stock off until after seed maturity each year for two years. In the same way each one-fourth of the range was reseeded naturally, without depriving the stock of the forage on any part of the range any year.

Where the vegetation was badly overgrazed at the beginning it was found that two seasons of protection until after seed maturity was necessary before the original plants became vigorous enough to produce a crop of fertile seed. In such cases it took 4 years to accomplish what was accomplished in 2 years where the original vegetation was vigorous enough to produce a crop of fertile seed the first season of protection.

A study was made to determine the improvement in vegetation secured under this plan of management as compared with similar range grazed throughout the season each year, and also with fenced areas not grazed at all. At the end of the third year it was found that the reproduction from seed was five and one-half times greater on the lands grazed after seed maturity each of the three seasons than on the areas totally protected against grazing, while the reproduction of good forage species was much greater.

It was found that establishment of seedlings depends very largely upon the thoroughness with which the seed is planted. Similarly, it was found that nearly all fertile seeds will germinate on the surface of the ground, but the resulting plants are unable to extend their root systems deep enough to reach the moist lower soil, so that where the surface layer of soil dries out early in the season, as it does on most of the range lands, the young plants die from drought.  This is what happened on the lands totally protected against grazing, and as a result a large percentage of the reproduction was made up of less valuable plants, the seeds of which are provided with contrivances which work them into the ground. On the area grazed after seed maturity the sheep trampled a good deal of the seed into the ground and reproduction as a consequence was much better.

Following the Oregon experiments the system of deferred grazing has been tested out elsewhere on both cattle and sheep ranges, and both practically and experimentally, with results that confirm those secured in Oregon. In a three- years’ test on early summer overgrazed sheep range in Wyoming, the total vegetation on range grazed each year after seed maturity increased at least 100 per cent, and of this at the end of three years 80 per cent was made up of the best forage plants. On an adjoining area protected against grazing for three seasons the total vegetation increased 80 per cent, while the proportion of desirable forage plants at the end of the test was only about 25 per cent. Adjoining range, grazed season-long each of the three years, had only one-half as much total vegetation as the area grazed each year after seed maturity, not more than 22 per cent of which was made up of the best forage plants.

On desert grass range of the Jornada Plains in southern New Mexico an area of 35,686 acres was fenced in April, 1913. During the main summer growing seasons of 1913 and 1914 it was stocked with cattle only to about one-fifth to one-third of its carrying capacity, in order to give the vegetation a chance to develop and produce seed. During the remaining 8 months or so of each year the area carried stock to about its existing capacity. In the summer of 1915 the actual number of good forage plants per unit area, according to experimental count, was 33 per cent greater on the fenced area than on the outside range. Further, the height growth of the vegetation in the pasture exceeded the growth of that outside by from 2 to 6 inches. When the area was fenced in 1913 it was in poorer condition than the outside range is at present, for the latter has recuperated as the result of two exceptionally good years for forage growth in New Mexico. The improvement in the pasture is largely the result of protection during the summer growing season, and shows what can be accomplished even where growing conditions are less favorable than on the majority of pasture lands.

The principles of deferred grazing are being applied on National Forest ranges as rapidly as possible, and the results in practice bear out those secured experimentally. Where it is not possible to defer grazing until the vegetation matures seed, it is planned to give each part of the range in turn its chance for the maximum undisturbed growth consistent with use. It is firmly believed that the maximum continuous carrying capacity of the range can not be maintained without the application of the principle of deferred grazing.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING AND MANAGING NATIVE PASTURES.

The principles just discussed may be summarized into the following points for application in the management and improvement of native pasture lands in the range States, especially lands under fence:

1.    Avoid grazing any of the pasture while the ground is wet in spring and the principal forage plants are just beginning growth.
2.    Limit the number of stock to what it is believed the whole area will support, at least in good condition for feeders.
3.    Apply the principles of deferred grazing as nearly as possible.
4.    Control and distribute the stock by fences, well-distributed watering places, and salt troughs, so as to minimize handling, natural travel, or congregating in large herds. In other words, work for open, quiet grazing, uniformly distributed over the entire area.
5.    Watch the vegetation on the area as a whole to find out whether the best forage plants are increasing or decreasing, and increase or decrease the number of stock as may be necessary to bring the pasture, or each compartment of it, to its maximum forage production.

With the limited information available, it is difficult to set a time limit for the protection of the pasture lands before grazing begins in the spring. In the arid and semihumid sections stock should probably be kept off for approximately 2 weeks after growth of the main forage plants begins.  Where moisture is abundant throughout a long growing season, this feature is not so important. If the pasture land is an important part of the farm, it will in most cases pay in the end to feed the stock the extra 2 weeks in the spring, in order to give the vegetation a chance to get a good start.  This period of protection is merely tentative, and may be materially changed as a result of further experiment and observation. The essential point is that some measure of protection at the beginning of the growing season is essential in intensive pasture management.

With grazing restricted at the beginning of the season, it is believed that when the stock is allowed to run over the whole of the pasture, limiting the number to what the area will carry and turn off in good feeder condition, is sufficient protection against overstocking to begin with.

[The suggestion above contains elements of regenerative grazing (sometimes called holistic grazing), which is an even-better way to manage pastures. -ASC]

By following this plan the various portions of the range will be given not only equal chance to reseed but equal protection against grazing during the fore part of the growing season. Should one part of a pasture be in greater need of building up than another, it may be advisable to vary the plan in a way to secure a maximum crop over the whole area as soon as practicable. It is possible, too, that the character of the vegetation, the soil, and moisture conditions may be slightly different on different parts of the area, so that one part will be more in need of protection than another. A knowledge of the individual case is necessary in order to decide what variation should be made, but if the principles involved are clear, this should not be a difficult matter.

The advantages of readily available water and salt and of quiet handling, with equal chance for the individual animals in feed lots, are well known to stockmen. The same advantages apply to the animals in the pasture, and the object should be to obtain them as far as practicable.

The same observation should be given the pasture lands to determine both change in amount of vegetation and in species as the farmer gives his alfalfa land to determine the density of the stand and the amount of weeds present. To facilitate observations of this character, a plot about 2 rods [approx. 10 meters -ASC] square should be fenced in each typical part of the pasture.  Stock should be kept off these check plots at all times, so that the vegetation will have the best opportunity for growth. By careful comparison of the forage within these protected areas and on the adjoining pasture, it will be possible at any time to tell whether the pasture is or is not approximately at a maximum, both as to density of vegetation and species. For accurate comparison, the number of plants, size of plants, and general vigor for each species per unit area should be determined; but generally careful observation without counts should show whether or not the best practical results in carrying capacity are being secured.  The loss of pasturage on the inclosed plots and the cost of the fences and their maintenance will amount to but little charged against the pasture as a whole.

The acreage of native pasture lands where it will pay to seed cultivated forage plants are so limited by soil and moisture conditions that definite suggestions as to where such seeding will pay are not given here. A better plan will be for the individual to ask advice of the United States Department of Agriculture or the State agricultural experiment station for his own specific case:

It has been pointed out that while the damage due to erosion is generally recognized, the character and extent of this damage are not always fully appreciated. The rills, gullies, and larger washes are plain enough, but the removal of a sheet of good soil from the surface of large areas by wind, water, and other factors is apparent only after careful observation. Yet it is important. The first step in checking damage of this character is to restore the native vegetation of the pasture. The suggestions already made relative to grazing management should accomplish this, if it can be accomplished. When the vegetation on the area as a whole has been restored, engineering work to fill up washes and gullies may be advisable. Engineering methods without restoration and protection of the vegetative cover, however, will be expensive and not productive of the best results.