Slide 1
Range is one of the world’s major ecosystems with grasslands covering 40% of the land’s land surface.
Range is the major source of nutrition for the world’s human population it is important that it will be able to adapt to change be it grasshoppers, drought, disease, fire, global warming, global cooling
Slide 2
To keep natural systems adaptive you must have three things;
1)Variety or biodiversity, so if one species or age group crashes another species or age group can take it’s place.
2)There must be beginnings, when range is disturbed it goes back towards it’s beginnings, it’s starts again with healthy roots, seeds, and weeds.
3)Boom-Bust to keep the system information rich.
Slide 3
All natural systems are Boom-Bust range, equilibrium is a myth. When you are at equilibrium with your environment you are at room temperature and you are dead. If you still believe in equilibrium tell me you are never going to die.
Boom-Bust can be illustrated in another way with two user groups. In the first user group you have man and his cattle. The second user group you have black grass bugs, june bug larvae, rodents, wildlife, fire, hail, disease, etc when you severely graze the range and remove your cattle, range is at it’s peak rest because you destroyed the second user group. As you go into the rest, the second user group starts increasing till at a 2 year time period it’s consuming 100% of the biomass. If you don’t severely graze the range at this time the second user group will overgraze the range just as man and his cattle would under continuous use. In other words, if you don’t use it something else will, and you probably won’t like it, such as fire burning down your town.
In narrow spectrum mode lock the system is information poor and will not adapt to change. In range, change would be invasion of noxious weeds, insects, fire, hail, drought, etc. In broad spectrum mode lock, such as severe grazing and letting the range recover, the system is information rich and adapts readily to change. In the drought of 1934 and 1936 in Miles City, Montana, 92% of the grass died. So it was important to have a lot of seed, a lot of biodiversity, and healthy roots on the surviving grass so the system would recover. An analogy of broad spectrum mode lock would be in raising children, you bring the child up as far as you can., when he becomes anti-social you severely discipline him and then bring him back up again, This way the child becomes information rich, he knows how to recover, he knows better times are always ahead, and he won’t shoot a bunch of his little friends because his girlfriend broke up with him, because his father’s corporal punishment was a lot worse than that.
Information in range would translate in biodiversity, healthy roots, and a lot of seed.
Slide 4
Since modern thought figures that nurture will do everything people forget the functions of pain. People will not think I’m kinky; I used the Biblical functions of pain and disturbancewhich are listed.
Slide 5
The functions of boom or rest are:
That the Canopy reduces temperature and raises humidity at ground level. Both are adverse to pests such as grasshoppers, plus they reduce evaporation giving more efficient use of natural rainfall.
Litter, when you have 10% ground cover and have 2 inches of rain you get 70% run off. When you have 70% ground cover and 2 inches of rain you get 10 % run off. It is a good reason to have litter, without it you make your own drought.
•With rest you have Increase in rodents and wildlife population, those being tillers of the soil
•With increased seedheads you have increased seed production
•If a seedling is bit twice during the fist year of production it is lost for future production. Rest guarantees seedling survival.
•In the semi-arid climate of Eastern Montana, with four out of 10 years being drought, Stockpiled feed from rest guarantees forage for livestock
Relic areas such as road ditches that have never been mowed, never been hayed are used to monitor rest. When the pasture is at the same biomass as the road ditch it is time to use. Different sites have different rest requirements.
Slide 6
Bust is common in nature, such as fire, hail, drought, and continental glaciers. Bust controls insects, destroys senesced plants leaving space for new seedlings, cattle hoof prints are excellent seed beds for new seedlings. Severe grazing is the only even grazing since cattle are selective grazers. Dr. Heitschmidt puts it this way: When you graze lightly the cows only eat the plants they like, leaving the plants they don’t like with the competitive advantage since the plants they don’t like never get eaten. When you graze severely they eat the plants they like plus the plants they don’t like. Giving the plants they like the competitive advantage since they are used to getting eaten. But you can not make a cow eat what she doesn’t like and expect her to perform. That is why we use low production cow when we severely graze. Severe grazing will stop fire. To monitor grazing you pick the species the cows like the least, which would indicate there is not a lot left in the pasture. I use silver sagebrush and snowberry as the key species for use.
Slide 7
In the area between chaos and order there exists a phase transition where much creativity and self-orgainzation exists. An example of creativity are when Hitler and the free world came together there was much creativity such as; jets, radar, atomic energy, sonar, etc. Examples of self-organization are: generically,when a population of flies is hit by a fog of pesticide, most of the individuals die off but some individuals may be resistant to that insecticide and go on to produce a population of flies that are insecticide resistant;
When certain species can not survive on a certain range site, they will die off. Leaving room for the species that can survive on that range site. So a person can identify the range site by the species present;
Economically speaking, when fuel prices get high people cannot afford to patronize the urban businesses therefore, they must patronize their local business accelerating local economic development.
Slide 8
This WibauxCounty ranch will be an example of Boom-Bust Management for the sake of adaptability.
Slide 9
On the east side of the ridge that runs through the middle of the ranch are rolling hills with 14 -16 inches annual precipitation.
Slide 10
On the west side of the ridge are badlands with 12 -14 inches of annual precipitation.
Slide 11
The next few slides demonstrate the difference between pastures with one year rest and two year rest.
Slide 15
This slide shows how we monitor rest.
Slide 16
This slide was taken during a drought, in which area farmers said they lost 70% of their carrying capacity. The pasture under boom bust management was running at 100% of it’s annual carrying capacity.
Slide 17
The following slides show how we use the key plant species.
Slide 20
This slide was taken in YellowstoneNational Park, park officials say the area was too dry for the establishment of willows and aspen. This exclosue shows that the rainfall was sufficient. The bison and elk killed the old stands and prevented the establishment of new stands.
Slide 21
In rested pasture the forage quality is poor.
Slide 22
Diet Modification
•Deer- When bad weather forces deer into feed lots, it causes starvation, but let a deer gradually adapt to 75% of his diet to alphalfa he will thrive
•Nitrates- When nitrates are too high in cows they will die but let them adapt, they can eat a higher quality.
•Eat it or die- Dr. Fred Provenza has done much work on foraging behavior and diet modification and has discovered many tools. My approach is eat it or die, same as a mean old mom: Clean up your plate before you get anything else
•When diet is inadequate cattle will eat novel food.
•Time required- The time required to change a cow’s diet seems to be three years.
•Preferred food change- Cattle change their selectivity by mixing the lower palatability with the higher palatability foods when first enter a new pasture.
•Tools to change diet selection are using reinforcements and punishments.
Slide 23
When feeding low quality feeds we lower a cows performance, thus lowering her minimum daily nutritional requirements and enabling her to utilize the lower quality forage produced by the long rest
Slide 24
A colony of Western Snowberry
Slide 25
June bug larvae cuts the root of the grass in a snowberry colony yielding snowberry and bare ground.
Slide 26
The function of snowberry is to open the canopy for the invasion of trees.
Slide 27
The ash coulees on this ranch were rated the highest functional condition of any ash coulees in two separate studies.
Slide 28
The problem with snowberry patches is when frost kills the snowberry, a light rain would cause the grass to green, but the snowberry is done for the season. With no competition from the snowberry, noxious weed seeds will sprout and thrive in the patch. Next few slides are examples of this.
Slide 31
The next few slides show plant progression.
Slide 33
This slide shows a competitive environment which resists noxious weeds.
Slide 34
Some exotic plants are beneficial such as sweet clover which provides forage when grasses are non competitive and producing nitrogen for the next year’s growth.
Slide 35
This slide shows how you can tell what has been done to the pasture, how the pasture was grazed, by the species that are present in the pasture.
Slide 36
On the continual grazing there is a lack of shrubs
Slide 37
But an abundance of grass sprouts and seedlings. This pasture would benefit from rest.
Slide 38
This side of the road shows thick brush and Canadian Thistle and would benefit from severe grazing.
Slide 39
The next few slides show the differences in the riparian area between seasonal grazing and Boom-Bust Management.
Slide 46
This pasture shows grasshopper damage on the year it was rested. Previously, this pasture was the only one on the ranch that was grazed every year and was the only pasture with grasshopper damage every year. Under Boom-Bust grazing, the grasshoppers did not compete with the cattle.
Slide 47
After a year’s rest, this is how the forage recovered. Jerry Onsager explains how Boom-Bust grazing controls grasshoppers this way: There are over 300 species of grasshoppers in Montana, 12 are destructive. To get a grasshopper epidemic you must have 5 species doubling their numbers for 3 years. Under Boom-Bust Management, only two species can do this, leaving the pasture immune to grasshopper epidemic.
Slide 48
The big picture is animal waste is plant food, and plant waste is animal food. This is a feed ground that has been fed on for 60 years. Because of increased nutrients and water it recovers quickly. It is grazed every dormant season and hayed every summer. Failure to use the nutrients will leave the ground bare and unusable.
Slide 49
This cow path illustrates how cattle reseed the range. They were eating in an alfalfa field with mature seed. The seed pasted through their GI track and dropped onto the path during the rest period the seed sprouted and survived.