Register now for our upcoming September workshops!

Working Rangelands Wednesdays - Remote Sensing and Drought Forecast with Dr. Leslie Roche - September 7 - 6:00pm: The last in our series of Drought Solutions Webinars, this session will focus on efforts to develop forage production forecasting for annual rangelands, and will provide a look ahead at conditions this fall and winter. Register with this link! View previous sessions on our Working Rangelands Wednesdays YouTube Channel!

Crop Insurance / Pasture Range and Forage Insurance - September 13 - 6:30pm: We've invited a local crop insurance agent to walk us through the costs and coverage benefits of Specialty Crop and PRF Insurance. This workshop is FREE! Register here! This workshop will be held at the UCCE office in Auburn.

Beginning Farming Academy - September 30 - October 1: This 2-day intensive workshop provides an introduction to starting a commercial farming or ranching! We'll cover the basics of market-driven farming and ranching, provide you with economic analysis tools, and wrap up with an action plan for jump-starting your enterprise! The cost for the academy is $80 (to cover meals). Apply online.

 

Broomsedge Bluestem (Andropogon virginicus L.) is an increasingly problematic weed in irrigated pastures in the Sierra foothills. We've grazed several pastures with fairly significant infestations - and we're seeing it spread. Based on my observations (and a quick review of published research), I suspect we're seeing it pop up where our irrigation isn't perfectly efficient - it seems to get a toe-hold on parts of the pasture where the soil dries out more than is optimal between irrigations (because of shallow soils or not enough water). It also seems to like areas with low fertility.

Our older ewes will graze it (some) early in the growing season, but by the time we get back to these pastures in the fall, the plants are too coarse to be palatable. As with most forage plants, palatability and nutrition seem to be related - as the plants become coarse, they also drop in nutritional value. And since the sheep don't graze it late in the year, it seems to be able to out-compete some of the more desirable species (which the sheep will eat).

Over the last decade, we've tried several different approaches. Early on, thinking that fertility was a key factor, we tried fertilizing with triple phosphate. We saw no difference between the areas we fertilized and those we didn't. One of our landlords tried mowing the broomsedge mid-season - which didn't seem to set it back at all, and which also didn't increase its palatability. In 2020 and 2021, I tried spot treating individual plants with glyphosate. These plants were still vegetative (that is, they hadn't flowered or produced seed yet), but in most cases, as the plant died from the herbicide, it seemed to go into hyperdrive and produce seeds. After the 2020 experiment, we didn't notice much difference from our spot spraying - we're still seeing broomsedge in our pastures.

In very early April, I decided to try another type of spot treatment - fire! Using a propane torch, I tried burning individual plants, as well as groups of plants where fire would carry. Broomsedge seems to be more of a warm-season perennial here, so it really hadn't started growing yet.

Obviously, this spring has been atypical, weather-wise (although over the last decade, I'd be hard-pressed to say what "typical" weather is). After I burned the broomsedge, we received more than four inches of rain (more than we measured for January through March 2022). Additionally, we started irrigating in mid-April. Not surprisingly, the burned broomsedge started to grow - sending up new tillers within a week or two of my burning.

Fast-forward to the last two weeks. We finally got the sheep onto the parts of the pasture I'd burned. And they absolutely LOVED the fresh growth on the broomsedge - they selectively grazed the plants that I'd treated (and ignored the decadent plants that I didn't burn). The next step will be to see if these plants stay palatable following our typical rest period (which is usually 35-40 days during this time of year).

By some definitions, a weed is simply a plant that is growing where we don't want it to grow. A weed, in a pasture setting, is a plant that takes up water, nutrients, and sunlight, at the expense of plants that may have greater nutritional value or more palatability. In that sense, broomsedge is definitely a weed - it's growing where I might otherwise be able to grow orchardgrass or clover. But what if I can figure out a cost-effective way to keep it palatable longer into the grazing season? What if I can get the sheep to eat it? Maybe a "weed" is in the eye of the beholder! Stay tuned - I'll provide an update on my observations as we make a second pass through this pasture!

In the meantime, here's a link to some USDA information on broomsedge.

Register now for the Sierra Foothills Cattle & Sheep Grazing School!

If you look back far enough in the histories of most foothill cattle operations, you'll find... SHEEP! Believe it or not, many long-time cattle operations also had sheep at one time. And today, there's increased interest in using multi-species grazing as a risk management and diversification tool!

If you're interested in learning more about managing both sheep and cattle on rangeland or pasture, sign up for the Sierra Foothills Cattle & Sheep Grazing School, July 14-15, 2022, in Auburn, California! This two-day school will include information - and hands-on experience - in grazing planning, estimating carrying capacity, fencing systems, stockmanship and husbandry practices, cattle and sheep nutrition, and economics! Our instructors include Dan Macon (UCCE Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor), Joe Fischer (Bruin Ranch), and Ryan Mahoney (R. Emigh Livestock). Every student will have an opportunity to graze both sheep and cattle!

Tuition for the 2-day program is $200, which includes meals and course materials. Producer scholarships are available through Sierra Harvest.

For more information, contact me at dmacon@ucanr.edu or (530) 889-7385. Let's get out there and graze!

Last month, between dog food and vaccines, we spent just over $103 on our three livestock guardian dogs (LGDs). For the first part of April, our two older dogs (Bodie and Elko) were with our ewe-lamb pairs on annual rangeland west of Auburn. Our younger dog (Dillon) was protecting our rams. After we sheared the sheep over the third weekend of April, Dillon and Bodie went with the pairs to irrigated pasture; Elko stated with a handful of late lambing ewes at our home place. During that time frame, we lost a lamb to disease, another to a fencing mishap, and a third due to an assumed case of thievery (by Dillon - see "The Right Dog for the Job"). We didn't, however, lose any sheep to predators - in fact, we haven't lost any sheep where they were protected by dogs for at least half a decade. But how do we know whether our dogs are a cost-effective livestock protection tool?

Along with my colleague Carolyn Whitesell (UCCE Human-Wildlife Interactions Advisor in the Bay Area), I just published a new peer-reviewed analysis of the economics of LGDs in the Western Economics Forum (you can download the full paper here). If you're not into reading journal articles (and who is, really!?), here are our key findings:

Benefits of Using LGDs

• LGDs likely reduce the indirect, stress-induced losses associated with depredation (including reduced weight gains, lower conception rates, and increased labor).
• Ranch-raised ewes may have greater value than purchased ewes given their local adaptation to management and forage conditions.
• Sheep guarded by LGDs travel greater distances to forage in rangeland conditions, increasing grazing efficiency.

Cost Factors

• Labor costs and dog:livestock ratios vary greatly in real-world settings. Maximizing labor efficiency, and determining the proper number of dogs by operation and season can reduce costs.
• Successful bonding techniques are a key driver in LGD acquisition and development costs (and subsequent depreciation expenses).

Over the last several years, we've used trail cameras to get a better idea of the types of predators near our sheep, especially during lambing season. As you might expect, we've "trapped" lots of coyotes in our cameras, along with bobcats and gray foxes. We've also picked up mountain lions in our cameras - within a quarter mile of where our ewes are lambing. While I can't say with certainty how many lambs or ewes the dogs have "saved," I can say that I sleep easier at night knowing the dogs are on the job. Peace of mind and a good night's sleep are difficult to value economically - as Carolyn and I write, "While most commercial producers factor an acceptable level of predator loss into their economic decision making process, the value of peace of mind (or the lack of human stress) is difficult to quantify."