Over 160 high school students enrolled in FFA and 4-H programs across four counties spent the day at UC SFREC on October 7th, exploring key topics related to beef cattle and rangeland management.

Assembly member James Gallagher, who has strong ties to local agriculture in the Sacramento Valley, kicked off the day with a forward looking key-note address that highlighted the important role the current generation of students will play in addressing California's agricultural and natural resource needs over the coming decades.  

Following this address the students rotated through five hands-on learning demonstrations developed by UC researchers that explored major topics in beef cattle and rangeland management.   Dr. Bret McNabb, DVM from the UC Davis Large Animal Clinic, discussed evaluation of health issues in beef cattle with Dr. Myra Blanchard from the UC Davis College of Veterinary Medicine following up by highlighting ongoing vaccine research for Epizootic Bovine Abortion.  Dr. Jim Oltjen from UC Davis Department of Animal Science discussed the use of technology in managing cattle and pasture while UC SFREC staff member Dan Macon led students through a hands-on demonstration exploring the principle of animal behavior as it relates to low stress livestock handling.   In the 5^th module, Roger Ingram, UCCE advisor in Placer/Nevada/Yuba & Sutter counties demonstrated principles related to dryland and irrigated pasture management.  

Sponsors including Robinson Ranch, Farm Credit West and Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau and the time donated by FFA leaders and UC staff were instrumental in making the second year of this annual event a major success and a great opportunity for students to interact with ongoing research led by UC.   

 

Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center (SFREC) and the Sutter Yuba UCCE Master Gardeners hosted the bi-annual Home Orchard Workshop at the SFREC Educational Outreach Fruit/Nut Orchard on Saturday, August 22, 2015. Janine Hasey (UCCE Tree Crop Farm Advisor, County Director, & Master Gardener Advisor), Heidi Sanders (UCCE Master Gardener Program Representative) and Nikolai Schweitzer (UCANR Staff Research Associate) conducted the workshop, discussing the past, present and future objectives concerning the orchard. Workshop topics included:

• planting different bareroot/potted fruit/nut tree varieties on a successive ripening curve
• important pre-planting timelines, methods and procedures
• demonstrating environmental success and/or stress on each fruit/nut variety
• illustrating summer pruning on apricot trees
• showing different irrigation methods, volume, rates  
• options for dormant pesticide applications

Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center and Sutter Yuba UCCE Master Gardener Program will host an early spring bareroot fruit/nut planting in 2016. If you are interested in attending, please contact Master Gardener Program Representative Heidi Sanders at 530-822-7515.

Summer “drought” is a fact of life in the Sierra Foothills. Our Mediterranean climate is characterized by cool and (hopefully) wet winters and hot, dry summers.  While the higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada often receive summer moisture from thunderstorms, summers are typically dry in our foothill rangelands – we usually don't receive any measurable rainfall from late May or early June until October or even November. However, this year's summer drought is anything but normal. At the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center (SFREC) – and throughout the Sierra Foothills, we are starting to notice signs of stress after four consecutive dry years.

One of the most obvious signs of systemic stress, at least to me, are the water levels in our foothill reservoirs. After the first three years of this drought, we went into last winter with depressingly low water levels in most of our man made lakes. These reservoirs are critical for storing water for irrigation, human consumption, and downstream wildlife habitat. In normal years, they allow us to capture snow runoff and save it for use during the dry summer months. The winter of 2014-2015, however, brought virtually no snow to the Sierra Nevada – and consequently no spring runoff. I thought our reservoirs were low last summer; this summer is even worse. Last weekend, I drove across the Parrotts Ferry bridge over New Melones Reservoir (on the Stanislaus River between Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties). I was shocked to see that the water level had dropped below the old Parrotts Ferry bridge – I'd ridden across it as a kid, but didn't think I'd ever see it again once the New Melones Dam was built.  Perhaps even more shocking – I could see the Stanislaus River flowing under the bridge.

Another obvious sign of drought stress can be found in wildfire behavior. As I write this, many regions of Northern California have experienced another round of dry lightning.  Wildland firefighters report that this year's fires are exhibiting behavior that they've never experienced – fueled by incredibly dry vegetation and erratic winds. And the worst part of our fire season is still to come; while temperatures begin to moderate, September and October are generally dry and windy in the Sierra Foothills.

Closer to home, the oak trees in Auburn and at the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center are starting to turn color as if autumn were already here. When deciduous trees experience extremely dry conditions, they'll often shed their leaves early as a survival mechanism. The blue oaks and black oaks at SFREC are dropping leaves earlier this year than most of us can remember.  Some of the trees are in full color; they make the hillsides seem like we're already in October. In addition to turning color and dropping leaves, we've seen more trees dropping entire branches (and some are even falling down entirely).

Finally, we're also seeing our seeps and springs dry up at SFREC. The flow in some springs has stopped entirely, while others have slowed to a trickle. One spring in particular, which has been developed to feed a series of water troughs at the higher elevations of the Center, has never stopped flowing in the past – even in the 1976-77 drought. In the fourth year of this current drought, we seem to be in uncharted territory.

According to the National Weather Service, one of the strongest El Niños ever measured seems to be shaping up in the Pacific Ocean. Many in the media are reporting this phenomenon as if it's a sure bet – our drought is all but over!  Unfortunately, the impacts of El Niño aren't so certain – Northern California is just about as likely to experience dry conditions as wet weather in an El Niño year.  I'll believe we're having a wet winter when I'm still wearing my mud boots next April!  In the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for additional signs of stress.

This year, we have four distinct groups of cattle at SFREC.  Each group is part of one or more research projects:

• We have cow-calf pairs that belong to the UC Davis Animal Science Department.  These are fall-calving cows.  In normal years, the calves are weaned in late May, and the cows are grazed on dry forage during the summer and fall.  Currently, this herd is split into 3 groups – older cows with calves, second-calf heifers with calves, and open cows with calves.
• We have bred heifers also belonging to the UC Davis Animal Science Department.  These heifers are typically grazed on irrigated pastures during the summer and through fall calving.
• We have outside heifers that are part of a foothill abortion vaccine trial.  These heifers will be preg-checked in mid-April.  Normally, the open heifers would be kept at SFREC until late May.
• We have steers that are part of a long term adaptive management and targeted grazing research project.  Like the heifers, these steers would be kept at SFREC until late May in a normal year.

But this year is anything but normal!  After a very promising fall (with normal germination of our annual grasses and near-normal forage growth through the end of December), we are now coping with a fourth year of drought.  Since January 1, we've measured just 2.43 inches of precipitation (average for January-March is 11.69 inches).  With the lack of rainfall, forage growth has slowed (total production through April 1 was 1400 pounds per acre, which is about 100 pounds less than normal for this time of year).  Total production doesn't tell the whole story, however; the pastures that we've grazed since the first of the year haven't recovered as expected (which means we haven't returned to these pastures as expected).  My colleagues who have worked at SFREC for a number of years tell me that the vegetation is at least 30 days ahead of schedule – in other words, our annual rangeland looks more like mid-May than early April.  All of this means that this week's rain will help in some pastures, but it's “too little, too late” in others.  Our peak standing crop (the total amount of forage grown during this growing season) will likely be far below our long term average of 3000 pounds per acre.

Based on this year's reality, we started fine-tuning our drought plan in early March.  One of the key steps in our drought planning is to establish a critical date – a date by which we'll make some stocking decisions if we don't receive rainfall.  In early March, we decided that if we hadn't received at least an inch of precipitation by April 1, we'd need to start taking action.  Here are the steps we're looking at taking in the next 30 days (by May 1):

• Ship the open foothill abortion heifers 7-10 days following preg-check.  This will allow us to take as many as 150 heifers off the pastures at SFREC.
• Ship some of the steers (at least those in pastures where feed is not re-growing) by early May.  If we do happen to get some late-spring moisture, this would allow some regrowth for next fall.  This week's rain may be enough to get us through to the end of May.
• Ship open cows and calves.  There are only 13 pairs that fall into this category, but every little bit helps!
• Wean early.  Some of the Animal Science calves already weigh more than 500 pounds.  Another large group is between 450 and 500 pounds.  Weaning the calves now and shipping them off SFREC, will reduce the nutritional demand on the cows, and will reduce the forage demand (both from cows and from big calves) on our rangeland.

Because most of our forage base at SFREC (like much of California) is annual rangeland, we have to manage our spring grazing to ensure that we have enough dry forage through the summer and fall months.  We also want to make sure that we leave enough residual dry matter to protect our soils and provide a microclimate for germination when it does rain again next fall.  On commercial ranches, decisions like those I've outlined take on profound economic consequences – the impacts of shipping lighter calves, selling replacement heifers, and culling the cow herd more deeply than normal can be felt for years to come.  At SFREC, these decisions can impact long term research into important topics.  Ultimately, however, the long-term health of our rangelands is our greatest responsibility.

For more information on long-term weather and forage production trends in the Sierra Foothills click here.  If you are interested in getting more information managing through low rainfall/forage years SFREC has a number of videos and publications that explore this topic.

To get more information about how producers can benefit from forage production data, click here.