Calag Archive

The wildlife research program at the Hopland Field Station has been a cooperative effort involving primarily researchers from the Davis and Berkeley campuses and, occasionally, researchers from other state and federal agencies, California state universities, Oregon State University, and certain private companies. The station has also served as a base of operations for other research projects in nearby counties.

Proper fertilization is important in realizing the great potential from the annual grasslands of California. One of the first studies indicated that forage production on improved dry-land pasture fertilized with nitrogen and phosphorus increased ten-fold over untreated pastures during the winter months of feed shortage. In another study it was found that fertilized pastures yielded about 3 1/2 times as much meat and wool as unfertilized pastures over the growing seas on.

The need for water in all phases of California's economic development has put strong emphasis on research toward maximum use of this resource. Wildland watersheds supply approximately 95 percent of the state's water. Consequently, an understanding of water-shed management is necessary to obtain the highest water yields.

An area once covered with chopanal (above) now contains demonstration plots showing the effects of different management techniques follwing burning and seeding (below).

Goals of the Hopland Field Station's sheep research program have been to increase production by increasing the number of lambs born, improving lamb survival, increasing weaning weights, economically meeting the nutritional needs of sheep, and developing more productive strains of sheep.