Richard Teague

The Waggoner Ranch Research Project
Wilbarger County, Texas — Spring 1998

The Waggoner Ranch
The 500,000 acre Waggoner Ranch spans 6 counties south of the Red River. It receives an average annual rainfall of 26 inches and has a good mix of warm and cool-season midgrasses. The ranch is lightly stocked and range condition is fair. The large size of the operation gives them an economy of scale, and when judged by the Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA), they come out as one of the least-cost cow-calf operations in the nation.
The perception is that mesquite brush is the biggest problem on the ranch. On much of the ranch, cattle cannot be gathered without using a helicopter. However, mesquite improves wildlife habitat at low or moderate densities and provides the right conditions for some cool season grasses, reducing winter feeding costs. The Waggoner ranch has treated thousands of acres since the 1950s, but the brush has grown back as multi-stemmed thickets everywhere except where the brush was removed by root-plowing and follow-up grubbing of individual plants. Most of the treatments to reduce mesquite have been terminated due to high costs.

Goal
The objectives are to develop a profitable management strategy to reduce mesquite using fire, decrease chemical and mechanical inputs for mesquite control, improve grass composition and productivity, enhance wildlife habitat, and cope with drought.

The Research Project
To be of greater value to ranchers, the experiment is being conducted under commercial ranch conditions at the ranch scale. The study includes 4 treatments with 2 replications per treatment covering an area of about 34,000 acres. Three different rotational grazing systems are being compared with continuous grazing. These 3 different systems represent different levels of management intensity and are being compared to provide the points for and against each, since different ranchers are likely to be comfortable with different intensities of management. The Waggoner ranch does not believe in HRM principles. The treatments include:
1) Continuously grazed pastures at a moderate stocking rate (control with no burn).
2) A 4-pasture, 3 herd (Merrill) system.
3) A 4-pasture, 1 herd system.
4) An 8-pasture, 1 herd system.
Fire is used in years when there is sufficient fuel to carry the fire and produce the desired effect on mesquite. The i herd rotations receive about 45 days rest during rapid growth and 90 days at other times. One fourth of each system is rested to provide sufficient fuel for burning in February and March. The whole area is grazed during the year, but at least 1500 lb/ac of fuel is left in the areas to be burned that year. Prescribed burning is conducted in late winter to minimize negative effects on the soil and vegetation, increase the safety factor and achieve the desired effect on mesquite. In terms of frequency, the goal is to burn every 4 - 6 years.

If a very intense fire is applied using high fuel levels, high air temperature and low humidity under moderately windy conditions, the entire above-ground portion of the tree is killed. This is followed by regrowth of virtually all plants, which with no follow-up burn eventually creates a regrowth thicket. An alternative is to burn using less fuel and when weather conditions will result in a less intense fire. Such low intensity fires result in mesquite trees that (1) have less foliage and potentially compete less with grasses for water, (2) maintain apical dominance and do not resprout, and (3) improve visibility for livestock management because the lower branches are removed and there is no regrowth. Both high and low intensity fires are being applied in each treatment to evaluate the relative merits of each.

Questions To Be Answered
The questions we are asking in this project include which treatment(s) provide;
1. Enough fuel for fire to reduce mesquite (either by topkilling or creating a savanna effect)?
2. The highest gross profit per acre while maintaining the natural resources on which production depends?
3. The best management for wildlife habitat applying controlled burning using rotational grazing?
4. The best grass composition, density and cover?
5. The minimum economic and environmental impact due to drought?
6. The most stable cash flow and minimum capital expenditures?

Measurements
In addition to environmental and animal performance measures, a full economic analysis of each treatment will be conducted using Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA). Cow-calf performance is assessed in terms of beef produced and profit per acre. One of the most important results will come from the unburned controls. In this treatment, the cost of not controlling mesquite or not implementing other treatments will be taken into account when calculating profit. In this way the cost of not maintaining the natural resources on which production depends will be taken into account to calculate true profit.

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