Question about improving rangeland for pasture

[Broke-T]

About three weeks ago my wife and I took a road trip to Burlington, CO. Left MS and headed west to Fort Worth for first night. Then headed NW thru Amarillo and then N to CO. After a cpl of days in CO we turned E to Kansas City and on to St. Louis before turning back S to MS.

Saw lots of beautiful country but wondered why the pastures were so scrubby for lack of a better word. I know a lot of this country only gets a small amouny of rain but grass doesn't need any more rain than weeds.

It would seem practicle to spray herdicides to control the undesirable weeds and brush so more grass could grow. But from what I saw it looks like the pastures are left to grow whatever.

I don't mean you need to plow up and plant improved grasses but just help the native grasses to compete.

I would like to know what people who ranch in these areas think.

Johnny

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

Sounds like they haven't heard about rest and rotation.

 

[jigs]

most of the guys in our area run snow cattle. when the snow melts, turn them into the grass and when the snow falls again in the winter pull them off. so we have a big area of buffalo grass as the dominant grass.

I waited until late may to dump cows and the cool season grass was so thick the neighbors asked me if I was not gonna use it, they would rent it!

no respect at all for the grass. but this is a dominant farming area, so the cattle thing for most is a side job for "something to keep the hired man busy"

if you headed from Colorado to KC, did you run I-70 or KS-36 ???
if you took 36 you were just 6 miles away from me!

 

[L.E. Stevens]

Then headed NW thru Amarillo

That part of the country experienced heavy fire damage awhile back and has very little rain this past year. Greens up pretty nice with some moisture.

 

[Jerry H]

i'm not shure about kansas but here in the panhandle and eastern co. we had rain late in the summer and the weeds just took off to the point that the farmers could not plow them out of the wheat feailds and had to spray them
but in our grass country we did not have much of a weed problem as we have good grass cover there and we don't abuse it so the don't have a chance to take over
i bet what you saw in texas and colorado with laots of weeds on it was in crp
that is where we have a big weed problem mostly tumble weeds that when the wind gets up takes out our fences and causes lots of problems
until later
jerry