What it’s like to undergraze
We’ve all heard about overgrazing by livestock and farming since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law in 1862. This law basically allowed most all of the United States owned land to be subdivided into 160 acre parcels and with the advent of Barbed Wire in 1867 these homesteaders could now fence. So this new homesteader could either till the soil and raise a sellable crop or he could raise livestock. It was a wonderful idea and almost overnight most of our U.S. land was broken up into homesteads. The only person who disagreed with this Act was Mother Nature who has been trying to change the way we humans managed the land.
I think at first this vast tract of virgin land would grow with the right climate and rainfall, anything from oranges to corn and cattle to sheep and hogs. But It didn’t take long before Nature began to worry as each year came and went and more new ways to harvest this wealth beneath their feet was invented. Nature watched as her soil held together by a grass sod were no match for a farmer armed with a new John Deere moldboard plow. This plow was able to take grass on top and turn it under and bring the bright black soil to daylight. So, with its protective cover buried the newly exposed soil was free to wash away, blow away, pave away and natural soil fertility was being sold off as corn, wheat, and various other edible growing crops. Now add in grazing livestock that stayed year round with virtually no rest time from grazing animals the plundering of Mother Nature’s gargantuan garden was complete.
I think the great “Dust Bowl” of the 1930’s that even dusted our nation’s capital with some midwest dust finally gave birth to the idea that these millions upon millions of acres needed better care than they were getting.
It only took from 1862 until 1930, 68 years to realize that we were withdrawing more from Nature's bank than we were putting back. On our V6 ranch under my management I was certainly part of an overgrazing program. With my working corrals at 1,500 feet elevation and the top of the ranch is 3,800 feet it was easy to say after vaccinations and branding a thousand head of stocker cattle to just drive them about a mile, open a gate. These cattle were free to climb the mountain then find a place to their liking were they would stay from November to June then sold to a feedlot for further fattening before they were harvested. The problem was that each year’s cattle didn’t want to climb the mountain right away so they stayed to long on the low grazing country before moving on to new areas of the ranch. This practice went on before me by the prior owners so all added together probably went on for 150 years. It was taken for granted that the low country was just not as good as the high grazing land. Wrong.
In the summer of 2022 I enclosed a small area in the low country and one in the high country ( see photos below ) they were taken on April 22, 2025. The low country photo is amazing as the volume of grass in the photo is, I don’t know how much more productive than the surrounding area but it’s a lot. Consequently next week with my three employees we will start building three miles of four wire barbed wire that will split the low country from the high country. I believe only a year or two of rest will rejuvenate the lower part and it will lower soil temperatures and get better infiltration of rain into the land. As I see it it’s a win-win situation for my cattle, the wildlife and all the rest of the critters that call the V6 home.
See Ya,
Jack
High Country on the V6
Grass inside enclosure shows only marginal difference between the surrounding areas
Lower Country on the V6
What a difference two years of rest makes
Juniper Fence Posts
These Juniper fence posts are still standing from on an old homestead on the ranch.