Range and Forage

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac. Grasslands are the number one use of land in Nebraska, and cover almost half the state, but transitions away from maintaining our state's grasslands are leading to many problems for farmers and ranchers. Dirac Twidwell, a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at UNL describes his research on the benefits, grasslands have on human well-being, and his work with grassland owners across the Great Plains to combat these problems.

[Dirac Twidwell, UNL Agronomy & Horticulture Professor]
We specialize in, uh, grassland conservation, uh, their management at large scales, so we do a lot in the state, working with ranchers, industry, a number of stakeholders on it.

I think for a lot of people, grasslands are often talked about it.

They're the least conserved, often most underfunded, least appreciated.

And so it's one of those, uh, that a lot of Nebraskans don't know it's our number one land use in the state.

Covers over half the state.

And it's vital to a number of our ecosystem services, both for agricultural productivity, preventing major issues associated with, like, natural disasters like wildfire.

They're surprising disease vectors, when we lose grasslands, things like woody encroachment.

So our lab really focuses on how grasslands are important to human well being, not just to a producer on a ranch, not just for, say, like, wildlife conservation, but to the entire state.

Our grasslands, because they're overwhelmingly privately owned in the state.

One of the important things that we started doing several years ago is working with teams and collaborations of rancher communities.

And so we've been able to scale up from instead of just working on individual experiment or place, collaborating at, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres across multiple communities in the state, spanning areas like southwest Nebraska, less canyons, sandhills, southeast, northeast, up in the Pine Ridge.

And that's helped us align local needs and rancher needs, too, a lot of supporting groups.

So grasslands, there's that entity that brings all these groups with their individual values together, spanning wildlife water production.

And we slide into that, kind of that classical land gram mission of where research and that technical expertise fits into how we support this privately owned resource that, historically and still today, is the majority of our state.

When we're looking at grasslands today and the opportunity going forward, I mean, we're all really specialized in what we know with our jobs, and that is where the next level and nexus is.

If we, you know, which areas today are contributing the most to our rangeland productivity, which obviously is a key cornerstone of our beef industry here in the state.

But there's also areas that are disproportionately important for bird conservation, which are the fastest group of declining species, or grassland birds.

So, then, if we knew where water is critical, and things like woody encroachment pose those risks across all three of those sectors, that's where we're able to start teasing apart different specializations of, like, what's our hydraulology team know well?

And building that over with, like, our avian conservation, with, like, people in animal science, with our beef industry and sector?

And that's what ranchers and a lot of these groups that work in grasslands are dealing with all the time.

They're not managing just one thing.

They're managing the ecosystem.

And so when we do that, and, you know, the growing wildfire issue in the state, like, that's where I want to see things be able to grow, is we're having teams of people across all units.

And we're getting a lot of interest from other universities on that, as well, because that's a common shared pool of questions that every land grant institution has here in the Great Plains.

So that's what I think is next.

Like, not only getting our land grants more collaborative on these big questions in space.

And what we're seeing on the back end is that's directly fueling those conservation partners, like the USDA and our state wildlife agencies.

It makes that science more actionable.

And that really goes back to really helping one group, and that's the ranchers that own those land.

They're not just profitable because of what they're doing on the ground.

They're managing for our water resources, our biodiversity, these other things we care about, that we often take for granted that's on their shoulders, because they're the key decision maker.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Brad Mills. Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media, and Nebraska Extension. For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
 

[Brad Mills, Host]

Nebraska Extension Almanac. Our past years and ranges are becoming increasingly threatened with the spread of eastern red cedar trees.Nebraska extension educator Bethany Johnston says, this encroachment goes beyond just a change in scenery.

[Bethany Johnson, Nebraska Extension Educator]

Cedar trees are out competing grasses, reduce forage options for grazing, and can increase the risk of wildfires.

The most important predictor of where cedar trees are going to start encroaching.

It's not necessarily your soil type or the fact that you did a good job with your grazing management or your range management, but it's how close your unmarred prairie is to a Eastern red cedar seed source.

We planted these wind breaks and the cedar trees.

There's male and female trees.

But once they're mature, kind of those big ones you like to have in your shelter belts, those female trees can put out one. 150000000 berries every year.

So if you start running the numbers.

So if you just assume every other tree is a female, you can measure, like I've done it on Google Maps.

I'll measure my shelter belts, I'll count how many rows, and then figure out how far apart they've been planted, and I can get a tree count, and then if I divide that number by 2, that gives me how many females, and then I can take that times 1000000 or one. 1500000 and figure out how many seeds are coming out of that shelter belt every year.

And we have just kind of a 3 row cedar belt that goes around our calving pasture and it's not a very big area.

It's maybe, I think, 2030 acres.

But there was one hillside out in the pasture.

I always have to cut and I would get 20 or 30 little cedar trees off there and I can remember thinking, gosh, I can't believe I'm cutting all these trees.

And then I figured how many berries were coming out of that shelter belt and it's like half a 1000000000 berries every year or seeds every year.

And so when I cut that hill now, I'm thinking, well, at least I'm not cutting like half a 1000000000, right?

But the thing is, is we just, once they've kind of hopped the fence, right?

So we fence out our shelter belts.

Once you see a cedar tree, that you haven't planted outside in your grassland, that's when you need to start doing management on it.

And the nice thing about cedar seeds or cedar berries, the professionals call them cones because they're actually a conifer, but they're not going to, you know, float through the wind, anything like that.

So birds are actually the ones that spread them.

So most of your encroachment is going to happen within that 200 yards of that seed source because the birds are going to eat the seeds and then they're going to fly away and poop out the seeds.

And so usually you can kind of draw a 200 yard circle around and then that's where maybe you start hand pruning them.

Other people, they have such big shelter belts and they just can't physically keep up by using pruners or mechanical means.

And so they're actually just doing like little tiny prescribed burns next to their shelter belts because then it cleans out those little cedars and it's just a little bit easier to to manage.

And probably, you know, 20 years ago.

We used to tell people, well, if you cut a cedar tree once, you don't have to go back and do maintenance.

And that's partially true because if you cut a cedar tree below their bottom branch, they're not going to resprout.

So if you think of things like sumac or wild plump, like we can cut those, and it almost makes them more aggressive and they send out rhizomes and they come back, right?

But cedar trees, you can cut them off at the base and they're not going to resprout.

But the problem is that seed source.

So unless you're willing to take out that entire seed source.

And if you do that, then you're going to have to put up some kind of, you know, metal wind break or something to break the wind for you.

But unless you remove the seeds, it's going to be maintenance, right?

We're going to do cedar control every year, whether that's cutting or using chemicals or using fire or maybe a combination of all of those.

[Brad Mills, Host]

Today's program was a portion of an interview taken from a recent beef watch podcast offered by Nebraska extension. To hear the entire interview, go to beef.unl.edu or download from Apple Podcasts. For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Brad Mills. Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension. For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.

BenHayQuality226 Transcript:

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac. On our previous program, extension educator Ben Beckman talked about how storage conditions play a huge part on the quality and shelf life of hay. He says exposure to weather, heat, and water can quickly spoil Hay's nutritional quality. On today's program, he begins by talking about how certain factors affect the aging and protein content of stored hay.

[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
So if you weigh a bail at the same moisture, you know, that's always the critical point here and difficult to do, but if you weigh a bail, the same moisture content that you had initially when you harvested it.

And then if you left it outside for a season or a year and had it at the exact same moisture content and waited again, it's going to weigh less because that decomposition process released some of that energy as gas.

And so it's or leached it out through moisture or things like that.

And so we actually have less bail, we have lower energy content that is pretty typical across the board.

Now, when we look at things like crude protein content, things get a little bit more interesting, we should say.

Crude protein doesn't behave in exactly the same way.

Usually the biggest loss that we see in that is through leeching or through physical loss.

So like if we've gotten alfalfa bale, you know, leaf shatter, the leaves hold a lot of the protein content, and alfalfa, and so if we're moving those bales around, you know, we get that dust of of the leafs that have been pretty much pulverized, and that leads to a loss of protein content.

So we can lose some in that way.

But however, crude protein, as we measure it is a percent of the total amount of that bail.

And we just said that as a bale decomposes or weathers, it actually shrinks and we get, you know, less dry matter.

And so we can actually run into circumstances where we have less protein loss than we lose dry matter from the bail, and we can actually sometimes increase crude protein content, just because the total percentage of protein in that, and it's kind of counterintuitive, but the total percentage of protein hasn't really dropped that much compared to how much we've lost in dry matter and energy and things like that.

So crude protein can be a little bit different and interesting.

The one really big caveat to that is sometimes we can have heating.

So when that bail gets warm either through microbial activity or fungi or things like that, as it's decomposing, those proteins can be denatured.

And so we can run into a point where we basically get a browning reaction and the protein no longer is going to be able to be useful to the animal, but it's still there.

It's just in a different shape and form.

And so our typical protein test will pick it up and still count it as protein, but we have to do a heat damage protein test, basically, to show, yeah, they're here, but they're not usable for the animal to actually have during digestion and be useful to the animal.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
And says farmers should be aware of any problems like mold before feeding the cattle.

[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
You know, when we think about how we use these bales, again, testing them is always going to be the best way to kind of determine quality.

If we've got something that's really well weathered, We do have a potential for having things like mold. You know, there's bacteria, a lot of fungi that are gonna be in the outer layer of those bales, just from the decomposition part.

And so need to keep an eye out.

You know, a lot of times we don't have things like mycotoxins or stuff show up, but if we do get some weird colors, always something to run a test for or have something that you're a little bit questionable about.

But a lot of times animals aren't going to really enjoy that hay, they might have some refusal from it, especially if we give them a chance to sort if we're feeding it by rolling that bailout or putting it into a feeder or something like that.

And so there's some trade-offs.

Yeah, they're not going to consume as much, but they're going to get the more high quality parts of it and actually utilize the better part of the veil.

So just how we feed that can be an important thing.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
To read the detailed article about this topic, go to extensions beef website at beef.unl.edu or download the entire interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills. Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.

For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
 

BenHayQuality26 Transcript:

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac. Is older, stored hay, poor quality than more recently harvested hay? Maybe, but it's not the age that is the question here, but the storage conditions, according to extension educator Ben Beckman. He says proper storage can help maintain feed quality of hay for an extended period of time.

[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Is when we start to really dive into the studies that have been done looking at hay quality and looking at impact of storage on, hey, it's not the age of the hay, it's the weathering, and basically the decomposition of the hay that's really affecting the quality.

When we're putting up hay, we are essentially trying to stop the clock on decomposition.

Whenever we're putting up a forage, you know, whether that's silage, you know, in that case, we're putting into an amaerobic state, and stopping microbes from decomposing, when we do hay, we're drying it out, getting it to a point where the moisture content is solo, that microbes are no longer going to be decomposing it like they would if we just let that grass or alfalfa or whatever we have in that bale out in the natural environment and just left it spread out.

And so how we have those microbes continued to be stopping, whether we get moisture back onto that bail and they start to decompose again, or whether we have that bail in a totally, you know, dry and isolated condition, really makes a difference when it comes to what the quality of that is versus exactly how long that bail's been there for.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Ben says there are different storage techniques that will help hay remain viable and nutritious for quite some time.

[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
We're trying to get the hay to a dry point so microbes can no longer be decomposing.

And so the best and ultimately top storage method when we're looking at ways to store haze to, you know, put it inside under under a roof and keep it from getting any moisture on it at all.

And you can see that, you know, if you know anybody that puts up really high quality alfalfa hay a lot of times, you know, they do have a storage shed and, you know, they're keeping it a fair distance so they can get airflow through that and keep those bales, you know, and humid conditions dried out still, you know, they're basically regulating the moisture around those hay bales.

The type of bale that we have makes a big difference.

Our large squares really need to be protected a lot more, say like a round bail would be because those squares don't have that outer covering and the way that they're put together, moisture penetrates into them a lot easier than they do in a round bail.

And even when we're looking at round bales, the difference between grass hay and alfalfa hay and round bale is different as well, and how that sheds water and keeps precipitation from coming into it.

So basically, the big thing is how can we keep precipitation or moisture or anything from getting into that bail, whether it's putting it under storage, putting a tarp over it and keeping it dry that way, and then also keeping it up off the ground, if we can do that as well, so we don't get moisture wicking up into the bail from the bottom.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
One of the biggest spoilers of baled hay is moisture. Ben says bales exposed to weathering will quickly lose quality.

[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Um, so there's a lot of different things that tend to happen.

The 1st thing that we usually look at is TDN or measure of energy.

And that really has to do with the soluble carbohydrates that are locked in those plants.

And when the animal eats that and it's either going through the gutter, the rumen, you know, depending on what sort of animal's eating it, that's where a lot of those energy compounds are getting released from.

But that's also what the microbes are using for energy as well as, as, you know, they're growing and basically decomposing that bail.

And so TDN is usually where we see pretty steady drop when we have a bale that's exposed to weathering.

So as soon as we get moisture in their microbes, fungi, those sorts of things start to become active again and they start to use those soluble carbohydrates as energy sources, and so that energy level in those bales starts to drop.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Stay tuned to future almanac programs where Ben continues this discussion about, hey, quality, to read the detailed article about this topic, go to extension's beef website at beef.unl.edu, or download the entire interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, for Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills. Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension. For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
 

[Brad Mills, Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac. On a recent almanac program, Nebraska Extension Specialist, Jerry Valeski, and Mitch Stevenson, discuss how pastures and range land could possibly recover from recent wildfires with some good precipitation. On today's show, Mitch starts the discussion by talking about recovering some of the dead litter on the ground, and how that helps in numerous ways.

[Mitch Stephensen, Nebraska Extension Specialist]
We oftentimes talk of a lot about the litter and standing dead plant material and how important that is in our system, not only as a cover, but also it shades the ground, it helps dissipate some of the rainfall that falls down, it helps hold that soil from wind erosion, those types of things.

And so, as we think about grazing the year after.

A lot of our research, it, for dormant season fires, especially would suggest that we'll get just as much growth on the, uh, of that current year's growth on a burn piece as we would on an unburnt.

Essentially, the tops burned off, but the grass below it, the roots, the what's going to push that growth early on is going to be the energy stored in the buds and the roots, and then precipitation sunlight, the growing conditions are going to drive that after that gets started.

And so, uh, it's probably not going to be too far off what the current year's production is, but you've lost quite a bit of plant material that was there to kind of help hold this oil and the surface and as well as offer a little bit of a buffer in in some of that grazing.

So the, the big thing is you want to go.

We're looking at one to 3 years, in terms of that signature, most of the time, it's within 2 years following a fire, you won't even be able to see those scars from that satellite.

The other thing that we can look at and measure is the amount of bare ground.

And so the bare ground does go up, as you would expect. Because there's not as much later covering that landscape.

And so, a lot of times, I think what Jerry and I both, we'll talk about is if you are going to graze out there that you make sure that you are leaving enough of that residual biomass to help build that cover up.

I think that's really the adaptive nature of grazing after a wildfire is to be responsive and make sure you're not over grazing it to the point that you're not leaving enough of that cover that's out there.

[Brad Mills, Host]
Jerry says one of the strengths of Nebraska range land. Is that plants develop strong root systems, which in turn will also help in a fast recovery.

[Jerry Volesky, Nebraska Extension Specialist]
We're very lucky, I guess, in terms of all of our native range lands that they have some pretty good root systems and particularly in the sand hills where they can prevent excessive amounts of sand, I guess, I should say, from blowing around.

You know, one of the things that, you know, probably contributed to some to this year's wildfires was the fact that last year, 2025, we had a really good growing season and our pasture production in most all of these areas was anywhere from 15 to 25% above our long term average production.

And so, you know, that just literally added more fuel to the fire.

For both cool and warm season grasses, you know, more so in late summer for the for the warm season grasses, which had a really good growing season in general, like I mentioned, but both cool and warm would have gone into the winter in most places in pretty good shape.

They would have had their energy or carbohydrate reserves built up pretty well.

And so even though it was dry over the winter, they were dormant, as we got into spring here, when the fires occur.

[Brad Mills, Host]
To read the detailed article about how to graze after a wildfire, go to Nebraska's extension beef website at beef.unl.edu. To hear the rest of this interview, you can download the Beefwatch podcast from Apple Podcast or Spotify. For Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills.

Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension. 
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu. 
 

[Brad Mills, Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac. Conditions in the state may have contributed to the recent wildfires that destroyed ag land, past years, and some communities. Extension specialist Jerry Valeski and Mitch Stevenson talk about how fire damage affects pasture land and subsequent grazing. Jerry begins the discussion by talking about grass types, and how that might help recovery in damaged past years.

[Jerry Volesky, Nebraska Extension Specialist]
When we have a wildfire and help strictly speaking about the Lust Canyons, We're dealing with an area that did have, in many of the places, quite a bit of cedar trees that burned as well.

But people have to keep in mind that these grasses are perennials, most of them are perennials, and they will come back, are key to this, course, is going to be adequate rainfall.

And we do see many times an increase of annual weeds after the fire, and this is really what fire is a disturbance to these range lands.

And so having some weeds in there can be pretty common, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Our key message I tell for producers is that one of the things that they do need to be careful with is the how heavy they are grazing.

So 1st of all, whether or not they graze this year is going to dependent on rainfall.

And in many cases, it shouldn't be a problem that they could turn out to these pastures in mid to late summer or this fall, if there's a specific need that they need to get out on some pasture.

But regardless, they should be at a bit of a lower stocking rate and leave a little bit of extra residue out there.

[Brad Mills, Host]
Mitch says some good spring rain will really help these damaged areas recover.

[Mitch Stephensen, Nebraska Extension Specialist]
You know, there's been a few fires there north of North Platte that we've monitored over the years.

One was the Betty's Wayfire that was in 2024, and that fire, especially, I think we got this really good precipitation that spring.

It was a dormant season fire.

And that spring got really good precipitation.

And I remember going out in, in late June, early July and and having a hard time finding the, even the burned line of where it had burned and not burned.

And so, you know, the recovery seemed to be fairly, fairly quick on some of those fires, if we get the precipitation, but, you know, as you mentioned, the totals acres burned, numbers that I have is of March 18th.

So I know more has burned since then, especially with those fires near Ashby and Hyannis.

The numbers I have are about 823,000 acres have burned this year and to kind of put that in context with the data that we have from the National Interagency Fire Center as well as the monitoring trends and burned severity website.

I mean, 1984 and 2025.

These are wildfires over a 1000 acres.

That amounted to about one. 1600000 acres.

And so over that, you know, roughly 40 year period.

And so really kind of unprecedented in what we've seen in terms of the size, especially without moral fire and moral garden, Arthur counties.

And so being out there on the burn pastures this last week, you know, it definitely is, does look bare out there.

There are a lot of choppy sands in that area.

But when you really think about it.

And as you walk through a lot of that area, What we don't see is just the tremendous root amounts that are just below the surface, right?

We've seen we see some of that sand moving on the top, but not very far below that.

Think about as much vegetation as it was above ground.

There's just as much or more below ground, and a lot of that's in the top foot or so of soil there.

And so there's there's a tremendous mat there that holds a lot of that soil together.

[Brad Mills, Host]
Stay tuned to future programs where Jerry and Mitch continue this topic of grazing on fire damage past years. To read the detailed article about how to graze after a wildfire, go to Nebraska Extension’s beef website at beef.unl.edu. For Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills.

Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
 

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.

Dry conditions this fallen winner have contributed to the recent wildfires in Nebraska.
Extension educator Todd Whitney has been on the ground around the cottonwood fire, looking at the devastations the fires have done. He described some of the damage he's seen around farmland and local communities.

[Todd Whitney, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Pastures are still brown.

We've had some encroachment of eastern red cedar that's come in there.

It's posed a big problem for those that are trying to fight the fires because that cedar, uh, when it burns, is is burning eyes.

It's been hard for them to breathe as well.

And so it's been a big factor that way.

Uh, We have had some, some cases where people have been hesitant about whether they should do some cover crops. Have had a lot of ride that's been used in the area.

We've seen some, uh, switching to some other rotations with some lead in the rotations to.

This is proving out to have a green barrier helps.

And so, uh, we've had a case like the village of Farnham, where, uh, they had some green cover that was there.

The fire came up, basically stopped at the cover crops and then kind of went around, probably saved the town because it was in desperate need of support.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Because of recent past wildfires, experts have a little better understanding of what might recover, and what conditions are optimal for quicker recovery of pastures and prairie.
[Todd Whitney, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Every fire is different.

I mean, if we can start getting some rains that will definitely help.

I think we'll see recovery if the rains come.

Uh, you know, delaying uh, turnout will help.

Uh, we are hopeful that we will see some of those rains coming and that things will be helpful reducing stocking rates, some of those normal things.

But if the rains don't come, it's going to be really tough.

We've had people that virtually have all their grass is has been burnt up.

And so they've got to have to wait for recovery.

Even if the rains come, it's probably going to be 45 days before they can start doing some degree of grazing.

We've had some that thought, well, they had an open winter.

They sold off half of their, their hay, and now, they don't have, and now, we've had cases, I've heard of 500 bales being burned here, 300 round bales over here, takes for 200 cow herd, it takes 3 bales a day, if they're gone, now are they going to be able to buy, it is so widespread.

It's like, it's just not like next door, you can go buy some more for each because there's been so many acres that's been impacted.

So be a lot of trucking, people are trying to make decisions.

What are they going to do?

And we've had some people step up and say, well, they would allow, uh, others to come have their cows over, uh, and calve out in their area.

We have a lot of calves on the ground.

We don't know how many are gone.

You know, mostly the cows weren't turned out because it was dry, and so they were dry lauding.

And so that was a blessing that way, but it's still not known yet, you know, because we don't know what the range is going to.

Last year, we started getting rains, we had twice as much rain as normal last year, coming about mid May that came in and turned things around.

Uh, this year we didn't have a lot of uh, subsoil moisture in the moral area we're concerned about uh, how deep some of those hot fires impacted.

There's already been some movement, but the sands moving around and the heat impact.

And so some of the dunes have kind of moved around, which is, we're not sure what the full impact's going to be, but there will be some change on, on some of the grasses that come back because that's short grass prairie where we're kind of intermediate in that, uh, cottonwood area.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Stay tuned to future almanac programs that will continue this discussion of the recent wildfires and efforts to recover from it. For Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension. For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.