Range and Forage

[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.