Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: grass (misc. perennial), hay
- Additional Plants: native plants
- Animals: bovine
Practices
- Animal Production: free-range, preventive practices, range improvement, winter forage, feed/forage
- Education and Training: technical assistance, extension, farmer to farmer
- Farm Business Management: feasibility study, value added
- Natural Resources/Environment: wildlife
- Pest Management: physical control
- Sustainable Communities: partnerships
Proposal summary:
Sampling and monitoring of mixed mountain shrub communities in southeast Wyoming reveals old stands of shrubs depleted of nutrients for wild and domestic ungulates. Part of the problem is a lack of disturbance, mainly because of wildfire suppression. Clyce and Myrtle McCulloch of Wheatland, Wyo., and other ranchers will work with Ryan Amundson, a habitat extension biologist with Wyoming Game and Fish, to refurbish shrub stands using a skid-steer tractor with a brush mower attachment. The plan is to mow about 200 acres in 10 demonstration sites composed of mixed mountain shrubs known to sprout after treatment. The goal of this Western SARE Farmer/Rancher grant is to improve mountain shrub and grassland communities for domestic livestock, mule deer, elk, whitetail deer, antelope and bighorn sheep. Up to now, cost-effective treatment of mixed mountain shrub communities has been limited to prescribed fire, and participants hope this project will add another tool to keep these communities healthy.