12
CapitalPress.com
Friday, December 13, 2019
Livestock
Subscribe to our weekly dairy or livestock email
newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters
Lane honored for contributions to livestock industry
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
ROSEBURG, Ore. — For his
years of sharing about the sci-
ence of forages, soils and pastures,
Woody Lane was recently presented
with a Distinguished Service Award
by the Douglas County Livestock
Association.
Lane has been an educator in
the livestock industry since mov-
ing to the Roseburg area in 1990
and establishing Lane Livestock
Services.
He has been key in organizing
the Umpqua Valley Forage Study
Group, the Forage and Nutrition
Group along Oregon’s south coast
and the Willamette Valley Grazing
and Nutrition Group.
“The goal is to improve our man-
agement on forage-based ranches,
to increase profitability and sustain-
ability on forage-based ranches,” he
said. “We share information, expe-
riences, new techniques. We want
to build on what we know. That’s
what we do.
“Knowledge is power,” he
added. “The more we know gives
us a better chance at making good
decisions.”
Lane admitted he was surprised
when he was informed he was to
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Woody Lane, a livestock nutri-
tion and forage specialist, has
helped establish three forage
study groups in southwestern
Oregon. His work in helping
farmers and ranchers with for-
age management was recently
recognized. He was presented
with a Distinguished Service
Award by the Douglas County,
Ore., Livestock Association.
be a recipient of the 2019 Distin-
guished Service Award.
“To have the folks in the live-
stock association think that my
work and what I try to do is import-
ant to them is flattering,” he said.
“I’m honored to receive the award.
It’s a great honor.”
Lane earned his master’s degree
and his Ph.D. in animal nutrition
from Cornell University in New
York.
The livestock nutrition and for-
age specialist has conducted hun-
dreds of classes on forage man-
agement in southwestern Oregon,
in other western states and in most
of the Canadian provinces. He’s
been a guest presenter at numerous
national and international work-
shops and has written many maga-
zine articles and several books on
his specialty. He has another book,
“Capturing Sunlight,” due out
within the next couple of months.
The three study groups he helped
establish and now facilitates have
18 to 28 farm or ranch members in
each. The total number of monthly
meetings or field trips that the three
groups have held is 646.
“Having the members get
together and share what they’re
doing on their places helps the oth-
ers make better decisions for their
own places,” Lane said.
Diane Swingley Huebner, who
has a small Angus operation on a
century farm near Days Creek, Ore.,
is a charter member of the Umpqua
GREENER
PASTURES
Valley Forage Study Group. She
presented the award to Lane at the
Douglas County Livestock Associ-
ation’s annual dinner meeting.
“His life is the very definition of
a pioneer,” Huebner said of Lane.
“He enriches that definition by ener-
getically and passionately teaching
the science of ruminant nutrition,
forages, soil health, grazing and
pasture management, all with the
focus on profitability. He delights in
watching us apply that science suc-
cessfully, most of the time, to our
soils.”
Lane has scheduled numerous
outside expert speakers to present
their views and knowledge at the
meetings of the study groups.
Bill Hoyt, who runs cattle and
sheep on both sides of the Doug-
las-Lane county line, credits Lane
with starting the study groups. Hoyt
is a member of the Umpqua Val-
ley group. He said the groups are
unique because the members are
willing to share.
“Unlike many agricultural areas
where there’s not a lot of sharing of
information, people here are readily
willing to talk about their successes
and failures, what they’ve tried that
has worked and not worked,” he
said. “It’s a continuing educational
experience.”
Doug
Warnock
Animal
ag that
works
By DOUG WARNOCK
Greener Pastures
Historic 17,000-acre Wyoming ranch has new owner
By NICK REYNOLDS
Casper Star-Tribune
One of the most important agri-
cultural properties in Wyoming
history has a new owner.
The Bixby Ranch – a sprawling,
nearly 17,000-acre parcel outside
Glenrock – was recently sold to
Casper-based True Ranches, who
on Saturday became the ranch’s
third owner since it was founded
in 1876. One of the oldest con-
tinuously-running cattle ranches
in central Wyoming, the property
features eight homes on the site, a
guest cabin and breathtaking vistas
lined with 15 miles of riverbank
and pocked with 14 reservoirs and
ponds.
The property is also home to
the Carey Mansion, the home
Courtesy photo/TownNews.com Content Exchange
True Ranches has purchased the historic Bixby Ranch, which sits out-
side of Glenrock, Wyo.
away from home for both Wyo-
ming’s eighth governor, Joseph
Maull Carey, and his son, Rob-
ert: both of whom served as Wyo-
ming’s chief executive as well as
one of its representatives to the
U.S. Senate.
Both men eventually made their
homes and reputations in the cash-
rich cattle town of Cheyenne and
the smoky halls of Washington
D.C. But the Bixby Ranch – which
has undergone a number of name
changes over the years – served
as the Carey family’s foundation
in Wyoming, with a history inter-
twined with that of the state itself.
After seven years of service in
the judicial branch of the Wyo-
ming Territory, the elder Carey –
an easterner – left the bench to try
his hand at cattle ranching in 1876,
trailing approximately 12,000 head
of cattle up from Austin, Texas, to
the first-ever ranch founded in the
area: the legendary CY Ranch. A
humble but extensive property,
a parcel of the ranch along the
North Platte River would even-
tually became the location of the
original Casper town site, with the
ranch itself serving as the name-
sake of one of the city’s main
thoroughfares.
JohnDeere.com/6M
JohnDeere.ca/6M
We didn’t just design the
6M Series Tractors with you in mind.
We designed them with you by our side.
Before we even hit the drawing board, we talked with farmers,
fleet owners and more to learn what they need in a mid-size utility tractor.
Visit your John Deere dealer to experience the tractor you designed—with more
visibility, better maneuverability and more options to fit your needs.
The 6M.
S157735-1
Reimagined by you. For you.
Earlier this year, a col-
league and I were asked to
assess the plant commu-
nity of a rangeland pas-
ture in Central Oregon. The
area in question was fairly
steep, mostly native pasture
that had perimeter fencing
and minimal cross fencing
in place. The area had been
moderately grazed with a
small herd of cattle in recent
years.
The landowner wanted
to improve the quality and
quantity of the forage, and
the goal included improving
water quality in the stream
that flowed through that area.
Our assessment revealed
that the upland areas had an
excellent stand of bluebunch
wheatgrass that had been
underutilized, resulting in
accumulated old growth that
was slowly oxidizing. There
were small patches of medu-
sahead in disturbed upland
areas. The pasture adjacent
to the stream had previously
been overgrazed and was
currently composed of annu-
als and unpalatable shrubs.
Properly managed live-
stock offer a tool that can be
used to improve the nutrient
cycle and water cycle of the
rangeland and improve for-
age quality for both domes-
tic animals and local wildlife.
This introduces the con-
cept of targeted grazing. Tar-
geted grazing is the appli-
cation of a specific kind of
livestock at a determined sea-
son, duration and intensity
to accomplish defined veg-
etation or landscape goals.
Grazing animals can provide
a very efficient tool to mod-
ify and enhance landscapes
when properly managed.
Our
recommendation
was to increase the num-
ber of grazing animals to
about three times as many as
had been grazing the upland
areas. These animals need
to be bunched to get hoof
action and trampling of the
old plant material into the
ground. The placement of
salt and protein blocks can be
used to get excited behavior
where livestock will trample
the perennial bunchgrasses.
While increased cross fenc-
ing would help accomplish
this type of grazing pattern,
herding by people on horse-
back offers a more direct
control on where the animals
are grazing and seeing that
they are moved at the most
appropriate time.
In the riparian area with
the history of overgrazing,
cattle can be used to manage
the population of undesirable
plants. Livestock can be put
into those areas for short peri-
ods of time when the plants
are most susceptible to graz-
ing. This will help to keep
the plant populations low and
control their expansion.
The most critical aspect
of successful targeted graz-
ing is to control herd den-
sity, the time of grazing each
area and ensuring adequate
plant recovery time follow-
ing grazing before being
grazed again. Targeted graz-
ing is a means of regenerat-
ing land that was neglected
or over used and promoting
the growth of the more desir-
able perennial grasses and
forbs that offer the higher
quality and more nutritious
forage. The success of tar-
geted grazing depends on
pre-planning and careful
observation of the land need-
ing regeneration.
Doug Warnock, retired
from Washington State Uni-
versity Extension, lives on a
ranch in the Touchet River
Valley where he writes about
and teaches grazing man-
agement. He can be con-
tacted at dwarnockgreener-
pastures@gmail.com.