BY MIKE MAYFIELD
May/June 2007 Issue of Texas Deer Association Tracks

In the twenty-first century, many ranchers are diversifying their operations and exploiting more of their natural wildlife resources due to tighter budgets and ramped inflation. It is important to note that, while some management practices contribute positively to both livestock and wildlife habitat, domestic livestock and wildlife are, at least to some extent, competitive enterprises. Landowners face difficult decisions concerning how vegetative management practices for livestock production and wildlife habitat can be integrated to increase economic returns.

Herein lays conflicting interest of how to maximize the return on the end product. But, then again, who said that maximizing would yield the highest net gains? Rather, think about maximizing as taking away from other potential profitable resources to pour into mainly one. Optimizing, on the other hand, would seem to have greater impact on increasing overall production? Right? Under most circumstances yes.

When we manage for the goal of optimizing each enterprise, we functionally witness a healthier, more productive ecological system which, in turn, will allow all areas of the operation to produce good yields.

There have been many a myth about wildlife biologists and ranch managers having range wars over who knows best. The thing is, if they could just see past the end of their own noses, they would see that management practices of one can, in fact, help the other. Typically, each side has thrown some wicked, low blows, but now days, both sides are forced to join their focus in reaching the ultimate goals of the ranch. Oddly enough, they still waste valuable time and money on dividing the management of entities instead of marrying them together. The all-time great range war would have to be the triad between cattle, deer, and quail.

We know, by conventional wisdom and years of research, that cattle are primarily grazers. They eat just about any type of grass available, graze 90% of the day just to maintain, and drink about half a swimming-pool of water every day during summer months. Their shelter requirements are close to nothing, and they always see the grass greener on the other side of the fence.

With the same type of knowledge, we also know that deer are ruminants not much unlike cattle, but they specialize in browsing. They eat well, sometimes they could be considered a goat but for this article’s sake, leaves from various shrubs and, during the spring, a ton of forbs. Water is important, but they can make do with 1/10th of the requirements needed by cattle, and they are a little more picky on their shelter requirement desiring between 40-60% cover (cover does not necessarily mean canopy cover from trees).

Lastly, quail, by the very same knowledge, have a diet consisting of seeds from grasses, forbs and shrubs, and insects. They obtain the majority of their water requirements throughout most of the year from metabolic and preformed water. These types of water are extracted from the dietary food and created from the bonding of hydrogen and oxygen molecules from the metabolic process. And they, somewhere between cattle and deer, require about 10-30% cover.

So, where is the controversy? It all seems like each species would fit together like peas and carrots. Well, since nothing is that simply defined, each species has about a thousand different dimensions to manage for. Basically, wildlife and livestock experts have constructed a three-dimensional hyperbole for each species that encompasses most of the important aspects. Then they find where each species’ hyperbole overlaps each other and call that the focal point for management. This is what is known as optimizing. Just like in the Venn Diagram, the arrangement where all three circles join, so is the hyperboles of each species. The optimization point is the point at which all three circles merge together. When managing for many species, augmenting or deviating from this focal point starts to jeopardize the productivity of the other species.

To put optimization into economical perspectives, let’s look at operations from all three entities: deer, quail, and livestock. Each division of management wants to shift the paradigm of the central focal point more in their favor. Therefore, shifting the focal point towards, say, running a higher stocking rate and breeding heifers at one year of age to increase the number of marketable cattle. This will inevitably decrease the productivity of deer and quail by X number of dollars. But the question is, ‘Will transferring management, budgetary transactions, and time into one entity create more revenue for the ranch?’ These hypothetical illustrative tables (Table 1 and 2 on page 98) can sum up this scenario.





Table 1 hypothetically shifts the management focus to produce the highest economic yield for cattle. By reducing the percent cover per 1,000 acres from 40%, which is well suited for deer, to 5%, which best suits cattle, we see a dramatic increase in revenue for the cattle entity, available forage, and attainable density. However, we also see that a reduction of cover in this magnitude also has negative, or limiting, impacts on the other two entities.

The percent of available cover is reduced far below the requirements of deer and thus restricting the utilization of the entire land area. This also substantially affects the attainable density for this entity. Although the amount of available forage was not impacted greatly (an actual realized increase in spring forage), the underlying impacts are substantially poor summer and winter forage and virtual elimination of browse and cover.

Through basic knowledge and an outdoor sense, one might anticipate quail production to increase substantially with the excessive amount of canopy removal. However, by removing excess requirements of canopy cover needed by quail and increasing stocking rates, this ultimately has a limiting impact on their production. This limiting impact is induced because the inability to utilize the entire land area and the vegetative destruction that occurs from high density stocking rates. Vegetative cover is essential for quail to elude predation, and the heavy removal of cover and destruction by cattle makes them vulnerable.

Table 2 theoretically shifts the management focus to produce the highest economic yield for all three enterprises. We see that reducing the percent cover per 1,000 acres from 40% to 30% allows a balanced increase in productivity of all three enterprises. The economics of this scenario allow us to see that, just because one enterprise is not generating maximum revenue, does not mean that productivity for all three enterprises will not produce higher profitability in the total scheme of the operation.

In table 2, we can see the checks and balances of how optimizing works. This is virtually a fool- proof plan to ensure that not all the eggs are placed in one basket. How many times have you seen a mother doe leave her twin fawns in the same location? I would willingly bet hardly ever. Economic law dictates that money well invested is divided into several different enterprises.

Proper economic evaluation of habitat improvement incorporates the full array of costs and benefits into decision-making. Careful planning and assessment of goals is critical for determining the overall cost-benefit ratio of how to optimize. By optimizing, realized revenue will significantly increase, and productivity will escalate. As always, it is important to correspond with your manager, biologist, or consultant to properly plan and institute an optimization plan.

Ephesians 4:2-3 NKJV

-Mike Mayfield is owner of Blue Moon Genetics

BY MIKE MAYFIELD
Mar/April 2007 Issue of Texas Deer Association Tracks