 We're here today at Lowell Perman's Ranch and we are looking at soil characteristics and we're looking at soil health specifically on rangeland versus hayland across the fence. Across the fence we have long term hayland, managed that way for many years. The producer decided to put that into a native grass stand so he recently seeded the grass after a couple years of cropping to prepare the field and here we have native range that's fairly highly diverse. We've got the mix of different groups. We have shrubs and forbs and grasses and a pretty highly vigorous stand and we're obviously dry this spring so it doesn't look real vigorous right at this point but if some rain comes we should have really good vigor in the plants. So what what is that different kinds of management and different kinds of plant community? What effect does that have on soil health and that's what we're looking at. Those two factors seem to play a big part in what happens to the to the ecosystem underground compared to what you see above ground. So what we've done is we've pulled two soil cores one on the long-term hayland that's been recently converted to grassland and that's this one here nearest to me and one on that side is this native rangeland that has never been broken and always managed with grazing management. So the first thing I want to point out is the the dark colors and we call that the mollet colors and the depth that those colors go to. You can see initially looking at these they look pretty similar in color in this upper horizon up here but as you if you look closer you can see the dark mollet colors come down to on the rangeland come down to 10 or 11 inches pretty easily whereas on the the long-term hayland we're only getting down to about seven inches with the mollet colors. So a difference in the depth of the mollet or the dark colors here. Another thing that you'll notice is it is a change in the structure and right away I think you can see these larger clods in this upper horizon. We call that blocky structure or subangular blocky whereas over here when you when you break this apart it crumbles into small pieces and so throughout much of this upper horizon when you when you open this up it breaks into what we call granular structure. So this native rangeland has granular structure almost down into this about six inch level and it's starting to move into the small blocks subangular blocky blocks as you get to about six inches. So not only the the shape of these sole pads going from granular over here nice granular structure to blocky but also the size so even when you look at the blocks when you do eventually get into subangular blocky over here you can see a difference in the size of the blocks. This is much larger not as many pores in this soil profile here compared to this one over here so changing from granular and gradually going to the subangular blocky whereas on the hayland we start with subangular blocky pretty much right at the surface and in fact in a minute we'll talk about another feature that we see in the surface layer of that long-term hayland over there. Another characteristic you can see upon looking at this closer is look at the fine roots we have in this native rangeland an abundance of fine roots all throughout this upper foot really of soil. When you look at this hayland over here very few fine roots an occasional larger root but the abundance of roots is much higher on the native rangeland compared to the the hayland. So we see just several characteristics that we also refer to as dynamic soil properties that are different between the long-term rangeland versus the long-term hayland and so we see management and plant community having an effect on those properties that you have some kind of control over through management. So this all amounts to this next thing I want to talk about and that's what effect do these different characteristics have on something like infiltration. So when we were out here last fall we we did measure the infiltration on this native rangeland compared to the hayland over there and we did five different samples on each site and the average average time for the second inch of infiltration to infiltrate on the on the hayland was two hours and on the native rangeland well managed native rangeland it was 12 minutes. So there's a huge difference that all these factors have on the resulting infiltration much more rapid infiltration on the native rangeland a time of only 12 minutes compared to the hayland which was two hours average time. So big impact on the characteristics and the resulting combination of those characteristics. Now I mentioned there's an exception in the structure of this hayland that shows up better when we pull out a larger profile and we just want to look at that right over here. So looking at this long-term hayland on this side uh compared to again the native range now when you look at these and just kind of break them apart a little bit you see all throughout that upper profile that nice granular structure again it easily breaks into little granules throughout that upper six inches but looking at a bigger larger profile you can see what happens here is we have what we call plady structure which is the soil is laying in horizontal plates or layers and that's as a result of compaction over time due to traffic and just poor porosity and the native soil texture the silt loam texture lends itself well to developing these plates with management that that leads to that so you see these plates um that form showing the compaction that has occurred over time and as well you can see the fine roots coming down throughout this profile over here lots of fine roots and kind of a not so many fine roots on this side over here on the hayland some larger roots but uh not quite as many fine roots between the two profiles. Obviously management and the plant community uh have an impact on the soil health out here on the grassland and you can see it's evident in the soil profiles and in the data we've collected. So hayland is not necessarily worse for soil health per se but it depends on the combination of plant community and management. Hayland is typically a simple plant community comprised of only one to a few species based on the first soil health principle plant diversity above ground results in diversity below ground. Hayland often does not meet that criteria. Also hayland is typically harvested at the equivalent of 70 percent utilization or more and all of that biomass is removed at each harvest instead of building up organic matter much of it is removed off the site. So a simple plant community and severe management from a plant standpoint often results in reduced soil health on hayland. Soil health on hayland can be improved. For starters the plant community can be made more diverse by planning a higher number of species. Secondly hayland can be alternated between grazing and haying and the cutting heights can be increased in order to leave more biomass and cover on the site as well as changing the timing of the principal harvest from year to year. Another management option for hayland is to do either bale or windrow grazing in the fall and winter right in the hay field as this will return much of the organic matter to the hayland. This option can also save the cost of moving the hay to storage and then feeding it out. Lastly it comes back to the overall management of the operation and looking at how the animals are utilized as tools to achieve better soil health. It may be possible to reduce the acreage of hayland by increasing the amount of time the animals are grazing. Winter grazing is a viable option in many cases. To have a sustainable operation it comes down to managing the animals we can see as well as managing for the ones we can't see to provide us with the healthy soils underpinning a successful enterprise.