 Hi, I'm David West with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. And I'm Beau Broadbeck with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Today Beau and I would like to demonstrate for you how to properly remove a tree branch. It's a frequent call to the local county extension offices as to why we remove tree branches and how to properly do so. And so we thought we would try to do a nice demonstration video for you. We will also be discussing how to reduce a branch length when the full removal is not required. We will also be talking about the proper tools for the job and the safety equipment that you should be using. Okay, let's get to work. One reason we may want to remove a branch from a tree is because it's competing with our central leader. And so on this tree here we see that we have this branch which is coming up and possibly competing with the central leader on this maple tree. So the first thing we'd like to do is identify where our branch collar is if we decide that we want to remove this branch. And so if we look right here we can see our branch collar on this tree. So I'll mark it with this Sharpie. And so that's a swollen area there at the base of the branch and that is where our wound caused by the cut will heal more quickly. If you're in doubt about that on some trees you can always just rub your hand down until you feel at the base of that branch where it starts to get wider and that will be a good gauge for you in terms of where you make your cut. And we're going to be demonstrating our three-cut method and so our first cut will be up right here a third to halfway through the branch and then we will come up here and make a cut and we'll go probably all the way through the branch here but this will give us some hinge wood between these two cuts which will let this limb lay down easier and it will keep us from ripping bark off down the tree. If we came right here and made one cut right here there's a chance that the weight of this limb falling would then rip the bark down the side of our tree and so we're trying to avoid that and make it make the smallest wound and the most likely area for the tree to recover more quickly. Okay I've put on my gloves and my safety glasses. It's very important to have your safety glasses on around trees when you're pringing because you'll end up bumping into one of these limbs and maybe injuring an eye. So it's a good thing to put those safety glasses and gloves on. Our first cut is right here. We have a good sharp pringing saw and so we're going to go about halfway through right there. Now our next cut right here and so you can see how that let the tree lay down or let the limb lay down easy to keep some pressure off of that. We can finish that cut now and this damage right here is what we're trying to avoid at our final cut. And so our final cut is going to be right here on our branch bark collar. Get our saw lined up good. Let me get right here where I can use my right hand. We want ease off on the pressure a little bit as we get closer and then we've done a nice clean pruning cut on this tree. David West has done an excellent cut here and the next year or two you will begin to see this tree seal this wound. It will be evidenced by a donut shaped wound that will slowly begin to seal over this cut. If you did a poor cut by removing the branch collar you will notice that the tree will seal from either side leaving openings at both the top and the bottom of the tree which will allow for more decay and for a longer sealing process for this tree and possibilities for diseases. Some tree species will not have a branch collar present and in that case to identify where to make your cut you're going to use the bark ridge which is evident in this maple tree right here. The bark ridge is where the bark from the branch and the bark from the tree meet and form a raised ridge. You draw a line following the line of the trunk straight down the tree and then draw 45 from that to approximate where you should make your branch removal cut. And you can see this in my drawing that you have a straight line following the angle of the trunk and then 45 degrees from that we estimate where our branch collar would be for species where we don't see a branch collar present. Another good reason to remove a branch and deprune a tree is when you have crossing branches. Right here we have three branches that are very close together and as this tree continues to grow this branch will eventually begin to rub on this outer branch. So we want to remove this branch to allow these other two branches to continue to grow. A hand pruner is a very good job for any pruning that is done on branches the size of your pinky and smaller. Anything larger you want to start using loppers at about one inch and hand pruners like we used in the previous cut on branches two inches and larger. So I'll go ahead and make the cut looking for that branch collar that bark ridge remove the branch and now we've opened this space in the tree and it'll continue to grow into the future. What we have here is a stub cut. This is an improper pruning cut because we have left a stub sticking away from the tree. This tree will not be able to heal over this cut allowing the rot to potentially enter the center of the tree. So what we want to do is come back and remove this stub back to that branch collar that we've previously discussed. David has done another excellent cut. We've cut the branch back to the branch collar and in the next year or two this tree will begin to do the doughnut shaped wound wood which in the next two years will no longer even be visible. Another reason to make a pruning cut is to remove a common parasite in the southeast mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasite of trees that robs sugars from a branch which will slow growth and eventually kill that branch. However it is not good enough to just remove the mistletoe or even prune the branch at the point of mistletoe. Instead you want to prune this branch back at least six to eight inches to ensure you've removed the pseudo root that is inside this branch. However in the case of this tree we do not want to make the cut six to eight inches at this spot because we would be doing a heading cut or a stub cut. Instead we want to prune back to the branch collar as we've previously discussed. We will probably want to do the three cut method to ensure we don't do a tear out. So instead we do an undercut overcut and our final cut back at the branch collar. Another type of pruning cut is a reduction cut. This is a cut where we reduce the length of branch back to a smaller lateral branch. The reason we do this cut is to not only remove branches that are interfering with roofs, patios, or in this case a sidewalk. But we always prune back to a lateral that is at least one-third to half the diameter of the branch we are removing. The reason for this is this branch needs to be large enough to assume dominance for this branch and to prevent a flush of growth. In this case I've already pre-cut this branch and as you can see the final result of a reduction cut. We have a pruning cut with this smaller branch that will now continue to grow in an upward direction hopefully over this sidewalk. In future times if this becomes a problem we can always prune back to another lateral branch or even further back. Always remembering that we prune back to a lateral branch at least a third to half the diameter of the original branch. We've made a variety of pruning cuts today and we use several different pieces of equipment. We want to make sure that we point out to you that for smaller cuts you can use these nice bypass pruners and we want to make sure that they're bypass pruners, a handheld pruner. This will cut things up to maybe a half inch in diameter safely and it'll do a clean cut. You don't want to do to use the anvil type pruners because that crushes tissue on the bottom side and so we want bypass pruners that are good quality to make a good clean cut. For things a little larger up to two inches we can use our bypass loppers. Again we won't bypass and so it's got some teeth here to lock it in place and then it makes a clean cut on the back side so that we're getting a clean cut all the way through and then for larger things we'd use our saw like you saw us use and modern saws are very effective efficient very easy to cut with and this this is the equipment that we recommend to homeowners to use these three pieces of equipment and only as a last resort do we recommend that homeowners use chainsaws and we'll try to do a video on chainsaw safety the safe use of chainsaws in the future. We hope that this video has been helpful to you. If you have any questions you can visit our website at www.aces.edu or call your local county extension office. Thank you.