Rancher Takes Action Against
Cedar Using Elevated Chain

By Colleen Schreiber

ARDMORE, Okla. — Sam Daube was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie region of the Arbuckle Mountains in Southeastern Oklahoma. Over the years, he’s watched cedar destroy the once vast expanses of open prairie. Daube realized more than two decades ago that he would have to intervene in a serious manner if he planned to save his ranch for future generations.

"I was losing the prairie to the cedar trees," Daube says. "The cedar was getting so thick in places that we couldn’t ride a horse through it. Brush control, I realized, was something I couldn’t afford not to do."

Average stocking rate in his tallgrass prairie country runs about a cow to 10 acres in some areas, a cow to 20 acres in other spots. A cow to 15 acres, he says, is about average across all his country.

Daube’s grandfather came from Germany when he was 16. He first settled at Bowie, Texas, and then moved to the Indian Territory around 1870. A merchant by trade, he built the Daube Mercantile in Ardmore. The mercantile, which later became a department store, was in business for 102 years before it finally closed half a dozen years ago.

The elder Daube began putting land together when he first came to the Indian Territory. His brand, Double O Bar, first appeared in the Choctaw Nation brand book around 1886, well before Oklahoma statehood. Daube concentrated his land acquisition efforts in the eastern edge of the Arbuckle Mountains to the north of Ardmore. Realizing that access to water was critical, he bought land up and down the creeks and springs. Today most all of their pastures, Daube says, are fed by running water.

Daube’s father died when he was only 12, so at a very young age, he began working his way into the business to take on family responsibilities. Part of that responsibility involved implementing a serious brush management program to fight back against the cedar. Using a combination of brush management techniques, Daube shifts country with little to no value to land that will carry at minimum the average stocking rate.

The two main problem species are eastern red cedar and ashe juniper. Fortunately, both are non-sprouters, which makes control much more effective, though certainly not any cheaper. Daube has tried the gamut of control techniques. Rootplowing was never an option in his rocky, shallow soil country. Aerial spraying of herbicides on cedar is not a prescribed method, and individually treating with herbicides, Daube says, is cost-prohibitive in his situation. Over the years, a combination of two-way chaining and prescribed fire has proven to be the most cost-effective method.

Daube started using a specialized anchor chain about four years ago. The idea was brought to his attention by Dr. Harold Wiedemann, an engineer researcher with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Vernon, Texas. Wiedemann designed a roller-ball chain which strikes trees at an elevated height during chaining. Preliminary research shows that the elevated chain reduces the pulling force by 84 percent compared to standard ground level chaining when felling nine to 18-foot trees. That, in turn, reduces treatment cost.

The rotating ball attached midway in an anchor chain is pulled between two large crawler tractors. For research purposes, two balls were constructed: one four feet in diameter for a two-foot chaining height, the other six feet in diameter for a three-foot chaining height.

The somewhat misnamed "balls" were fabricated from half-inch steel plates and were constructed by welding elliptical tank heads on either side of a cylindrical spacer so the device would not tip sideways. A four-inch axle through the center of the ball allows it to rotate as it is pulled by chains attached to each end of the axle. The ball is placed at the midpoint of a 180-foot anchor chain pulled by two D-8 Caterpillar tractors. The 2 1/16-inch diameter chain weighs 27.3 pounds per link.

Research conducted on the Daube Ranch in which 90 percent of the cedar trees were between 12 and 25 feet in height found the six-foot ball to be more effective. The four-foot ball caused the tractors to overheat with trees this large. Performance of the elevated chain using the six-foot diameter ball averaged 12.4 acres per hour compared to 12.1 acres per hour using the four-foot ball and 10.1 acres per hour using a ground-level chain.

Daube figures the cost of the treatment to be just over $16 an acre compared to the conventional chaining method, which costs him about $19 an acre. Daube owns one D-8 bulldozer and rents another at $100 an hour. Cost of the treatment was figured at $100 per hour per tractor. Daube owns an anchor chain but rents the six-foot ball.

Raking is not used. Instead, felled trees are left lying and a prescribed fire is used as a follow-up treatment to clean up the debris.

Daube chains as he can afford it, but he sets aside acreage to burn every year when conditions permit.

"I got interested in burning about 20 years ago," Daube says. "I was afraid of fire, but really didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what was involved in conducting a controlled burn. I just thought you got a bunch of cowboys out with a box of matches."

Since then, Daube has worked closely with local NRCS personnel and Extension personnel from Oklahoma State University. Weather permitting, Daube tries to burn from 2000 to 5000 acres every year beginning in March. He puts in few fire lines, which cuts down on cost. Instead, he burns mainly off roads and draws and uses the wind to his advantage. He also has most of his own equipment, and his own ranch personnel are now better skilled in the art of prescribed fire. Daube figures it costs him less than a dollar an acre to conduct a burn.

With higher annual rainfall than the cedar-plagued Edwards Plateau region of Texas, Daube finds prescribed fire an effective tool. The higher rainfall averages in his area make it less risky than it might be elsewhere. Cattle are turned back on the burned area during the next growing season, which also helps cut down on costs.

Prescribed burning, he says, not only helps open up his country but it is also beneficial to his best cow grasses like big bluestem, Indian, switch, little blue and the wide variety of grama grasses that are prevalent in his area.

Daube runs a Hereford-based cow herd. His forefathers were Hereford men, and he’s followed the same tradition.

"Herefords settled the West," Daube says. "It wasn’t grazed with Angus."

That said, Daube believes his country is best suited to a Braford type cow. He breeds his first-calf heifers to an Angus bull and their offspring are crossed back with a Braford bull.

"The quarter-blood Brahman cow is ideal for us," Daube says. "The Braford cow seems to get around a little better and has a higher calving percentage. I’m sure our buyers would just as soon not have that Brahman blood in them, but they add so much to our operation that I don’t intend to change that."

Calving begins in January and runs through March. Just as quickly as the calves are weaned in the fall, they’re turned in on wheat pasture. The eight-weight yearlings are generally sold private treaty in May.

To cut down on overhead cost, Daube says he’s in the process of shifting from improved pasture to a more permanent pasture like Bermuda grass.

At present, Daube Ranch is stocked at about half capacity, but he’s rebuilding numbers. He bought a string of reputation Hereford heifers this winter. His own replacement heifers are "loaned" out to cutting horse trainers to help gentle them. When they run out of "spunk," they’re returned to the Daube Ranch.

Daube Ranch Company still works livestock the old-fashioned way. That’s part of the reason Daube raises his own horses as well. He knows what he’s getting when he breeds them himself, he says. In addition, horses that are bred and raised on the place are better adjusted to the rocky outcrops and therefore tend to do a better job.