Nance Ranch And Feedlot Part
Of College, Extension Combo

By David Bowser

CANYON, Texas — It may look like a ranch, but it's a laboratory.

For almost three decades now, the Nance Ranch has been owned by West Texas A&M University and run for the benefit of the students, not the cattle.

As with most ranches, it's had its ups and downs, but over the past few years, the ranch, along with the school that owns it, has expanded its role in the cattle industry.

David Lusk is an animal science instructor at West Texas A&M University and faculty coordinator for the activities at the ranch.

The ranch, which dates to the turn of the century, used to be a purebred Hereford operation. They also ran some sheep.

"My grandfather sold some rams to the ranch in 1934 and bought a car with the money," Lusk notes.

In the early 1970s, 2400 acres of the ranch were donated to what was then West Texas State University. Some 600 acres are used for dryland farming and the balance is in native grass, predominantly blue grama and buffalo grass, Lusk says.

The farmland is in a rotation of grain sorghum and forage sorghum that they use for hay that would be grazed. The other part would be a rest plot.

In the last five years, they have added equipment and facilities. They have also added about 15 new faculty and staff over the last six years. In addition, Lusk says, they have tried to improve their herd of commercial cows.

"We have right at 100 black baldy cows," he says. "Our breeding program here is a simple terminal cross with Gelbvieh and Simmental sires.

"Those calves are available for research purposes," Lusk adds.

The ranch is also actively involved in AI and sire evaluation, some embryo transfer work, dryland grazing systems, vaccination studies and forage studies.

"There are a lot of soil science activities that go on out at the Nance Ranch," Lusk says.

But the newest addition to the ranch are pens and buildings at the renovated 300 to 400-head capacity feedyard.

"The original manager of the feedyard, I'm told, was Dr. John McNeil when he was on the faculty here," says Dr. John Sweeten, resident director of ag research at the Texas Extension Service and Agricultural Research Service experiment station at nearby Bushland.

Today, Michael Jeter is in charge of the care and feeding of the cattle at the Nance Ranch feedyard.

The rations, except for expected trials, are comparable to what is being used commercially in area feedyards, Jeter says. They feed whole corn, using alfalfa hay and cottonseed hulls for roughage. A steam flaker has been ordered but it won't be in use until a new nutritionist arrives around the first of the year.

The processing barn features a snake chute with enclosed sides and lights directly over the chute to prevent shadows. There is also a light inside directly over the entrance to prevent the cattle from coming up to the doorway and being stopped by a dark hole into the shadow.

"You need to put light where the cattle need it so they can see where to go," Perino says.

The cattle also never have to turn a right angle. All the gates in the alleys are set at 45 degree angles. Chutes are curved.

Perino says they can't control how the cattle are handled prior to arrival, but once they get to the feedyard, they can.

"It's a very smooth, solid surface," Perino says. "They can't see out. All they know is they're moving forward and they're not seeing a lot of disturbance around them. There's nothing there to spook them or anything to cause them to balk. The feedyard was designed to save man and beast. We don't like to lose cattle and we don't like to lose cowboys."

Sweeten, who holds dual appointments with the Extension service and West Texas A&M, says no one entity has enough faculty or resources to do a complete job, but by working together they have been able to make research dollars go farther, more fully use differing expertise, and conduct higher quality research.

The 384 head feedyard at Bushland is also being rebuilt, but it will have a different focus.

"Those pens have been uniquely designed to do environmental quality work, waste water quality and air quality as well as performance," Sweeten says.

The ones at Nance Ranch are set up for animal performance, animal health, varying levels of water quality in the ration, and the effects of that on newly received calves.

Phase One of the renovation of the feedlot at Nance Ranch was completed last spring. It included pens that can hold up to 20 head each. "The two feedlots complement each other very well because they're really set up to do two different things," Sweeten says.

"Our work out at Bushland is going to be looking at levels of protein and phosphorus and metals like copper and zinc in the ration and their effects on animal health and performance all right, but also on manure quality and quality of runoff and air quality. There will be some product testing with regard to odor control and dust control. It's set up to do sprinkler dust control studies."

Bushland also has a metabolism barn in which everything from cattle to sheep are fed in one-head crates.

"At Bushland we can go from a one-head feeding trial treatment all the way up to 12 head, versus the Nance Ranch, which can do eight to 20 head per trial," Sweeten says. "Their new pens, which is the next phase, will take them to 50 head, which is getting almost to a commercial feedlot category."

The Nance feedlot is built on designs and formulas that have been developed in the cattle feeding industry over the years.

"We like to see cattle pen spacings of 150 to 200 square feet per head for High Plains feedlots," Sweeten says. "It depends on the cattle size. The cattle weights are coming in larger these days, 700 pounds versus 550 a number of years ago. The cattle weights are larger and it takes a bit more pen space."

That is somewhat correlated to moisture regimes, Sweeten adds.

"In the desert Southwest, you can get by with 100 square feet, 80 to 110 square feet let's say, where it rains 10 inches a year," Sweeten says. "Here, it rains 15 to 20 inches a year, and we need 150 to 200 square feet. It's almost 10 times the rainfall."

By comparison, he says, in central and eastern Kansas, central and eastern Nebraska and Iowa, they need 250 to 400 square feet per head.

The evaporation rate is 70 inches per year on the High Plains.

"We get about 15 to 20 inches of rainfall, meaning we have a moisture deficit of 50 inches-plus," Sweeten says. "It's an excellent cattle feeding climate."

Except during a series of recurrent snowfalls, the pens are relatively dry. There's usually a month or so in late winter or early spring when they can get wet, so they need to be designed to shed water.

"We want to design them on about a two to six percent slope," Sweeten says. "I like to see a four percent slope; three to four I consider ideal."

It is also important when a feedyard is first built not only to have the right slope but also to prepare the soil surface, Sweeten says.

"You want to get the organic matter and grass off of it," he says. "You want a site that has a well graded soil. It's a soil with some clay, some loam, some sand and some fine gravel. It has some cohesiveness, but yet it's not a boggy clay nor is it a sand. The trouble with clay or sand is they are too uniform in texture. We want something that has almost equal portions of the different soils."

The soil should be tested to determine optimum moisture content and the maximum dry density it can obtain.

"Another reason we try to shed water and we try to keep a relatively dry to moist surface is to minimize odor," Sweeten says. "There are tradeoffs between odor and dust. A series of experiments that we're beginning is to determine that correct moisture regime between odor and dust."

The odor from wet manure is some 50 times greater than it is from dry manure.

"Building a feedlot surface is very similar to building a county road," Sweeten says. "It needs to be something that holds up over a long period of time."

One of the problems the Nance Ranch feedyard may be facing soon is a problem it shares with other feedyards, ranchers and farmers in the area: a lack of good water.

"Water supplies are getting to be important for us," Sweeten says. "The feedlot industry was built here for many excellent reasons and most of them still hold true, but one that we're increasingly beginning to worry about is water supply. I think feedlots need to ascertain their long term water supply. They need to be able to acquire more water rights if they can get them. They need to save water when they can and not grow beyond what wet capacity would limit them to."

It takes on the order of 10 to 15 gallons of fresh water per head per day just to water the cattle. It may take another five gallons per head per day to operate an overflow drinking water system. It's going to take another five gallons per head per day on average year around for dust control.

"It's not hard to add up to 25 to 30 gallons of water per head per day," Sweeten says. "Most of that needs to be good quality water."

The Ogallala, the major aquifer extending from the Texas South Plains north to Nebraska and the Dakotas, is showing signs of dropping. Some feedyards are buying land to drill wells to pump water back to the feedyard. "Others need to start thinking about that," Sweeten warns.

There is a deeper aquifer under most of the High Plain of Texas, the Dockum Aquifer group.

"It's really a stratified aquifer," Sweeten says. "It's not just one uniform thing. Some of the water bearing formations of the Dockum include the Santa Rosa. It is a more saline aquifer that's below the Ogallala."

According to the Texas Water Development Board, it tends to follow an old sea basin, part of the Permian Sea. It is deeper from about Lubbock west and southwest and shallower around Amarillo, but that deeper part also contains more saline water. It is widely variable in salinity, but is several times as saline as the Ogallala.

"It is possible to drill a good Santa Rosa well in the upper reaches of it and particularly in the Amarillo area and find water that's usable, that's potable, for cattle to drink," Sweeten says. "That's what they've done at the Nance Ranch."

Because the Nance Ranch is near Palo Duro Canyon, the canyon has cut through the Ogallala and drained it away, leaving only the Santa Rosa water.

"That's what they're operating that Nance Ranch feedlot on," Sweeten says. "At Bushland, we're operating ours on Ogallala water; however, it's getting in shorter supply out there, too. The water table has dropped drastically over the years."