[Sca-cooks] Pigs help New Forest ponies

[Georgia Foster]

for feasibility of this possibility, see the Taylor Grazing act.

What follows is a GROSS OVERSIMPLIFICATION of what is, in fact a very 
COMPLEX item.

We manage 3.7 million federal acres in my field office.  The field office is 
divvied up into grazing allotments which are further subdivided into 
pastures.  Each pasture is evaluated on the number of Animal Unit months, or 
AUMs it can support.  Existing forage is allocated first to the wildlife 
that will be using it.  Any additional AUMs are then sold to the rancher who 
runs cattle in a specific allotment.  A Grazing Plan is developed for the 
allotment indicating the best rotation and amount of use of the available 
forage that is not already allocated to the wildlife that compete for the 
same resource.  Ranchers pay, based on AUM a set amount to allow the cattle 
to graze on the public land.  This would be similar to the free-range in the 
forest, only we don't have many trees in Southwest Wyoming.  When the set 
use has been met, the domestic livestock must move to the next pasture.  
When the pastures are all used up, the rancher must move the cattle to his 
private holdings or sell them.

There is no herder with these cattle.  They go and do pretty much as their 
nature dictates.  In areas where resource damage from cattle use is possible 
or occurring, such as riparian areas, those areas are fenced off by the 
building of an exclosure.

Those of you paying $8.00 a pound or more for free-range beef … these are 
your wild cows.

Cheers

Malkin
Otherhill
Artemisia



Jo (Georgia L.) Foster
jo_foster81 at hotmail.com

Never knock on death's door........ Ring the doorbell and run. He hates 
that.