Economic evaluation for old world bluestems in the Texas panhandle

ore than 1.20 million hectares in the Texas High Plains Region were enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. Over 162 thousand hectares of this total were sown with old world bluestem (OWB) grasses.;The general objective of this study was to determine production potential of OWB as livestock forage through grazing under a rotational grazing management system in the Texas Panhandle. The specific objectives of this study were to evaluate the economic value of grazing OWB, to estimate potential returns from grazing OWB, and to optimize return per hectare and per animal given the availability of forage and its nutritional contents as affected by the grazing intensity and seasonal growth of the forage.;A short duration grazing management system was used in the study where the livestock were rotated between paddocks every seven days. Therefore, a complete rotation throughout all paddocks was completed every 28 days. Each paddock was grazed for seven days and rested 21-days for regrowth. Forage samples were taken from one square meter areas to obtain information on each of four schedules (i.e., pregrazing samples, post-grazing samples outside cages, sample from caged enclosures after seven days and samples from cages after 112 days). The nutritive content of forage was determined by laboratory analysis. Each sample was analyzed for dry matter production, crude protein, crude fiber, total digestible nutrients, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus. The nutritive analyses of forage were used to estimate the availability of nutrients during the growing season.;The treatment effects for high stocking rate and medium socking rate, were statistically different for dry matter production, total digestible nutrients (TDN), and crude protein (CP).;The dry matter available to the high stocking rate represents a value of ;Based on the assumption of variable stocking rate, optimal utilization of available forage nutrients indicated that under the high stocking rate a total gain of 138.47 kg/ha could be achieved over a grazing period of 112 days. Under the medium stocking rate the maximum achievable total gain was 85.75 kg/ha. Availability of crude protein from the old world bluestem was the binding constraint during each grazing period. This means that with some supplement which is rich in protein content, even more gain can be expected. On the basis of average buying price of...