Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Ken fwd an email on this with large photos which unfortunately wouldn't go 
through the system at 14 MB. This is a smaller version on the same subject.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
=====================

Ancient Criollo Cattle Offer New Options in Semiarid Lands
By Darrell J. Pehr
http://researchmag.nmsu.edu/2008_SP/feature_cattle.html

For the ranching industry in the dry Southwest, tough times demand tough
measures. Increasing fuel costs, dry conditions and a changing environment are
creating new challenges for ranchers. In a search for innovative answers,
researchers at the Jornada Experimental Range are studying an ancient, rugged
breed of cattle that may offer some modern-day solutions.

Criollo cattle are hardy scrappers that make do in conditions other breeds of
cattle could not withstand. These “Criollo” – a Spanish word that describes
something of Spanish descent but born in the Americas – are particularly
well-suited to the arid and semiarid Southwest U.S.

That’s not surprising, since they’ve been in New Mexico more than 400 years.
Criollo have been in the New World even longer. Their descendants came across
the Atlantic on Christopher Columbus’ second voyage (1493-1496) to the island 
of
Hispaniola, and in 1598 Criollo cattle came with Juan de Oñate as he explored
modern-day New Mexico.

But in the late 19th century, Criollo began to fall out of favor with the
introduction of larger, British breeds like Angus and Hereford, preferred by
British investors who fueled the cattle boom of the 1880s. Selective breeding
helped those new cattle thrive in the Southwest U.S. and northwestern Mexico,
but not without some extraordinary measures, like providing costly 
supplemental
feed.

As the British breeds moved onto the rangelands, Criollo cattle became scarce.

Researcher Ed Fredrickson says ranching with British breeds worked very well
until recently, when fuel and supplemental feed were still cheap. Currently,
fuel to move cattle to markets has become more expensive and the demand for
supplemental feed, like corn, has intensified, especially due to its current 
use
as an alternative fuel feedstock. In addition, the process of desertification
has been under way in this area for more than a century, creating more 
unusable
shrublands as beneficial grasslands are lost. Those factors, combined with
British breeds’ impact on the grasslands, led Fredrickson to begin to search 
for
an alternative, desert-adapted cattle breed that might be a better match for
these changing conditions.

Fredrickson is a researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Agricultural Research Service with expertise in range nutrition and behavior 
and
desert ecology. Fredrickson came to New Mexico State University in 1987 to 
work
on his Ph.D., then started at the USDA’s Jornada Experimental Range in 1990. 
His
current research is based at the Jornada, a 197,000-acre expanse north of Las
Cruces that stretches across an area the size of New York City, but has just a
handful of residents.

Fredrickson initially searched for desertadapted cattle in North Africa. 
Later,
he teamed up with researcher Jose Rios from the Universidad Autónoma de
Chihuahua and their attention soon turned to their own backyard. In the Copper
Canyon region of Chihuahua, Mexico, Tarahumara Indians still raised a breed of
cattle that had nearly disappeared from New Mexico and Chihuahua – the 
Criollo.

“This is ideal for us,” Fredrickson said. “This land has really co-evolved 
with
these cattle. So not only can we look at cattle in an arid situation, but how
they’ve influenced the vegetation.”

In 2003, the scientists assembled a research herd that was divided among the
Jornada Experimental Range and the UACH’s Rancho Experimental Teseachi in
central Chihuahua. The two sites are representative of much of the Southwest
U.S. and northwestern Mexico: The Jornada’s desert grasslands are lower in
elevation and in annual precipitation, compared to the more mountainous Rancho
Experimental Teseachi, which ranges from piñon-juniper savannah to forests of
pine and oak in the higher country.

Initial studies by Fredrickson, UACH’s Rios and Gerardo Bezanilla-Enriquez, 
and
Dean Hawkins, Animal and Range Science professor at NMSU’s College of
Agriculture and Home Economics, have shown that Criollo bring several 
beneficial
characteristics to the table: They tend to use larger areas and more diverse
habitats when they graze, rather than concentrating on one area as a British 
cow
would; they graze fewer hours per day; their diets are more varied; they are
smaller, averaging 730 pounds, rather than the 1,200-1,300 pounds of a British
breed; and they seem to be able to remain active in hotter temperatures.

“If cattle stay in certain spots, we lose vegetation. But if we can get an
animal that uses the whole thing, we can avoid the desertification process.
Criollo roam around,” Fredrickson said. “They use the rougher country, they
travel more.”

In addition, it appears that their bodies partition energy in a different way.

“A British animal would put fat on the outside to prevent heat loss,”
Fredrickson said, pointing out that body insulation is important for an animal
accustomed to the colder European climate. But the Criollo cattle do not seem 
to
build up fat as insulation. Instead, their bodies seem adapted to encourage 
heat
loss.

Research will initially focus on the physiology of the Criollo cattle, then 
move
to economic implications, whether local or industry-wide.

For the Tarahumara, the versatile Criollo have been essential to their
existence.

“In Mexico, they provide milk, meat and draft,” Fredrickson said. “They’re 
part
of the family.”

For other potential producers, Fredrickson sees possibilities for the cattle
both as a meat animal and as a sport animal at rodeo events.

“This may be a great animal for people who have small ranches,” Fredrickson
said. The meat could be marketed as a source of organic beef in specialty
markets, for example, and the multicolored hides would add a second market for
ranchers. Rodeo contestants value the stout-horned Criollo as roping steers.

Fredrickson also sees the genetic makeup of the Tarahumaran Criollo as a
resource that could be critically important some day.

“These animals have had very little selective breeding,” Fredrickson said, so
they are genetically different in many ways. The key to a disease outbreak in
other cattle, for example, could be found in such a unique herd of cattle.

“When do these animals become valuable for some unique trait they have?”
Fredrickson said. He believes the Tarahumara and Mestizos should be given
incentives to continue to maintain their discrete herds.

The cattle also may have some answers for traditional ranchers who are looking
for new products to bring to market, a more diverse genetic makeup for future
herds, or an animal that can help them remain economically competitive.

“We’re losing a lot of people on the land. We need to figure out how to stay
economically viable. This would give them some options,” Fredrickson said. “We
can be more profitable, and when we’re more profitable, we’ll have more ranch
families.”