Looking to the north along the west edge of our herbicide exclosure. The treated area is on the right.

Comparing an herbicide treatment to grazing treatments wasn’t part of this project originally. But when Boulder County decided to spray 99 acres of the 540 acre Mayhoffer pasture, Rob Alexander suggested we take advantage of the opportunity.  We built an electric fence exclosure around the treated area.  Currently our plan is to exclude grazing from the treated area for the life of this project Meaghan Huffman gave me a great list of fencing supplies, and I picked them up at Stockyard Supply in Commerce City on Tuesday June 1 and stockpiled them in the pasture. I started building the herbicide treatment exclosure fence on Thursday, and then Leah Ashley and I finished the on Sunday, June 6.

This Gallagher charger was an alternative to what Meaghan ordered and we're watching to see if it's up to the job. We're running a positive/negative wire set up and will keep a close eye on the amount of charge we're getting.

The gate is at the south end of the exclosure. We built it in the small draw that leads to the lake because it had softer soils and fewer rocks for the T-Post and ground rod pounding.  Leah installed four 8 ft ground rods to about 5 feet deep each.  Laying in bed that night, I realized  that I wished we had put the charger on the opposite side of the gate. That way, when the cows are grazing in their “mob pastures” we wouldn’t charge the entire exclosure, just the side where the cows are grazing.  So before I drifted off, I figured out a way to solve that problem without pounding any more t-posts or ground rods.

It's much easier to pound in 4 metal rod posts and tie them together to create an alternative to a T-Post that's just as strong.

I learned that pounding in T-Posts is not fun. Actually I figured that would be the case before we started, but now scientific research has proven it to be true. I have this theory that to be truly useful, temporary electric fence should be child and woman friendly. So I built a child and woman friendly alternative to T-Posts. I pounded in 4 of the metal rod posts and tied them together as an anchor for one side of the gate. It works like a charm, is a lot less expensive, and any woman or child can do it.

Leah and I tightened the fence we took photos at 23 different points along the fence in all four directions. This should help us track changes in vegetation between the herbicide treated area and the grazing treatments. One of the things I’m noticing is that there is a large difference between the two sides already.  The treated area is much browner, and there seems to be a lot less diversity in species. It’s possible that this area has been treated in the past, something I’ll find out.

My Dad and Mom helped me GPS the entire fence line and the points where we took our monitoring photos. I will also took photos of watering areas so that we can monitor changes in them. One of the things I’ve noticed already is that the tanks where the cows watered last year, and where we had our temporary, temporary fence, is really green and lush.

Here are some examples of our photos.  Click on them to see them larger.

Numbered flags were replaced with GPS locations so we can repeat our photographs easily.

Site 4 looking west into the area that will be grazed.

Site 4 looking east at herbicide treated area