Kansas Cattle Rancher Becomes Steward of the Grass

Posted: 14-Dec-2006; Updated: 18-May-2007

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Jane Koger and team member Marva Weigelt discussing patch burn strategies. (Photo: Mike Blair/Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks)

Jane Koger describes her transition from thinking only like a cattle rancher to also thinking like a steward of the grass as an incremental process spanning 20 years. “I came from a family tradition that equated land ownership with status and counted profitability as the ultimate measure of success, so it’s been a long journey.”

Koger credits USDA’s Soil Conservation Service (since renamed Natural Resources Conservation Service) personnel with first raising the question of sustainability. The guest program she operated on her 4,000-acre ranch for 15 years also influenced her attitude. “City women oohed and aahed over sunsets, birds and wildflowers, things I’d been too busy to really notice. That fresh perspective helped me see the prairie as a whole system of resources instead of just a place to raise cattle.”

Homestead Ranch is located in the Flint Hills, a narrow band of rolling hills in east-central Kansas. In the cattle industry, this area is famous as the Bluestem Pasture Region—fertile native range on which stocker cattle reliably gain at least two pounds a day. More recently, the region has gained attention as the last relatively intact tallgrass prairie on the continent.

In the early 1980s, Koger was among the first to embrace a profitable, but potentially destructive combination of range management practices: wide-scale annual pasture burning and intensive early stocking (putting twice as many cattle in a pasture for half the normal grazing season). “It took me a long time to see the flaws. Burning every stalk of grass each spring robs grassland birds of any nesting cover. Treating all the land the same way, year after year, you might as well be raising wheat—you’re killing off diversity.”

Jane Koger in a stand of native Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans).
(Photo: Marva Weigelt/ Homestead Ranch)

This awareness dawned after Brian Obermeyer, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Flint Hills Initiative, introduced Koger to a patch burn grazing system that mimics a more random, natural pattern. (Read the USDA fact sheet on patch burn grazing [PDF].) She agreed to burn one-third of a pasture each year on a seven-year experimental basis, but with two conditions: She needed technical assistance, and she would measure success by whether the program was practical and economical for private ranchers to implement.

The Homestead Range Renewal Initiative is now in its third year. All major management decisions reflect input from a seven-member team that oversees the project, including ranchers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service and The Nature Conservancy, as well as Koger’s 14-year-old nephew, Jim, the team’s youth partner.

Consensus and communication aren’t always easy, Koger admits. “What I call grass, another team member refers to as vertical herbaceous structure, but I guess by the time we get done wrangling with a decision, we’ve taken a lot into consideration—cattle, soil, water, plant diversity, wildlife habitat and sustainability.”

Koger’s initial reluctance to accept “government handouts” was gradually overcome as she realized that the value of finding a way to balance responsible stewardship with profitable cattle production outweighed her reluctance. Funding and technical assistance come from a variety of sources:

While grateful for all the input, Koger reserves the right to trust her own instincts. She counts her cattle, other animals, the prairie itself and especially greater prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) as members of the consulting team. “Four years ago, I didn’t even know we had prairie-chicken booming grounds on the ranch. In two years, I’ve taken about 100 people out before dawn to watch the spring mating dances, a privilege for which they are happy to pay. If you think about it, that means 100 more people understand the importance of habitat diversity.”

Greater prairie-chickens during spring mating ritual. (Photo: Marva Weigelt/Homestead Ranch)

Patch burn grazing satisfies the complex habitat requirements of greater prairie-chickens, whose numbers have declined sharply in recent years. Most other native grassland birds, including the increasingly rare Henslow’s sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii), thrive in the same shifting patchwork.

The patch burn method calls for careful control of fire, which contrasts markedly with local practices. In addition to demanding more labor and equipment, prescribed burning also requires coordination with neighbors. “They probably think I’m crazy,” says Koger, “but they’ve been incredibly cooperative. And they’re curious, which is about the best free advertising you can get.”

Preliminary data from an annual breeding bird survey, cattle performance and fixed-point photography are encouraging, but not yet conclusive. The method is being tested in three separate pastures of about 900 acres (364 ha), each under a different stocking scenario: (1) year-round cow-calf pairs; (2) full-season yearlings (April-October); and (3) double-stock yearlings (April-July).

In 2005, Koger took another step and put most of Homestead Ranch in two conservation easements—one through USDA’s Grassland Reserve Program and the other through USDA’s Farm & Ranch Land Protection Program and The Nature Conservancy. “I’ve come a long way from profit as the only bottom line,” says Koger. “Now I balance profit with considering people, planet and perpetuity—and passion, too. Being passionate about the prairie makes a difference.”

-Conservation Incentives thanks Marva L. Weigelt, Homestead Ranch, for this article. For more information, visit the Republic of Grass web site.

See sidebar on Helping More Ranchers Benefit from Patch Burn Grazing.