Pasture burning

[BRYANT]

Does anyone burn their places off? the county soil conservation keep telling me it would be a good thing to do. My place is native grass but I also have lots of bermuda in places. If I did would it help with the control of red cedars, sandplums and blackberries ,it is a full time battle trying to keep them out, also along my creeks I have lots of hardwoods ,oak ,pecan, hickory that I do not want to loose but the under growth is so thick, with lots of green briars and fallen branches from a big ice storm, you can hardly even walk through it. How wide of fire lanes do I need to keep it under control? If I do it I was going to brushhog the edges then run a disk on the outside of that ?
any info would be helpful ?????????

 

[circlebllc]

Your county extension office should provide classes for controlled burns. Mine also provides blowers and drip torches. There is a lot to cover, more than a post can cover. Yes, they work, especially with your native grasses.

 

[Jogeephus]

I burn them off occasionally. Burnt two off yesterday. Width of fire line depends but I normally just use a four disc off set and that is plenty.

 

[Tim/South]

I wish we could still burn pastures and hay fields. County regulations now prohibit the practice. A good slow burn is a great farming tool.

 

[kenny thomas]

Does anyone burn their places off? the county soil conservation keep telling me it would be a good thing to do. My place is native grass but I also have lots of bermuda in places. If I did would it help with the control of red cedars, sandplums and blackberries ,it is a full time battle trying to keep them out, also along my creeks I have lots of hardwoods ,oak ,pecan, hickory that I do not want to loose but the under growth is so thick, with lots of green briars and fallen branches from a big ice storm, you can hardly even walk through it. How wide of fire lanes do I need to keep it under control? If I do it I was going to brushhog the edges then run a disk on the outside of that ?
any info would be helpful ?????????

Excellent way to control red cedar, makes the blackberry worse.

 

[Craig Miller]

We burned some woods off yesterday just to clear the under brush. We almost burned the pasture more than ones but thankfully got it under control.

 

[Jake]

We burn pastures every three years if possible. A red cedar in our area will grow about a foot a year and you can kill up to a three foot tree pretty easily. If you don't burn you will never keep ahead of them around here. Lot of old timers won't burn and therefor have cedar forests and a total mess on their hands.

 

[dun]

If I remember correctly the width of the firebreak should be the height of the timber along the edges. 40 foot trees, 40 foot wide firebreak.

 

[jltrent]

If you can get to it a good mist sprayer and some Surmount spray will take care of the Cedars and Briers. A little breeze going with the wind and those mist sprayers will go a long ways.

http://www.dowagro.com/range/products/surmount.htm

 

[Jogeephus]

It should be noted that these new salt cured corner posts are highly flammable. Especially the ones than have a gate hanging on it with a sac of sacrete buried at its base. :bang:

 

[dun]

It should be noted that these new salt cured corner posts are highly flammable. Especially the ones than have a gate hanging on it with a sac of sacrete buried at its base. :bang:

As is above ground polypipe

 

[Jogeephus]

It should be noted that these new salt cured corner posts are highly flammable. Especially the ones than have a gate hanging on it with a sac of sacrete buried at its base. :bang:

As is above ground polypipe

Yep, got one of those too. Had a boy helping me and that was his sole job was to keep the fire away from that one little thing. NOT. Easy enough to fix though. I'm tempted to go buy a bundle of creosote posts.

 

[BRYANT]

Thanks for all the input never burn off one, so little concerned going to try it if I can get enough help trying to pay the small fire dept. to send out some trucks hope that works out

 

[toughntender]

I would be careful about putting too much stock in having the local fire department around when you do burn. Even they make mistakes. Last spring one of our neighbors was burning some CRP land. They do it every spring, along with the fire department. After having a really nice west wind all day long, it was getting late in the day and all of a sudden the wind switched. They weren't prepared for an east wind and it got away on them. It ended up burning across an 80 acre corn field perfectly to where a different neighbor has his round bale yard. So we ended up grabbing whatever tractors, skid loaders, and front-end loaders, we could to try and save em. We were only able to save about a dozen out of over 300. Not a very good day for anybody but worst of all for the fire chief. It was almost comical to see the fire chief taking orders on how to fight the fire from a bunch of farmers. Mostly because he was on site the whole day and it was under his watch when it got away. My advice is to keep some sort of tillage tool hooked up just in case. You sure don't want to have to pay for a bunch of burned up property.

 

[Jogeephus]

Usually when I burn a pasture or hay field I get a good back burn going and get plenty of black on the down wind side then ring the thing as quickly as possible. The fire will draw to the middle and stabilize any freak winds which might come up in the few minutes it takes to burn the field off.