26 BULLETIN" 211, V. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



A common sight on an overstocked range is the arroyo made by 

 the run-off which has not been held back by the grass and bushes 

 until the water could soak into the ground. (PI. VIII, fig. 1.) So 

 the removal of even the grass and low shrubbery results in the 

 partial loss of the soil and much of the ground water. 



These effects, like many others of the range country, are cumulative. 

 Once a cut is started it soon becomes a trench into which the water 

 drains, the soil is gradually all carried away and in the end nothing is 

 left but the gravel and bowlder-strewn channel where little or nothing 

 can grow. Many of the ranges in New Mexico that years ago were 

 gently rolling grass-covered plains are to-day cut and scarred by 

 arroyos that are almost impassable to a horseman, and all because 

 the region has been overstocked. 



RANGE MANAGEMENT. » 



As stated in another place, in New Mexico to-day the stockman 

 usually owns the land upon which he has " developed " water, and he is 

 warranted by the custom of the country in the use of the range half 

 way from his last watering place to the nearest water of his nearest 

 neighbor, on all sides. He must maintain at his watering place a 

 supply sufficient for the number of stock he may have watering at 

 that place. Such watering places must be open to all stock that come 

 to them of their own volition. Only animals which are driven 

 through the country are expected to have their water paid for, and 

 this recognizedly legitimate charge is often not exacted. 



The stockmen's wars, so common a number of years ago, are mostly 

 of the past, for everybody concerned has learned that such methods 

 do not pay. There is still more or less friction among individuals 

 in a small way, as they overreach or are overreached. But in general 

 there is a desire to play fair, or at least within what are recognized as 

 the "rules of the game." What is needed for the improvement of 

 the business is a pronounced change in the rules. 



The routine work of the ordinary cattle ranch of to-day consists 

 in maintaining the watering places, moving stock from one place to 

 another as the feed varies, looking after old cows or dogy calves, 

 riding bog, and going after strays, with the heavy work of the spring 

 and fall round-ups, and the incidental branding of calves that have 

 been missed. Owing to the fact that the cattle are in no way re- 

 stricted in their movements and that all distances which must be 

 traversed are large, such work requires much riding by a number of 

 men, depending upon the size of the ranch. 



i The word management as used in this bulletin in every case means the financially profitable regulation 

 of the individual enterprise considered as a productive business unit. The principles apply as well to the 

 man with a hundred or so cattle or horses or a single band of sheep as they do to the owner of thousands of 

 animals and large equipment . 



