PELLET SEEDING OX WESTERN RAXGELAXDS 



29 



Table 4. — Costs and results on 16 large-scale pellet seedings 1 — Continued 



COATED SEED PELLETS 



Location and seeding date 



Cost 

 per acre 



Crane Creek, Idaho, 1949 



Summit, Idaho, 1954 



Dubois, Idaho, 1954 



Sand area, Fort Hall, Idaho, 1954__ 

 Buckskin Flat, Fort Hall, Idaho, 



1954. 

 Ross iFork, Fort Hall, Idaho, 1954_ 

 Portneuf River, Fort Hall, Idaho, 



1954. 



4. 31 



8. 78 



8. 78 

 7. 35 

 7. 35 



7. 35 



9. 93 



Moisture at time of 

 seeding 



Result? 



Not favorable 



Favorable 



do 



do 



do 



do 



Not favorable. 



Failure. 

 Unsatisfactorv 



Do. 

 Failure. 

 Unsatisfactorv 



Do. 



Failure. 



1 For compressed earthen pellets, costs are based on 1 pellet per square foot 

 For crested wheatgrass this averages 1.2 pounds of seed and 72 pounds of pellets 

 per acre. For coated seed pellets, costs are based on 6 pounds of seed per acre. 



Conventional seeding methods are about equal in cost to seeding 

 coated seed pellets by airplane. 



The lower costs for seeding compressed earthen pellets are the 

 result of lower seeding rates. Advocates of compressed earthen 

 pellets claim that seeding rates can be reduced to 2 or 1 pound per 

 acre or even less. The reasoning behind this claim is not clear. One 

 reason given is that the resulting stand of grass will be so thin that 

 livestock will not find it worth grazing. This is hardly a suitable 

 objective of range seeding. Furthermore, competing vegetation and 

 the lack of seed covering make it difficult and slow for plants in a 

 thin stand to spread and provide a good, grazable stand of grass. 



Six pounds of crested wheatgrass seed per acre is recommended 

 for range seedings with good seedbed preparation and seeding methods 

 (U.S. Dept. Agr., 1948). Observations show that a compressed or 

 coated seed pellet has no better chance of becoming an established 

 plant on arid rangelands than has nonpelleted seed. Thus it would 

 seem that the seeding rates advocated for pelleted seed, which are 

 considerably lower than rates recommended for range seedings with 

 nonpelleted seed, are not justified. 



Total costs and returns from seeding coated pellets are shown in 

 table 5. Per dollar expended crested wheatgrass seed drilled on a 

 plowed seedbed produced three times as much grass as seed or pellets 

 which were airplane broadcast on a plowed seedbed. For every 

 dollar invested, plowing and drilling returned 71 pounds o( grass 

 compared to 1 pound of grass for airplane pellet seeding on a burned 

 seedbed. 



With compressed pellets a commonly accepted cost for manufacture 

 of pellets is $1.25 per acre when using the recommended one pellet 

 per square foot. On the Manti-LaSal project in Utah it cost $1.40 



