26 BULLETIN 211, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF 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. (Pl. 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. , 
1 The word management as used in this bulletin in eyery 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. 
