Dryland and Crop Rotation

Eddie and Phyllis Bryan farm near Happy, Texas, southeast of Amarillo. They married in 1969 and they have two grown children and two grandchildren. They live on part of the original home place farmed by Eddie's parents. The Bryans are involved with the community and have been involved with the Texas Cooperative Extension Service in Randall County for many years. They raise stocker calves and grow wheat and milo for grain. They also grow forage sorghum for silage and red-top cane for hay.

The Bryans started to scale back the operation around 1997 but still farm around 2,800 acres of cultivated land and around 800 acres of pasture. Currently the operation is all dryland. "We had irrigated about 200 acres up to about two years ago, but now find that it is too costly," Eddie noted. Discontinuing irrigation also helped reduce labor requirements for the farm.

Wheat and cattle have always been an important part of the operation. Eddie first added milo to the operation in 1972. As they began leasing additional farm ground, Eddie established a wheat-milo-fallow rotation program. This rotation produces two dryland crops over a three-year period. Fallow periods between wheat and milo crops help to conserve moisture.

"We are flexible in what we do, depending on weather," Eddie emphasized. "No two years are exactly alike. If we are in good shape in the spring, we plant more milo. If not, we will likely wait for good wheat planting conditions in the fall."

Raising Stocker Calves and Wheat

In a normal year they can stock calves on wheat pasture at the rate of one calf per two acres during fall and winter. "We buy calves around 450 pounds in August or September. By mid-March, we will look at pulling cattle off about half the wheat acres. This year we have good moisture, so we can probably run two per acre through the spring for graze-out." Concentrating calves on half of the wheat allows them to harvest half of the acres for grain and still continue grazing cattle for a target weight of around 800 pounds by late May or early June.

Graze-out also has some advantages besides cattle gain. "We consider the graze-out program to be equivalent to fifty-percent of a summer fallow program. You do not have the same moisture conservation as a true summer fallow, but you do have more than if you had harvested grain from that ground." After cattle come off in early summer, Eddie will rip the ground to 6-8 inches. Any hard summer rains will soak in, eliminating run off. He will run a sweep plow as necessary to control summer weeds and can be in good shape for planting by September.

"There is a lot of cotton coming into this country, but my philosophy on dryland is don't plant anything that cattle won't eat. We can salvage a milo crop with cattle, and we can salvage a wheat crop with cattle. And we try to keep our hay on hand so we don't have to buy hay." Grain from their milo crop is added to silage for cattle feed.

"We also bale quite a bit of wheat, and we plant a beardless variety for that purpose." Eddie has grown Longhord, a variety from Agripro that is good for forage production, but he actually prefers an older Triumph wheat that he feels can withstand dry conditions and insect pressure very well.

Appropriate Implementation

Eddie enjoys the work of farming over the management aspects. He also enjoys the art of welding and customizes implements to suit his needs. The Bryans have a long time friendship with Wylie & Billie Byrd in nearby Tulia, Texas, who build Roll-A-Cone brand farm implements. Eddie enjoys discussing implement design with Wylie, and over the years Eddie has made many modifications to his own Roll-A-Cone implements.

Eddie is conscientious in matching the size of implement and fuel requirements to his scale of farming. For example, instead of purchasing an expensive planter and then having to increase his acreage to afford it, Eddie built his own planter using a Roll-A-Cone plow frame as the base. Observing that milo grew best along the roadside, Eddie built his planter with 30-inch row spacing, skipping every third row.

The "skip row" method allows the milo crop to utilize moisture uniformly over the entire field in the same way that the first few rows will do naturally near the ditch. This increases yield potential over the entire field.

Managing Operations in Dryland

In the Areawide wheat program, we have been interested in learning about how growers manage the costs of their dryland farming operations. This includes learning how they diversify income, how they manage risk, and how they deal with pest problems including insects, weeds, and diseases. Given the relatively lower expected yields on dryland compared to irrigated, we know that growers are going to be more frugal in spending for high input costs like fuel and chemicals—including fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.

Growers have many options in managing these inputs. Eddie Bryan's approach is to keep the costs of the operation appropriate to expected dryland yields for his area. He manages risk by emphasizing cattle gain and crops that work well with the cattle operation. With a graze-out program and a wheat variety that grows well in dryland conditions, Eddie does not generally worry about the need to spray wheat for insects.

Matching inputs to the scale of his operation allows Eddie to continue to enjoy farm work as he enters his "retirement" years. It also allows him to make time for some of the other things he enjoys—like traveling with his wife and riding his Harley Davidson.