BlackTailedPrairieDog_Students_Graves_Russell_DoddCityTX_1February2022_Reel4091.mp3

Russell Graves [00:00:00] For like 10 years, I would take kids out every spring on this same prairie dog town. For 10 years we'd do the same basic observations every single year and we did this, did it the same way.

Russell Graves [00:00:12] And we would measure the town using GPS. We would just do an outline of the town when we'd first go out there. And that way, over time, we could see and even if we were to animate it, it would have been cool. You could see how the town would ebb and flow in terms of its size and shape. It wasn't a static entity that, you know, in good years when you'd have more prairie dogs, the town would get a little bigger and the boundaries would change, when in lean years, might get be a little smaller and the boundary would change. So it was fascinating to look at that.

Russell Graves [00:00:41] We also did our best guess and would mark with GPS the active versus inactive burrows within that town. And just, and just again to show how dynamic the town is from a, the town itself is living and breathing.

Russell Graves [00:00:57] And you know, we'd do other things, like we would measure the soil infiltration rate. In other words, you know, we had the question, "Do prairie dogs affect how fast water infiltrates back into the soil when it rains?" And so we'd test infiltration rates both in the town and outside the town on like soil types, where the prairie dogs hadn't colonized yet and see if there was a difference.

Russell Graves [00:01:21] We would test the forage quality and quantity in the town versus outside the town, on, on, on identical soil types. And that was a key part, just to keep consistency in our observations and to see if there was any difference in soil quantity and quality that the, that the prairie dogs influenced, you know, again in the town as opposed to outside the town.

Russell Graves [00:01:43] Or we'd do observations and record the number, the kind of animals we saw in the town when we had visited.

Russell Graves [00:01:50] We had a reference point, a T-post in the ground and we would take a reference picture of the prairie dog town every single year when we were out there.

Russell Graves [00:01:57] So we'd spend about two months a year with this one class I taught, going out every single day, weather-permitting, and taking these observations on these prairie dog towns and then just trying to understand more about them.

Russell Graves [00:02:09] And one thing we did for several years that was kind of cool is I got a grant. I actually got a couple of, I got several grants, but a couple of noteworthy ones. One grant provided us with a, with a fiber optic probe that we could put down in the holes and look at the prairie dogs in the burrows. And that was just, that was cool, not from a scientific standpoint, but just from a practical standpoint that you could take people out there and say, "Let's go look at prairie dogs in the holes!" That was kind of neat like that.

Russell Graves [00:02:36] But the ultimate question we tried to figure out is, because through all the data that we would collect, we started figuring out that inside the prairie dog town, they did indeed affect the, the plant quantity. So in other words, the pounds of forage per acre was less inside the prairie dog town that we found, as opposed to like soil types outside the prairie dog towns.

Russell Graves [00:03:00] But, and here's, this is the "but", but if you look at, if you look at numbers like crude protein and total digestible nutrients and all those things that cattlemen really focus in on when they're trying to determine the best rations to feed their cattle, the forage inside the prairie dog towns was far superior than the forage outside of the prairie dog towns.

Russell Graves [00:03:20] So it came down to nutrient density and caloric density. You know, we can get full by eating ice cream all day, but a well-balanced meal that includes maybe some protein and salad is a lot better for us.

Russell Graves [00:03:32] And so just from a, you know, not a scientific standpoint, but from a practical standpoint, we figured out that inside the prairie dog town, yeah, they didn't get as much food to eat, but it was better food for them, and the cattle probably did better.