The Blackland Station is one of the ten original soil conservation experiment stations set up by the Soil Conservation Service in cooperation with state experiment stations. It serves 15 million acres that make up the black, waxy lands of Texas, predominantly dark, heavy prairie soil. This region has soil conservation problems peculiar to the area, with only about ten percent of the entire Blacklands free from erosion damage. Fifty percent of the area has severe damage from sheet erosion and gullying, forty percent moderate erosion.

Technician Cox records results of a soil analysis in the Station laboratory.

Station records compiled over an eleven-year period on a control plat planted continuously to corn lost 226 tons of soil per acre, or an average of 20.5 tons a year. Three rainstorms caused 27 percent of this loss, and 14 storms accounted for 52 percent of the total loss. It has been established from observations here that rainfall on a wet, tightly compacted soil causes almost five times greater loss than one of similar amount and intensity falling on a moist, loosely packed soil. A moderate rainfall of high intensity falling on dry loose soil that has been subjected to flat cultivation produced much higher runoff and soil loss than a similar rain falling on similar soil that had been left in a cloddy moist condition. Such findings show that modifications of cultural practices can play an important part in the management of soils in the Texas Blacklands.

Such plant cover as Bermuda grass furnishes the most effective means of reducing runoff and controlling erosion. For cultivated plantings, oats gives effective protection because it is at its maximum growth when the spring rains set in. Crop rotations containing small grains are effective in reducing soil and water losses, and this is greatly enhanced by strip cropping. The combination of strip cropping with terraces is more effective than either of these soil-conserving measures used alone.

Studies here indicate that wide, shallow well-sodded natural depressions extending up into the cultivated field offer the best solution for terrace-outlet problems in the Blacklands. One hundred twenty species of grasses are under observation at this Station to determine the possibilities for their use in soil conservation.

A conference in the corn field, with Superintendent Hill at the left, J. W. Collier, argronomist in corn breeding work, facing the camera.

Good land management in the Blacklands will mean the retirement of badly eroded areas from cultivation, placing them in pastures. Creek bottoms and seepy areas too wet for cultivation in years when there is excessive rainfall can furnish good pasturage for cattle and sheep. Thin soils can be utilized for the production of small grains, and the more nearly level heavier soils can produce such row crops as cotton and corn. At Blackland Station, the job is tackled with the philosophy that everything has been improved but the soil, and it has been mined. They know that the use of phosphate increases legume yields, and that legumes used as cover crops or in rotation with cotton and corn increase the yield of these crops. They have found that the use of nitrogen increases grain yield.

Studies on the utilization of pastures and a variety of feeds and surplus roughages are being made with cattle at Blackland Station. They even fertilize some of their blocks of Johnson grass, better known around the Station as "Blackland Sudan!" An abundance of green grazing is a fundamental requirement for livestock raising, and there are 35 acres of permanent pasture, 70 acres of temporary pasture, 50 acres of sweet clovers, and 125 acres of small grains on the Station. Visitors to the station are told repeatedly that a steer is probably the most efficient piece of farm machinery, for its cuts, rakes, bales, carries to the barn and feeds the hay, then distributes the manure.

Grazing studies are conducted in eight five-acre plats, with eight steers on each of the pasture plats. Starting out with the same age steers, and having recorded weights at the beginning of the studies, it has been found that a steer running on clover is 200 pounds heavier than one on unimproved pasture, and one on improved pasture is 80 pounds heavier than one on unimproved pasture.

L. Screenivas, with the government of India in Bombay province, now working on his Master's degree in Agriculture from Texas A. & M. College, is seen here conducting a rainfall splash test, a problem in erosion measurement. The special equipment was devised at the Station.

One pasture is Sudan grass, another is oats and Madrid sweet clover, another is oats and Madrid clover fertilized with 100 pounds of ammonium nitrate and 200 pounds of superphosphate to the acre, another is oats, hubam clover, and Johnson grass, another is Johnson grass alone, another is unimproved permanent pasture, another is improved permanent pasture, and still another is native meadow. More gain was put on with the oats, hubam clover and Johnson grass combination than any other grazing. All of these pastures are labeled, and the gains translated in dollars of profit per acre, so that visitors can jot down all the facts they want.

The Station is also doing some work with sheep, running them in a creek bottom pasture. Sheep are such good lawnmowers, one can fence such land, cut the weeds, and let the grass grow - the sheep will do the rest. Breeding and feeding work involves the Rambouillet and Dorset breeds, and they are trying to breed a type of sheep adapted to the Blacklands. The Rambouillet gives good fleece, the Dorset gives mutton confirmation, and the cross breed combines these features and has a wide hoof that is not bothered by foot rot. They try to get the lamb crop before the end of January here on the Station, and as a result get maximum price for fat lambs.

In the left foreground, fat beef cattle, and in center background, the sheep barn.

No poultry, dairy and swine work is being done at present on the Station, but enough of these are on hand to round out a typical Blackland farm operation.

People learn by seeing, and the great cumber of visitors, often a couple of hundred in a single day, is evidence of interest in the work being done at Blackland Experiment Station.

The fence divides two of the eight experimental pastures at Temple Station.

In scanning one of the monthly reports, I noticed that thirteen man-days were required in one month to take care of the visitors and show them around. It's down to a fine system with a loudspeaker mounted on a pick-up truck which leads the way around the Station. The visitors pile in Station trucks for the trip, and on the morning that I visited Blackland Station, two groups of veterans studying agriculture from Hill County, and groups led by the county agents of Burnet County and Bosque County were on hand. These visitors go back to their communities as missionaries of better farming as a result of what they observe at Blackland Station.

July 13, 1998
Dennis Hoffman, Project Leader
Steve Dagitz, Webmaster