Rangeland services
Mesquite and huisache take grazable acres out of production a little at a time, and the bill for getting them back rises the longer it sits. This calculator works out both numbers for your ground, using your costs, so you can put a defensible figure in front of an owner.
On grazing value alone, brush control is close to a wash on the average acre. Halving the canopy on a moderately encroached acre buys back a few dollars a year in forage. Set against sixty or seventy dollars of treatment, discounted over the years it takes the grass to answer, it often does not clear on its own.
That is not an argument against doing the work. It is the reason cost-share programs exist, and it is why which acres you treat, and when, decides the outcome rather than merely improving it. A program that treats the right ground at the right time pays. The same money spread across the wrong ground does not.
So the useful question is not whether brush control pays. It is what has to be true for it to pay on your place, and the calculator below is built to answer exactly that.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The sliders start at values typical for South Texas rangeland; replace them with your own bids and lease rates and the answer moves with them.
Everything below starts at a typical value. Change it to match your place.
The ground
Roughly what share of the ground the brush canopy covers.
Percentage points of canopy gained per year.
What it costs you
Chemical and application, before the canopy adjustment.
EQIP or a similar program. This is the biggest single lever.
What it returns
What a clean acre is worth to you per year, lease or run.
Treating 1,000 acres at 25% canopy
$10
profit per acre, 30 years
$9,830
across the whole job
$23,500
out of pocket after cost-share
Brush keeps thickening whether or not it is treated. Past about 30% canopy the spray stops doing the job and the work turns mechanical, which is roughly twice the price. At 0.65 points a year, this ground reaches it in 8 years.
Put it off 3 years
$1,170
more than treating now, at 27% canopy
Put it off 5 years
$1,950
more than treating now, at 28% canopy
Put it off 10 years
$50,250
more than treating now, at 32% canopy
Spraying no longer works by then
Each bar shows how far the answer moves when that one number goes from low to high and everything else stays where you set it. The long bars are what to argue about. The short ones are not worth the meeting.
Share of cost covered by cost-share
0% to 75%
Grazing value of an acre at full production
$12/ac/yr to $35/ac/yr
Share of brush killed for good
30% to 70%
How hard brush suppresses grass
1.00 to 1.90
Spray cost
$22/ac to $45/ac
Discount rate
5.0% to 8.0%
How fast brush comes back
7 yr to 18 yr
Years before the grass responds
1 yr to 3 yr
Brush canopy before treatment
15% to 40%
From a canopy and change analysis across roughly twelve thousand acres of Texas Coastal Bend rangeland, using satellite records back to 1986 and airborne laser survey of the brush canopy itself.
The public 30-metre cover products most people quote overstated woody canopy by more than half against a direct laser measurement of the same ground in the same year. On twelve thousand acres that was an eight-hundred-acre difference. Budget off the wrong number and you either buy treatment you do not need or come up short mid-season.
Ground within sixty metres of established heavy canopy was roughly nine times more likely to be gaining brush than ground out in the open. That gradient held on every one of eleven soil map units tested, so it is not simply that brush sits on the better dirt. Clearing the easy edges while leaving the thick stuff standing means paying to clear ground that gets seeded again from next door.
Below roughly thirty percent canopy you can treat by broadcast spray. Above it the spray stops performing and the job becomes mechanical at about twice the cost. Acres thickening at the measured rate of half a point to three quarters of a point a year cross that line on a timetable you can put a date on, which is what the waiting figures above are counting.
Forage production is treated as falling as canopy rises. Treatment kills a share of the stand outright; the survivors rebuild toward a level below where the stand started, because a root-killed plant does not come back. Benefits are discounted over the years you choose. Cost rises with canopy and steps up at canopy closure.
The starting values are typical, not yours. Spray bids, lease rates, and cost-share terms vary widely between counties and between years. The rankings on the sensitivity chart hold up across a wide range of inputs; the dollar amounts only mean something once you have put your own numbers in.
Root kill is the assumption worth arguing with hardest. It is driven mostly by spray timing, it varies more between species than most other terms in the model, and huisache is the harder kill. If you have historical treatment results on your own place, they are better than any published figure.
This is a planning tool, not a treatment recommendation. Herbicide selection, rates, and timing are regulated and label-specific. Work them out with your supplier, your applicator, and your local extension office.
The calculator answers whether treatment pays. Deciding which ground to treat first, and proving afterward that it worked, takes a measurement of the brush itself. We map canopy and rate of change across whole ranches, and the cost falls sharply when neighbours share a single collection.
Talk to us about your place