. Bulletin. Agriculture; Agriculture -- Arizona. ^^'^'. Fiir. 8.—Which shall havt- the grass—the cattle, which are valuable, or the prairie dogs and har\ester ants, which are of no value? Prairie does and ants destroy grass, roots and tops, and also cause the soil to become washed away by flood waters. Use poisoned grain for the prairie dogs and London Purple for the ants. Spring Valley were discovered near Willcox about 40 years ago. Th^y are now infesting at least 200 sections of land in this valley, and ther? are many other sections which have been infested by thsse pests on which the "
. Bulletin. Agriculture; Agriculture -- Arizona. ^^'^'. Fiir. 8.—Which shall havt- the grass—the cattle, which are valuable, or the prairie dogs and har\ester ants, which are of no value? Prairie does and ants destroy grass, roots and tops, and also cause the soil to become washed away by flood waters. Use poisoned grain for the prairie dogs and London Purple for the ants. Spring Valley were discovered near Willcox about 40 years ago. Th^y are now infesting at least 200 sections of land in this valley, and ther? are many other sections which have been infested by thsse pests on which the "dogs" have destroyed the grass and have moved away. It does not talc? long for prairie dogs to destroy the grass on an area infested by them. They eat the crowns and roots of grasses, and they usually destroy the best pasture grasses first. They also prevent the reseed- ing of the grasses by cutting down the seed stalks, in their efforts to main- tain an open view of their towns. It has been estimated that 20 prairie dogs, with their normal increase, will eat or destroy as much grass in a year as a cow will consume. But this is not all the damage they do, for in destroy- ing the protective grass sod they leave the land bare for erosion, especially on slopes and hillsides. In such districts "washes" will occur which gradually increase in size, until grasses cannot again establish themselves. The writer has observed many such places. In other regions where the erosion is not so great, especially in sandy soil, when the prairie dogs are killed off and the cattle are kept off for one to two years, the good grasses reappear. Besides large areas of prairie dog-infested land in the Sulphur Spring Valley, there are many sections of infested grass land in the San Pedro. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble
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