Firebreaks - the good and bad?

C

cyclonenation10

Well-known member
Curious to get others thoughts on firebreaks. On one hand, we all know that prescribed fire is critical to maintaining high quality pheasant habitat (primarily for nesting/brood rearing), so fire is almost a given in any well thought out management plan. We have our CRP acres on a 3 year burn rotation - we burn about 1/3 of all our acres each year. Instead of doing it all in thirds, it is broken into smaller chunks, to create more of a mosaic/diversity. However, with more firebreaks breaking up our CRP, I wonder if that also impacts nest survival, as an unintended consequence of fire breaks is that they also provide travel corridors for predators, etc. So instead of 75 acre field as an example, it is effectively 3 25 acre parcels, each dividend by ~30 foot of mowed clover/alfalfa mix.

I'm still convinced the benefits probably outweigh the negatives, but was curious to get everyone else's thoughts?
 
I like what you are doing. I feel those fire breaks will also provide corridors for the chicks to navigate outside of the habitat with the heavy understory. Personally, I would like to add the green fire breaks to ours. I am guessing it may not be a "necessity" as the birds are flourishing without.
EDIT..And those firebreaks make an easier path back to the truck, when you fill your limit in the way back side.
 
I can’t a find thing wrong with your philosophy I try to do the same thing just a bit larger scale and a different type of break.
I disk them all twice a year to bare dirt as weather permits even if no plan to burn that area I also only do 10-12’ width. Because of this routine I can open up to bare dirt at 6 mph, and if I time it right I get nice weedy growth like wooly croton and prairie senna and not so much grass.
None of it is CRP, it’s straight up grazing and I struggle to get the cattle operation to not burn whole sections or more. But it all sees fire about the same cycle as you do unless it just won’t burn due to lack of fuel.
 
With your 75 acre field example, if you’re burning 25 acres of it yearly, isn’t that 1/3 of your acres every year? Sorry, not entirely following.

Or, is that 75 acres broken up into lots of individual chunks with clover in between, and you burn a total of 25 acres of it each year?
 
SDinWI said:
With your 75 acre field example, if you’re burning 25 acres of it yearly, isn’t that 1/3 of your acres every year? Sorry, not entirely following.

Or, is that 75 acres broken up into lots of individual chunks with clover in between, and you burn a total of 25 acres of it each year?
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Was just using that as an example. So think One square field totalling 75 acres. That 75 acre field is dividend (by firebreaks) into three smaller 25 acre fields. Each year, we burn one of the 25 acre fields. Does that make sense?
 
UplandJim said:
I can’t a find thing wrong with your philosophy I try to do the same thing just a bit larger scale and a different type of break.
I disk them all twice a year to bare dirt as weather permits even if no plan to burn that area I also only do 10-12’ width. Because of this routine I can open up to bare dirt at 6 mph, and if I time it right I get nice weedy growth like wooly croton and prairie senna and not so much grass.
None of it is CRP, it’s straight up grazing and I struggle to get the cattle operation to not burn whole sections or more. But it all sees fire about the same cycle as you do unless it just won’t burn due to lack of fuel.
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I would think that strategy is probably just as good or better. It seems like disked ground that grows to weeds is about as good of brooding cover as anything you could possibly plant - and its all there in the seed bed for free!
 
cyclonenation10 said:
Was just using that as an example. So think One square field totalling 75 acres. That 75 acre field is dividend (by firebreaks) into three smaller 25 acre fields. Each year, we burn one of the 25 acre fields. Does that make sense?
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I'm taking the below quote from your post to mean you don't burn it all every 3rd year, but 1/3 of the acres every year. I guess I wasn't following if you were breaking up your fields even more so than one 25 acre block out of 75, but rather were burning 25 acres of the 75 in non-contiguous fashion and you had lots of burn breaks separating the different areas. That doesn't seem to be the case.

"Instead of doing it all in thirds, it is broken into smaller chunks, to create more of a mosaic/diversity."

Anyway, I think what you're doing is a great strategy. The habitat benefit from keeping your stand well maintained that you get from burning every third year for those sections is a huge pro as well as providing food for birds and deer. Probably more green food than the birds need, but oh well.

I think you're right on the consequence of those burn breaks helping predators in finding nests or have the occasional pheasant meal as they travel them, but 25 acres of habitat is a good chunk for each third of the field so that helps. Those breaks would also be a prime spot to put a couple of dog proofs, too, if you wanted. I think I caught 7 coons in 9 days this spring. :eek:
 
In the fire breaks, if it were mine, I would try white clover. It stays short and if there are many deer around, they will have it ate down to about nothing in the fall, so in the spring it would be about bare ground. Short clover puts the bugs it attracts down low too.
 
McFarmer said:
Can you cut the breaks just before you burn
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McFarmer said:
Can you cut the breaks just before you burn ?
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For a spring burn, I have been mowing in the Fall, to give a chance for the clippings to decompose, etc. I worry that if I mow close to burning (since some of the clover is pretty tall), that I may end up with dead debris on the firebreaks that could potentially provide enough fuel to carry the fire?
 
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