Originally Posted by rockinbbar
...
Syc, cattle don't stay by the river, because if they did, there wouldn't be anything but a muddy trickle through the desert.

Nearest river to the desert BLM that I ranch is the Rio Grande about 120 miles away. So, they put in pretty sophisticated water systems that feed troughs through the area. Pastures are usually separated by where the water is in relation to graze. A pasture fence does it's job by keeping cattle out of a certain area, as much as it does by confining them to a given area. The water systems are indeed what lets ranchers take advantage of large areas of desert, and the cattle are indeed spread out on the desert....


Rockinbbar,

You've pretty much described the Virgin... " a muddy trickle through the desert"

This is some barren-ass country, and 120 degrees in the shade, if there were shade, which there isn't. Basically runs from Mesquite to Lake Mead.

I understand the strategy of creating watering points to spread out the animals and access forage. Also salt is used to some extent to move cows around here.

It is unclear to me how much of that infrastructure was provided by .gov and how much by the rancher.

Sycamore

p/s nice 1911 in your avatar.

Originally Posted by jorgeI
...Actually Sycamore, you are sort of right....