DETERMINING THE IDEAL AGE AT TRANSPORTATION TO ENHANCE THE WELL-BEING, HEALTH, AND PRODUCTIVITY OF DAIRY CALVES

Our research is focused on post-drought recovery in the semi-arid shortgrass steppe and is designed to provide the foundational knowledge necessary to sustainably manage for healthy US rangelands in the future. We will conduct a Drought Recovery Experiment, building on an existing 4-yr extreme drought study, to quantify the effects of drought legacies - alterations in ecosystems during drought that affect functioning after drought - on rangeland recovery. Our major goals are: 1) determine how drought legacies affect recovery of forage productivity, carbon cycle processes, and other ecosystem services; 2) assess how precipitation amount in the years after drought affects recovery, and 3) examine how drought legacies and precipitation amounts influence management decisions to return livestock to these grasslands.