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IRRIGATION IN MONTANA
USING WATER EFFICIENTLY
 Irrigation is very important to many operations. Since Montana is classified as arid, irrigation is essential for many crops grown on the state. The smaller the parcel the more important irrigation water is to the land owner to maximize production. If you do not have irrigation water, your livestock management becomes more complicated due to the lack of grass recovery following a grazing event. Most range grasses cannot tolerate being grazed more than twice per year.
If you have not yet purchased land, consider the purchase of irrigated land due to the additional flexibility of the land and the flexibility of the crops that can be grown.
The key to irrigating land is to fill the soil profile to a depth of four feet assuming you have four feet of soil. Four feet of soil will hold approximately four inches of water and the plant will be able to extract 50% of the water in the soil before stressing. These rules of thumbs can be your guide to irrigating your property. The water can be applied through a spreader ditch system, gated pipes, or sprinkler systems. Many times sprinklers are necessary for small parcels since it takes a certain volume of water to properly irrigate land. Typical water rights are one miner’s inch per acre. Twenty miners inches of water does not have enough volume to push the water across the property and most ends up soaking up the ditch instead of the field. If you have a smaller parcel, it is very wise to spend some money on a simple sprinkler system. Simple sprinkler systems can be hand move aluminum pipe with a small gas or electric pump. Another advantage of sprinklers is that you can move them in the morning, go to town for 12 hours and then move them in the evening.
Sprinklers also work better for shallow soils that require more frequent irrigation. Different soil types require different soil types require different irrigation schedules. Typically the wheel line should be repeated every 12-14 days.
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