Above are some prairie dogs foraging during an autumn afternoon at Greycliff State Park.
Many ranchers see the rodent's food habits as direct competition with their cattle's needs.
However, Tilman et al. O'Meilia et al. Basically this means that although the areas around prairie dog mounds may be relatively bare, the nutrition in the plants on a colony are comparable to a non-colonized area. Although the colony plants are shorter, they grow at a relatively fast rate, while non-colony plants grow more slowly. So although the latter plants might be taller and thicker, their overall nutrition value, especially in the older parts of the plants, may not be much greater than the heavily cropped ones.