Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDVM) will begin using a single-color windshield sticker for all overweight permits issued with a sticker.

Orange will be used for all permit types, which is currently used only for the Ready-Mixed Concrete Truck Permit.

Permits issued with alternate colors before this date will remain effective until their expiration date.

This change affects the following permit types:

• Over Axle/Over Gross Weight Tolerance Permit
• Timber Permit
• Intermodal Shipping Container Port Permit
• Fluid Milk Transport Permit
• Ready-Mixed Concrete Truck Permit

Contact the Permit Office at 1-800-299-1700, options 2-2-2, with questions about this change.

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Herbivores are not all the same

We know that herbivores eat vegetation (for the most part), but did you know that all herbivores aren’t created equal, and neither is vegetation? For example, some herbivores like rabbits are monogastric (humans are too), which means they have a single stomach compartment and may or may not be able to digest cellulose (we can’t), which is the main substance found in plant cell walls.

On the other hand, some herbivores are polygastrics, more commonly known as ruminants. We often say these animals have four stomachs, but they have a gut made up of four compartments (rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum) that specialize in breaking down vegetation with the help of bacteria and other gut microbiota. We usually refer to the whole gut as the rumen, but the rumen is just one large compartment that acts as both a storage and fermentation vat.

Even within ruminants, all is not equal. For example, as you move from right to left on the graph below, diets become pickier. Cattle are the least picky because the combination of a large gut compared to body size and a slow metabolism enables them to eat lower-quality vegetation, such as grass, which has more cellulose and a thicker cell wall. On the other hand, white-tailed deer have a small gut compared to their body size and a fast metabolism, which means they can’t break down low-quality vegetation quick enough to feed their metabolism and will actually starve with full bellies of low-quality vegetation. This is why whitetails require high-quality, easily digestible vegetation such as forbs.

Intermediate feeders vary their diet between browsing and grazing. I do want to point out that grazers can and will utilize high-quality vegetation and not just grass, which is why too many herbivores on the landscape or too few resources (think drought years) can lead to those with picky diets suffering. The axis-whitetail issue in the hill country is an excellent example of this. Axis deer eat all the high-quality vegetation, then switch to grass, leaving nothing for whitetails to eat.