Crop Spraying in Denton County, TX

Crop spraying costs in Denton County

Crop spraying in Denton County, TX by drone is priced per acre, per pass, application only. Herbicide, insecticide and seed are billed separately. Texas drone rates for 2026 run $8–21 per acre for standard 2–3 gallon passes, with about $12 as the typical figure. Our operators start in line with or just below that:

Service	Typical rate
Wheat fungicide	from $11/acre
Fall armyworm and grasshopper insecticide	from $11/acre
Pasture and hay meadow herbicide	from $12/acre
Seeding and dry spreading	from $14/acre
Brush spot treatment (mesquite, honey locust)	from $19/acre

Every job carries a $250 minimum per visit, which covers most horse properties of 15–20 acres. The quote depends on acres per trip, fences and power lines, nearby homes, and the spray volume on the product label.

Crop dusting in Denton County, done with drones

Many landowners still search for a crop duster. Airplanes remain useful on large open blocks, but Denton County has become hard airplane country: the population passed 900,000 in 2020 and keeps climbing, and most farms now sit beside subdivisions, roads and lakes.

Factor	Ag airplane	Spray drone
Small fields and horse pastures	High minimums, wide turns	Efficient on 10–50 acres
Drift near homes	Higher release height	8–12 ft above the crop
Power lines and trees	Hazard on approach	Mapped buffers
Scheduling	Booked by region	Fits single-farm jobs

Pasture and hay meadow weeds

Hay and pasture dominate local land use: the 2022 Census of Agriculture counted about 126,700 acres of pastureland and 39,482 acres of harvested hay. Texas A&M AgriLife lists two main weed seasons for North Texas meadows:

• Winter and early spring: buttercup, groundsel, red sorrel, thistle rosettes and dandelion. Spray buttercup in late February to early March, before bloom.
• Summer: goatweed (croton), common and western ragweed and bitter sneezeweed, best treated while plants are small.

A 2023 AgriLife trial in Grayson County found a spray drone at 2 gallons per acre matched ground-rig weed control at 90% or better, while mowing gave only about 30% control two months later.

Spraying horse pastures in Denton County

Denton County ranks second in Texas and tenth in the nation for horse sales, with 9,680 horses in the 2022 census, and Pilot Point calls itself home to hundreds of horse ranches. Most properties are small: about 81% of the county's 2,936 farms are under 50 acres. That shapes how pasture spraying is done:

1. Pick a herbicide whose label allows grazing by horses, and follow any waiting period before turning horses back out.
2. Map barns, arenas, water troughs and hay storage as no-spray zones.
3. Spray in the morning when wind is light, and move horses to a dry lot during the flight.

Many landowners keep agricultural or wildlife valuation on their property, and regular weed control on hay meadows is part of active land management.

Wheat, sorghum and armyworm passes

Wheat is the second-largest crop in Denton County at 28,180 harvested acres, followed by about 5,000 acres of grain sorghum.

Crop	Main target	Timing
Winter wheat	Leaf and stripe rust	Flag leaf to heading, April
Grain sorghum	Sugarcane aphid, headworms	Based on scouting counts, summer
Bermuda and wheat pasture	Fall armyworm	After late-summer rains, when larvae reach threshold

AgriLife sets the fall armyworm threshold at 2–3 larvae of half an inch or longer per square foot, with treatment early in the morning or late in the evening.

Brush control in the Cross Timbers

The western half of Denton County lies in the Eastern Cross Timbers, where mesquite, honey locust, greenbriar and eastern redcedar spread into pastures around Justin, Ponder and Krum. Drones can spot-treat individual trees and patches on mapped coordinates, which uses less product than broadcast spraying a whole pasture. Brush work runs at higher spray volume and slower speed, so it is quoted separately from standard weed passes. Leaf-applied mesquite treatments work best once the trees are fully leafed out and actively growing in late spring and early summer, while greenbriar and honey locust respond best to treatment in full leaf along fence lines and creek edges.

Spraying near homes, lakes and neighboring counties

Farmland near Lewisville Lake, Ray Roberts Lake and the Elm Fork of the Trinity now borders houses on several sides. Operators check the FieldWatch registries (Texas joined as the 27th partner state) for beehives and sensitive crops, keep buffers from homes, gardens and water, and use coarse droplets on downwind edges. Denton County is not on the Texas Department of Agriculture's list of regulated-herbicide counties, but neighboring Collin and Dallas counties are, so jobs across those county lines follow additional rules.

Texas licensing for drone application

The Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) licenses drone applicators. A commercial operator needs a TDA Commercial Applicator license with the Aerial Application category plus at least one other category, such as Pasture and Rangeland, which means passing a general exam and two category exams and keeping up continuing education. The FAA requires a Part 107 remote pilot certificate, a Part 137 operator certificate, and a Section 44807 exemption with a third-class medical for drones of 55 pounds or more.