Ag Drone Services for Comanche County, Texas Farms

Ag drone service pricing in Comanche County, TX

Ag drone services in Comanche County, TX are charged per acre for the flight work, and the product you apply is billed separately. Texas drone applicators typically quote $8–$21 per acre for one pass on field crops and $18–$35 on pecans, where trees need more water per acre. Our rates:

Service	Typical rate
Coastal bermuda and hay meadow herbicide	from $12/acre
Wheat and oat fungicide or insecticide	from $12/acre
Peanut fungicide	from $13/acre
Brush spot spraying (mesquite, prickly pear)	from $20/acre
Pecan orchard fungicide or insecticide	from $22/acre

Prices move with gallons per acre, total acres in one trip, tree height, terrain and obstacles such as pivots, oil leases and power lines. The minimum job is 20 acres per visit. Pecan growers who book a season program — several scab sprays plus a casebearer pass — get one combined quote instead of per-trip pricing.

What Comanche County grows

Comanche County is livestock country with a strong forage and orchard base. The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture reports:

Item	Comanche County, TX
Farms	1,500
Land in farms	596,256 acres
Pastureland	370,482 acres
Cropland	169,567 acres
Hay and haylage	44,626 acres
Pecans	13,335 acres
Irrigated land	23,210 acres

Livestock, including a large dairy herd around De Leon and Comanche, accounts for over 90% of farm sales. That means most drone work here is forage, pasture and orchard spraying rather than row crops, plus small-grain and peanut fields along the Leon River valley.

Drone spraying in Comanche County pecan orchards

With more than 13,000 acres of pecans, Comanche County is one of the larger pecan counties in central Texas. Orchard spraying has always been hard work: airblast sprayers need dry ground between rows, and wet springs are exactly when disease pressure is highest.

Pecan scab

Scab infects young leaves and nut shucks during rainy periods from budbreak through early summer. Susceptible varieties need fungicide on a regular interval in wet years. A drone can fly the orchard the morning after a storm, when an airblast rig would bog down between rows.

Pecan nut casebearer

The first casebearer generation enters nutlets in late April to May in central Texas. Insecticide timing follows pheromone trap catches and the Texas A&M AgriLife forecast. Drones let growers hit that narrow window across several blocks in a single day.

What drones can and cannot do in orchards

Drones apply 5–10 gallons per acre and use rotor downwash to push droplets into the canopy. They work well on young and mid-size trees and on native groves with uneven spacing. Very large, dense trees may still need airblast for full canopy coverage; operators assess tree height before quoting.

Combining drone and ground work

Many Comanche County pecan growers keep their airblast sprayer for dry-weather sprays on mature blocks and hire a drone for the passes that fall right after rain, for young plantings and for native groves along creek bottoms where rows are irregular. That split keeps every scab and casebearer spray on schedule without buying a second ground rig. Zinc foliar feeding, which young pecan trees need several times each spring, can often be tank-mixed with fungicide in the same drone flight when the labels allow it, saving a separate trip through the orchard.

Hay, small grains and dairy forage

Coastal bermudagrass hay meadows, winter wheat and oats for grazing or silage, and forage sorghum feed the county's beef and dairy herds. Typical drone jobs include:

• Broadleaf and sandbur control in bermudagrass, timed before the first cutting.
• Fall armyworm treatments in late summer, when outbreaks can strip a hay meadow in days.
• Aphid and rust control in wheat and oats grown for grain or silage.
• Peanut fungicide passes for leaf spot and southern blight on the remaining peanut acreage near De Leon.

Because a drone never drives the field, there are no wheel tracks across a meadow you plan to cut, and no compaction on irrigated ground.

Brush and weed control on rangeland

Mesquite, prickly pear and annual broomweed are the main competitors on Comanche County rangeland. For scattered brush, a scouting flight maps each plant and the spray drone treats only those points, which saves herbicide compared with a broadcast pass. Dense mesquite stands can be broadcast-treated in late spring, when soil temperature and leaf maturity give the best root kill. Rough draws, creek bottoms along the Leon and Sabana rivers and fence lines are treated without risking equipment.

Booking a drone application

1. Tell us the location, crop or pasture, acres, target pest or weed, and the product you plan to use.
2. A licensed local operator confirms the per-acre rate and the next workable weather window.
3. The crew maps field or orchard boundaries, tree height, buffers and obstacles.
4. The drone applies along an RTK-guided route while logging rate, wind and temperature.
5. You receive an application record and coverage map once the job is done.

Who can legally spray by drone in Texas

Drone applicators working for hire in Texas must hold an FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate and a Part 137 agricultural aircraft operator certificate, plus a Section 44807 exemption for aircraft above 55 pounds. Pesticide application for hire also requires a commercial applicator license from the Texas Department of Agriculture. The operators we connect with Comanche County farms carry all of these credentials and liability insurance.