Anything I should do to help this birch tree?

[Crashcup]

We have this old birch tree in our yard. It has a big crack in the trunk, and plenty of dead wood... it's always dropping dead branches. As far as I know, it's about 50 yrs old.

My wife thinks it's ugly and we should cut it down. I still like it, and figure why not keep it as long as we can.
I know I'm behind on my pruning, and I should take off the dead branches. But is there anything else that would be helpful? Should I take off a few of the more horizontal branches to take some of the load off? Or just stick to taking off dead branches? Anything else?

Thanks!

 

[Jason Douglas]

If that torsional crack doesnt take care of it sooner or later, borers or crown rot will.

There's a semblance of a root flair visible but not much. Birch borer is attracted to stressed and declining trees.

 

[BC WetCoast]

Birches, in their native environment, are a pioneer species, in that they will colonize a site after a fire and disturbance. They then give way to a secondary or mid-seral species. At fifty years, the tree is reaching very old age and is beginning to break down.

If you want to keep it, remove the deadwood and prevent it from getting drought stressed (ie water it - once a week for about 4 hours to allow water to soak through the soil). Some slow release fertilizer probably wouldn't hurt either. I wouldn't do to much pruning as you will be removing the foliage the tree utilizes to build up reserves to get it through the winter and fight of pests.

 

[Marine5068]

I would cut it down before it falls.
Looks like some bad damage to it and its close to its end of life.

 

[ironman_gq]

My experience with birch trees is that once they start dropping limbs they're pretty much done. They rot from the inside very fast and those limbs are the first sign that it's on its way out. I've cut down a lot of birch trees that seem healthy other than a few larger dead limbs only to find that the trunk is punky all the way to the stump.