Caustic Burno
Well-known member
Ranching in Extreme Environments
By Kristen Tribe and Ellen Humphries
Ranchland, very roughly defined, is any open land not used for row crop production, forestry or other cultivated use. What is left over are some parcels of land which could be considered extreme environments – low and wet, high and rocky, or just plain distant from the rest of us.
Along the Gulf Coast, the sight of cattle grazing in a pasture thick with green grass warms the heart - until those cattle are driven to distraction by swarms of vicious mosquitoes.
West Texas cattle benefit from strong grasses -- when there's rain.
North in the shortgrass prairies of the Panhandle, cattle seem to be in a producer's paradise -- but you have to drive for days to get there.
We talked to four Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) members who ranch in extreme environments to find out how they cope. These are not in-depth discussions of their operations, but rather snapshots of the varying terrain of Texas and how these members see their resources as challenges, as well as gifts.
Swatting 'skeeters in the South
Linda Joy Stovall, who raises Beefmaster cattle along the coast where the Colorado River empties into the Intercoastal Canal, says the Gulf Coast has actually been in a drought for the last four years. As of this August, the area had only received 15 inches of rainfall all year, and it usually enjoys 25 to 30 inches by the end of the summer.
Unfortunately, the lack of rain hasn't diminished the mosquito population.
"We have so many mosquitoes, we even have a hybrid," says Stovall. "It's an F-1 cross between a fire ant and a yellow jacket." She's only half-joking, though.
Even in the heat of the summer, it's not unusual to see Stovall gathering cattle in a denim jacket with a rag over her nose and mouth, or mosquito netting over her head to protect herself from their vicious bites.
Dr. Todd Thrift, formerly an East Texas-based Extension Livestock Specialist and now animal science assistant professor, University of Florida, Gainesville, says mosquitoes also bite cattle, and the animals have been known to become anemic due to blood loss. As mosquitoes begin to swarm, cattle will often become restless and may not even bed down for the night in an effort to shake the pests. If the cattle have access to the beach, they'll seek out the sandy shores where the ocean breeze helps keep mosquitoes at bay.
Leroy Ezer ranches at Anahuac, across the bay from Galveston. His lands come within a mile of the coast, so his cattle don't seek out sandy shores. But, they do seek out each other's company. Ezer's herd is large enough to allow him to put groups of 150 to 200 cows in a pasture. "If you ride around at sunup you will find the cows bedded up in a real tight knot. They will get in that tight knot and put off an odor. You will be surprised, but after a short period of time the insects will leave them alone."
Ezer attributes this grouping trait to the Brahman influence. "Basically we have to keep some Brahman characteristics in our females. I'm using quite a few Charolais bulls and a few of Rob Brown's (Throckmorton, Texas) Hotlander bulls, because of their heat tolerance. We have to have the Brahman influence in a crossbreeding program in our cows because of the heat, insects and humidity."
Horses are also plagued by mosquitoes in the Gulf Coast region. Ezer provides his working horses some relief from the maddening insects by burning a round bale of poor quality hay in a 40-acre horse trap.
"After the flame burns all the outer grass off, it will just smoke all night long. My horses know it and they will come to it like coming to feed. When they are coming across the pasture to the smoke at sundown," Ezer describes, "they'll be fighting the mosquitoes, stomping, throwing their heads, swishing their tails. When they get in that smoke, it's like a tranquilizer. They smell like smoke, but they get relief."
Intense disease
Mosquitoes and other biting insects can also carry other diseases. Anaplasmosis, a disease that has plagued some Gulf Coast ranchers, is often associated with high populations of biting insects.
Dr. L.R. Sprott, animal science professor and Extension specialist, Texas A&M University, College Station, emphasizes even though it's found in areas with high insect populations, the disease can also be transmitted by contaminated cutting instruments (knives, needles, dehorning devices)." He also says anaplasmosis is not a "universal problem along the coast," but there are pockets of the disease there and in East Texas. No matter the location, the death loss can be devastating if a herd becomes infected and is not treated in time.
Stovall says she has fought anaplasmosis in her herd before, among other diseases.
She and her neighbors joke that "any disease on the coast has to have originated in the Gulf."
"Where else could it have come from?" she asks with a laugh. Cattle new to the herd must get a series of shots, because it doesn't take long for them to succumb to the diseases that are often more prevalent in the coast's wet conditions.
Wet conditions also encourage parasite afflictions. Thrift says there are probably double and triple the parasite problems, with things like liver flukes, for about a 25- to 50-mile stretch along the coast.
Ezer explains his parasite management program succinctly, "We spray for the external. We worm religiously for the internal." Every animal in his herd is wormed at least once a year and some animals get two treatments. He adds that horn flies and deer flies are also a problem in his area.
Bill Gearhart ranches near Valentine, Texas, about 30 miles from Mexico, as the buzzard flies. Mosquitoes aren't an issue for him. "The worst thing we treat for is horn flies or biting flies that bother and molest the cattle," he says. "We either spray or put out rubs."
"Unlike the Gulf Coast, where internal parasites are absolutely horrible, we don't suffer from that. We have very few internal parasites out here," Gearhart explains. "I usually worm the cattle once a year, and on some occasions, if the condition of the cattle is good, I may not worm. Last year it was so dry and the condition of the cattle was poor we went ahead and wormed them anyway. But, I think it was drought and lack of any strength in the grass" that caused the poor condition.
Gearhart describes his commercial herd as predominantly black with up to a quarter Brahman influence for hybrid vigor.
The Brainard family, Canadian, Texas, runs primarily Hereford cattle on their Panhandle lands. Swasey Brainard says pests for his area are "basically, flies in general. In the summertime the flies get really bad. You can go out there in the summertime and the bulls and females will be covered from their nose to the tip of their tails." Brainard worms his cattle once a year when the females are pregnancy checked in the fall. The calves are wormed at branding in the spring and again at the fall working. But, Brainard says levels of internal parasites in the Panhandle don't compare to what Stovall and Ezer face.
"The one thing with our operation, as spread out as we are," Brainard says, "we lease ranches. Some of our neighbors bring in stocker cattle. We have to keep in touch with them and know where they get their cattle. One year we had some coccidiosis kick up with some of our calves." Brainard's hired hand was doctoring the sick cattle and discovered the disease was coming downstream from a neighboring ranch. "There was live water that ran through that pasture, and we figured out it got kicked up on the neighbor's land (where the stream started) and came down to our cattle."
Specific Grasses
It's a testament to the resiliency and provision of nature that each extreme environment offers a unique forage for cattle and wildlife. Ezer explains one of the good characteristics of his brackish marsh pastures is they provide substantial grazing in the winter months. "Our cattle do pretty well in the marsh if the weather's not too bad, if it's not raining and freezing. It's been a practice here forever that you carry your cows to the marsh in the winter and you come out in the spring, when the insects get bad."
Two grasses specific to the brackish marsh are marshhay cordgrass and seashore paspalum. "We're very high on that paspalum grass," Ezer says. Research shows it to have a 13 to 14 percent protein content. "That's with no fertilizer or anything. It's really good and the cattle do well on it." Ezer explains seashore paspalum grows thick, lush and rich green in the summer months. In the wintertime, it dies down to the waterline in the marshes. Cows native to the Gulf Coast area know to graze below the waterline and will come up with a mouthful of nutrition.
"The worst thing that can happen to us is to not get rains in the wintertime and then get a heavy frost or a freeze," he says. Without standing water in the marshes, there would be no grass reserve because the paspalum freezes back to the waterline. "So if there are three or four inches of water over the grass, it's still green under the water. I will see cows out in the marsh grazing and they are still getting food value. The cows that are natives know how to go out in that marsh and make a living," Ezer says.
Out in West Texas, Gearhart's cattle graze on very strong grass -- blue grama, black grama, tobosa grass, sideoats grama, and a few other species. "I like to see some frost on green grass," Gearhart says. "It seems to retain its strength. If the grass has completely dried out before frost, the protein value really falls and it has little or no food value."
"Right now, I would consider my place marginal," he explains. "We've been through five or six years of drought. This year we thought we'd get some relief, but it hasn't happened." The mountainous part of his ranch, which usually receives the most rainfall, has not. Land at the lower elevation has had about 10 inches of rain this year and some of the pastures are recovering. "We have roughly 400 cows on 30,000 acres," Gearhart says. "Normally, we would have more than that, plus we would buy some yearlings. That won't happen this year or next year."
Brainard describes his family's ranch lands as "mostly shortgrass plains. Once you go underneath the (Caprock) along the Canadian River, you've got bluestem. All of our pastures are native grass country. My granddad and my dad, they way they ran the ranch was to keep it as uncomplicated as they could," he says to explain the native pastures rather than improved pastures. "It's worked for them," and Brainard doesn't seem inclined to alter their good practices. He adds a historical note. "My great-grandfather and grandfather started running a cow herd in 1917. They were buying bulls from the Bivins family out of Amarillo. That's when they started their Hereford cow operation."
Higher ground -- it's a relative thing
Ezer chuckles when he talks about the extreme elevation of his pasture land, both owned and leased. It is extreme because it is extremely low. "Our highest elevation is 15 feet," he says, repeating the figure as one-five, because I thought I had heard 50 feet. "The part that is 15 feet is maybe 150 acres, but it's a gradual fall to where the low land is." About half the land he operates on is one-foot or lower elevation.
His cattle don't experience any feet and leg problems due to the marshy conditions, "because we have what we call cow walks, which were built years ago. We can't build any new ones because the government won't let us disturb the marsh in any way. But we can maintain those which are already in place. Thank goodness these were put in years ago. We have ground in all of our marsh pastures that is high enough for our cows to get out and bed down on --" he pauses a long moment, and adds "hard ground. I started to say dry ground," he laughs, "but in the winter time it might be raining. There might not be dry ground."
Gearhart's elevation is just the opposite. "My house is more than a mile above sea level – 5,500 feet. The country runs east to west toward Hwy. 90 and we probably lose 1,000 feet in elevation." At the lowest point of the ranch, near Valentine, the elevation is still 4,000 feet or higher.
Dealing with stress
When buying cattle, whether it's a bull or replacement females, Gulf Coast ranchers look for certain qualities. Not only do the animals have to withstand an onslaught of pests and disease, but they also have to tolerate Gulf Coast weather.
Along the coast there is a greater threat of severe weather, hurricanes and floods.
"You just have to work with Mother Nature," says Stovall. Stovall recalls the time when Hurricane Francis looked like it was going to hit the Gulf Coast.
"Everyone in Corpus started moving their cattle inland," she says. "So you couldn't find any cowboys and day help was getting paid big money."
Stovall says although she moved her cattle to her top trap, she didn't have the help to get them inland. Fortunately, she says her property was on the dry side of the storm and she didn't even get a good rain out of it. "I looked really smart," she says with a laugh, "because I didn't have all the extra costs to sort my cattle from my neighbors' or to bring them back."
Stovall says luckily she has never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane in her 12 years along the coast, but the day-to-day heat and humidity are a constant challenge.
For example, even though the temperature was only in the high 90s during early August, the heat index was about 105 degrees. To make matters worse, it only cooled down at night to no less than 80 degrees.
Thrift explains that the lack of nighttime cooling is often what makes the weather so unbearable for animals along the coast, whereas animals in a state like Arizona suffer through high daytime temperatures, but find relief in the desert's significant nighttime cooling.
The most serious way heat affects the profitability of beef cattle operations is its detrimental effect on the cattle's reproductive systems.
Sprott says he does not recommend breeding cows in July, August or September along the Gulf because the heat and humidity affects fertility in males and females.
In "Review: Factors Affecting Decisions on When to Calve Beef Females," by Sprott, along with professors from Oklahoma State University and the University of Nebraska, it says, "numerous female reproductive functions are impacted by heat stress."
For example, during hot temperatures, blood moves away from the inner organs to the outer extremities to dissipate heat. This reduces blood flow as well as the transport of hormones to the uterus.
After conception, heat stress can reduce embryo survival as well as cause problems with its development. According to "Factors Affecting ...", heat stress can also shorten estrus and the time of ovulation from the onset of estrus.
Heat stress during the middle to the end of pregnancy can reduce calf birth weight and subsequent milk production in the dam.
In bulls, heat stress reduces sperm quality and numbers, and unfortunately, it takes a long time to return to normal sperm production.
The paper also notes that male libido and a bull's serving capacity are lower during hot weather. Besides the problems with the female reproductive system, this could also be cause for a reduced pregnancy rate because bulls are not seeking out and servicing females.
Sprott says he has known some people to have success with summer breeding, but he thought it had something to do with forage quality in those particular instances. He still advises against summer breeding because there are numerous trials indicating it's not advisable.
Dryer months are stressful for Gearhart's and Brainard's herds. Gearhart says, "We try to calve from January to February and get the calves off the mama cows in late October to early November. I hate for the cows to have a large calf on them going into the winter. Early January is dry and it is more stressful if they have a big calf on them then."
Brainard concurs, "We wean starting Oct. 1. If it's really dry, we wean earlier. We summer our replacement heifers in Kansas and they like for us to be off their pastures by Oct. 15. So, by October we do some shuffling around to make room for those cattle coming home."
Fighting predators
Once calves are on the ground, Gulf Coast ranchers have to fend off predators just like anyone else. Buzzards and coyotes are a problem, as they are across the state, but they also deal with predators most people have only encountered via television's Discovery Channel.
"I'll lose two or three calves every year to alligators," says Stovall. "They travel across the pasture from one water source to another."
In fact, Stovall recently encountered a sharp-toothed surprise as she was riding horseback. She began crossing a washed-out area filled with water and got almost halfway across before she realized there was an alligator waiting for them on the other side.
"I think we scared the gator as much as it scared us," she says. "He crashed into the water and was headed straight for us. The horse just froze."
Stovall says she was trying to get her horse to move because she knew the gator was coming to the right of them, but there was nowhere to go. They just had to continue charging through the shallow water determined to make it to the other side.
Stovall says alligators can run as fast as a horse in short bursts, but she says the secret to outrunning one is zigzagging.
"Gators can run fast in a straight line," says Stovall, "but they can't zig zag."
Unfortunately, alligator season is only for a limited time each year, and they can't be killed any other time. Although it takes a little creative thinking, they can be run off, at least temporarily.
Often gators will take up residence in watering holes or watering troughs, and then they snap at cattle when they come to drink. Stovall says if she can't get them out, she'll just turn off the water at the trough, and once it dries up, the gator will leave. Then she turns it back on and the cows have a place to drink again. She's even known some people who have roped the gators and carried them off.
The biggest one she's seen in her water troughs was 10.5 feet, but she knows people have caught bigger ones out of their water troughs.
A predator that has proven even more devious for Stovall has been humans, and these folks aren't just cattle thieves. Imagine a self-taught butcher on the beach.
Stovall has an undivided interest, along with six or seven other people, on the East Matagorda Peninsula where she takes her dry cows in the wintertime. This lightens the load on her other pastures during drought times such as those of the last four years. They stay on a 17-mile stretch of public beach that stretches from Sargent to Matagorda.
Since it's a public beach, it's impossible to keep the cattle away from the beachcombers, and some of them are looking for more than shells. Stovall says inevitably some of the cattle get killed because people see it as free beef. She says it's a risk she takes.
The ranchers in the dryer country don't contend with alligators, but coyotes are a common problem. Brainard says, "We have lots of coyotes. Seems like they're getting worse." Feral hogs are adding to the predator problem on Brainard's lands down by Canadian.
When asked about predators, Gearhart answers, "Oh yeah, bad. We've got plenty of coyotes out here and mountain lions." Gearhart and his neighbors have formed a ranchers predator control club. Dues are paid to the Texas Wildlife Damage Management Fund in San Antonio, and go toward the salary of a trapper, who is also paid by Animal Damage Control. "We pay our dues to them and they reimburse our trapper. As far as the lions are concerned, I have a full time lion hunter who hunts on a number of ranches in this mountainous area. We pay him a monthly fee. If he traps a lion on your land, he charges another fee."
Feral hogs are a bit of a problem for Gearhart. He encourages his hunters to take the hogs when they see them. Also, the predator control club takes care of any large groups of feral hogs they may come across by airplane or helicopter.
Extreme Environments, Extreme Tenacity
For all their differences in rainfall, range and resources, our four ranchers seem to share a similar love of the cattle business and the lifestyle. Whether coastal, mountainous or prairie ranchers, they all work with their neighbors to solve problems and help each other out. The environments may be different, but the underlying commitment to their chosen industry is the same.
By Kristen Tribe and Ellen Humphries
Ranchland, very roughly defined, is any open land not used for row crop production, forestry or other cultivated use. What is left over are some parcels of land which could be considered extreme environments – low and wet, high and rocky, or just plain distant from the rest of us.
Along the Gulf Coast, the sight of cattle grazing in a pasture thick with green grass warms the heart - until those cattle are driven to distraction by swarms of vicious mosquitoes.
West Texas cattle benefit from strong grasses -- when there's rain.
North in the shortgrass prairies of the Panhandle, cattle seem to be in a producer's paradise -- but you have to drive for days to get there.
We talked to four Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) members who ranch in extreme environments to find out how they cope. These are not in-depth discussions of their operations, but rather snapshots of the varying terrain of Texas and how these members see their resources as challenges, as well as gifts.
Swatting 'skeeters in the South
Linda Joy Stovall, who raises Beefmaster cattle along the coast where the Colorado River empties into the Intercoastal Canal, says the Gulf Coast has actually been in a drought for the last four years. As of this August, the area had only received 15 inches of rainfall all year, and it usually enjoys 25 to 30 inches by the end of the summer.
Unfortunately, the lack of rain hasn't diminished the mosquito population.
"We have so many mosquitoes, we even have a hybrid," says Stovall. "It's an F-1 cross between a fire ant and a yellow jacket." She's only half-joking, though.
Even in the heat of the summer, it's not unusual to see Stovall gathering cattle in a denim jacket with a rag over her nose and mouth, or mosquito netting over her head to protect herself from their vicious bites.
Dr. Todd Thrift, formerly an East Texas-based Extension Livestock Specialist and now animal science assistant professor, University of Florida, Gainesville, says mosquitoes also bite cattle, and the animals have been known to become anemic due to blood loss. As mosquitoes begin to swarm, cattle will often become restless and may not even bed down for the night in an effort to shake the pests. If the cattle have access to the beach, they'll seek out the sandy shores where the ocean breeze helps keep mosquitoes at bay.
Leroy Ezer ranches at Anahuac, across the bay from Galveston. His lands come within a mile of the coast, so his cattle don't seek out sandy shores. But, they do seek out each other's company. Ezer's herd is large enough to allow him to put groups of 150 to 200 cows in a pasture. "If you ride around at sunup you will find the cows bedded up in a real tight knot. They will get in that tight knot and put off an odor. You will be surprised, but after a short period of time the insects will leave them alone."
Ezer attributes this grouping trait to the Brahman influence. "Basically we have to keep some Brahman characteristics in our females. I'm using quite a few Charolais bulls and a few of Rob Brown's (Throckmorton, Texas) Hotlander bulls, because of their heat tolerance. We have to have the Brahman influence in a crossbreeding program in our cows because of the heat, insects and humidity."
Horses are also plagued by mosquitoes in the Gulf Coast region. Ezer provides his working horses some relief from the maddening insects by burning a round bale of poor quality hay in a 40-acre horse trap.
"After the flame burns all the outer grass off, it will just smoke all night long. My horses know it and they will come to it like coming to feed. When they are coming across the pasture to the smoke at sundown," Ezer describes, "they'll be fighting the mosquitoes, stomping, throwing their heads, swishing their tails. When they get in that smoke, it's like a tranquilizer. They smell like smoke, but they get relief."
Intense disease
Mosquitoes and other biting insects can also carry other diseases. Anaplasmosis, a disease that has plagued some Gulf Coast ranchers, is often associated with high populations of biting insects.
Dr. L.R. Sprott, animal science professor and Extension specialist, Texas A&M University, College Station, emphasizes even though it's found in areas with high insect populations, the disease can also be transmitted by contaminated cutting instruments (knives, needles, dehorning devices)." He also says anaplasmosis is not a "universal problem along the coast," but there are pockets of the disease there and in East Texas. No matter the location, the death loss can be devastating if a herd becomes infected and is not treated in time.
Stovall says she has fought anaplasmosis in her herd before, among other diseases.
She and her neighbors joke that "any disease on the coast has to have originated in the Gulf."
"Where else could it have come from?" she asks with a laugh. Cattle new to the herd must get a series of shots, because it doesn't take long for them to succumb to the diseases that are often more prevalent in the coast's wet conditions.
Wet conditions also encourage parasite afflictions. Thrift says there are probably double and triple the parasite problems, with things like liver flukes, for about a 25- to 50-mile stretch along the coast.
Ezer explains his parasite management program succinctly, "We spray for the external. We worm religiously for the internal." Every animal in his herd is wormed at least once a year and some animals get two treatments. He adds that horn flies and deer flies are also a problem in his area.
Bill Gearhart ranches near Valentine, Texas, about 30 miles from Mexico, as the buzzard flies. Mosquitoes aren't an issue for him. "The worst thing we treat for is horn flies or biting flies that bother and molest the cattle," he says. "We either spray or put out rubs."
"Unlike the Gulf Coast, where internal parasites are absolutely horrible, we don't suffer from that. We have very few internal parasites out here," Gearhart explains. "I usually worm the cattle once a year, and on some occasions, if the condition of the cattle is good, I may not worm. Last year it was so dry and the condition of the cattle was poor we went ahead and wormed them anyway. But, I think it was drought and lack of any strength in the grass" that caused the poor condition.
Gearhart describes his commercial herd as predominantly black with up to a quarter Brahman influence for hybrid vigor.
The Brainard family, Canadian, Texas, runs primarily Hereford cattle on their Panhandle lands. Swasey Brainard says pests for his area are "basically, flies in general. In the summertime the flies get really bad. You can go out there in the summertime and the bulls and females will be covered from their nose to the tip of their tails." Brainard worms his cattle once a year when the females are pregnancy checked in the fall. The calves are wormed at branding in the spring and again at the fall working. But, Brainard says levels of internal parasites in the Panhandle don't compare to what Stovall and Ezer face.
"The one thing with our operation, as spread out as we are," Brainard says, "we lease ranches. Some of our neighbors bring in stocker cattle. We have to keep in touch with them and know where they get their cattle. One year we had some coccidiosis kick up with some of our calves." Brainard's hired hand was doctoring the sick cattle and discovered the disease was coming downstream from a neighboring ranch. "There was live water that ran through that pasture, and we figured out it got kicked up on the neighbor's land (where the stream started) and came down to our cattle."
Specific Grasses
It's a testament to the resiliency and provision of nature that each extreme environment offers a unique forage for cattle and wildlife. Ezer explains one of the good characteristics of his brackish marsh pastures is they provide substantial grazing in the winter months. "Our cattle do pretty well in the marsh if the weather's not too bad, if it's not raining and freezing. It's been a practice here forever that you carry your cows to the marsh in the winter and you come out in the spring, when the insects get bad."
Two grasses specific to the brackish marsh are marshhay cordgrass and seashore paspalum. "We're very high on that paspalum grass," Ezer says. Research shows it to have a 13 to 14 percent protein content. "That's with no fertilizer or anything. It's really good and the cattle do well on it." Ezer explains seashore paspalum grows thick, lush and rich green in the summer months. In the wintertime, it dies down to the waterline in the marshes. Cows native to the Gulf Coast area know to graze below the waterline and will come up with a mouthful of nutrition.
"The worst thing that can happen to us is to not get rains in the wintertime and then get a heavy frost or a freeze," he says. Without standing water in the marshes, there would be no grass reserve because the paspalum freezes back to the waterline. "So if there are three or four inches of water over the grass, it's still green under the water. I will see cows out in the marsh grazing and they are still getting food value. The cows that are natives know how to go out in that marsh and make a living," Ezer says.
Out in West Texas, Gearhart's cattle graze on very strong grass -- blue grama, black grama, tobosa grass, sideoats grama, and a few other species. "I like to see some frost on green grass," Gearhart says. "It seems to retain its strength. If the grass has completely dried out before frost, the protein value really falls and it has little or no food value."
"Right now, I would consider my place marginal," he explains. "We've been through five or six years of drought. This year we thought we'd get some relief, but it hasn't happened." The mountainous part of his ranch, which usually receives the most rainfall, has not. Land at the lower elevation has had about 10 inches of rain this year and some of the pastures are recovering. "We have roughly 400 cows on 30,000 acres," Gearhart says. "Normally, we would have more than that, plus we would buy some yearlings. That won't happen this year or next year."
Brainard describes his family's ranch lands as "mostly shortgrass plains. Once you go underneath the (Caprock) along the Canadian River, you've got bluestem. All of our pastures are native grass country. My granddad and my dad, they way they ran the ranch was to keep it as uncomplicated as they could," he says to explain the native pastures rather than improved pastures. "It's worked for them," and Brainard doesn't seem inclined to alter their good practices. He adds a historical note. "My great-grandfather and grandfather started running a cow herd in 1917. They were buying bulls from the Bivins family out of Amarillo. That's when they started their Hereford cow operation."
Higher ground -- it's a relative thing
Ezer chuckles when he talks about the extreme elevation of his pasture land, both owned and leased. It is extreme because it is extremely low. "Our highest elevation is 15 feet," he says, repeating the figure as one-five, because I thought I had heard 50 feet. "The part that is 15 feet is maybe 150 acres, but it's a gradual fall to where the low land is." About half the land he operates on is one-foot or lower elevation.
His cattle don't experience any feet and leg problems due to the marshy conditions, "because we have what we call cow walks, which were built years ago. We can't build any new ones because the government won't let us disturb the marsh in any way. But we can maintain those which are already in place. Thank goodness these were put in years ago. We have ground in all of our marsh pastures that is high enough for our cows to get out and bed down on --" he pauses a long moment, and adds "hard ground. I started to say dry ground," he laughs, "but in the winter time it might be raining. There might not be dry ground."
Gearhart's elevation is just the opposite. "My house is more than a mile above sea level – 5,500 feet. The country runs east to west toward Hwy. 90 and we probably lose 1,000 feet in elevation." At the lowest point of the ranch, near Valentine, the elevation is still 4,000 feet or higher.
Dealing with stress
When buying cattle, whether it's a bull or replacement females, Gulf Coast ranchers look for certain qualities. Not only do the animals have to withstand an onslaught of pests and disease, but they also have to tolerate Gulf Coast weather.
Along the coast there is a greater threat of severe weather, hurricanes and floods.
"You just have to work with Mother Nature," says Stovall. Stovall recalls the time when Hurricane Francis looked like it was going to hit the Gulf Coast.
"Everyone in Corpus started moving their cattle inland," she says. "So you couldn't find any cowboys and day help was getting paid big money."
Stovall says although she moved her cattle to her top trap, she didn't have the help to get them inland. Fortunately, she says her property was on the dry side of the storm and she didn't even get a good rain out of it. "I looked really smart," she says with a laugh, "because I didn't have all the extra costs to sort my cattle from my neighbors' or to bring them back."
Stovall says luckily she has never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane in her 12 years along the coast, but the day-to-day heat and humidity are a constant challenge.
For example, even though the temperature was only in the high 90s during early August, the heat index was about 105 degrees. To make matters worse, it only cooled down at night to no less than 80 degrees.
Thrift explains that the lack of nighttime cooling is often what makes the weather so unbearable for animals along the coast, whereas animals in a state like Arizona suffer through high daytime temperatures, but find relief in the desert's significant nighttime cooling.
The most serious way heat affects the profitability of beef cattle operations is its detrimental effect on the cattle's reproductive systems.
Sprott says he does not recommend breeding cows in July, August or September along the Gulf because the heat and humidity affects fertility in males and females.
In "Review: Factors Affecting Decisions on When to Calve Beef Females," by Sprott, along with professors from Oklahoma State University and the University of Nebraska, it says, "numerous female reproductive functions are impacted by heat stress."
For example, during hot temperatures, blood moves away from the inner organs to the outer extremities to dissipate heat. This reduces blood flow as well as the transport of hormones to the uterus.
After conception, heat stress can reduce embryo survival as well as cause problems with its development. According to "Factors Affecting ...", heat stress can also shorten estrus and the time of ovulation from the onset of estrus.
Heat stress during the middle to the end of pregnancy can reduce calf birth weight and subsequent milk production in the dam.
In bulls, heat stress reduces sperm quality and numbers, and unfortunately, it takes a long time to return to normal sperm production.
The paper also notes that male libido and a bull's serving capacity are lower during hot weather. Besides the problems with the female reproductive system, this could also be cause for a reduced pregnancy rate because bulls are not seeking out and servicing females.
Sprott says he has known some people to have success with summer breeding, but he thought it had something to do with forage quality in those particular instances. He still advises against summer breeding because there are numerous trials indicating it's not advisable.
Dryer months are stressful for Gearhart's and Brainard's herds. Gearhart says, "We try to calve from January to February and get the calves off the mama cows in late October to early November. I hate for the cows to have a large calf on them going into the winter. Early January is dry and it is more stressful if they have a big calf on them then."
Brainard concurs, "We wean starting Oct. 1. If it's really dry, we wean earlier. We summer our replacement heifers in Kansas and they like for us to be off their pastures by Oct. 15. So, by October we do some shuffling around to make room for those cattle coming home."
Fighting predators
Once calves are on the ground, Gulf Coast ranchers have to fend off predators just like anyone else. Buzzards and coyotes are a problem, as they are across the state, but they also deal with predators most people have only encountered via television's Discovery Channel.
"I'll lose two or three calves every year to alligators," says Stovall. "They travel across the pasture from one water source to another."
In fact, Stovall recently encountered a sharp-toothed surprise as she was riding horseback. She began crossing a washed-out area filled with water and got almost halfway across before she realized there was an alligator waiting for them on the other side.
"I think we scared the gator as much as it scared us," she says. "He crashed into the water and was headed straight for us. The horse just froze."
Stovall says she was trying to get her horse to move because she knew the gator was coming to the right of them, but there was nowhere to go. They just had to continue charging through the shallow water determined to make it to the other side.
Stovall says alligators can run as fast as a horse in short bursts, but she says the secret to outrunning one is zigzagging.
"Gators can run fast in a straight line," says Stovall, "but they can't zig zag."
Unfortunately, alligator season is only for a limited time each year, and they can't be killed any other time. Although it takes a little creative thinking, they can be run off, at least temporarily.
Often gators will take up residence in watering holes or watering troughs, and then they snap at cattle when they come to drink. Stovall says if she can't get them out, she'll just turn off the water at the trough, and once it dries up, the gator will leave. Then she turns it back on and the cows have a place to drink again. She's even known some people who have roped the gators and carried them off.
The biggest one she's seen in her water troughs was 10.5 feet, but she knows people have caught bigger ones out of their water troughs.
A predator that has proven even more devious for Stovall has been humans, and these folks aren't just cattle thieves. Imagine a self-taught butcher on the beach.
Stovall has an undivided interest, along with six or seven other people, on the East Matagorda Peninsula where she takes her dry cows in the wintertime. This lightens the load on her other pastures during drought times such as those of the last four years. They stay on a 17-mile stretch of public beach that stretches from Sargent to Matagorda.
Since it's a public beach, it's impossible to keep the cattle away from the beachcombers, and some of them are looking for more than shells. Stovall says inevitably some of the cattle get killed because people see it as free beef. She says it's a risk she takes.
The ranchers in the dryer country don't contend with alligators, but coyotes are a common problem. Brainard says, "We have lots of coyotes. Seems like they're getting worse." Feral hogs are adding to the predator problem on Brainard's lands down by Canadian.
When asked about predators, Gearhart answers, "Oh yeah, bad. We've got plenty of coyotes out here and mountain lions." Gearhart and his neighbors have formed a ranchers predator control club. Dues are paid to the Texas Wildlife Damage Management Fund in San Antonio, and go toward the salary of a trapper, who is also paid by Animal Damage Control. "We pay our dues to them and they reimburse our trapper. As far as the lions are concerned, I have a full time lion hunter who hunts on a number of ranches in this mountainous area. We pay him a monthly fee. If he traps a lion on your land, he charges another fee."
Feral hogs are a bit of a problem for Gearhart. He encourages his hunters to take the hogs when they see them. Also, the predator control club takes care of any large groups of feral hogs they may come across by airplane or helicopter.
Extreme Environments, Extreme Tenacity
For all their differences in rainfall, range and resources, our four ranchers seem to share a similar love of the cattle business and the lifestyle. Whether coastal, mountainous or prairie ranchers, they all work with their neighbors to solve problems and help each other out. The environments may be different, but the underlying commitment to their chosen industry is the same.
