The Good The Bad and the Ugly

[cowboy43]

Texas was under a extreme drought for 2 years, no hay , started raining in Sept now have had 30 inches of rain, only problem is too wet to get haying equipment in fields , now we have had a 21 degree frost with hay standing in the field. Some fields are not fenced to graze so the hay probably will be there till next spring till El Nino runs its course. How many of you are in the same boat? The good is the pastures are in such good shape from low stocking rates I should be able to get by with protein only., The bad I went from 70 cows to 10 cows and 2 bulls left on 500 acres, The ugly is you try to keep surviving and as you sell your herd off , you put that money into feed till you have nothing left, it's like a gambler with an addiction, for now at 66 years old I will start rebuilding again, like I said it's an addiction!

 

[1982vett]

Yep, seems like that is what we do. I managed to get my hay in. Would have baled more, but knowing it was unlikely I'd get it in dry I went ahead and grazed it. Some of the oats is showing that it is water logged and it is proving difficult to graze without the cows doing a lot of hoof damage.

 

[novatech]

Texas was under a extreme drought for 2 years, no hay , started raining in Sept now have had 30 inches of rain, only problem is too wet to get haying equipment in fields , now we have had a 21 degree frost with hay standing in the field. Some fields are not fenced to graze so the hay probably will be there till next spring till El Nino runs its course. How many of you are in the same boat? The good is the pastures are in such good shape from low stocking rates I should be able to get by with protein only., The bad I went from 70 cows to 10 cows and 2 bulls left on 500 acres, The ugly is you try to keep surviving and as you sell your herd off , you put that money into feed till you have nothing left, it's like a gambler with an addiction, for now at 66 years old I will start rebuilding again, like I said it's an addiction!

Same in our area. I plan on running an electric fence on a hay meadow I recently leased. It actually comes out a lot more economical to graze instead of baling.(Stockpiled forage will hold a fair amount of nutrition until about February.) Once it is grazed down I may plant clover, taking advantage of the wet winter, for the spring. The cows recycle the N back into the soil. The cows are allowed to graze down the clover. I then let it go to seed while the Tifton 85 takes back over. When it grows back out I either sell it standing for hay or buy stockers to graze it again if I do not need the hay for my own use.
It really looks as though we need to keep our cattle operations fairly liquid for the next few years as our weather patterns are so unpredictable.

 

[bigbull338]

im in north east texas.an like you we to was in a drought for 3yrs.although we never cut the herd because we had enough pasture.it started raining in sept an rained off an on till the next aug.an we was finally able to get in an get the hay baled.the only thing you can do is graze your meadows if you can.with 10 cows left i bet you dont have to buy any hay.ive had cattle under foot all my life.an i guess ill go brke with them if i have to.

 

[marksmu]

Our place is just short of 800 acres - All of it went underwater during IKE. We lost 95% of our fencing - a little over 13 miles or so. We had saltwater stand on about 300 acres for close to 4 months because the storm washed out the only bridge across an irrigation canal. By the time we got a bridge up the damage was done. Thats the bad and the ugly for me.

The good - I had about 65 acres of bahia that was able to shrug off the saltwater and continue on. We experienced drought in Chambers county, but not like the rest of the state. My grass was able to keep up, and having not been baled for at least 5 years, I had plenty of stored nutrients to support my 20 pairs on that 65 acres.

The blessing in disguise though was the storm. We went in with all our neighbors and replaced the fencing...all of it. FEMA paid most my neighbors portions and they supplied the labor to put it up. I only had to give them cash (FEMA does not like me) and my neighbors got it all back up. In addition to new fencing, all new surveys were done by FEMA remarking property lines, etc...we picked up about 40 acres that had been fenced incorrectly...also a bonus.

The saltwater also killed off all of the horrible invasive weeds and the majority of the tala trees that were along some areas difficult to mow. A new grass, not sure of the real name, but everyone round me calls it (long tom) took over the 300 acres that was underwater, and it is thriving. The cows love it, and graze the heck out of it. They choose it over the bermuda and over the bahia...not sure why.

So now even though its too wet to do much, its a bit over a year later, I have all new fence, 300 acres of improved pasture I never had to seed or touch, a new bridge, and a nice check from the insurance company that repaired what little damage we did have. Since I was just getting started I never had to sell off any of our cattle....Depending on how this winter/early spring calf crop turns out we may be expanding our herd with some more ladies...this being our first calf crop, I want to see how it goes prior to buying more cattle. So far we are 2/20 both healthy bull calves....I rolled the dice and did not put up or buy hay (had a source to buy from if it didnt pan out), but planted 130 acres of Rye - it looks like the roll was successful b/c its about 8-9" tall and the cows are ready to be turned out on it once they exhaust the Bermuda grass from the field they are in now. Probably run out of that by end of January - and then have a nice lush pasture to turn out to...

I feel the pain the rest of the state experienced, but I have really been lucky enough to make some nice lemonade from the lemons thrown my way.