Fall Ranch Update

It is time for a little fall ranch update! Yesterday we loaded and hauled the cows about 4 miles up the road to a new pasture that has had about 4 months of rest and is ready to be grazed again. It is the last of our summer stockpile grass that was able to grow and recover after spring grazing.

I wish I was getting on here like last fall and talking about how good the pastures look and how much grass we have and how well set up for winter we are.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for us this year. Typically, in SWMO we get two grass growing seasons, a nice big and long one in the spring and then another short one in the early fall. The month of September is our typical season of fall growth that ideally, we would grow enough or just about enough grass to see us through the winter. This year, we have simply not gotten the rain to bring on the growth. There seems to be an umbrella over this little section of MO that has blocked all the rain. Not much we can do about it other than try and make the best business decisions we can.

It will likely mean selling a lot of cows after we wean their calves and selling more calves than we had originally planned. The cost of feeding hay to cows/calves is the highest cost of a cow/calf operation and you just don’t recuperate the money from feeding a lot of hay. So, reducing our numbers is about the only way through.

Right now, we don’t know how many cows that will mean, or how big of a hit we will take on them. It is just the cow business though. Many in northern TX are going through and have been through the same thing we are here, its not unique to us. I don’t know if you can ever really figure out the cattle business, but we are sure trying and learning from each decision we make, both the good and the bad decisions that we now know not to make again.

And who knows what the weather will do. There is always the hope of a nice rain and a few days of sunshine to turn the grass right around! Serina says we haven’t been going to church enough haha I don’t know where she picked that up, but it sure makes us laugh!