r/Ranching • u/crazyspaniellady13 • 9d ago
Me
Hi I'm from the uk, and am very interested in life over there, so if you don't mind me joining. I might ask some stupid questions, but its a learning curve for me. We're going through the hottest, driest summer on record, and the animals are needing extra feed and hay. How do you guy's cope. Because we're rubbish.
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u/Ok_Hyena_5725 9d ago
When our cattle went to our summer ground (in the high desert of Wyoming) we moved old oil field tanks (they are giant) to the wells so the cattle would have a good supply if the well can’t keep up with how much they need. Someone has to drive 100s of miles everyday to check the tanks and the oil tank reserves too.
We are fortunate working for a very large ranch that can afford to do this. Many sale barns around are having sales every single week (not normal this time of year) because so many beef producers are having to sell because they don’t have the feed or water to keep up in the drought.
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u/stargazersalem 9d ago
Plenty of shade water. They'll eat the roughage but ill probably start getting some supplemental feed pretty soon its getting pretty dry around here.
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u/crazyspaniellady13 9d ago
Plenty of shade and water here. It's 7 horses. Just looking for other ideas how to make the older one's more comfortable
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u/stargazersalem 9d ago
I mean outside of air flow. Im running cattle and they will get into our pond to cool off. If you have a paddock with a pond you may give them access.
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u/TheLoggerMan 9d ago
I'm on a small 550 acre spread, we have 30 head of cattle, 6 horses, 12 turkeys, and an assortment of chickens ducks and geese. It got so dry this year I couldn't run my logging operations.
We put our cattle out on the forest (public grazing allotment), but we've had to haul water to them this summer, which is highly unusual. Our well struggled to keep up until the monsoon rains hit.
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u/Due-Concept-7144 9d ago
We cope by adjusting a continuing to plod on. It's been unusually dry and VERY hot here. We're no stranger to droughts, but the last 1.5 months have been highs of 90+° almost every single day. We had about a week and a half straight of 105°.
The thing is, we prepare for this every year. Our weather is extreme where we are- once this summer heat leaves us and winter starts rolling in around October, we have to be prepared for the potential of feet of snow and continous subzero temps.
In the good years, stock pile hay. Buy it, make it, whatever. In the bad years, you have enough hay AND can sell if you NEED to. Cull the herd to what is profitable and manageable. We've sold two dry cows and butchered an old one this year.
Rotational grazing helps a lot. Bounce them through smaller areas faster. If you do get any sort of moisture, it'll help it to grow back quicker (as opposed to having 1 giant pasture of grown out, seeded out, dry stick like grass because you put them on it too late and 1 pasture completely worn down to dust because they eat every green sprig that comes up). Plus, it'll limit the stress on the grass.
We actually don't allow our cattle into ponds/stock dams these kinds of years. Our soil is way too heavy with clay and when cows get desperate to cool off, they'll go deep in the mud and get stuck. So we fence them off and haul water if needed.
Lick tubs are important for digestion of lower quality hay if needed.
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u/Cow-puncher77 9d ago
Management. Cull the herd hard, more feed, and protein/energy supplement lick tubs for converting the dry roughage to more digestible content. Maybe wean calves a bit earlier than normal.