Limited Relief Rains on Cattle Ranchers
The recent months' rains have brightened the outlook of Pearsall-area rancher Frank Helvey.
Pastures that only months ago were as bare "as that highway back yonder" now sport green growth, Helvey said. While some of his stock tanks are still low, one that dried up in the drought now has so much water that cattle can drink what they need and get a cooling break from the daytime heat by wandering belly-deep in the pool.
Helvey calls the rain the "biggest blessing we've had in a long time."But it hasn't been enough to heal his ranching operation after he sold more than half his herd last year during the state's worst drought ever.
Texas' cattle industry, the largest in the nation, with $10.5 billion in cattle sales in 2007, is still under a cloud that the recent rains have not dissipated. Parts of Texas are still in a gut-wrenching drought, and depleted pastures and high cattle-replacement costs could keep the industry from reclaiming its vigor.
The ranching population is getting older and worn down by a series of droughts since 1998. Many might decide to try something else, and those who are left are not likely to rebuild their herds as quickly as they trimmed them.
"I think the long-term impact is we're going to have fewer cows than we had before the drought," said David Anderson, a livestock economist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
"To get back to higher numbers, we'll need changes in the economics of the industry. Cattle prices and costs have to move in a more profitable direction."
Figures from the National Climatic Data Center show that the drought started in Texas in October 2010, when less than an inch of rain fell. For the next 11 months, the state received just 10.5 inches of rain.
From October 2011 through February, almost 11 inches drenched the state. But with big stretches of West Texas and parts of the Hill Country and South Texas still facing serious water shortages, the improvement hasn't been enough for state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon to declare the drought over.
Texas has been in such a rain deficit that even more rain is needed to grow the crucial warm-season grasses that ranchers count on for feed much of the year.
The growth from the fall and winter's rains won't last much longer, and Helvey might have to pull back on restocking plans for his herd if the summer grasses are stunted.
"It's getting scary again," Helvey said as he kicked through weeds in a pasture near Devine last week. "We're at a crucial time (in April and May). It needs to rain."
"It needs to rain" has become the mantra of Texas ranchers, particularly in recent years as drought after drought has walloped the state.
Last year's drought choked off the state's grass and hay production, forcing ranchers to feed cattle high-priced supplements and imported hay - if they could find it here.
Many chose to not keep paying those costs and instead took advantage of strong prices for cattle and sent much of their herds to market. Others found green pastures in other states and moved cattle there.
The end result was a reduction in the state's cattle count by 1.4 million from 2010 to 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated. That also pushed the nation's cattle numbers down by 1.9 million to 90.8 million cattle - the lowest count since 1952.
At 11.9 million head of cattle at the start of the year, Texas still has the biggest U.S. inventory. But Nebraska, which added cattle in 2011, jumped to the No. 2 position with nearly 6.5 million head.
Beefcows, a vital component of the herd because they produce calves and, therefore, income for ranchers, took a particularly hard hit in Texas. The USDA estimated that 660,000 beefcows were removed from Texas herds last year. Experts call that the largest single-year decline in beefcow numbers ever, and it could be an underestimate.
"No one I've talked to feels like that number is a liberal estimate," said Rick Machen, an extension service livestock specialist in Uvalde.
He believes that in the area west of San Antonio, more than half the beefcows have been lost since 2009, another year dominated by drought.
"I've never seen it this short," he said.
The drought started to break in the fall through parts of Texas and continued into the spring, bringing with it good winter forage and the hope that ranchers can get back into the buying business.
San Antonio received less than 11 inches of rain in the 12 months that ended last September. In the six months since, it's had almost 21 inches, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
In Cotulla, roughly midway between San Antonio and Laredo, rainfall totals have exceeded 12 inches since October - about three times the amount the city received in the 12 preceding months.
Ty Keeling, a Pleasanton rancher who fattens up calves on leases across the state, said ranching conditions still vary widely. Some South Texas pastures look "like the Garden of Eden" thanks to winter rains, but in Muleshoe in the Panhandle, it's "still a dust bowl," he said.
Keeling has built his herd back to about 70 percent of its average size since the rains returned, but he expects to cut that down again if the rains go away and fields turn brown.
"I'm only stocking leases that get rain," he said. "The volatility of the markets is plenty to handle, and now with the volatility of the weather, it's a big concern. If there is no rain and the market crashes, I could go broke."
And weather is only one of the ranchers' concerns. Cattle prices have risen, at times dramatically, since ranchers sold their stock last year. So rebuilding their herd at the new prices will put a strain on ranch budgets, experts said, particularly if ranchers went into debt to make it through the drought.
Joe Paschal, AgriLife livestock specialist in Corpus Christi, said young female cows are selling for more than $1,200 and that mature beefcows are selling for $2,000 and above, at times twice what they brought a few years earlier.
At those prices and with annual maintenance costs rising, producers might not make much profit off each animal before those cows are sent to market, Paschal said.
"(Ranchers) need to look at their costs and their expected returns and make a solid judgment before they buy cows based on green pastures," he said. "They can only pay so much money going in to make money at the other end."
Many ranchers have not bought back into the market heavily and are not likely to pick up the pace until they see how pastures have rebounded, Paschal said.
Bill Hyman, executive director of the Independent Cattlemen's Association of Texas, said that "once the first cutting of hay starts, people will breathe a sigh of relief."
Ranchers won't know until early June if pastures will produce hay this year, Hyman said.
"You'd have to have guts like John Wayne to get back and totally rebuild right now," he said.
Officials worry that older ranchers without heirs to take over their operations will be frustrated by the industry's new challenges and will get out of the business.
In addition, one statewide survey said about 25 percent of the ranchers who sold all their cattle during the drought won't get back into beef production, said Ron Gill, Texas A&M University's associate department head for animal science.
That reaction is understandable, given how devastating the drought was financially and emotionally for ranchers, he said.
"If they are heavily in debt, it will limit what they can do in the recovery," Gill said. "Our concern is for the people who give up and don't even try."
He hopes ranchers who withdraw from the industry will keep their land in beef production by leasing acreage to other ranchers.
With the state already losing ranch acreage to urban sprawl and wildlife hunting, the industry needs to preserve what ranch land it can, Gill said.
He and other ranching experts have scheduled a series of workshops through the state to help both new and experienced ranchers learn how to rebound from the drought and keep the industry strong for the long term.
"We want people to restock, but we don't want them to go broke in the process," Gill said.
The series is set to start this month in a handful of towns and will come to San Antonio's Freeman Coliseum on May 4. It didn't make a stop at Midland as officials originally planned, however. It's been too dry there to get ranchers interested, Gill said.
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