Drought Threatens Cattle Farms

A year-long drought affecting Texas, Oklahoma and western Arkansas has caused a shortage of hay to feed cattle through the winter.

Jerald Southern, manager of the Farmers Cooperative store in Fayetteville, said his local suppliers are down 50 to 60 percent in hay production so far this year.

“It looks pretty grim right now,” Southern said. “If we don’t see some sizable moisture in eight to 10 weeks, well, it’s just getting terribly drastic … In Texas, them boys are grinding up newspaper for filler.”

Rain was predicted for Northwest Arkansas in mid-March, but with the area parched, it might not help much.

“I think we’re going to suffer in ’06 even if we do get rain,” said Ted Collins, executive director of the U.S. Farm Service Agency for five counties in Northwest Arkansas. The dry weather will affect hay production next winter, he said.

Collins said farmers are spending about 50 percent more on cattle feed than they did a few years ago. Water is also in short demand as ponds dry up and farmers pump water to the fields.

Cattle prices have remained steady, but the higher costs for feed and water are cutting into the profit margins of area farms. Many farmers have sold cattle early. Some have even liquidated their herds and gotten out of the business, at least for this year, Collins said.

The drought hasn’t really affected the world’s largest meat producer, at least not yet, said Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale.

“We buy very few market-ready fed cattle in Arkansas,” he said via e-mail. “The drought has brought cattle off of the wheat and grass pastures earlier than usual. The cattle numbers in feedlots are record high as a result. If drought-affected areas get moisture, some of these cattle may go back to graze. If not, we should have large numbers of fed cattle through the summer into early fall.”

Arkansas is considered a cow-calf state, meaning cattle are bred here and the calves are usually raised until they’re six to 10 months old (between 300 and 600 pounds). At that point, they are sold to out-of-state stocker operations, where they are grazed for two to four months before being sold to feedlots where they are sent to slaughter after reaching 900 to 1,400 pounds.

Washington and Benton counties lead Arkansas in cattle production. Together, the two counties have about 233,000 head of cattle. That compares to 96 million head of cattle nationwide.

Exceptional Drought

Over the past year, Fort Smith has had 37.9 inches of rain. That’s 16 inches below normal, prompting the National Weather Service to declare west central Arkansas to be in an “exceptional drought,” which is the most severe level of drought. This winter was the ninth driest on record for Fort Smith, with the city getting 4.11 inches of rain for December, January and February combined. The normal rate of rainfall for those three months in Fort Smith is 8.07 inches.

Fayetteville had 30.68 inches of rain in 2005, 14 inches below normal, creating an “extreme drought,” which is one level less severe than exceptional drought.

And the National Weather Service isn’t predicting much improvement through May.

The drought extends throughout Oklahoma and Texas, but the worst of it in early March appeared to be a swath of land from Dallas to about Tulsa that also took in the Fort Smith area.

In Northwest Arkansas, the level at Beaver Lake is the lowest it has been in years. The area usually receives its largest amount of annual rainfall from March through May.

For area cattle farmers, the drought is the worst in decades.

“A lot of the old timers who lived through the Depression years are comparing it to the Depression,” Southern said.

Southern said the price of hay is up about 20 percent over last year (with grass hay selling for about $80 per ton). But farmers have also been hit with similar percentage increases in the cost of fuel, fertilizer and bailing twine.

Southern said some products, such as soy hulls, can be used to supplement the hay and make it go further.

Worst Year Ever

Dorothy Dunham said it’s the worst year she and her husband Bill have had on the farm they’ve owned near Booneville for the past 25 years.

They have run out of hay and have started using alternative feeds such as corn and distiller’s grain for their 800 head of cattle.

“We’ve really had a hard time this year,” she said. “We’ve always had a lot of hay. This year, I don’t know what happened. Everything was just brown.”

But the alternative feeds aren’t necessarily bad for cattle.

“His cows are hungry, but we’re meeting their needs,” said Ken Coffey, a professor of animal science at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. “We’re meeting their requirements, but we’re not letting them get full. They can stand to be hungry, and they’ll actually be more efficient that way. When you run hay through them … all that bulk uses up a lot of energy.

“That system will work,” Coffey said. “You’ve just got to have a good fence because these cows are looking for something to eat.”

“It’s the driest I’ve seen it since 1980,” said Randy West, who has about 300 head of cattle on his 600-acre farm near Prairie Grove.

West said about half of his acreage is used for growing hay, so he has enough for his cattle to eat. But he has already sold all his surplus hay.

“When we have a severe drought, it can take three or four years to get back to normal,” West said.

“We used up a lot of excess hay storage this past year,” said Johnny Gunsaulis, Washington County agricultural extension agent. “One dry year you can live with, but the second one can be awfully hard … It’s early enough that if the weather were to cooperate, we could be sitting OK by the end of March … It’s going to take a lot of water between now and summer.”

“If the rains come back, we’ll probably be OK,” Coffey said. “As long a drought as we’ve had, we’ll probably have some thin stands, though.”

“The curtain hasn’t fallen yet,” Southern said, “but it’s going to if we don’t get some significant rainfall.”