The drought in 2021 reached disastrous levels for central North Dakota, wreaking havoc on farmers, ranchers and their land. One such rancher was Shane Anderson of Towner, who has been ranching on his family land for nearly 20 years, building his own herd of commercial cattle, only to be forced to scale back his herd.
“It was a multitude of things. But just knowing in the back of my mind that we had not had any moisture” in spring, “I didn’t want to get to a place where I was trying to move pairs in the middle of summer,” Anderson says, of making the decision to sell cattle last year.
In an average year, his ranch runs 300 to 350 head. During 2021’s drought, he sold over 100 head.
“When we were in the middle of breeding season, it looked like our hay crop was already going to be adversely affected. I felt better making the decisions to move that many animals, knowing that if it started to rain, I would be able to graze more acres later or do something with that grass,” he says. “If I didn’t think this through, then every decision I made from there on out would probably be a knee-jerk reaction and maybe wouldn’t be the best option.”
Cull time?
Drought conditions last year forced some ranchers, like Anderson, to make tough decisions, including selling off cattle due to potential lessened forage, pastures and rangeland. But how do cattle producers decide which cows get sent down the road and when?
Olivia Amundson, a cow-calf field specialist with South Dakota State University Extension, spearheaded a cull cow survey, completed Dec. 1, to get a pulse on issues concerning culling, and how much impact drought had on those decisions.
Cattle producers from South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado and Wyoming rank the main reasons for culling cows during a normal year, in order of importance:
open cows
temperament
health
age
“Then I asked, ‘On a dry year with low forage resources, how do you cull your cows?’ What was the most important then?” Amundson asks. The same four cull reasons surfaced during a dry year, but age came in as the third most important reason, while health came in fourth.
“Definitely noticing an increase in dispersals coming into the bred cow sales this year,” says Kiernan Brandt, SDSU Extension cow-calf field specialist. “You can definitely tell that the increase in feed prices is driving some folks to bring some additional bred cows to sale, but they’re holding their value from what I’m able to tell.”
With the thinking to plan for a bad year, but hope for a good year, Amundson says some producers bred their cows with the hopes of keeping them in the herd, but if forced to sell, a bred cow may have more value.