“It’s been a disaster,” said Andrew Mills, former president of the Santa Barbara County Cattlemen’s Association.

 

Because cattle ranchers are paid by the pound for the animals, the early sales and lower weights have a massive impact on profits. “They’re not only 200 pounds light this time of year, but they would have weighed more at this time in a normal [rain] year,” said Hollister Ranch Co-op Manager John McCarty.

 

The challenges facing cattle ranchers as a result of the drought are three-fold.

Not only are ranchers being forced to sell cattle early and at a significantly lower weight than normal years, they are also losing breeding animals which would reproduce and add stock to next year’s herd. In addition, as creeks and rivers that nourish the cattle dry up, ranchers’ ability to get water to their cattle is threatened, McCarty said.

 

“First of all it has to rain next year,” he said. “If it doesn’t rain next year, it’s gonna be like an earthquake. It’s not gonna be twice as bad, it’s gonna be seven times as bad.”

As ranchers are forced to sell significant numbers from their herds, they dig themselves into a hole to start the next year.

 

“It’s gonna take us two to three years just to get back to where we were,” said Bob Isaacson, owner and operator of El Chorro Ranch.

 

Buying new cattle to bolster diminished herds will be exceptionally difficult because every rancher will be buying cattle as soon as it rains, McCarty said. “You’re gonna be buying back in at such a high price that it’s gonna take years to pay for that cow,” Isaacson said.

 

Buying out of state cattle isn’t a viable option either because they are more susceptible to diseases that can devastate a herd, McCarty said. Foothill disease and Anaplasmosis threaten cattle in the western states and can not only diminish a cattle’s ability to gain weight, but the diseases can also be fatal.

 

Beyond the herd thinning’s effect on reproduction within individual herds, the malnourishment resulting from lack of fresh pasture has reduced conception rates throughout the county, McCarty said. “There’ve been reports of under 50 percent when in a typical year you can expect your cattle to breed back in the high 80s, low 90s.” The result is, “The Tri-County’s out of cows,” he said.

 

With no food on the ground as result of low rainfall and freezing temperatures in the fall and winter, ranchers were forced to supplement their cattle’s diets with hay and alfalfa. But with oat hay costing as much as $225 per ton, totaling some $4,000 per month for a 100-cow herd, the solution is only temporary.

 

“Feeding hay isn’t an option for me. Feeding hay to range cattle is just money down the drain as far as I’m concerned,” McCarty said. “If you’re feeding cattle now, you’re very, very rich and you’re not in this as a rancher. You’re in it for a hobby.”

 

Isaacson echoed McCarty’s statement. “We rarely feed hay, but this year we fed hay for six weeks,” Isaacson said. “This was one tough year.”

 

But the silver lining for ranchers has been the steady price per pound on the cattle they are selling. Mills said that because the market is driven nationally, the regional drought is not significantly affecting the price.

 

“I think you have to look at the long haul,” Isaacson said. “If you’ve had a ranch and you’ve been in this business for a while, you know that this sort of thing happens.

“The good years are going to come back.”

 

Rain statistics provided by Matt Naftaly, Senior Hydrologist for Santa Barbara County Flood Control District.

 

By Staff Writer Jared Blankenship