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Impact Report

For plan Profitable Livestock Production (Catron County)
Date October 27, 2011, 7:46 pm
For Objective Long-term Show long-term objectives
Impact Report 2011 has been a year of records. Not only have we seen record commodity prices we have record drought and fires. Catron County ranchers saw a very dry winter, spring and early summer. Most of the county received significant rainfall staring in late July. The wide spread drought in Texas and surrounding states has drastically effected cattle and commodity prices. Many cattle through the county were in poor to extremely poor condition when we finally received rain. The effects of this drought will be felt for years to come. Short term effects include reduced weaning weights and later than normal breeding. Work continued on the long term improvement to Catron County cattle. Due to drought no heifers were AI ed this year. Work centered on evaluating the current cow herd in the face of drought. Cows were evaluated based on body condition and calf quality. Cattle in poor condition had their calves early weaned and the poorest open cows were sold. Those that were bred were kept. The cows that had expectable body condition were allowed to raise their calf. I will evaluate these cows again next year to determine the effects of these management decisions on the cow herd long term. Many of the early weaned calves were sold others were pastured and for the most part have done very well after the rains came. This could prove to be an excellent decision for ranchers as their seems to be a trend that there is more demand for heaver calves going into winter and next spring. Catron County experienced its own fires this year. The largest wildfire in Arizona history overlapped into New Mexico. Much of June was spent assisting local state and federal agencies with livestock evacuated from the fire. Livestock such as horses and small farm flocks of sheep and goats were moved to the Carton County Fair Grounds in Reserve. Other evacuation locations were identified in Quemado, Magdalena and Glenwood. However no livestock were moved to these sights. Cattle in immediate proximity to the fire were allowed to move away from the fire by removing fences and pushing them out of the fires path. Plans were also in place to relocate these cattle to open grazing allotments if the fire continued to spread. I also identified trucking for these cattle and sources of hay to feed these cattle in the event that we needed to confine them for longer periods of time. This fire was good example of the need for emergency planning. A Beef Quality Assurance program was conducted in March. Fifteen People attended the training. This training allows ranchers to market their cattle as being from a certified beef quality assurance program.