Dealing with drought, before it hits

Accumulated precipitation – Agriculture Canada

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She notes that ranchers should be thinking about pasture and forage sources from the standpoint of always preparing for the fact that they can’t control the weather and don’t know what they’re going to have in terms of moisture conditions.

“So, preparing yourself to manage your forage resources for the good times and the not-so-good times – having that flexibility built-in to a management plan is probably number one, and then, when you’re looking at your forage source, pre-planning and that your forage resources are being managed so that you always have a back-up.”

To manage forages appropriately during a drought, Bruynooghe explains that adequate rest time for pastures after grazing is key.

“Plants are a living system and we know that within normal growing conditions, plants need rest. When an animal grazes a plant, it needs time to rest and recover so it can regrow. When we get into dry conditions, that’s amplified even more – plants need even longer time to rest and recover, they may not have the moisture to regrow to their full potential, or even at all, and they may go dormant.”

“And so, building into management plans, being able to move animals from a pasture area and allow those plants to recover becomes even more critical in a drought situation.”

In order to allow the plants their needed recovery time, animals need to be removed from the pasture. Bruynooghe offers some strategies to make that happen.

“Think about if you can combine herds so that you’re moving animals more often, remove them off of pasture to leave some carry-over, leave some plant material – any plant material we can leave behind also creates a bit of insulation or it provides the chance fo those plants from that area to retain some moisture.”

“The quicker we can move animals, get them off of pasture and onto the next, the better, even under normal conditions, but especially during droughts.”

“I recognize that as a producer you’re going to immediately think – well, it’s dry, where am I going to move them to? Recognize that having that plan in place is important, that there’s another pasture to go to, do you have reserve pastures or supplemental feed?”

Aside from reserved pasture and hay, there are additional strategies to include.

“You may look at the option of sending animals to rented pasture – can you find other forage options to bring into the mix, are you going to remove cows and calves and put them into a dry lot situation and feed them supplemental feed, can you wean calves earlier than you normally would?”

“Reducing the pressure on forage resources also reduces the pressure on those cows if you’re raising yearlings – they would probably be the animals you look at first, to market earlier than you originally planned, as a means of reducing the total overall numbers.”

Bruynooghe encourages producers to put a detailed plan together now to manage herd and forage resources if a drought occurs or intensifies in your region.

“There’s nothing worse than getting into the first of August and, all of a sudden, your a month into a drought, you’ve run through all your pasture, you’re looking at very limited feed resources and forage, and your ability to make good decisions and having that flexibility becomes really difficult, so, as hard as it is, none of us like to think about what’s the worst-case senerio going to look like but, if you have the plan ready to implement, our hope is, of course, that you don’t have to, but when things get tough, that’s when you start to make those decisions and it becomes a lot easier because you’ve already thought this through and you’ve followed the steps.”

Dealing with Drought will be one of the producer sessions at this year’s Canadian Beef Industry Conference, held August 13-15th in Calgary, AB. For more information and to register for the conference, visit www.canadianbeefindustryconference.com. Register by June 14th to take advantage of reduced early bird rates.

Additional drought resources for cattle producers are available at www.beefresearch.ca.

by Dori Modney with files from Alberta Beef Producers