Mike Hughes of Rosanky Cattle Company can’t put an exact dollar amount on the losses his operation suffered as a result of the recent multi-year drought that scorched Bastrop County.
What he can confirm, however, is that it wasn’t good.
“Sure we lost money. There’s no doubt about it,” Hughes said, when asked this week how he is faring going into the 2010 season.
Like so many other beef cattle ranchers around Central Texas, Hughes is likely trying to forget the 2008 and 2009 years that left him nearly tripling his input costs in the midst of plummeting cattle market prices and a drought that seemed to have no end.
Now with a rain-soaked winter and early spring providing some level of comfort, Bastrop County’s beef cattle industry -– still the biggest single component of the county’s economy -– is hoping to get back on track after watching its production value drop some $16 million in a three-year time span.
According to recent figures from Rachel Bauer at the Texas Agrilife Extension Service, Bastrop County’s total beef cattle production value fell from approximately $32.7 million in 2006 to $16.7 million in 2009.
Bauer says her office has determined that roughly half of the approximately 42,000 beef cattle head listed by the USDA in the county in 2009 were sold off by ranchers who could not afford the cost of acquiring costly feed hay shipped in from great distances. To make matters worse, the market became flooded with ranchers around the state forced to do the same thing.
“It was a combination of the two,” Bauer said. “Hay prices were just outrageous and people trying to hold onto their cattle were breaking their checkbooks trying to keep them fed. It was just not economically feasible to do that. And then, whatever you did try to sell, the markets were flooded so prices were way down.”
Hughes, who averages around 1,000 head of cattle, said that while he normally goes through two bales of hay per cow each year he went through close to three and a half bales per cow. And on top of paying extra freight expenses for shipping in hay from out of state or East Texas, he was also forced to shell out more for protein supplements necessary to account for the lack of a grass fed diet. Overall, however, he admits he was fortunate to have acquired a small separate piece of property with substantial grass.
Besides Hughes, another large beef cattle rancher who weathered the storm of the past two years is Bobby Steiner of Steiner Ranch. Steiner says he was hit hard with overhead costs but considers himself fortunate that he had reserves of hay on hand when the drought struck.
“I was one of the few people that didn’t shorten the herd much because we at least had a surplus of hay,” Steiner said. “We were very lucky we had that on hand.”
Steiner, whose family has been ranching for over 100 years, says the drought was the worst he has ever seen. He says he has heard more than a few accounts of ranchers without reserves of hay who were forced to sell all their stock and get out of the business.
“It was very devastating to a lot of people,” Steiner said.
Bauer said she does not have hard figures on the numbers of ranchers Bastrop County lost due to the drought.
“It’s really, really hard to get a grasp on,” Bauer said. “We have heard people talking that did sell everything, so we know that happened. Some will get back into ranching but some probably are not going to.”
While stressing that the recent rains have him feeling confident, Hughes also acknowledged the long-term consequences of the past few years on his industry.
“Unfortunately I think there are going to be more people selling land to get out of the business than there are people getting into the business,” Hughes said. “It is going to be kind of hard to talk them into it. After those kinds of years there are a lot of people who don’t want to work at it and then loose money.”