Grazing Texas Longhorn Cattle in the Snow
It is January and my cattle are in the high country. This goes against everything that sounds logical to me – a Tennessee native. It always seems that I should put our Texas Longhorns in the high country in the summer – and get them to low country before snow flies. But the Arizona reality is that our native grasses lose a lot of nutritional value after they dry. The browse in the high country is very high in protein and other nutrients – plus there is plenty of dry grass to balance out a cow’s diet. So to the high country the steers go in late December.
On a practical note, there is natural running water in the high pastures – no waterlines to freeze or dirt tanks to dry up. But – it sure can be COLD riding to check on cattle in the winter. Thank goodness for wool long handles and wildrags!
Wilma
I meant to ask you something when we were emailing back and forth. How many head do you run? You said you had several hundred in an earlier post. Just curious.
Kyle,
We are only running 224 steers right now- about half of what we should have. The Forest Service will be reburning about 10,000 acres on this ranch to control juniper encroachment. That means we can only graze lightly before the burn and can’t regraze till the grass is reestablished. Plus we are still working on more alternative water systems. We will have about 30 miles of pipelines and water troughs when we get finished. In Arizona, droughts are common.We want to make sure we have adequate feed and water before we increase the herd size.
Wilma