Plainview is my hometown,i worked there when it was MBPXL,back in the 1980's, Plainview is a great city to live,hardly any crime,and great people,i miss my hometown,i lived in the Sethward area,miss it,i now live in San Francisco,but too expensive to live here,maybe someday I'll return.
In case you are wondering….piping, pumping or hauling water is extremely expensive both in cost and energy. In drought conditions a million gallons of water covers a very small portion of land. Creating such a system would drive the cost of beef sky high, too high to eat. I have irrigated pastures. To create such pastures where there is no infrastructure is cost prohibitive. Where nature provides the water and grass cattle can be profitable…..but that water is not guaranteed.
so I advise you to check what I'm going to say anyway because I'm not 100% sure but I had read that before the arrival of the 1st Pioneers in the Great Plains there were a lot of trees in fact, which enormously minimized sandstorms and by dint of plowing and cutting down all the trees of the great plains sandstorms exist exclusively because of the cutting of trees in the plains and the fact that men have turned and overturned the earth again and even
Seems to me that with water being the biggest problem in the drought yrs. Trucking in tanker trucks with water would not have been as costly as killing off cows and calves. All the land I don't see and not a oil well in sight in the TX panhandle and no damn well it's there but if not they could drill water wells. I know since I am not a rancher but have lived 69 yrs. here in the TX panhandle that these men and women are smarter than that and if not ask for help from some that do and don't give up until that water for their cows. Bet your ass if it was the rancher and his family needed water he would find it somewhere. Well them cow and calves and bulls are his kids until they are sold one way or the other. Makes me wonder what kinda ranchers allow things to get so bad. I know there is a lot of crap from Washington and there lies a far easier problem. Go to where they work and run them off!! They are suppose to work For Us not the other way around.
They have enough water to drink. Its the land isnt growing any forage. That land has a thin topsoil and doesnt retain moisture very long. back in the 1970,s in the Arkansas delta near where I live. They cleared the land to grow rice. and dug ditches to drain the swampy areas. I ran a bulldozer. and seen them removing all the fencerows that where windbreaks. I told a big farmer. You will see the day when you cant grow even a soybean in the black river bottoms without irrigation. He laughed hell son we always have too much water. A rice well was only 60 ft deep then. And every year when they broke the ground to plant there was dust. that was the lighter organic matter blowing away. Now they have to go a couple hundred feet for a irrigation well. and its sand. They add chemicals and water just hydrophonics on a great scale. and cant grow anything except misquitos without irrigation.They have lowered the water table in the Sparta Aquifer so much that the ground elevation dropped twenty feet near Stuttgart Ar. In the Ozarks we still grow a tremendous amount of forage. instead of large ranches. its small acreages with a animal unit for every 2 acres. I had some cows when they got high. I sold my entire herd. a cattle man asked why I was Selling. I told him that there where two times that I didnt want to own cattle. When they where too cheep and when they where too high. And there was a profit to be made and I was Taking It. I simply kept two milk cows and sold hay made as much as ever. I could buy back today at about 1/2 of what I sold for. But Im old and just dont need the extra money or work. I once told that cattle man that I has doubled my herd that both of my cows had calves. He wasnt amused.
The price of cattle is so low, it's hard to make a profit. If you have to truck in water and feed, then you are paying to raise cattle. You can't do that for too long, without losing everything. I do agree with you though, the wellbeing of the cattle come before everything else, even profit.
@@sweetpeasandyarrowaranchdi8327 Sorry men, I get on a tangent ever once in awhile. Really hope things get better though I don't see a lot of hope in these days. Will keep praying things get better. Kirk In The TX Panhandle.
I have aquestion. I'm not the most learned person on any kind of a drought but, in the military in the fifties, they had six inch pipes that were normally used for fuel transfer. I'm wondering why water couldn't be pumped in from the major rivers to keep the animals from being killed because of the drought lf it was killing people like it was in war, I'd bet they would figure out a way to get the water to the livestock. There were methods of moving fuel to facilitate the killing people but, no one tried to move water in that way to save the food source of most of the country eats. The farmers and cattle ranchers suffered the most and, like today the government still is trying to control the people in any way they can. Like the ranchers have said, for years the blm has been trying to control something that they should keep their noses out of unless, it's to do something that benefits the people not the fat cats that think they know everything about farming. The methods of moving liquids has been around for decades and the livestock has to pay with their lives for the brain dead positions that think if they wait long enough it will rain and all the problems will stop. As you know, history always repeats itself. THAT IS OBVIOUS TODAY AS WELL. I'd bet that nobody even suggested that method to the ranchers or the farmers. Those people were tough and they tried best they could but most of,if not all of them knew about the liquid transfer systems that were available. Big brother sure helped them out, didn't they. It'll never change. You can bet on that. IT'S DAMN SAD.
Shell Bell because Dairy Farmers sell the milk that belongs to the calf. It's all about money, money money. The reality is many of these calves will scour.. many will die from it. Bull calves are killed the day they are born or sent to slaughter houses when they are 1 to 5 days old where they have their throats slit and then they are hung and processed.. The mothers never see their calves. Again it's all about Profit.
Cargill is a fun place to work at...joking around with the co workers and etc. But every one from plainview went to friona cargill.. Its an hour drive maybe... But still worth it...
