McALLEN, Texas \u2014 Texas cattle rancher Charles Kothman is down to six calves and their mothers after selling off 80 animals in recent months.<\/p>\n
The drought that has baked pastures and dried ponds has ranchers in Texas and Oklahoma \u2014 the nation\u2019s top two beef producers \u2014 culling their herds. Some have sold off all their cattle, but Kothman is hanging on and hoping for rain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may get to the point that I say \u2018no\u2019 and take them over to the sale barn,\u201d said Kothman, whose ranch is about 70 miles south of San Angelo. Some ranchers say they may sell out and get back into the business down the road. Others may never get back in, Kothman said. \u201cMy reason for saying maybe is because I\u2019m 74 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cattle ranchers either have to sell cattle during droughts or buy feed because their barren pastures can\u2019t sustain the animals. If they opt to buy hay while watching for rain clouds, they risk running into bankruptcy. If they sell off cows of calf-bearing age instead, they do it knowing rebuilding the herd later will be a long, costly process. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" McALLEN, Texas \u2014 Texas cattle rancher Charles Kothman is down to six calves and their mothers after selling off 80 animals in recent months. The drought that has baked pastures and dried ponds has ranchers in Texas and Oklahoma \u2014 the nation\u2019s top two beef producers \u2014 culling their herds. Some have sold off all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5042"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5044,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5042\/revisions\/5044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}