Drought

While SW Missouri isn't nearly as bad as parts of Texas, it's still in an extreme drought as labeled by the US drought monitor and as witnessed by simply observing the countryside. Grass is crispy, trees are dying, ponds are dry...it's not pretty. We could not be more fortunate to have made the decision to sell our cows and go to stockers. We have plenty of grass to get our home raised calves to the first week of October when we will merchandise them thru the Joplin Stockyards. At that point we won't have a single animal on the Goat Ranch. Our hope is that by spreading a ton of litter per acre within the next few weeks and removing all animals and giving the ranch a rest, we can stockpile some forage for early spring grazing. The nice thing about running stockers is that if we don't get a rain and we don't grow any grass, we will simply wait to buy stockers until we have the forage to support them.

I think now is a great time to rent more grass. We are trying to rent as much as we possibly can for as long as we possibly can...if there was a better time to be in the grass raising business, I don't know when it would be.