Six-hundred miles south of Lincoln at Canadian, Texas, Jim Haley was up at 4 a.m. Tuesday to round up cows and calves for a trip to the sale barn.
Haley, 55, is one of many ranchers who doesn’t like to talk about how many cattle he owns. But he admits the number is dwindling rapidly, as drought, wildfires and grasshoppers turn grazing ground in the Texas Panhandle and much of the rest of the state into a scene from hell.
“God only knows how long this thing is going to last or how deep it’s going to go,” he said.
As the color of the landscape fades in Texas, Oklahoma and western Kansas, Haley and brother Jeff are among many resorting to desperate measures.
“We just shipped some cattle to Wisconsin Saturday, between 900 and 1,000 miles.”
If they could find a good lease arrangement, the next stop could be the Nebraska Sandhills, 19,300 square miles of prime cow country where rains have been ample enough in 2011 to disrupt haying season.
Ranchers who spend their lives upgrading the bloodlines of their herds do not give up easily, even when it seems too dry to spit. Read more:
