September often makes wheat pasture seem like a quick way to earn money. Someone at the feed store mentions that calves should gain well this winter; a bit of rain moistens the ground, and soon everyone is eager to start planting.Yet eventually the bills come. A large amount is taken up by seed costs, and another by fertilizer. Repair work is needed on the fence, and the water trough has to have a new float as well, together with the fact that the calves can’t begin grazing when you wanted them to.
At that point, the so-called cheap winter grazing begins to appear expensive.
Wheat pasture can assist in helping calves put on weight and allow native grass to rest when other fields have dried out; but the fact that the wheat is green doesn’t mean that your cattle will turn a profit.
Before you plant 10 acres close to your house or several hundred acres over your ranch, calculate the total cost of the pasture and the amount of weight your cattle need to gain.
You must also know how many calves the field can support, how long they can graze, and whether the additional weight gained will cover the entire program.
You can do the math in September before you begin planting.
September in West Texas can be misleading. Although the pasture still has brown grass, the cows are scattered about, and one rain may bring a bit of green to the low areas. It might look from the truck as though there is enough feed to carry on into the fall.
Bovine Respiratory Disease, or BRD, can become a very costly situation quite quickly; one day a calf may appear to be healthy but by the next it could be standing by itself with droopy ears, a lowered head, and more heavy breathing.
It may still seem like summer in August, but that is precisely the time when you should begin considering winter cattle management.
On a cow-calf ranch, August always seems to arrive out of nowhere. One day, you’re busy keeping water troughs full, fighting flies, and making sure calves have shade during the hottest hours. Suddenly, you check the calendar and realize fall sale season is much closer than it seemed in June. Calves that looked healthy in July can quickly lose condition if they’re weaned, vaccinated, worked, transported, and sold all at once. In West Texas and the Southern Plains, heat, dust, dry pens, long trailer rides, and mixing at the sale barn all put extra stress on a calf’s immune system. That’s why August is the right time to start getting calves ready before all the stress hits at once.
August pasture can be deceiving at first glance.
When spring breeding season ends, most people are ready to pull the bulls, close the gate, and take a break. That makes sense. Breeding season is hard work, especially in tough country, hot weather, big pastures, and with cows that are not easy to find. But the work is not finished when the bulls leave the cows. For many herds in West Texas and the Southern Plains, this is actually when next year’s breeding season begins. If a bull comes off cows thin, sore, footsore, heat-stressed, or dealing with parasites, he needs care now—not next spring when it is too late.
If you’re planning to wean calves this fall, August is when you need to get started.
In August, pastures can be deceiving.
If you walk through a West Texas pasture in August, the grass will usually show you what is really happening, even if it is not what you want to see. Maybe the old bluestem is thin near the water lot. Maybe broomweed has popped up in a pasture that looked good back in the spring. Maybe ragweed is filling in bare spots, or silverleaf nightshade keeps returning, no matter how many times you thought you had it under control. Most ranchers see these plants and immediately ask, “What do I need to spray?” That is a reasonable question, but it should not be the first one. A better question is, “Why is this weed showing up here?”
