In June, a pasture might look good from the road, but it could still be hiding problems.In West Texas and the Southern Plains, early summer often hides problems until they become costly. You might see green grass, cattle spread out, and calves growing. But underneath, forage quality could be dropping, water needs are rising, flies are increasing, and the best grass might already be grazed more than you realize.
That’s why taking time for a real June pasture walk matters. Don’t just check from your truck or the gate. Get out, walk through the pasture, look at the grass, watch the cattle, check the water, and ask if your place is ready for the next two or three months of heat.
Summer rarely ruins a pasture overnight. It’s usually the small things that get overlooked: a slow-refilling trough, a mineral feeder in the wrong place, bare ground near the shade, a pasture that needed rotating last week, calves looking a bit thin, or cows losing condition even if they still look ‘fine.’
A good June pasture walk lets you spot these issues early, while you still have options.
June marks the time when a creep feeder starts to look tempting to producers.
Branding day gets all the attention, but the days after branding are when many calf health problems either settle down or start building.
June can make the breeding season seem better than it actually is.
Across West Texas and the Southern Plains, a pasture may still look pretty decent from the road. There may be green color left, grass standing, and cattle scattered about, as if everything is working fine. But just because there is forage in front of your cows does not mean it still has the same nutritional value it had back in April or early May.
If you want to really understand your pasture conditions right now, don’t just look at the grass, watch the weeds, too. In May, everything becomes more obvious across West Texas and the Southern Plains. You can see what grew well with early moisture, what got grazed too much, and what’s been slowly going downhill. This is one of your best chances to check pasture health before summer stress hits.
Have you ever noticed that two ranches can feed what seem like the same cattle on similar pasture, but still get very different results? It’s frustrating, and it usually has less to do with the cattle or the grass than most people think. More often, it comes down to something less obvious: how the cattle feeding program is set up.
If your cattle feeding program in May is the same as it was in February, you could be losing money without realizing it. Around this time in West Texas and the Southern Plains, many producers think green grass means nutrition is covered. But that’s often when performance drops and feed dollars start to go to waste.
If you’ve ever stepped outside on a freezing West Texas morning and watched a cow nudge a skim of ice off the top of a water trough, you already know one thing: 
If you’ve ever raised first-calf heifers through a cold West Texas winter, you already know the truth: 
