Drought

Two Chadron ranchers share how they are handling the current drought condition in Nebraska 

As the drought continues to beat down on the U.S., two Chadron ranchers, Jim Lestermister and Craig Wyatt, cope with the dry conditions and prepare winter.  

Wyatt, a hobby rancher, owns 60 head of longhorn cattle that graze various pastures around Chadron and South Dakota. Wyatt has been raising longhorns since 2007 and sells most of his calves as rodeo stock.  

For Wyatt the drought has meant selling some of his cattle and buying extra hay to prepare for coming winter, after pasture conditions struggled to provide enough forage. 

“This is just a hobby for us, and we want it to be a paying hobby,” Wyatt said. “But right now it’s kind of a stretch to do that because we had to buy a little hay, because of the drought, and then our pastures are just grazed slick. We don’t like to do that, just kind of the way the cookie crumbled this year.”

Lestermister owns an average sized cattle ranch, leases and owns land around Chadron. He has been ranching for 40 years, in those years he has been through several droughts. 

“We went through drought for nine years in the early 2000s,” Lestermister said.” And then we just had mediocre years for eight or nine years in a row we just hardly had nothing, so I’ve been through. Then in 2012 was a terrible terrible year, that was probably one of the toughest years because there was absolutely nothing.”

During year where moisture is average or above average, Lestermister only grazes as much as he needs in order to save grass for poor production years.

“In a good year we save a lot of grass and then the pastures have a lot of extra grass, “ Lestermister said. “Then when we hit a drought and -it depends how bad the drought is- but if its not too bad we just roll on.”

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of Dawes County is in a severe or moderate drought. This is based on the evapotranspiration rates and decreased precipitation. 

At a severe drought standing, the drought monitor describes the expected impacts being; damaged crops, burn bans, foundation cracks in homes, surface water levels drop, saltwater intrusion occurs in bays and some hay shortages. 

The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) estimates that 9,182 people in Dawes County have been effected by drought in the last month. This year ranked as the 10th driest year in 127 years of data. 

As a whole, 99% of Nebraska has a below average precipitation probability and has had lower than average precipitation this year. This year, according to the Drought Monitor, is the first time in eight years that all of Nebraska has been considered in drought.  

As precipitation decreases there is less grass production, leading to decreases in available food for livestock. There are over 32,000 cattle and almost 2,000 sheep in Dawes County, according to NIDIS. 

Another concern for ranchers is the increase in hay prices, driven by the drought. Current prices in the western part of Nebraska range from $250-$180 for large alfalfa squares, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. 

This year, Wyatt expects to be buying hay for the winter despite having land that he harvests hay from each year. 

“We didn’t do too bad this year on one of our little chunks of ground where we get hay, we got about 95 bales off of that which is not too bad,” Wyatt said. “Last year we got seven bales and the year before that we got 150 bales and the year before that we got like 95 bales so 90 to 100 bales is pretty average. The seven bales was just terrible, this year we got just enough, it turned out OK.”