To better prepare for a drought, we must know key precipitation events associated with the plant community in our pastures. Pastures dominated by warm-season species thrive with May-July precipitation, but pastures dominated by cool-season species thrive with earlier precipitation events (April-May).
There is a correlation between the number of precipitation events greater than 0.10 inches and forage production. Every event that contributes more than a tenth of an inch of precipitation can result in an increase of forage biomass by 80-90 pounds per acre. Therefore, it is important to track precipitation amounts.
Understanding the trigger dates of when precipitation is needed for the forages found in our pastures can help us improve our grazing management plan by ensuring that we are meeting our livestock dry matter intake needs while not overgrazing pastures. During a drought, it is important that we are not overgrazing our pastures so that our native species can recover properly.
Therefore, an important part of having a drought management plan is having key dates where we will evaluate the total precipitation received (our drought status), along with creating and regularly revisiting a drought management plan that realistically fits our goals, objectives and resources.
When creating a drought management plan, it is important that we evaluate our objectives and goals. When creating our objectives, we should consider what works best for our operation based on the resources available.
When making a good decision, an appropriate decision period must be established, and the decision should implement your objectives. Additionally, you must create alternatives and evaluate those alternatives and their trade-offs using sound reasoning based on your objectives and the resources you have available.
When making a proactive decision, it is important to create a clear set of objectives first, then evaluate the alternatives to reach these objectives. Finally, it is important that we commit to our decision and implement the plan.
When deciding to lease pasture ground, consider drought when creating the lease. To implement drought in the lease, be explicit about the impacts of precipitation on forage to avoid overgrazing while ensuring that we don’t short our cattle on feed. The landlord and the lessee should agree on how much of the forage can be grazed and how cattle will be moved out.
Additionally, a mutual solution to adjust the rental rate if cattle are moved out early should be established in the lease. With clear communication, considering drought in the lease can reduce stress on both the landlord and the lessee.
Federal assistance insurance is available to help mitigate the risks and losses caused by a drought. Pasture, Rangeland and Forage is federally subsidized grazing land insurance based on rainfall. The deadline for this is usually around November, so producers should contact a USDA agent beforehand. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) provides financial assistance through livestock forage disaster programs for producers who lease or own grazing land and are affected by drought over a period of time. However, there are rules one must follow to be eligible.
Therefore, before a grazing lease is finalized, it is important to take it to an FSA agent for review and assurance that the drought plan in the lease follows their disaster program requirements.
There are several options to manage drought effects, but not all are realistic for all operations. Therefore, a producer must decide how to manage their herd during a drought based on their objectives and resources. During drought, producers may cull underperforming cows, older cows or cows with issues such as temperament or broken mouths.
Additionally, producers may opt to do earlier pregnancy checks and sell open cows to free up grass for bred cows. Another practice includes weaning calves early and taking them to a drylot. This allows our cows to be maintained by grazing poor-quality pastures or being fed low-quality feed because a dry cow will require less nutrients than a lactating cow. During a drought, it is important that we calculate the amount of feed we will need, secure additional feed sources ahead of time and compare different solutions.
Preparing for a drought is important, as it puts us one step ahead in mitigating risk by ensuring that we have enough feed and forage for our herd without overgrazing and deteriorating our pastures. — Wyoming State University Extension
