It seems that the last few blog posts I have written all have the underlying theme.  Lack of moisture of any kind so far and the impending doom of the prospect of a repeat of last years moisture levels. The extreme cold temperatures of the last week with the strong winds from the southeast haven't brought any more moisture.  Normally a southeast wind for several days brings up Gulf moisture as it collides with the cold air from the north, but nothing.

Tammy talked to a guy with a feedlot in eastern South Dakota and his concern was the ranchers in the west would have to sell out their herds and they would have no calves to feed next fall.  They are running numbers as to how much it would cost to put cows in the feedlot to hold a herd together.  The costs are coming out in the $2.25 a day range.  Our cows are currently grazing old dried up grass and are getting 16 lbs. of old hay per day. The cost to replace this hay would be $.10 per lb.  So our cost with some grazing is $1.60 per day. That annuallizes out to $580 a year just for feed.  These cows won't calf for another 30 days.  We will have to kick up quality and quantity soon.  Our replacement heifers are in a feedlot by Vale and are costing $1.75 a day

Our young neighbor started selling his herd down last week.  He sold heifer calves.  He kept a quarter of his potential herd replacements and sold off three quarters.  The problem is do you sell out now and get ahead of the rush to sell later.  Or maybe you sell and it starts raining in a month and we have an average year.  Nobody knows.

I have been running grazing plans and different senarios of what to keep and what I could sell.  Nothing works out very well with no rain.  If it rains things look good and all grazing plans change.  Tammy was out in an alfalfa field the other day and we made this video.

Once the weather warms up a the end of the week I will probably start getting ground ready to plant.  Haven't decided what to plant.  That will depend on seed price and availability.  For now I guess I will close and go help Ryan tag some calves.