“This drought runs all across eastern Montana and into Canada and the Dakotas,” Gasper said.
It seems everyone has been hit by this.” Gasper, who serves as the Montana Farm Bureau Young Farmer and Rancher chair and is McCone County Farm Bureau president, says the drought has hit hard.
“Our hay crops are so bad we might just turn the cows out on our hay fields.
On July 10, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue gave the go-ahead to conduct emergency haying on Conservation Reserve Program lands to help provide feed for livestock in drought-stricken areas of Montana, North and South Dakota.
Without alternative forage options like grazing and haying CRP lands, livestock producers are faced with the economically devastating potential of herd liquidation.” Eligible CRP participants can use the acreage for grazing their own livestock or may grant another livestock producer use of the CRP acreage.
“That might help some producers so they don’t have to sell cattle,” Gasper notes.
“Around calving time, you always expect you’ll get a snow storm.
“I remember the 1986-1988 drought when it was so hot and dry with no grass and lots of grasshoppers.
Liles is making some tough choices.
We plan to sell our calves a few weeks early.