Strategies to manage herds during drought include well-developed culling plan
NDSU Extension
FARGO, ND – Weather forecasts predict worsening drought conditions in the northern Great Plains for the 2021 growing season, which is bad news for cattle producers.
Many cattle operations will find themselves without enough forage and feedstuffs to maintain their current herd size.
“Unfortunately, often decisions are made more with emotion than logic during stressful times,” says Lisa Pederson, Extension livestock specialist at North Dakota State University’s Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter.
Photo UNL Extension
Producers have several strategies to manage herds with limited feed resources, including developing a culling plan.
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Both developments came amid worsening extreme drought in North Dakota.
The Roosevelt Creek Fire encompassed about 900 acres, or about 1 ½ square miles, in Billings County, with zero containment by late afternoon, according to Misty Hayes, district ranger for the Medora Ranger District of the Little Missouri National Grassland. The fire started on Wednesday about 6 miles north of Wannagan Campground, north of the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was burning in rugged Badlands terrain. The cause wasn t known. No ranches threatened right now; some oil wells in the area but no immediate threat, Hayes said.
Larger fires this spring include ones that burned about 3 ½ square miles in the Medora area and an 8-square-mile blaze in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.