By Jennifer Whitlock
Field Editor
In the northwest corner of Scurry County, Cody Cribbs’ farm was looking very dry earlier this year.
So dry, in fact, that he didn’t even bother seeding any fields for grazing.
But conditions in West Texas have changed drastically in just a few short weeks.
“Like everyone else, we started off in the same position, dry as it could possibly be. And all the forecasts said we better expect it through the end of July, maybe through August and possibly even September,” he said. “But since the first of May, I’d say we’ve had between 17 and 19 inches of rain, which is about our average rainfall for the entire year.”
The rain was much appreciated. Cribbs had been feeding his cattle throughout the winter and spring because there just wasn’t enough forage available. Ten days after the first rain, he said he was able to drastically cut back on feeding.
“They all perked up, slicked off, and everything’s fat and happy at the moment,” he said. “Now, we’re back to feeding just to make sure everything is still here when we make our rounds. It’s more of a treat than a necessity.”
The much-needed drought relief in West Texas has come with a few challenges, however.
Some flooding has occurred due to the influx of moisture, and a few tanks have spilled over and made for some muddy conditions trying to get into the field to check cattle.
A friend who was in the field trying to drain some farm terraces recently called Cribbs to let him know he had a calf in the bar ditch that needed rescuing. The newborn calf had somehow made it outside the fence line and was stranded with no way to make it back to its mother.
Like many farmers and ranchers, he employed a little farm ingenuity to reunite the pair.
“He was still young enough to have an umbilical cord, so I don’t know if she was cleaning him off and he rolled through the fence or what happened,” he said. “But there wasn’t any way in the world we were getting him back into that pasture with anything other than a tractor, so I scooped him up in the front-loader and carried him back out there.”
Although getting back in the fields was delayed and there’s been some minor flooding, he considers the rain a blessing and one he hopes continues throughout the summer months.
“In a perfect situation, we’d get three weeks, maybe a month and then turn around and get another shower the first two weeks of August,” he said. “Hopefully, the forecast holds, and we can stay in these high 80s, low 90s, but July isn’t really known for that. So, we’re just going to hope for the best and grow all the grass we can until then.”