Texas cattlemen are slowly rebuilding herds as parts of the state continue to deal with drought conditions, a Texas A&M AgriLife cattle expert said recently at the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Convention in Fort Worth.
“I don’t think anybody is wholesale going out and buying bunches of cows and restocking,” said Dr. Joe Paschal, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service beef cattle specialist in Corpus Christi.
“What we’re seeing is when people normally in the past hold back 10 to 15 percent females as replacements, they are (now) holding back maybe 20 or 25 percent or they are going to buy some replacement females to fit that sort of bill,” Paschal said. “A guy that has 100 cows that is holding back 15 heifers…it doesn’t take long for that steady, slow incremental process to get us back (to larger inventory levels).”
However, Paschal said drought and high cattle prices have put a lot of producers in a dilemma of either choosing whether to sell out amid high prices and buy back later when cow costs come down in price.
“We are a long ways from getting back to where we were,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t think some folks are going to come back. As I look across the country, the big guys will come back and some of the smaller guys may not.”