To protect legacy and livelihoods, ranchers battle drought

...While attention is focused on California and the Southwest, ranchers in the Great Plains are laboring to survive a drought that covers all the West and much of the Midwest. 

The call of history is heavy on them. The heat and drought of the past year evoke the struggles of their ancestors; grainy old photos are reminders of the stern-faced immigrants who raised families in crude one-room log cabins, and gritted through dirt-billowing droughts and heat. They persevered. Those who followed are determined to do so, too.

Mr. Mrnak has been raising cattle in Bowman for six decades, a fourth-generation rancher. His great-grandfather homesteaded a “section” – 160 acres – here. His grandfather survived the Dust Bowl: They were down to one cow – “they fed her tumbleweeds” – and he sent his wife and two children to a relative in South Dakota because they had no food.

Mr. Mrnak recalls hearing stories from his father. His grandfather had a mental breakdown over the stress. But still they kept the ranch. That is the goal of struggles here – to keep the ranch. That is his job now.Mr. Mrnak recalls hearing stories from his father. His grandfather had a mental breakdown over the stress. But still they kept the ranch. That is the goal of struggles here – to keep the ranch. That is his job now.

To do that job, ranchers are paring their operations, struggling to save a few of the best animals they have spent generations breeding. Cattle raisers throughout the northern-tier states have little margin. 

They typically leave their cattle on the pastures to eat grass all summer and into the winter, if possible. After that, they may put out hay or silage to get the animals through winter, until the snows melt and the grass grows again.

But since June of 2020 there’s been almost no rain nor snow to keep the grass green and edible, and the heat has scorched what is there. The natural slough waterholes have dried. Mr. Mrnak worries that soon his cattle will have nothing to eat. And the hay that he and other ranchers grow to feed their cows has produced a meager yield. If he has to buy feed from another state, he could pay as much as a young cow is worth just to feed it for the winter...MORE