The Welfare Cattle Empire That Controls Your Public Lands: article

[KsRancher]

I agree with you that a bid process is the best way to determine market value. I see two big issues with this.
First there would be no competition on many of the public allotments. When the homesteaders arrived, they laid claim to all the water, when the homestead act was discontinued the land that was unclaimed became BLM. Many public allotments need to have access to the water on private land to be viable. Even if there is enough water on the public, you still need access to a corral and good luck getting the government approval for even a set of portable corrals. You could lose half the grazing season waiting for the approval. Forget about a set of permeate corrals You could be waiting years before this went through NEPA and the appeals appeals. Even if you do have corrals on the public, you do not want them. Rustling is still a thing on the accessable allotments where you are miles from anything. Not common but people will still load up a trailer load of cattle and take them east of the Missouri where you don't need brand inspections to sell them. A set of corrells just makes it easy for them. There would be no compeitive bidding on many allotments. You could remidy this with a minimum bid, but why set up a bidding process that would be sure to cost the goverment a bunch of money to administer and esentualy still have the same systom we have now.
The second reason I dislike a bidding systom is on allotments where there would be compition in the bidding, the winner would likely be the opporater that is going to skimp on maintaining the allotmernt and when it was getting close to the end of the lease, they would ride that allotmemt like the rented mule it is. The goverment simply does not have the man power or money to ensure that the allotment is treated well and even if they do try to enforce the rule on a bad opporator. by the time it goes through the appeals process the lease is up and the bad opporator is long gone.Change to a bidding systom and you change the permit from something you own to something you rent. People alway treat what they own better than what they rent. There is a reason range on public has been improving since the time we changed from the tragidy of the commons to the systom we have today where the opportors own the permit. Change to a bidding systom and all the incentive is to get as much out of the allotment as quickly as possable instead of haveing something for future generations. A bid syestom would be a bad deal for the health of puclic range.

There are some good points in there I didn't think about. If a bidding process wouldn't work for every piece then yes, there should be some sort of minimum. For instance. If someone is paying $1.70 per animal unit per month. Let's say someone is running 1000 animal units. Thats $1,700/month and $10,200 for a 6 month summer season.

I know its apples to oranges. But a 6 month summer season in my area (10 acres/AUM) for 1000 animal units would cost you north of $300,000.

I think that is why people are upset about it and it feels more like welfare/heavily subsidized thing. Because coming from someone that's been in cattle for 25yrs. $10,200 for summer grass on 1000 cows is absolutely nothing. And when I say nothing. I mean nothing

 

[cuerro viejo]

Cattle can be a good thing for mule deer. In general cattle grazing promotes the annual forbes and woody browse spices that deer prefer to eat. One of the reason mule deer have struggled in the west and elk have boomed is because better cattle grazing practices have lead to more grass and less browse.

One of greatest things often not mention, which tends to be the single greatest thing…. Constant water sources for fawns.

 

[IDElkmagnet]

I think that's a great idea.

I'd do the same thing with western hunting. Access should be done at market rates. Or, to be clearer - there should be trespass fees to access public lands and those fees ought to be based on what private land of similar quality goes for. No more freeloading. We're simply beyond the point where access can be free as there are too many hunters and not enough land, for that. Instead of having 800 hunters chasing after maybe 200 bulls per year in a typical Colorado unit, have 200 hunters - each paying $3000 in today's dollars - and suddenly you have less pressure on the elk, better experiences for the hunters, everyone wins.

If paying a premium for that experience doesn't result in enough harvest, make a late season cow hunt with traditional access rules.

They do this by regulating permets (grazing and hunting).
As to your "suggestion".
It would be a good comparison IF our current system was to give the tags to the same guys who had them last year as they are grandfathered in aaaaaaand we sold them the tags at a fraction of the cost it takes to administer the program.
If that was our current tag system then everyone would love your proposal.

 

[AHayes111]

There are some good points in there I didn't think about. If a bidding process wouldn't work for every piece then yes, there should be some sort of minimum. For instance. If someone is paying $1.70 per animal unit per month. Let's say someone is running 1000 animal units. Thats $1,700/month and $10,200 for a 6 month summer season.

I know its apples to oranges. But a 6 month summer season in my area (10 acres/AUM) for 1000 animal units would cost you north of $300,000.

I think that is why people are upset about it and it feels more like welfare/heavily subsidized thing. Because coming from someone that's been in cattle for 25yrs. $10,200 for summer grass on 1000 cows is absolutely nothing. And when I say nothing. I mean nothing

I understand this, I have watched several cattlemen over the years chase the cheap public grass only to find out you get what you pay for. Last summer because of the fire, we had to cut the herd hard, add 70 pair to our private herd and pray for rain and find private grass of 105 older cows and 60 first calf heifers. We found grass for the heifers at 25 dollars an AUM and the older cows at 22 dollars an AUM. Even though we had to pay much more for the grass, the cows did better. Our weaning weights were the best we have ever had and pregnancy were up a bit also. When it all settles out there isn't going to be that much difference in the bottom line. It was also a lot less work. With the heifers, we loaded them on the truck and landowner handled everything until it was time to load them back on the truck. No checking water, fencing or changing pastures. With the cows, I did go over the fence, but that was a cake walk compared to forest lease. Not only was there quite a bit less fence, but I could get the side by side to just about all of it. On the forest over half the fence is inaccessible to even the most daring side by side operator. Changing pastures was also easy, Half a day and we were done. On the forest changing pastures takes days and you still may not get all the cattle moved.
I have ran two herds of cattle for my entier life. One that summers priamily on public and one that is prmaily on our private. I once figured I could pay 15 dollars an AUM more to lease the private and still make as much money per cow as I could for the public lease and cattle prices were half of what they are now.
This is why.
Smaler pastures with less trees and topgaphy are less work when it comes to fencing and moving cattle.
Live water on creek and river bottoms is maintenance free, as apposed to wells, springs in a tank and pipe lines.
Better water and smaller pastrues equal better prgnacy rates. even though we turn out an exta bull per hundred cows on the forest lease to try to compinsate for the bigger pasture. In your example of 1000 cows that is some serious money.
Better water and less topgraphy also resuts in better weaning weights, With the private herd the calves weigh 50 lbs better then the public herd just about every year, sometimes even more.
Lots more rules and regualtion on the public, hard to put a value on that but it can be costly.

 

[KsRancher]

Curious how many cows per bull you figure in that rough mountain country. Out my way we run 15 cows on the rougher stuff and 25 on the better ground. This is for a 90 day calving season. More people are going to a 60 day season so they give it an extra bull or two on each group. But that starts to get pretty hard on bulls getting that many in a group. Usually end up with one gimping or broken dick.

 

[AHayes111]

I think the last year we turned out full numbers on the forest it was 12 and a half. When you have a pasture that is 10,000 acres of rough country, you got to have a lot of bulls to cover it. Problem is you always end up with too many at some water and not enough at others. Injures are an issue. Really sucks when you buy a 15,000 dollar bull and breaks a femur the second year. We don't buy yearling bulls, only two year olds for the cows. May cost a little more and you don't get as many years of use, but it is worth it in the long run,

 

[Legend]

There are quite a few options on how to calculate lease rates. And all of them can consider challenges to putting on weight or hassle for the operator (water, fencing, topography etc.). Heck you could even give 50% discount for having to work with the government!

Here are some examples: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c2-23.html

It's all about how much effort/money it takes to gain a pound in the end.

 

[elkliver]

.
Lots more rules and regualtion on the public, hard to put a value on that but it can be costly.

AHayes, did they have you count the Blades of Grass in a square inch? and then move over foot or so and count the blades in another square. And then submit a report so that you can document the status of the Grazing? And yes, that is a 100% true example of a Forest Service Allotment grazing requirement.

 

[Coyote Commander]

I don’t think you are missing my point or that I am missing yours.

If someone is running cattle on private land at 20-40 acres per cow, I don’t have any issue with that. My issue is with subsidizing cattle production in places - particularly on public land - where it makes no agricultural or economic sense to raise cattle.

And, frankly, I would be very happy in an economic system with no subsidies at all, basic environmental standards, and tariffs to encourage domestic production. It seems to me that our country was stronger in eras with less regulation.

So…..

So what should be done with this land in your vast experience of western land management and livestock production?

So the governments charging cheap rent, which is something.

The only other option is for it to sit idle and that land produce zero revenue. Which must be what you want? No water development. No nothing?

I know if I owned a piece of crap land that’s not good for anything but a few cows, and my options were a cheap lease or no lease, im choosing the cheap lease!

You want to talk subsidies, let’s talk farm subsidies, on private land even!!!

 

[Coyote Commander]

My family owns land in banner and kimbell county. Cattle ranches are everywhere. We lease some of our pastures for grazing and the mule deer hate it when the cows come in, whitetails don’t care.

Every time I find cattle on public in mule deer county I refuse to hunt it, the mule deer imo do not tolerate them nearly as good as whitetails and the numbers are drastically lower compared to when the cows ain’t there.

Wish there was a better option. I almost never hunt Nebraska public anymore because their are more cows then anything else, it’s insane.

I’ve seen the exact opposite literally everywhere I’ve hunted.

Mule deer and elk are FAR more tolerant of cattle than whitetails.

Heck. Elk are just wilder cows themselves.

But when the cows move in to a drainage, the whitetails seem to move to the next drainage for a while.