From the Fields - Taylor Hagata

By Taylor Hagata, Lassen County rancher 

We are pulling all our cattle off our permits, bringing them back to the home ranch, getting them on our meadows. We grow our own hay. We just got done with our second cutting on our alfalfa fields.

It was a good year in terms of feed. We had a good winter. It filled all the watering holes, and our stock water has been holding strong. We’re in the high desert. We’re used to missing storms, but we haven’t had any measurable rain in four months.

We are a cow-calf operation, and we run our cattle on Bureau of Land Management permits that are adjacent to our private ground. Our cattle stay on our property or our lease permits until we sell them. The cattle market has been good and is holding strong. We sell lighter calves that are about 500 pounds from December to January. We are going to try to hit the market when the grass starts growing in the valley.

Everyone in the Willow Creek Valley run cattle on large grazing permits, which can be anywhere from 10,000 acres to more than 100,000 acres. In a year like this where you have good water, the cattle can get really spread out.

The biggest issue this area has been dealing with on our permits is the horrible infestation of grasshoppers, which has affected counties throughout Northern California. As a permittee on BLM ground, there’s really nothing I can do. Even if you spray on your private ground, we’re surrounded by BLM land, so you’re wasting time and money.

We always have predator issues. Wolves have been killing calves, and we have bears, lions and coyotes. There is no relief whatsoever from California Fish and Wildlife. The agency has not been issuing depredation permits for lions or bears, so the coyote numbers have been skyrocketing. With coyotes, lions, bears and vultures, there’s nothing left of the cows but a pile of bones.