From the Fields: Cassie Oyarzum, ​​​​​​​Modoc County cattle rancher and hay producer

By Cassie Oyarzum
Modoc County cattle rancher and hay producer

The cattle market is at record-high prices. The national herd is small, and until it grows, they’re expecting cattle prices to stay high. I think we’re at that peak level of the market, and at some point, it’s going to go down, but right now everything is good.

It’s been a great year as far as feed on the range. We’re gathering cattle off the range to bring them home so we can start getting calves weaned, processed and ready for sale. We’ll wean them for a good 60 days, and then we’ll put them into loads and get them sold.

We’ve had a few thunder showers in the last couple months. It’s brought a bit of green grass back. We run cattle in Nevada and California. They’re all pretty much desert permits. It’s been a good year—not overly hot this summer but warm enough. The last few winters have been wet. Hopefully, this one will be wet. 

Our cows stay here all winter. We put them on the permit in the summer so we can put hay up on the home place, and then we’ll feed our cows hay all winter. We fall calve because we have foothill abortion issues on our permit. Foothill abortion causes the cows to abort their calves. It’s given to cows through a tick bite. For us, it’s easier to fall calve because by the time they’re bit, they’re already in their third trimester, so they can step through that without having too much loss.

All our hay is fed to our cows, but there’s a lot of alfalfa producers in this region, and it’s a rough time for them because hay prices are not great, and this is the third year that they’ve not been very good. In years when hay prices went sky high, we were fortunate enough to be able to produce our own, so it kept our cattle operation sustainable.

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