Texas wildfires will take years to recover from in cattle numbers and ranchers - Bill Martin

Hi everyone. I'm Paul Yeager. This is the MtoM Podcast to production of Iowa PBS and the Market to Market TV show. A couple of weeks ago, wildfires went through the panhandle of Texas, it damaged more than a million acres, it killed 1000s, if not more than 10,000 cattle. And it actually could have been worse. Bill Martin is with the Lonestar Stockyards in Amarillo, Texas and his stock yard that we were just referring to was in the heart of where this fire went through. We kind of talked about how business has been at the stockyard and a little background on just how big of a cattle region we're talking about here in the panhandle of Texas. Spoiler alert, it's big. And what happened with these fires, what is to come, this is going to take months and months and miles and miles of fence that have to be put back up. We're not talking just 110 miles, we're talking hundreds of miles of fence that will have to be rebuilt, rebuilt, before animals can come back into this region. And this is a region that has a lot of animals. So Bill is our guest. If you have any feedback for me, send me an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. Also at the end of this podcast. I've got a surprise for you. So listen to Bill, hang on for the end. And we'll see in a little bit. Are you from Amarillo, Bill? Are you in your home area?

[Bill Martin]  I was born and raised in the Texas panhandle. Lived in Colorado for about 25 years and had been back down here for about three years to open this livestock auction with a group of guys I went to college with and we all decided to invest in this.

[Yeager]  I'm sorry, how many years have you been with the barn?

[Martin]  Three years.

[Yeager]  Wow, quite a three years to be entering the livestock business in that capacity. 

[Martin]  Yeah, it was a pretty big leap of faith. But I had owned one in Colorado for 15 years. So it wasn't a stranger to the business. Just a unique opportunity to come back down to where I was raised and get back involved with something I like.

[Yeager]  So when someone finds out you're from Amarillo, when you're in Colorado, do they have stereotypes?

[Martin]  You know, a little bit but they overcame. We had a successful auction up there and they decided that everything from Texas wasn't too bad.

[Yeager]  My favorite still is Amarillo by Morning, the line by George Strait. I just love it. And it taught my boys about the geography of just how darn big Texas is. I mean, you're how many? How many hours are you from even Dallas, let alone Houston? 

[Martin]  Well, Dallas is six or seven hours, Houston is 10 to 12. San Antonio is 10 or more. The tip of Texas is a whole day drive. El Paso to Longview is another whole day drive. Yeah, it's a huge, huge part of the nation. 

[Yeager]  And from where you lived in Colorado, that was probably what six hours?

[Martin]  More like eight or nine. 

[Yeager]  Okay, but still not that far in comparison. Right. Right.

[Martin]  You can't put many taxes in the United States. But you can put a lot of other states in Texas,

[Yeager]  Iowa included. You can like copy, paste us a bunch in your state. Tell me about the cattle business in Texas and how different it is from say, the southern part, the western part to you in the panhandle?

[Martin]  Well, we're fortunate here because we have a lot of cow calf producers, but we also have a lot of yearling operators on improved grasses. The native grass is what we were familiar with in the fires. That's what we lost in that. And then we raised a lot of wheat pasture and that is usually grazed. If they harvest it, they have to get off by the first of March. If they graze it out. It lasts till maybe the first of June.

[Yeager]  And that's and that's you're talking about your area right now in the panhandle? Yes. Go ahead. And how different was it in color than where you are? 

[Martin]  Well, it's a lot more seasonal. Everyone is exclusively spring calves. They weaned all their calves in October 90% of the state grazes on federal lands which would be Forest Service or BLM. It's mostly in the mountains. So you summer in the mountains. You bring your cows down in the winter and keep them in the valley floors and usually have them stand up and feed them not many big yearling operations up there. It's probably 90% cow calf

[Yeager]  In your area, your sale barn, Tuesday's the sale day. What comes through on a Tuesday.

[Martin]  It's mainly all classes of cattle. We don't sell small animals. We do have a couple of big horse sales two to four times a year. But it would be calves weighing from mainly four to 600. And then yearlings weighing seven to 900.

[Yeager]  And they're coming in and who's sitting in the audience bidding.

[Martin]  So we've got a real good group of buyers. We obviously have called cow and bull buyers for the packers. Then we have guys that buy for the feedlots, both the corporates and the independents, the smaller feed yards. We have people that buy for grow yards, which is a preparatory stage that goes from a ballin calf to a seven eight weight that could go on to the finish yard. And then we have a lot of ranchers and elite farmers that both buy a cow turn on pasture. Right now they're buying their summer grass cattle. In the fall, they buy those cattle to go to wheat.

[Yeager]  When you say depending on where they're going, how many miles away or some people coming to buy it, at your sale? 

[Martin]  Most of the cattle that we get fall within a 200 mile radius. Some come further that I've known in the past, we get a few cattle out of Colorado and quite a few out of New Mexico. Obviously we're close to Oklahoma, so we get quite a few from there. But most of the cattle are within the panhandle area.

[Yeager]  In your area. I was talking to you yesterday, getting ready for this interview. And I and I said to you normally every time I look at the panhandle of Oklahoma, or the panhandle of Texas, you always seem to be in some kind of drought. Is that an accurate depiction of what it always seems to be? I guess if you put it in quotes, 

[Martin]  Well, probably more accurate. I mean, these two areas join each other. So that's what we think of the most. But actually, it's the High Plains that runs all the way east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi and goes all the way to Canada. Pretty similar weather patterns is pretty windswept, basically flat with a little bit of variation along the rivers. And we are pretty susceptible to drought. When we do get rains, we can get big rains, some pretty violent storms with all the wind that we have, we have tornadoes and hail and but you know, for the most part, this area right here is 12 to 18 inches of rainfall. And last year, we had over 18 in the month of May in the early part of June. And we didn't get any the rest of the year. So over the last, really it's a 10 year cycle. It's more than a two or three year deal, but it's basically been more dry than wet for about 10 years. 

[Yeager]  But you have green out the window right now.

[Martin]  It is just starting to come. Our native grasses have not really greened up yet. Obviously where we planted wheat that stays green all winter. But you're just starting to see some green grass coming in the native grass at the very base of the plant.

[Yeager]  And when was the big problem earlier this month?

[Martin]  That was the deal. Yeah, we were not extremely dry. We'd had some snow and some rain. Starting in December and a little bit in January and some more in February. We weren't as dry as we have been. But we had grown some feet so there was some tall. Some of our longer varieties of grass were standing up pretty good, you know, leftovers from last year. And of course, along the river basin where the fires went. We have a lot of mesquite and other brush. So there's quite a bit of fuel for those fires.

[Yeager]  And when you say River Basin, which river?

[Martin]  Primarily the Canadian River Basin and a tributary along it runs starting in the Northern Panhandle. It goes from the edge of New Mexico, all the way into Oklahoma. And then that same Canadian River Basin goes down through Oklahoma City and you know, through most of that state, so it's a real long, but it's usually dry. It's extremely rough. It's Sandy. So a lot of the roads aren't really very accessible, even a pickup.

[Yeager]  And let's go back to last year when the rain that happened in the spring kind of shut off. It did prompt some growth and you're saying that you had some pretty high grasses when the calendar flipped to 24 Right? 

[Martin]  That's right. You know that area they're here on on the outside edges of the river we have mostly grama grass, buffalo grass and shorter varieties. But along the river there's a lot more varieties that go there's a lot of overall bluestem and some other other varieties that reach one to two feet in height and they're not the most palatable so they usually don't get neat in the office. Well they give good cover. But you know They're not as tender and tasty as this buffalo grass and gravel grass.

[Yeager]  But they're flammable? 

[Martin]  Highly flammable.

[Yeager]  And that is the fuel that really kind of caused like, like in the mountain regions of California, they always talk about the underbrush after a rain that that just causes the fuel. So, did you have a warning in late February, early March? Is it just a general awareness that fires could happen at any time?

[Martin]  In the spring in the panhandle, and really, it's all the high plains all the way to Canada. You know, it's always a constant threat. And they issue red flag warnings or fire warnings. It's the same warning here. Yes, we were aware that the wind was coming. But they're still a little unsure what, what started the fires, they think it might be a downed power line, but three days or 50 mile an hour winds and then the day where sustained winds were 60 to 70. It probably toppled a line somewhere. And that is what set it off. 

[Yeager]  And when you say set it off, I mean, we're talking acres and acres, is there any total yet on how many acres burned?

[Martin]  There's a lot of numbers flying around. But the last I heard that was fairly verifiable was 1.2 to 1.3 million acres.

[Yeager]  And to give a sense of how big that is, I mean, we're talking. I guess I shouldn't say county because your county sizes are different than what we have in a lot of corn country. But that's a good chunk of land. Fair to say?

[Martin]  It's huge, and it's almost exclusively a cow calf. You know, so that's the people who are most affected by it. And yes, they did have warnings, but the wind was blowing so hard that nobody could stay ahead of it, and it would miss some spots. And then it would it would jump over things and burn some places entirely and then miss somebody's place miss a few cattle here and there and then get just wiped the next place out is like a lot of storms, we see you know, it doesn't just sweep the Earth, but it got a lot of them.

[Yeager]  it burns and it burns pasture it burns the grass that you would refer to did it do damage to homes or ranches or barns, hey, setups, anything like that.

[Martin]  All of that that they couldn't save was taken, you know, it's just some people were able to protect some of their facilities themselves with dozers and blades and water, you know, whatever they might have had to save their house, then cut some fire trails with a blade on the tractor. I mean, everybody was doing everything they could, you know, the first concern was to get the fences opened up so the cattle could get out. That's kind of a last resort. But you know, they might have a chance that they can get if they're not trapped. You know, obviously, getting them out of the direction of the wind, if it's blowing from west to east, you know, try to take them south or north as a lot of things people tried to do to save their cattle. But in the end, it was just it was really hard to get them all

[Yeager]  And you're trying to fight in so many different directions. And you already talked about the terrain, it's not easy to go chase down some Valley if you can't get there with a pickup.

[Martin]  No. And that's basically what we have when I lived in Colorado. And all the public lands, we had a lot of federal relief with planes and helicopters, they would bomb the fires with water and other flame retardant. So but this came so fast and got big, so quick. You know, it was too late. By the time the planes came in, a lot of the places were gone. We're just really lucky no more people lost

[Yeager]  More than a million acres. A couple of lives. Any idea on the number of cattle?

[Martin]  We've heard a lot of estimates, but I'm hearing a pretty defined estimate of about 10 to 11,000 dead animals that would mostly be cows and would include some calves. I think they say 20 to 22,000 cattle were affected by it. Which percentage wise in the nation is not a large number. But in our area. It's huge.

[Yeager]  I mean, it's the main crop.

[Martin]  Right? It's, I mean, these guys, it's their best genetics. They've been raising them, some of them for many generations. A lot of young ranchers that I am aware of, you know, just been in business for 1015 years, and this was what they had accumulated in that time period. And, you know, I had a friend that had 95 cows in one pasture that were about halfway kept out and when it was all over, he had six cows left

[Yeager]  And I'm guessing that's not the only story like that. 

[Martin]  Well, there's, unfortunately, way too many stories like that. And the numbers are a lot larger in some places. A lot of people lost 50 or 60. But it goes up to five and 600. And it's also hard to tell, I think you were telling me yesterday, that mean, you have some, you have some cows that were pregnant. And so that number they hadn't they hadn't calves yet. Right. So that's the last the cow and the calf and then you have some that maybe make it to when they have that calf in a few months, and maybe that calf will be born dead, we just don't know the extent of the damage. And a lot of the utters on the cows have been ruined. So you don't know how this gonna fit. If they are able to have the calf, if they can nurse it, if they can breed back or not. There's just so many things to think about the damage to the bowls, it just goes on and on.

[Yeager]  Is it too early to know if any of those fire damaged animals have shown up in the in the in the in the barn for sale yet.

[Martin]  We have seen a few of them in the area, we haven't had any here. They're really difficult to market, I know of a set that went into the edge of Oklahoma. And they hold like 70 or 80 of the cows and calves, which they knew that they were pairs and they got there and they couldn't make the cows take the calves. I think everyday was also sick and tired. They couldn't pair him back up. So they just split them and sold them separately.

[Yeager]  That alone, I just shutter to hear stories like that. And Bill when you know that it's in your industry is one that has had some really tough times. But as of late, I mean, at least the price and the live cattle in the feeder cattle market have been higher. It's just the expenses have come along with it. What's the mindset of producers in your area right now?

[Martin]  Well, I mean, they're just, it's been great before the fire, because they had all this potential for this great crop of calves that were about to be born and harvested this fall. And at probably the highest price we've seen ever. So it's really gonna backfire on him. Because these poor guys not only are going to have to replace all those females, the female market is as high as it's ever been as well. So, you know, whatever, wherever they get financed to do it, if they have insurance, if they don't have that to pay it out of pocket, they're gonna have to pay record prices, and they'll get zero return on calves that were lost. So it's kind of a double whammy. It's been a great market, but they're not gonna get to see any of it.

[Yeager]  Do you get the sense that many will try to rebuild a restock?

[Martin]  I don't know anyone that isn't going to try to rebuild. And that's, you know, the mindset in our industry is that, you know, nobody quits or gives up. And the people that have come in to help. I can't even tell you how many loads of hay have come from the northern states, Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, everyone has just done a great job of getting hay down here. So these guys can feed the ones that they have left. Because there's nothing they can turn them out on.

[Yeager]  And so the hay, the hay brigade or the hay helpers, I mean, you could give them a great name, but they're absolutely appreciated as well.

[Martin]  Oh, it's just been unbelievable. I mean, our industry has a lot of problems. You know, we're always fighting something, some kind of market issue or import issue exports, whatever. But when we're in trouble, we all pitch in to help.

[Yeager]  So now what's next, when you talk about rebuilding, you've got small operators that might have what, 10 miles of fence to rebuild.

[Martin]  That's another thing a lot of people don't realize. These fences are everything. And like a small operation might have eight to 10 miles of fence. These bigger ones have fence lines in the hundreds of miles. And a lot of that's gone. So just to get crews out there. It's one thing to fence one ranch; you can get 10 crews on it if you have to. But when you've got 200 branches to fans of all various sizes in rough terrain. It's just mind boggling.

[Yeager]  What about the terrain? Rain has rained since the fires and has anything green started to come up from underneath.

[Martin]  Well, it's that time of the year when we were just starting to see some green new growth. You know that country will grow back quickly with rain. We haven't had it yet. We have a slight chance this weekend. So, you know, timing wise is probably better now than having it in the early part of, you know, late fall or early winter, where there would be no growth for three to four months. So you'd be looking at dry burnt sand.

[Yeager]  Which would get caught in the wind, which would cause its own set of problems again, right?

[Martin]  Drifting sand, you know, stuff’s moving around all winter long, and you're just having to look at it. So at least now if we do get moisture, we'll have a good chance to recover some of that, hopefully, in time to grace this season.

[Yeager]  When you say it could happen, I mean, how quick could some of this rebuild, and can this be done in a month to get even the small ones operational, are they going to have these animals off hundreds of miles in other directions while they work through this fencing situation.

[Martin]  Most of the people that had a lot of cattle that lived through it, they hauled them off to either other states or other locations within the state. I just can't put a number on the timeframe, but I don't think in a month, we'll be ready to do anything, it's going to take two to three months for the grass to grow. It's gonna take six months to a year to build some of the fences back. Two to three years, we might see a lot of the places back in operation, but it's just gonna be, we're just gonna have to find out what we can do. 

[Yeager]  Well Bill, the anecdotes always end up here, at least back to us. In Iowa were when it was dry in Oklahoma there for a stretch and I'd heard it extended into Texas and parts of Kansas, maybe it was in Colorado, that when it was dry, these farm these producers, these ranchers were shipping cattle already out and did most of them all come back and had come back into the region after that dry period.

[Martin]  I don't think we are fully stocked here. We're in better shape than other parts in Central Texas were. But you know, we had we're sufficiently stocked where we just weren't ever completely recovered from the last serious drought. So we were just kind of gaining some headway. And now we get hit with this.

[Yeager]  So if anything that's the tiniest of silver linings, is that there? It could have been worse because there could have been more animals around.

[Martin]  Right. Right.

[Yeager]  I hate to take solace that that's an upside.

[Martin]  Well, you have to find something good in it. And that's like we were talking about a minute ago, the timing of the year if we do get moisture, you know, a lot of that black country will be covered with green here and another month if we get rain. 

[Yeager]  Well as a cattle rancher in Texas as optimistic as every other producer in agriculture.

[Martin]  I think outside of this, this terrible devastation. Absolutely. You know, the markets are strong. They're the prospects that have something to graze this year. We're looking pretty good. Yeah, I mean, everybody on the market side of things is very optimistic. We're at a 75 year low on the cow numbers. They're hard to find, especially young, quality ones. Yeah, everybody's optimistic.

[Yeager]  Do you have an in-house cafe at your sale barn on Tuesday as you do? What's the special?

[Martin]  We have a food truck. And we have one that does barbecue one week and then we have a real good hamburger guy the next week and we got the greatest Mexican food you can get out of the food truck the next week. So we rotate every week and get a little something different.

[Yeager]  Did you miss the Texas food when you're in Colorado?

[Martin]  Especially the Mexican food and barbecue.

[Yeager]  We won't tell them there that they could catch up to you in barbecue. Right Bill? Well, fortunately,

[Martin]  I took one of the best cooks in the state with me. So I never went hungry.

[Yeager]  And we have to thank her for her help and making this interview happen. I appreciate that too.

[Martin]  Yeah, without her phone. Technology. We wouldn't have got this done.

[Yeager]  I love it. Bill Martin, I appreciate your time. Thank you so very much.

[Martin]  Paul, thank you. Is there anything else I can do or help anybody get some insight on what's going on down here? We'd be glad to help.

[Yeager]  My thanks to Bill for his time as he is very appreciative. It's what he said when we were done recording all the support from around the country to farmers and ranchers in his part of the world. Want to say we have some mail to read. And I need to thank Leonard in Fresno, California. He was watching or listening to our latest episode about wild hogs. And he writes, Paul, he says this auction item he's holding an auction item here. This is a this is the 45th annual Ag boosters barbecue from 2022 done there in the Fresno area and he says Paul, this auction item was something we did not stay for it was lot number 15 that guided hog hunt. And he's not called his freezer for any possible extra meat. So appreciate his letter and also thank you for the kind words about the podcast. So thank you and if you have anything you want to send me so what Bill did - he wrote Iowa PBS, PO Box 6450 and Johnston Iowa 50131. I look forward to hearing from you in written form or if you want to send the show a note you can do it. MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. We'll see you then. Bye bye

 

Contact: Paul.Yeager@Iowapbs.org