Ranchers Weather Dry Times : Livestock: The county’s cattle industry has declined because of urbanization and rising costs. The drought could reduce it further.

Gazing over his cattle ranch in Somis, Arlie Harvey could see the hills where his cows climb and graze, hills turning brown from lack of rain.

“The grass is normally a foot high, but this couldn’t be more than a few inches,” the 57-year-old rancher said one morning, sitting in his pickup truck.

“I don’t think there’s a prettier place in the world than them hills when the grass is wavin’ in the wind,” he added with a sigh. “But we don’t have that.”

The drought that is starting to affect residential and commercial water supplies in Ventura also threatens the county’s 150-year-old cattle industry, agricultural experts say.

Cattle businessmen say the industry already is in sharp decline because of urbanization, rising land values and other costs during the last two decades. The number of cattle has decreased, from an average of 30,000 to 40,000 head through the mid-1970s to an estimated 6,000 to 8,000, according to state, county and industry estimates.

Sales of cattle, hogs and sheep in 1988, the year of the latest statistics available from the agricultural commissioner’s office, were about half those of 20 years ago, totaling $3.5 million out of a countywide total of $786 million for all agricultural products.

The amount of land used for grazing cattle has dropped at least 50% over the last 20 years, County Assessor Jerry Sanford said, to about 150,000 to 200,000 acres in the county.

“It’s a very small part of our farm economy,” said Bob Brendler, farm adviser at the University of California Cooperative Extension in Ventura. The drought could reduce numbers further, he said, because “the cattle business is dependent on rain.” Rain fuels the natural grasses, he explained, “and when you don’t have rain, there’s not much feed.”

Harvey said he has 350 cows in his hills. He has not yet made a decision on what steps to take, but said: “I’m anticipating cutting my herd in half.”

Harvey runs one of about 30 cattle companies that remain in Ventura County. He is believed to be the county’s largest cattle operator because, in addition to his 350 grazing cows, he has another 1,500 “feeding” cattle, which are kept separately in large pastures to gain weight.

A tall man with an unruffled manner, Harvey considers cattle ranching a way of life, something he’s done for nearly 40 years and would not give up. “I just always liked it, always liked the animals,” he said as he left the truck and tromped down a dirt path. In that sentiment, Harvey is typical of others in the business who say they hang on in spite of encroaching development, motorcycle riders and other trespassers who cut their fences, increased costs--and now drought.

Harvey spends his day on his land, dressed in jeans, a cowboy hat and boots that are as dusty as his truck. He is no longer typical of cattle ranchers in Ventura County. Today’s cattle rancher is more likely to be found behind the meat counter in a delicatessen, operating a feed store or managing a citrus ranch than spending the day out on the range.

Cattle ranching is now usually a secondary profession. “You couldn’t depend on the cattle to make a living,” said Pierre Esponde, meat department manager at Sam’s Deli & Meat Market in Camarillo.

“I personally believe if I had to make a living on cattle in this county, I’d starve to death,” said Fred Nehrig, a citrus manager who is president of the Ventura County Cattlemen’s Assn.

To underscore his words, the head of the local cattlemen’s group added that he no longer owns any cattle.

“There are far fewer cattle producers because of the realities of urbanization,” said David Kleine, head of the Agriculture Department at Ventura College. “It takes an average 20 acres to feed one cow per year, and orchard land, vegetable land or developed land are a better use than cattle, economically.

“However,” Kleine added, “where cattle are found in Ventura County, in hill, brush and grasslands not scheduled for development for a long long time, they do very well, because of the excellent climate and good quality grass--when it rains.”

Esponde pastures 150 head of cattle on about 3,000 acres he leases in Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park. A 53-year-old French Basque, Esponde rises at 5:30 a.m. every morning to tend his herd before he goes to work, and returns after work. He’s been doing that for 20 years, he said. “It’s a sideline. Hopefully you get a couple of bucks out of it.”

Happy Muller, owner of the Camarillo Feed Store, keeps 110 cows on leased land north of the Ventura city limits.

“I call my cattle my therapy,” he said. “Some people play golf, some sail boats. I go out and fix fence.”

Ranchers say they like the outdoor life, the care-taking, the game of outthinking the cows, whether they do it full time or not.

“It’s not every day you do the same thing,” said Joe Yanez, foreman of Smith-Hobson Ranch in Aliso Canyon, one of the oldest ranches in the county. He is the fourth generation of a family that first came to work on the ranch, located between Ventura and Santa Paula, almost 100 years ago.

“You can be plumber, mechanic, welder, cowboy, farmer, a little bit of everything,” the 42-year-old Yanez said.

But Esponde said, “I don’t know how much longer I can stay on.” He said more than 4,000 homes are planned for the land he leases.

The drought is an additional threat.

“I’ve had to feed hay all through the winter this year,” Esponde said, adding that he has sold 50 cows and calves to cut expenses. He hopes he won’t have to sell any more.

Cattle ranchers depend on the natural grass growth to feed their herds in the winter months when calves are born and raised, they say. The profit comes when the calves are sold around July for an average of $300 to $600 each, depending on their weight.

But when ranchers have to supplement the grass with hay, which some say costs about $10 a bale, expenses climb. Some sell the calves early, at lower weights, and the mother cows as well.

Kleine compares this practice to “selling off bedrooms of your house when you can’t pay the mortgage. You’re losing a capital investment.”

“The goal is to keep your cows,” said Richard Atmore, a 31-year-old Ventura native who started working with cattle eight years ago. He keeps 100 head on 3,200 acres that belong to an oil company. “Otherwise where’s your income the next year, when you have no calves?”

Along with Harvey, he is one of only an estimated half-dozen in the county who consider cattle ranching their primary profession. But even Harvey said he has a trash-hauling business and that he breeds and boards horses on his ranch to buttress the cattle operation.

“I couldn’t sit on this mountain and make it work by itself,” he said.

Harvey and his family even devised a special, more economical form of feed for the “feeding” cattle, he noted. It is made from a ground mixture of hay and food refuse--such as spoiled lemons retrieved from local packinghouses, almond hulls, stale bakery products and tapioca. The feeding cattle are bought thin and resold for slaughter 90 to 100 days later at a higher weight, he said.

Harvey is the son of a welder in Oxnard. As he grew up, he was the only one in his family interested in cattle, he said, and he got his first job on a ranch in 1951, working cattle for a summer.

For many years he managed a feedlot in Somis, and when the business shut down 11 years ago--”there were complaints about the smell,” Harvey said--he leased his current acreage.

Atmore was not raised by ranchers, either; he is the son of school teachers. A tall, energetic man, Atmore learned by working for a rancher who had been in the business 50 years, he said, and by studying livestock management at Ventura College.

He unsure what he will do about the drought, whether he will sell off part of his herd and, if so, when.

“I’ve never been through anything like this before,” he said. “This is terrible, a catastrophe.”

Harvey, however, seemed more philosophical about it. “It’ll come back,” he said calmly. “These years just happen.”

No matter what, Atmore said, he does not want to leave the business.

“I love what I do, whether I make a lot of money or not. And I don’t,” he said one afternoon sitting outside a mobile home he has placed on a high hill on his leased land. On clear days, Atmore can see the ocean from this spot.

“I make enough money to get by and live up here,” Atmore said. “It’s great. I have a $4,000 mobile home and a $4-million view.”