Greener Cattle Pastures Give Reprieve : Livestock: Ranchers say they won’t have to supplement natural grasses with expensive hay, thanks to the March rains.

Cattle ranchers in Ventura County say that rains in March have produced enough extra vegetation to give the troubled industry at least a brief reprieve.

The wet weather produced enough grass to feed the dwindling cattle herds in the county, staving off a repeat of recent drought years when ranchers were forced to supplement natural grasses with expensive hay.

“This is going to be a good year,” cattleman Rob Frost said as he looked over a few of his 100 cows and calves high in the hills above Santa Paula. “There is plenty for the cows to eat. And prices are good because the cattle inventory is low since they’ve been sold off over the years.”

But the bonanza may be short-lived if this fall and next spring do not bring at least normal rainfall, Frost said.

Without the rain needed to make the grasses flourish, Frost said ranchers will be back where they were at the beginning of 1991, paying to graze their cattle in other parts of the state or selling off parts of their herds.

“Let’s put it this way: Nobody is getting excited about increasing the size of their herds again,” said Frost, president of the Ventura County Cattlemen’s Assn.

Frost’s neighbor, Bob Pinkerton, said ranchers can only be pushed so far before the industry is gone for good from the county.

“We have a little hope because of the rain,” said Pinkerton, a retired Army man with deep family roots in Santa Paula.

“You’ve got to take humane care of the livestock, and yet you’ve got to make a profit. It comes down to some cold, hard decisions.”

Richard Atmore, who leases 3,000 acres in the hills above Ventura, said his 50 cows and their calves ate 70 tons of hay last year, more than his ranch has used in the last 10 years.

“You just can’t afford to keep buying $500 worth of hay for a cow that’s worth only $500,” Atmore said. Last February, Atmore said he was almost ready to bail out. “When this hay is gone, so are these cows,” he said he told himself. “I was down to my last truckload when the rains came.”

But with a carpet of green grasses and yellow and lavender wildflowers now covering the range, Atmore is more optimistic.

“The cattle industry will be in Ventura County as long as there is open space,” he said.

Development has already encroached significantly on an industry that was the No. 5 moneymaker in the county 50 years ago, according to Ventura County crop reports. By 1990, cattle had fallen to 16th place for gross sales in the county.

Pinkerton, Frost and other ranchers know that they can do little to offset the effects of natural calamities such as drought. But they are working with the Cattlemen’s Assn. in a renewed effort to lobby against political decisions that they feel could hurt their industry.

The Cattlemen’s Assn., which has about 120 members in the county, plans to work with supervisors and other officials on land use, water rights and environmental concerns, Frost said. “Environmentalists get upset when they find out you trimmed an oak tree,” Frost said. “But we protect our oaks because we need them for shade. The range operators are really the best stewards of the land. They are the true environmentalists.”

Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee, who represents the Santa Paula, Fillmore and Camarillo areas, which contain much of the county’s rangeland, said it is difficult to represent the interests of both urban dwellers and cattlemen.

“But you have to in this county, where agriculture is still the largest industry,” she said. She has invited the cattlemen’s group to meet with her to hear their concerns and set up an ongoing dialogue. But she said the days of autonomy for any individual or business group in the county are gone forever.

“There are restrictions on all of us in this day and age,” she said. “People in the towns say there is too much growth. Farmers say there are too many restrictions on their pesticides. Large landowners say we’re controlling them too much because the zoning won’t allow them to subdivide.

“We have to have a balance of growth and restrictions,” she said.

Frost and Pinkerton intend to work so that the scales tip in favor of preserving the cattle industry.

“I hope I’m in the business until the day I die,” Frost said.