http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/

v 2.4.3.0

The drought has affected us directly since the end of July 2017. Obviously its effects are intensifying as time with no rain progresses. We ran short on grass the end of last grazing season and what grass was there had little nutrition value. The grass just shut itself down and browned up. We supplemented with alfalfa to get along, but at significant unexpected expense. I'm afraid that the impacts of this dry spell are already impacting this coming year's grazing season and am preparing for such. The other day (27 December 2017) I had a water well powered by solar panels go dry on me. It no longer has the water capacity to keep up with the number of cattle I have in that location. My only option, outside of moving the cattle away from the feed, was to pipe rural water to them. Usually we can count on the wells we have. Prior to this one going dry, we were drilling wells in pastures where our ponds are drying up with great success. In December 2017 we drilled two wells in winter pastures where the ponds have all but dried up. Without rain soon we will have to drill wells in summer pastures where we solely depend on ponds. This past week we received 2" of snow, which is better than nothing. Outside of this moisture we've had very little (maybe 2.25" rain total) since last June. Wheat pasture has been a fail. We planted as usual for grazing and got about 1/2" rain on it. I went ahead and grazed what was there. I got about 3-4 weeks grazing and had to pull them off, just not enough there. Deer have been watering at my water tanks. From Marion County, Kansas, on January 18, 2018