A bane bigger than drought – quarantine

Quarantine. The word's got such a bad sound to it, as much for the fact of it as for the unknown outcome of it. Factor it out on big tracts of ranchland and beeves that weigh 800 pounds apiece and consume vast quantities of grass, and you can begin to get a grip on the size of the dilemma.

We had been so lucky to escape the scourge of a fever tick quarantine for a couple of decades in Zapata County. Luck runs both ways and in the bigger picture it's lucky I called the USDA office in Zapata to inquire about dipping before heading to the Río Grande sale barn. Had I not, I'd have been responsible for a massive infestation if our cattle had sold.

The news of the quarantine stopped me in my tracks, but once the possibilities were spelled out to me by the USDA tick inspectors, I mobilized to bring all the stock to el pie del rancho where the corrals are. Most of the herd was nearby because I had just weaned calves from their mothers.

You're given two choices to manage the problem. One is to spray dip the cattle every 14 days for nine months. The other is to dip them twice on the premises, haul them all off the premises to the government dipping vats in Ramireño for a final dip, haul them back in by truck to unload them on pastureland other than that on which they had been -- pastureland that is considered clean and that has had no stock on it. This can be one of your own pastures, or if your entire ranch is under quarantine, it has to be on clean land you might have to lease.

And actually, there is a third choice if you can't lease land or don't want to endure the hardship of tending livestock on land that does not belong to you. That choice is to sell all your stock after the final dip, a choice I would find heartbreaking, a choice my mother said was unacceptable. Of late out here in Zapata County, news of a tick quarantine has been justifiable cause to get out of the cattle business. My mother says we'll tough it out.

Fortunately, I have two large pastures at the back of the ranch that I kept free of livestock from the fall forward to allow the hunters a more enjoyable time. So the option I chose was two dips on the premises and one at Ramireño and then trucking the stock back to the ranch into one of the ‘clean' pastures.

We've been through the two dips on the premises, which have been incredible to watch. Austin Knox from Zapata and a crew of federal garrapateros showed up with makeshift pens, a spray dipping vat on wheels, and chutes on wheels. They quickly assembled a pen to come off of our corrals and began to move the stock through efficiently. As the animals moved through the process, they were marked with paint to signify they had been been dipped. By the time we finish in Ramireño, they will have three marks on them.

Thanks are in order for Austin, Mike Boudreau, Cesar Romo, Joe Akers, Walter Smith, and Ken Deyoung who made the work move quickly. If what they were doing looked effortless, it's because they've done the same work over and over on countless ranches and have refined the set-up and the momentum.

Our cattle will spend the next nine months in the hinterlands and cannot enter the pastures deemed quarantined. Any rounding up will have to happen in a small callejón in the back pastures.

In the meantime, there's been a mad hustle on these last two damp and cold weeks, with all the cattle in one very small place -- the corrales and a small trap -- to feed them hay, grain, and singed prickly pear. Moving thousand-pound bales of hay and a ton of burnt pear at a time are labor intensive chores, and all the while you've got to make sure all the cattle remain contained. Simultaneously, we are in a mad dash to clean water troughs and install a new one in the pasture on which they will graze for the next several months.

No matter how much we feed, after the first week in confinement the cattle begin to look drawn, which is unordinary on this ranch. They no longer have the look of sleek free-ranging bovines at the all day Buffel buffet.

Over the years that we built this herd, I've grown to love our cattle, and I know them well. Understanding the purpose they've given our work, I can't imagine this landscape without them.