CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Now that the rain has picked up, things are beginning to improve for the agriculture industry in South Texas.
A rancher and farmer, Danny Wendland spoke with 3NEWS and said his farm was devastated by the drought but things are starting to look up. "Right now yeah, we're kind of sitting on cloud nine. Let's go ahead and take it."
Wendland lost a great deal of production and even faced part of his ranch losing an extreme amount of grass at one point. "We got to where we were feeding 132 round bales a week. So we were putting out a lot of hay, an awful lot of hay. Bales weigh about 1700 pounds of piece." Wendland added.
After the summer months passed, the weather started to change. "Once it turned, it started raining and it rained." Wendland said.
The rancher's grass showed signs of excellent growth as the weed population increased extensively.
Wendland stated, "This is a very good situation to go in this time of year to have plenty grass out there and to go into the winter to where we can restock our high supplies. We can go in and not have to feed for a long time until we get a big freeze or something like that."
"The recent rains were a tremendous blessing." said Bobby McCool. A Natural Resource County Extension Agent with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension in San Patricio County. He told 3NEWS, it's been a long time coming.
"We basically had zero forage production from March until August," McCool explained. "So you know, our grass reserves, our hay reserves, everything was just about empty."
Now that the rain is replenishing forage. McCool reflected on what most of the South Texas agriculture community has faced these past months.
He explained, "Many in agriculture this year took a hit no matter if it was crop, or cattle production, everybody had to deal with a whole lot less."
As the industry prepares for winter, the rain has given farmers a lot to look forward to.
Wendland added, "Mother nature has given us the things we need to make life better."
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