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Prepping for a Different Herd, by Xaidin
I’m a prepper, however my situation is a little different than most. I wanted to write an article explaining my unique challenges.
My family has a small ranch in New Mexico. In the old days when it rained more often we ran about 100 head of cattle. With the drought that has hit the southwest so hard, we’re down to about 50.
I know most of you are thinking, oh my goodness this guy is so lucky. He can eat all the beef he wants when TSHTF. The answer is yes, and no. I had about the same initial reaction when I first started prepping. I thought I’d just go home, to the ranch, from my day job and be safe. I read all the books and browsed all the prepping blogs, then began to realize it wasn’t so simple. Not only did I have to prep for myself, I had to prep for 50 head of cattle! Plus a lot of other animals like chickens and dogs.
After I got my beans, bullets, and band aids squared away, my family and I started prepping for the cattle. There’s little question that they are our greatest resource. Imagine what half a beef could net us in a barter situation when everyone is starving. Provided I can defend the livestock, and keep them happy, healthy, and alive.
- Water
Everything needs water. There are dozens of articles about water on survivalblog. One gallon per person per day seems to be the golden rule. For a cow in 100 degree summer heat its 50 gallons a day! Crunch the numbers and that’s around 3,000 gallons of water per day worst case. Some days they don’t need near as much. We’re in the high desert, and do not have surface water. No streams, lakes, ponds, etc. Our current water source is pumped via an AC pump from a depth of ~600ft. Running a generator to pump the water we would need isn’t feasible. Solar was the solution. We ended up drilling a new well and equipping it with a solar pump that can produce about 2,500-3,000 gallons a day in the summer. To supplement this we installed a very large and complex rain catchment system. All in all we have ,7500 gallons of potable (people) water and 38,000 gallons of stock water that we keep on hand at any given time. This is fed all over the place via gravity to stock troughs and solar powered booster pumps to other areas such as the house. As you can imagine this cost a great deal of money and my income is lower middle class. It was a matter of priority setting for us. In a grid down situation the cattle would all die without water. That is not acceptable.
Here’s some advice about drilling a new water well. I did a lot of the work on the well myself to save money. Of course the actual drilling was done by a “professional”. When you interview your well driller be sure to ask the following question, “Are you the actual person who will drill the well?”
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