Ranchers see increase in grass thefts amid drought

VAUGHN, N.M. (AP) — Petty crime and bur­glar­ies aren’t unusual in New Mexico’s iso­lated Guadalupe County, but lately Sher­iff Michael Lucero has seen thieves steal some­thing a bit unex­pected: grass.

With drought dry­ing out graz­ing land and dri­ving up hay prices, some ranch­ers in New Mex­ico have started cut­ting neigh­bors’ fences or leav­ing gates open so their cat­tle can graze on greener pastures.

Author­i­ties in other drought-stricken states say they’ve seen sim­i­lar fence cut­tings, along with thefts of live­stock and other mate­ri­als as ranch­ers strug­gle to stay in busi­ness. In some cases, steal­ing a neighbor’s grass may be the only way for a rancher to feed his live­stock, but vic­tims say their liveli­hood is being threat­ened too.

“We’ve had around five cases in the past few weeks where some­one says his cat­tle just hap­pened to walk through a gate that just hap­pened to be open or an instance where a fence was clearly cut,” Lucero said. “And I sus­pect there are more cases, but they aren’t being reported.”

Ranch­ers from Mis­souri to Texas and west into New Mex­ico have sold off huge por­tions of their herds this year because the worst drought in decades dried up their pas­tures and they couldn’t afford to buy food for their ani­mals. While grass thefts might seem rel­a­tively harm­less, ranch­ers say they threaten the busi­nesses and ani­mals that are left.

“If they don’t have enough grass on the ranch, they have to sell their cat­tle,” said Leon Porter, a rancher in Corona, N.M., who sold half his herd this year to keep going.

It’s not clear just how many grass thefts have hap­pened since most aren’t reported, and even when they are, most don’t result in arrests, said Myles Cul­bert­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the New Mex­ico Live­stock Board.

“It’s extremely hard to make a case. You almost have to have an eye­wit­ness,” he said.

But reports from indi­vid­ual coun­ties show an increase. In Col­orado, for exam­ple, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office has received four reports of hay thefts in two months, the most it has seen in years, spokesman John Schulz said.

“We typ­i­cally see an iso­lated case here and there, but noth­ing like this,” Schulz said.

In one case, Welling­ton, Colo. rancher Ted Swan­son said $5,000 worth of hay was taken from a field over the Labor Day week­end. Swan­son said the thieves knew what they were doing because they stole high qual­ity alfalfa from stor­age and ruined lower qual­ity to get it.

“I felt sort of astounded,” said Swan­son, who never had been robbed of hay in 20 years of own­ing his ranch. “I couldn’t believe it happened.”

The drought hurt hay pro­duc­tion as the same time it dam­aged graz­ing land, and in some cases, ranch­ers can’t find or afford hay to replace bales that are stolen. In Texas, for exam­ple, an 800-pound bale of hay costs about $150, roughly twice as much as it did at this time last year.

“We sell small, 2-by-3 bales of hay now for around $20,” said Tom Schacht, man­ager of Parker Feed and West­ern Sup­ply in Parker, Colo. “Last year, the same bale was around $14. It’s because of the shortage.”

Some farm­ers in Mis­souri have tried to deter thieves by paint­ing bales of hay bold col­ors to help iden­tify stole bales sit­ting on oth­ers’ property.

In Texas and New Mex­ico, local author­i­ties have asked the U.S. Bor­der Patrol and other fed­eral agen­cies to help watch for sus­pi­cious behav­ior around ranches, includ­ing cat­tle rustling and grass theft.

“We are see­ing a pat­tern. It’s hard to mon­i­tor since we are busy try­ing to catch DUIs and other crimes, so we need more eyes and ears,” said Luna County Sher­iff Ray­mond Cobos, whose New Mex­ico county bor­ders Mex­ico and sits just west of El Paso, Texas.

Cobos recently unveiled a plan involv­ing a num­ber of local and fed­eral law enforce­ment agen­cies in the fight against ranch-related prop­erty crimes. His deputies also are tak­ing classes on cat­tle brand­ing to help iden­tify stolen livestock.

“We see peo­ple with cow­boy hats trans­port­ing cat­tle and hay all of the time, and we think noth­ing of it,” Cobos said. “But now if we see them at 3 a.m. in the morn­ing … we have to stop and think: Is there some­thing wrong?”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.