Ranching in the Sierra Foothills

Ranchers in Placer, Nevada, and Yuba Counties, along with UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) and the County Agricultural Departments from these three counties, have established a Disaster Livestock Access Program to facilitate livestock and human safety before, during, and after wildfire and other emer...

Fair warning - you might want to file this blog post under the category, "Aren't Ranchers Ever Happy?!" I'll admit - last year, I was worried about warm temperatures, lack of soil moisture, and dried-up stock ponds here in the Sierra Foothills. We'd had the driest January-March ever recorded.

Looking back at more than 20 years of precipitation data I've collected since my family moved to Auburn, I can't say that we've ever had an average year that is, we've never had exactly 32.68 inches of rain. Some years, like 2016-17, we measure quite a bit more than average (62.

Raising Livestock on Rangeland is not an Indoor Sport...

The Nevada-Placer-Yuba Disaster Livestock Access Pass Program operated for its second year in 2022. This program, available to commercial livestock producers in the three counties, is the first (and so far, only) multi-county program in California.