Drought and Undomesticated Livestock

February 22, 2026

Nature's Precarious Balance: View from a cave where people once sheltered during snowy and frigid winters.

I don't check the rain gauge. It's dry. As is about half the United States. The winter has broken records for the warmest, the least snow, and longest period without snow. I walk the ridge and see desperate threads of green underneath the ocean of crispy winter grass. The weather is warm, although it has been most of the winter, spring is now around the corner. I throw the herd some cubes, peek at the water tank, make sure (triple-check) the gate is shut and locked, and head for home worrying, as always, about where our world is headed.

The eggs I eat for lunch are from free-range chickens and quail. I enjoy looking out my kitchen window watching the birds tear up the lawn (and landscaping) to forage. There is such peace in a hen going about her day. She is content in the moment, unaware how low on the food chain she is. We do our best to keep the big cats, bears, and coyotes away, but everything likes the taste of chicken.

Chickens have been domesticated and kept for thousands of years. They are bred to be docile and lay eggs. Survival is not a strength. Quail are similar. I was amazed when we first started raising Coturnix quail that the broody behavior had been practically eradicated from them. We were hard-pressed to find a bird willing to sit on a clutch and raise chicks. Eggs must be hatched in an incubator. These animals would not survive without us. But as long as these birds are given room to forage, clean water, and shelter they become a part of the balance to our farm. They eat waste, fertilize the soil, and provide food.

Our population needs a lot of food. There's less and less land to produce that food. Production agriculture appears to be a necessary evil. And although I want to go down a rabbit hole of corporations and other countries buying up agriculture land, I won't right now. Large feedlots and row-crops require a lot of care. The conditions need to remain near-"perfect" and that requires intervention to keep it all working. Special feed to reduce bloat, hormones to grow fast enough, chemicals to kill weeds and insects...

Buffalo are not domesticated like my chickens. They've been held within fences for only about 100 or so years. Similar to how heirloom vegetables have gained recent popularity due to the nutrition content not being diluted from years of selective breeding for traits that are more appealing to the big producers (think shelf-life, size, and color), buffalo are like an heirloom breed. Without fences, they would no doubt find the grass and forbs that provides the nutrition they need in this drought and move on to the next nearby location, grazing only what's necessary to help the plant shed the top third of the stem and encourage deep root growth. In turn, returning more carbon into the soil and oxygen into the air. The prairie needs grazing to prevent plant oxidation and dying. For water, the animals would seek out shallow areas in the water table and make buffalo wallows that would provide water for microecosystems.

When I watch the buffalo, I sometimes wonder if we shift our focus to other creative solutions such as food waste reduction, food quality and nutrition content (not poundage and size - read about food shrinkage here), and local food production if that might have a bigger effect than we think. If we care for the land, it'll care for our animals, plants, and us. Trained in environmental and agricultural engineering, I've studied and witnessed how connected the ecosystem is. If the land and our animals come first, the rest should fall into place. That is something we can control while we check our weather apps.