It might have been a dismal Easter, weather wise, but the drought continues, especially in the Alpujarra, where a lack of green pasture is costing farmers dearly.

A sack of feed pellets, weighing 40 kilos, costs 13 euros, which might not sound much, but one sack is enough to feed five cows a day, so when you have dozens of cattle, then finding this extra money because pastures have disappeared is proving a headache. But it’s not only the cost; this form of feeding cattle is not exactly ‘fattening’ the herd, either.

When you go as far up as Trevélez or Bérchules, then you are over a thousand metres and in a normal year, the thawing of the snow cap keeps the pastures healthy, sometimes into the beginning of summer – but not this year. The generalised drought throughout Spain has meant a nationwide shortage of hay, so you either do without, or pay the elevated prices of imported hay… or feed your cows feed pellets and watch them get skinnier by the week.

So what do you do? Sell your cows? The trouble is that the price of these animals has hardly changed in 30 to 35 years, when the price of sack of feed pellets was eight pesetas; i.e. four centimes of a euro… Nobody is going to pay you what they are worth, so you struggle on and hope that the time of the ‘skinny cows’ is only Biblical in length.

(News: Alpujarra, Granada, Andalucia)