A cow and her calf are herded into the auction arena Saturday at the Springville Feeder Auction. Some farmers in southern Indiana have sold their entire herds because their fields are barren, ponds and streams have shriveled and buying feed is too expensive. See more photos and listen to an audio slideshow of the cattle auction at HeraldTimesOnline.com/video. Jeremy Hogan | Herald-Times
A cow and her calf are herded into the auction arena Saturday at the Springville Feeder Auction. Some farmers in southern Indiana have sold their entire herds because their fields are barren, ponds and streams have shriveled and buying feed is too expensive. See more photos and listen to an audio slideshow of the cattle auction at HeraldTimesOnline.com/video. Jeremy Hogan | Herald-Times
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SPRINGVILLE — With half of the nation’s corn crop dried up on the stalk and a drought with no end in sight, Alan Armstrong’s decision to sell off 120 cows in his herd came down to simple supply-and-demand economics.

Too many animals and not enough to feed them.

He had about a thousand cows this spring on farms in Lawrence and Monroe counties, and the first hay cutting yielded a good amount of feed for the animals. Then in June, it stopped raining. In July, temperatures soared above 100 degrees, days in a row.

“It was an odd situation,” the longtime farmer and elementary school teacher said Wednesday. “The kind that can worry you.”

Armstrong was among farmers who sold livestock during a sale this past Saturday at the Springville Feeder Auction. The auction association is a farmer-owned cooperative that has been in business since the 1950s. Sales are held throughout the year, but having one in August is rare.
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