Every agricultural business needs water, but cattle ranchers need it more than most.

Water in a reservoir doesn't do them any good. They need the rain to fall, so their cattle will have green grass to munch.

When it doesn't and this year, one of the driest in Ventura County's recorded history, it certainly hasn't ranchers can lose their livelihood, because they have to spend thousands of dollars a season on hay to feed their cattle. If it doesn't start raining soon, the total loss to the county's ranchers could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

John Harvey runs two of the county's largest ranches, with 350 head of cattle on about 7,000 acres in Moorpark and Somis. His cattle have grazed every last blade of green grass on both ranches, and now they've learned to come running when Harvey or his ranch hands drive up with bales of hay.

Harvey said it will cost him about $60,000 to buy feed for his cattle this year. His usual feed budget is just a few hundred dollars.

"Another year like this and I'll be out of business," he said.

Harvey, the president of the Ventura County Cattlemen's Association, sent a survey to the group's 120 members on the effects of the dry weather. Ten people responded, and they reported an average loss so far this year of about $5,000, said Susan Johnson, Ventura County's chief deputy agricultural commissioner.

To try to help them, the County Board of Supervisors has asked for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's help in securing a federal disaster designation. Such a designation could bring loans or grants to ranchers who are suffering the most.

Dry weather is a problem for ranchers statewide, but especially in Southern California, said Matt Byrne, executive vice president of the California Cattlemen's Association.

"If you look at how low the rain amounts are in many counties a couple inches of rain all year in terms of having any salvageable use of that grassland, it does reach the point of a true disaster," Byrne said.

The ranchers' losses probably won't have much of an effect on beef prices, because the market is a national one, Byrne said. But stores and restaurants that buy locally produced beef might see prices go down at first, and then up because at first, the market will be flooded with more cattle, as ranchers sell the ones they can't afford to feed, followed by a shortage in the coming years.

In Ventura County, 2006-07 is shaping up as one of the driest on record. In Ventura, for example, 4.55 inches of rain has fallen since Oct. 1, according to the County Watershed Protection District.

That's just one-third of the normal year-to-date total. And unless some rain falls between now and October, it will surpass 1886-87 as the driest year on record. The National Weather Service says rain is likely Friday a third of an inch or more on the Ventura County coast and an inch or more inland.

Harvey, whose family has been ranching in Ventura County for 30 years, said this is the worst year he's seen. The hillsides where his cattle roam are bone dry, and the only green patches are parks that are off-limits to grazing.

"This time of year, we should have grass 18 inches high," he said, and without the grass as free cattle feed, ranching just isn't a sustainable business.

Cattle ranching is a small niche in Ventura County's vast agricultural economy. According to the Agricultural Commissioner's Office, there are about 5,000 head of cattle on 100,000 acres of ranchland.

There are only about 150 ranchers left, Harvey said, and most of them are hobbyists, with no more than a handful of cattle. Ranches are usually out of sight, tucked into the canyons around Somis and Moorpark and the hillsides north of Ventura.

It wasn't always that way. When Harvey started, there were ranches on some of the county's flatlands, but landowners soon discovered that farming and subdivisions each brought in much more money.

"If you can't put a house on it or an orchard, that's what left for cattlemen," Harvey said.