Haydrop Continues For Starving Livestock
Ranchers, pilots and snowmobilers are racing to provide hay and drinking water to thousands of stranded cattle in the snow-covered southeastern Plains.
The Colorado National Guard was set to resume dropping hay bales from the air Thursday and trucking in hay to cattle along the growing number of county roads that have been cleared of snow.
A snowstorm left drifts as high as 10 feet last week and crews have had to use front-end loaders to scoop out the snow that has proven too much for plows, said Dan Hatlestad, spokesman for the Southeast Area Operations Command.
Cattle were already spread thinly across the region before the storm hit because a prolonged drought had left little grass for them to eat. The snow has covered the fences dividing pastures in some places so the animals have scattered even more.
Crews dropping hay from military helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane are mostly seeing groups of 10 or 20, rather than 100 or more, Hatlestad said. They have to be careful to drop it close enough to the animals that they don't have to wade too far in the snow but also try not to scare them.
"We can understand people's frustration that we may not have been able to reach their animals yet," Hatlestad said. "We are working diligently to reach as many animals as we can."
On Wednesday, helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane dropped more than 900 bales of hay, including a dozen weighing 1,700 pounds. An unknown number of bales were also brought in by the ground.
Ranchers rode with pilots to spot cattle and creeks for water. Crews in smaller helicopters landed near frozen streams and used sledgehammers to chop ice from the water.
Many of the cattle, trapped by heavy snow and high drifts, have gone nearly a week without being fed and cows can usually only survive five to 10 days without food or water in good conditions, Colorado state veterinarian John Maulsby said.
There is no estimate yet on how many cows have died in Colorado.
"We think there are probably 30,000 head out there that are at risk that we're having to make sure we feed," said Maj. Gen. Mason Whitney of the Colorado Guard.
The Colorado Cattlemen's Association estimated there were 100,000 to 200,000 cattle in the region's open range.
Don Ament, the Colorado agriculture commissioner, said a Lamar-area rancher said he could find only half of his 600-head herd.
He said farmers and ranchers have told him the storm was worse than the 1997 blizzard that killed 30,000 cattle and cost $28 million in agriculture losses. He said it reminds them more of a 1946 storm that covered the whole eastern half of the state.
Colorado health and agriculture officials planned to meet Thursday to discuss what to do with the dead and disabled cattle that are found. Ament said he wants to put the meat to use if possible and will contact rendering operations.
One Kansas feedlot owner said he had lost 450 cattle out of the 155,000 he has on feed preparing for slaughter and 20 dairy cows out of his herd of 7,500. Still, Roy Brown, co-owner of Cattle Empire near Satanta, said his insurance would cover his losses, which he estimated at about $350,000.
The 20,000 bison on ranches in southeastern Colorado, western Kansas and Oklahoma were unaffected by the storm, partly because bison use their head and hump "like a big snowplow to get down to where the forage is," said Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association.
The storm blamed for at least 13 deaths left utility crews in sections of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma working around the clock to restore power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses. But officials said it could be weeks for some of the most isolated, rural customers.
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., on Wednesday sought federal disaster relief for people and livestock in the southeastern part of the state. New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson and Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman also asked for a disaster declaration as did the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.