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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/us/24calves.html?em&ex=1169787600&en=c57ce686c158d332&ei=5070
On Snowbound Plains, Grim Fight to Save Calves
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Cattle on the Butler ranch in Colorado endure an especially hard winter. More than 3,000 adult cattle in the state have been confirmed dead. More Photos >
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By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: January 24, 2007
TOWNER, Colo., Jan. 17 — The temperature outside was 10 degrees and falling as calf No. 207, just one hour old, lay on the floor of the warming shed, wheezing and fighting for life.
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Multimedia
Slide Show
Harsh Winter for the Calves
Enlarge This Image
Kevin Moloney for the New York Times
Mr. Butler cares for calf No. 207, a baby Black Angus that was born prematurely and underweight to a mother stressed by successive blizzards and brutal cold. With Mr. Butler is his grandson, Nicholas Crum. More Photos »
Born underweight and premature to a cow stressed by successive blizzards and brutal cold over the last month here in southeast Colorado, the baby Black Angus might yet live if it could clear its lungs of fluid and get to its feet by morning. If not, No. 207 would take its place in the dead pile, the grim place in the barn on the Butler ranch where many of the 25 or so calves already lost this winter lay frozen and twisted.
Calving season on the High Plains will be harder and more costly than any year in at least a decade, ranchers and agricultural officials say. More than 3,000 adult animals have been confirmed dead so far in Colorado alone, and ranchers say many more remain uncounted, buried under drifts four feet to six feet deep. Thousands of other farm and ranch animals across the state remain unaccounted for.
With new storms, agriculture and disaster relief officials are still counting the costs from those that struck over two consecutive weeks beginning on Dec. 18. The biggest concern now, said the state's agriculture commissioner, John Stulp, is the persistence of the snow that cannot melt because of the cold that will not relent. Calving has just started on most ranches and will peak in late February and early March, and the Butlers have lost about one calf in six so far — more than three times the ranch's average death rate.
"The pregnant cows are stressed, and dropping down below zero is very hard on the newborns," said Mr. Stulp, a rancher himself in southeast Colorado.
But the birth cycle on the ranch exposes tangled emotions and ambivalent impulses that go far beyond the elements. Ranch owners see profit in their animals, but being human, they mostly also cannot resist the bonds that form, and the instinct to preserve life.
So to see a calf falling from the womb in the dead of this particular winter — steaming on the frozen ground, its body illuminated by a circle of headlights as people stand ready to help, if they can — is to see ranch life at its most tenuous and vulnerable, for the cattle and the people alike.
"Nothing we've done in the last three weeks has been fun," said Dale Butler, who grew up on a ranch five miles away before starting his own place here in the 1970s just west of the Kansas border. "It's a fight every day."
Mr. Butler, who is 51, knelt on the cement floor of the warming shed and held No. 207's head in his hands, blowing puffs of air into its lungs. He had been too busy trying to save the animal to even check its sex.
"Come on, bud, I've got a bet with Marty we're going to keep you alive," he said softly, referring to his business partner on the ranch, Marty Neugebauer.
Even the instinct of a cow to mother its calf can be weakened in a season like this, ranchers say. When a cow is depleted of energy by lack of food or by cold, or when a calf rescue like the one for No. 207 is necessary and the baby is taken away, mothers can become uninterested, focused more, perhaps, on their own survival than on that of their offspring.
"There's less mothering — and when it gets like this, you've got to have a good mom," said Mr. Neugebauer, 41, who has done night calving duty on recent evenings when the wind chill, he said, was 25 below.
The trouble with No. 207, however, was not the result of maternal failure. She licked the baby fiercely and protected it so that a pitchfork had to be waved in her face to force her away before Mr. Butler could seize the calf and run for his truck with it in his arms.
But the calf's small size — about 50 pounds, compared with 80 or 85 pounds on average — and its early delivery, about a month before the veterinarian had predicted, probably reflected the impact of the mother's near-starvation and cold during the pregnancy, Mr. Neugebauer said.
Many of the 900 cattle on the Butler and Neugebauer ranches could not be reached for days after the storms. One group of several dozen was put into a barn four miles from the ranch house for shelter on the eve of the second blizzard on Dec. 28, with the idea that someone would be back the next day to bring food and water. It took five days before anyone could make it.
"We're in it for the money, that's the biggest impact," Mr. Butler said. "But I'm attached to the animals too, and I do everything I can to try to keep them, and it's really disheartening to see them dead. I love to see them born, and get up — it's just a different feeling."
The struggle to save each calf is also a personal fight, Mr. Butler added. "I hate to lose," he said. "You're at the mercy of forces and doing everything you can to save them, and when you're not successful, it gets at you."
Calf 207's problems were probably compounded by its becoming stuck for a few minutes half in and half out of its mother during the birth — exposed to the bitterly cold air but still connected by the umbilical cord, and thus unable to breathe properly.
"I'm not sure why, but that really takes it out of them," Mr. Butler said.
In the warming shed, after bouncing back from the corral with the calf on the floor of his truck, Mr. Butler laid No. 207 on a burlap bag and rubbed it with a blanket. He tickled the calf's ears and nose, trying to provoke a sneeze that might clear the lungs. He picked it up by the hind legs and dangled it, hoping gravity would help the draining.
Mr. Neugebauer stood by, watching. "I don't think this one is going to make 'er," he said.
Mr. Butler glanced up. "Yeah he is," he said, and kept working.
But the calf — a female, as Mr. Butler later discovered — did not survive. Sometime between his rounds through the ranch at 2 a.m. and Mr. Neugebauer's return an hour later, the gasping wheeze had fallen still.
--------------------------------------------------------
On Snowbound Plains, Grim Fight to Save Calves
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Cattle on the Butler ranch in Colorado endure an especially hard winter. More than 3,000 adult cattle in the state have been confirmed dead. More Photos >
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Reprints Share
DiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: January 24, 2007
TOWNER, Colo., Jan. 17 — The temperature outside was 10 degrees and falling as calf No. 207, just one hour old, lay on the floor of the warming shed, wheezing and fighting for life.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Slide Show
Harsh Winter for the Calves
Enlarge This Image
Kevin Moloney for the New York Times
Mr. Butler cares for calf No. 207, a baby Black Angus that was born prematurely and underweight to a mother stressed by successive blizzards and brutal cold. With Mr. Butler is his grandson, Nicholas Crum. More Photos »
Born underweight and premature to a cow stressed by successive blizzards and brutal cold over the last month here in southeast Colorado, the baby Black Angus might yet live if it could clear its lungs of fluid and get to its feet by morning. If not, No. 207 would take its place in the dead pile, the grim place in the barn on the Butler ranch where many of the 25 or so calves already lost this winter lay frozen and twisted.
Calving season on the High Plains will be harder and more costly than any year in at least a decade, ranchers and agricultural officials say. More than 3,000 adult animals have been confirmed dead so far in Colorado alone, and ranchers say many more remain uncounted, buried under drifts four feet to six feet deep. Thousands of other farm and ranch animals across the state remain unaccounted for.
With new storms, agriculture and disaster relief officials are still counting the costs from those that struck over two consecutive weeks beginning on Dec. 18. The biggest concern now, said the state's agriculture commissioner, John Stulp, is the persistence of the snow that cannot melt because of the cold that will not relent. Calving has just started on most ranches and will peak in late February and early March, and the Butlers have lost about one calf in six so far — more than three times the ranch's average death rate.
"The pregnant cows are stressed, and dropping down below zero is very hard on the newborns," said Mr. Stulp, a rancher himself in southeast Colorado.
But the birth cycle on the ranch exposes tangled emotions and ambivalent impulses that go far beyond the elements. Ranch owners see profit in their animals, but being human, they mostly also cannot resist the bonds that form, and the instinct to preserve life.
So to see a calf falling from the womb in the dead of this particular winter — steaming on the frozen ground, its body illuminated by a circle of headlights as people stand ready to help, if they can — is to see ranch life at its most tenuous and vulnerable, for the cattle and the people alike.
"Nothing we've done in the last three weeks has been fun," said Dale Butler, who grew up on a ranch five miles away before starting his own place here in the 1970s just west of the Kansas border. "It's a fight every day."
Mr. Butler, who is 51, knelt on the cement floor of the warming shed and held No. 207's head in his hands, blowing puffs of air into its lungs. He had been too busy trying to save the animal to even check its sex.
"Come on, bud, I've got a bet with Marty we're going to keep you alive," he said softly, referring to his business partner on the ranch, Marty Neugebauer.
Even the instinct of a cow to mother its calf can be weakened in a season like this, ranchers say. When a cow is depleted of energy by lack of food or by cold, or when a calf rescue like the one for No. 207 is necessary and the baby is taken away, mothers can become uninterested, focused more, perhaps, on their own survival than on that of their offspring.
"There's less mothering — and when it gets like this, you've got to have a good mom," said Mr. Neugebauer, 41, who has done night calving duty on recent evenings when the wind chill, he said, was 25 below.
The trouble with No. 207, however, was not the result of maternal failure. She licked the baby fiercely and protected it so that a pitchfork had to be waved in her face to force her away before Mr. Butler could seize the calf and run for his truck with it in his arms.
But the calf's small size — about 50 pounds, compared with 80 or 85 pounds on average — and its early delivery, about a month before the veterinarian had predicted, probably reflected the impact of the mother's near-starvation and cold during the pregnancy, Mr. Neugebauer said.
Many of the 900 cattle on the Butler and Neugebauer ranches could not be reached for days after the storms. One group of several dozen was put into a barn four miles from the ranch house for shelter on the eve of the second blizzard on Dec. 28, with the idea that someone would be back the next day to bring food and water. It took five days before anyone could make it.
"We're in it for the money, that's the biggest impact," Mr. Butler said. "But I'm attached to the animals too, and I do everything I can to try to keep them, and it's really disheartening to see them dead. I love to see them born, and get up — it's just a different feeling."
The struggle to save each calf is also a personal fight, Mr. Butler added. "I hate to lose," he said. "You're at the mercy of forces and doing everything you can to save them, and when you're not successful, it gets at you."
Calf 207's problems were probably compounded by its becoming stuck for a few minutes half in and half out of its mother during the birth — exposed to the bitterly cold air but still connected by the umbilical cord, and thus unable to breathe properly.
"I'm not sure why, but that really takes it out of them," Mr. Butler said.
In the warming shed, after bouncing back from the corral with the calf on the floor of his truck, Mr. Butler laid No. 207 on a burlap bag and rubbed it with a blanket. He tickled the calf's ears and nose, trying to provoke a sneeze that might clear the lungs. He picked it up by the hind legs and dangled it, hoping gravity would help the draining.
Mr. Neugebauer stood by, watching. "I don't think this one is going to make 'er," he said.
Mr. Butler glanced up. "Yeah he is," he said, and kept working.
But the calf — a female, as Mr. Butler later discovered — did not survive. Sometime between his rounds through the ranch at 2 a.m. and Mr. Neugebauer's return an hour later, the gasping wheeze had fallen still.
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