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Our friends in Blizzard area!

F

farmboy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 10, 2005
Messages
102
Location
southcentralsouthdakota
Our thoughts and prayers to all of you in the blizzard area of NW South Dakota, and all other areas impacted. We have heard some producers lost up to 60% of their herds. I have a few friends in that area but have yet to be able to contact any of them. Hope all is well....... :(
 
For sure that is a huge wreck and those folks certainly deserve and have my sympathy. I would like to know (so we can try to avoid such a situation) what are the factors involved in such a large loss. Did the cattle drift into lakes or sloughs? Were they buried in snow or pressured into barriers? Was there a shock component going from hot to extreme cold? I know in this area in the early part of the last century many cattle were lost in a blizzard and the factors above were present in that situation.
 
From the people I've talked to, extreme cold wasn't really the issue. Sounds like the wet rain and snow got many of them so chilled that hypothermia probably took them. Heard of guys getting hay out to the cows but they still died. Those with wind protection fared pretty well I think. I'm probably 100 miles east of the snow, we just had rain. But I have lots of friends and acquaintences who are dealing with hell right now.
 
per said:
Did the cattle drift into lakes or sloughs? Were they buried in snow or pressured into barriers? Was there a shock component going from hot to extreme cold?
Click to expand...

i would say probably all of the above. i don't know, i'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.
 
In this area there were far more cows that died than calves. Not sure why but I am guessing that the calves have a better hair coat at this point? I don't know if that is true for other areas though. The timing was a major factor. We had a storm in early Nov of 2008 that lasted twice as long but it only seemed to kill older cows in poor condition. This storm killed every age and condition of animals. Hope I never see another one like it.
 

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