Losing Calves
|  Video
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| Retha Colclasure |
| 4/16/2009 |
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| Farmers and ranchers across North Dakota already know it`s going to be a tough spring. One reason for that is they suffered a lot of loss this winter. In Mercer County, ranchers are reporting calving losses of up to 15 percent. Most of that is because of flooding and blizzards. When the snow began melting on Gerald Bieber`s ranch, it began revealing more than just new grass. It also uncovered a number of dead calves. "I think we`ve found about 93," says Gerald Bieber, a Buelah-area rancher. It`s a substantial loss, more than 10 percent. "We were just ambushed by this big snowstorm and the flooding and rainstorm and all that," says Bieber. "It caught us when we were the most vulnerable." He says neither he nor the animals were able to cope with the weather. "It was bigger than we were," Bieber says. For about a week during the most severe winter storms, he says about 50 percent of the newborn calves didn`t survive. "You would have probably half an hour, 45 minutes in the extreme conditions," says Bieber. "If you let it go much over two hours, you were pretty much on the loss end of it. You`re getting 20, 30 calves a day, a lot of them are probably born during the night, the losses during those, say, five to seven days was pretty extreme." Ranchers all across Mercer County are facing similar conditions. "We`ve got documented cases of about 600 dead calves in the country, probably 150 calves," says Craig Askim, the NDSU extension agent in Mercer County. And even more are coming in every day. "People are just starting to finally find them now because the snow banks are melting and the rivers somewhat receding," says Askim. Across the county, he says the financial impact of lost calves alone will probably be $300,000. Bieber says in addition to the extreme weather conditions, he also lost power for three days, so everyday chores like mixing feed for animals and pumping water to them were even harder. He says he just hopes the federal government will be able to realize how bad of a problem calving losses are, and be ale to help them out. |
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