Cattle DO DROP DEAD!

It is one of those things we in the feed lot industry don’t talk about much but it does happen. This week a video surfaced of Kansas feed lot animals that had died and were being piled up. Not just a few but THOUSANDS of cattle. Conspiracy theories, misinformation, accusations of abuse and lots of Bull Feces is being spread. Let me Educate the uneducated city slickers who want to blame or spread BS.

The cattle that died in that video were all black hide and haired. Black absorbs a lot of heat any way and a fat animal of 1500 pounds or more just stresses easier in heat. Cattle are basically in ideal temps between 50 and 75 degrees. But turn the heat up to 90 or above and add high humidity and no breeze to cool them down and they start to stress. Cooler night temperatures usually help the animals deal with the heat of the day. Also, the temps prior to the heat up were in the 80s and the animals weren’t adjusting to the heat because it went from cool to hot in less than 24 hours). Add to t his a micro burst of heat at 10PM instead of temperatures dropping and it is a perfect storm.

Let’s look at some of the situation in Western Kansas. There was cooler temps, then some rain and then high temps with no wind. It is like living in a sauna! A human can only take so much of a situation like this, but a fat beef can handle it to a point. That point was reached when the night temperatures spiked over 103! There was no relief at night. But then again, that adjustment from cool to hot was not over a period of time it was one day cool next day too hot.

When I worked in the feed yards, I saw something like this happen. I started the day by being told to get the payloader and haul the deads out of pen 13. When I got to the pen, there were 23 dead, some were laying as if they fell asleep and never woke up. I started by putting a dead in the payloader bucked and chaining 2 others to the bucket and hauling them out. This was at 7:30 AM. By 9 AM, I could only haul one animal at a time because they have cooked from inside out and were decomposing rapidly. Yes it was as awful as it sounds and the smell stayed in my nose all day. By quitting time I was halfway through picking up all the deads and I ran from my payloader to my pickup in tears, drove home and promptly dumped a half bottle of bleach on my head in the shower to get rid of the smell.

The next day I continued to haul dead animals to the place I would spend the following day digging a huge pit that was over 12 feet deep, 75 feet long and 22 feet wide, all the while the pile of deads lay decomposing, melting down all their bodily fluids right beside the pit. I went through a lot of bleach that week and mentally I wasn’t dealing well. I drank a lot of beer that week, trying to forget.

City folks don’t know what cowboys and cowgirls go through to produce your beef. It is, as with all animal species in agriculture an emotional ride at times. Disease, toxins in feed, extreme weather and just years that want to kill animals off for little or no reason. The producers, whether in feed yards or ranches, fight every day to keep the animals going and some just die in spite of everything we do. Someone asked if the animals that died had all their vaccinations! Honey, vaccinations wouldn’t stop an animal from dropping dead from the perfect heat storm or a massive blizzard that rages for days on end. Oh, we forgot about all the feed yard animals dying in blizzards don’t we? Because that makes sense but 128 degree heat indexes are something that animals shouldn’t die from. Forgive my sarcasm folks, I am offended by stupid people who don’t know, they just have no clue. Yet they want to blame the ranchers or cowboys for not taking care of the animals! Well I have some very nasty choice words that translate simple to: “Go screw the pooch! You have no clue what you are talking about!”

That situation in the feed yard was years ago but my mind still remembers the smell, the heat, the flies and the cowboys and cowgirls who fought to haul water, tried to cool the animals off and who were force to watch as MOTHER NATURE cruelly killed the fat cattle in pen 13. It isn’t something we talk about or brag about but thousands of animals do die this way.

That person who posted the video should be hung out to dry. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an animal rights extremist that was planted at that feed yard to find something like this happening. They often set up in dairies to find something to skew and make up or set up when the owners aren’t watching but this is something that no human could ever set up. No, this was Mother Nature at her worst. Sprinkler systems would only add to the humidity. Shades are an option and some feed yards have them but the normal 14mph winds they usually have would rip them to shreds. They did put light colored bedding down to reflect heat but it was not going to save those that died.

What needs to happen now? Pray for those involved with the clean up efforts. It is not pleasant and the heat always makes things worse. If you can, share this post and maybe just maybe those who want to say this is conspiracy or animal neglect MIGHT understand. I hope I can at least educate some of those out there willing to listen. This was not a deliberate kill off of livestock and it was not enough to affect the food chain. The government MIGHT provide some financial assistance to the producers who had the losses but I doubt it. Insurance for livestock is expensive for just t his reason, so I doubt there was any insurance. This was a major loss for the producers but unless the meat packers take advantage of the situation and jack prices up higher, you probably won’t see a shortage of beef. Thank God.