Hot, muggy weather takes a deadly toll on cattle

LINCOLN — A lethal combination of heat, humidity and dead calm killed hundreds of cattle in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa this week.

Longtime observers said it was one of the worst bouts of feedlot heat deaths they had ever seen.

Many reports of cattle deaths had not been confirmed, but one expert said the toll could exceed 2,000.

Most of the deaths occurred on Tuesday, officials said.

A single feedlot in Hamilton County lost nearly 300 cattle, and there were reports that several other eastern Nebraska lots lost 100 or more cattle.

Western Iowa feeders reported smaller though still significant cattle deaths, said Bruce Berven, executive vice president of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Bob Kremer, a cattle feeder and former state senator from Aurora, Neb., who saw 21 of his 1,000 cattle die.

“I’ve been feeding cattle for about 40 years, and I guess I’d lost one or two on really hot days. But never anything like this.”

The cattle died faster than rendering trucks could haul them away, and some feedlot operators resorted to burying them on their farms.

Rob Robertson, chief administrator of the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation, recalled passing two rendering trucks full of dead cattle on Tuesday as he drove Interstate 80 to catch a plane from Omaha.

Some farmers, including Kremer, sought the aid of their local fire departments to hose down the animals and save their lives.

Dr. Dan Pachta, a veterinarian in Aurora, Neb., said he was aware of 500 to 600 cattle deaths in Hamilton County alone. He said his practice serves about 10 feedlots, and they all saw heat-related cattle deaths.

Pachta said the cattle hadn’t had the chance to acclimate to summer weather, considering daily high temperatures were in the 60s only two weeks ago.

It was a “disaster” for the Dose Land & Cattle Co. near Hampton, Neb., where 270 cattle had died as of Friday.

Shane Dose, who owns the 4,800-head lot with his brother and father, said most of the cattle that died were ready for market, weighing more than 1,300 pounds and worth more than $1,000 each.

The losses represented about one fourth of the Doses’ market-ready cattle and more than a year’s income for the business.

Les Vogler of Vogler Cattle Co. near Ashland said 15 cattle died in his small operation during the heat spell. Neighbors within five miles of him lost about 300 head.

He said the deaths occurred quickly.

“Everything was OK until about 3:30 or 4 o’clock Tuesday, when the wind got to zero and it got to be too much for them,” he said. He summoned the Greenwood and Ashland Fire Departments, who began helping cool his cattle about 5 p.m.

“I was pretty stressed,” he said. “When you do this all your life, it’s hard to watch them die right in front of you.”

Although this week’s highs — mostly in the low to mid-90s — weren’t as sizzling as those often experienced in a July or August heat wave, they were dangerous because of the humidity and lack of wind, said Terry Mader, a University of Nebraska animal science professor who teaches at the Haskell Agriculture Laboratory in Concord, Neb.

While the heat spell was brief, he said, the animals couldn’t cool down overnight because temperatures didn’t fall much and they weren’t used to 90-degree temperatures after a long, cool spring.

Mader said he’d also heard reports of heat-related poultry deaths. He emphasized that weather conditions like those of the past week are dangerously stressful for people and their pets, too.

He said this heat spell wasn’t as bad as one in 1995 that killed 5,000 cattle in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa before moving east and resulting in record human deaths in Chicago.

Mader estimated that cattle deaths from the past week could be about half of the 1995 total.

Officials said they won’t be able to tally total losses for several days. It’s likely that more than $1 million worth of cattle succumbed to the heat, although producers may be able to recoup some of their losses through a livestock indemnification program passed by Congress with the 2008 farm bill.

The program covers up to 75 percent of the losses of farmers whose livestock deaths exceed average mortality rates, said Doy Unzicker, acting Nebraska executive director for the Farm Service Agency.

However, the program won’t be fully implemented before mid-July, he said. It would cover livestock losses dating back to Jan. 1, 2008.

Contact the writer:

402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com