After a long hard winter and expensive calving season, cattle are finally settling into their summer pastures in western Wyoming.
Winter lasted well through April this year in western Wyoming, and it made it difficult for ranchers during calving season. For example, baby calves were literally freezing to the ground, and the high snowpack made it hard for people to move around through their herds.
“You're trying to do as much as you can. You’re up all night, but some of them just don't live,” said Andi James, a rancher in Sublette County.
James said normally they lose less than 10 percent of their calves between when they are born starting in March and when they are shipped off in the fall. But this year, they have already lost 10 percent. Part of that is also due to pneumonia, from the wet, cold spring and then occasional warm days.
“We’re doctoring for it, just with a fluctuation of heat and then warm, cold,” James said. “And this year, we were actually doctoring a lot more yearlings for pneumonia, and we've even doctored some cows, which we haven't done in a long time. So I think the weather just kind of affected them that way.”
James said the medicine and supplies were expensive.
Other ranchers had an expensive spring too. In the Cody area, ranchers were reporting up to 40 percent in losses of their calves due to the harsh winter. Earlier this year, Wyoming’s Governor Mark Gordon requested a ‘disaster designation’ from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) due to the harsh winter and its specific financial toll on livestock producers in the state.
“Mortality has been high thus far and is expected to increase well into the spring as a result of this exceptionally harsh winter,” Gordon wrote in the letter.
The designation was granted and additional USDA funding is available for those producers.
Now that temperatures have finally warmed up in western Wyoming, James said the calves are finally starting to grow.
“They were slow to grow, kind of like the grass actually,” she said. “But they're doing a lot better and as long as it doesn't get super hot and dry out fast then we should be okay.”
James said she hopes higher cattle prices will help offset the costs when they sell and ship their calves this fall.
