KEVN TV in Rapid City S.D. headlined on October 7th, “Ranchers suffer serious losses in blizzard,” and said that ranchers “found cattle huddled up along fence lines, along creek bottoms, and in road ditches, all dead. Silvia Christen with the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association says she has talked to ranchers who have lost 20% to 50% of their cattle.” To make it worse, “there was a bitter statement from Senator Tim Johnson’s office this morning that the losses come at the very time the USDA’s Farm Service offices have been shut down. As a result, the Senator says, ranchers won’t even be able to document their losses. Thousands of carcasses will have to be disposed of in the coming days. Silvia Christen says, ‘There’s a health hazard with those animals laying out there in the ditches and they need to be picked up. We need to identify whose animals those are.’ The blizzard killed huge numbers of cattle because of the unique nature of the storm. Ranchers say the heavy, wet snow stuck to the cattle’s hair and made them soaking wet. Then, freezing temperatures and seventy-mile-an-hour winds chilled the animals until they died of exposure. Most of the cattle will be discovered and disposed of in the coming days, but some are probably buried under snow drifts, and won’t be discovered until spring.”

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