Weather hits farmers: 'Mother Nature is a really tough business partner, and she has been pretty unforgiving'

Montana feedlot operator Jake Feddes sent Bloomberg this photo of calves with ears taped to prevent freezing

"Farmers from Kansas to Alabama have never dealt with weather like this," says The Wall Street Journal's headline on a story by Jacob Bunge. It's killing livestock, disrupting transport and shutting processing plants, and is "projected to cost agriculture companies and farmers millions of dollars," he reports. "Farmers and state agriculture officials said it remained too early to tally all the costs."

Oklahoma Agriculture Commissioner Blayne Arthur summed it up for Bunge: “Mother Nature is a really tough business partner, and she has been pretty unforgiving here the past few days.”

For Reuters, Tom Polansek reports from Texas, the state perhaps worst hit by the extreme weather, and the No. 1 cattle state. Newborn calves "are particularly vulnerable to the shock of the cold when they leave their mothers’ warm wombs covered in fluid," he noted. "Struggles to care for surviving livestock are the latest challenges for ranchers who over the past year have dealt with Covid-19 cutting demand for meat at restaurants and shuttering slaughterhouses."

Polansek reports, "Ranchers said they are spending long, cold hours breaking up ice in water tanks and on frozen ponds so animals have something to drink. Icy conditions have turned diesel fuel into a useless gel in tractors. Ranchers said they are using gasoline-powered pickup trucks to transport hay that cattle can eat and use for warm bedding."

Farmers are using pantyhose and duct tape to keep calves' ears from freezing and falling off, Bloomberg reports: "For the flora and fauna -- as well as those who make their living cultivating them -- it’s been equally disastrous, a Darwinian mix of outlandish and gruesome. . .. In Mississippi, four broiler houses were destroyed from collapsed roofs overwhelmed by snow and ice."

U.S. Department of Agriculture map shows major cattle counties in dark green; for a larger version, click on it.