PLAINVIEW, Texas-It could be weeks before literally thousands of stray cattle from across the Texas Panhandle-South Plains can be sorted and the process of returning them to their various owners begins in earnest.
For now, the strays are generally being rounded up and penned together until the weather clears and owners can be located.
"We have a wonderful community in this area where everyone is helping each other out," explains Don Ebeling, who farms and raises cattle west of Plainview along U.S. Highway 70.
"We are all working together putting up each other's cows until we can start sorting them out," he said.
The cattle over the weekend drifted across a wide area in reaction to the driving snow and biting northerly winds gusting to 60 mph, Ebeling explained. "There were some (cattle) from this area on West 70 that ended up in the Abernathy area," Ebeling noted. Livestock from Swisher, Castro and Lamb counties have been found in Hale County following the storm, he added.
With snowfall in excess of a foot in some areas, cattle were able to escape pastures after snowdrifts covered electric fences. Others were not energized due to power outages. Some fences may have been blown down by the strong winds as well.
"Our producers for the most part work together really well, helping each other out anyway they can," adds Jason Miller, Hale County's AgriLife Extension agent for agriculture and natural resources.
Although a cattle lost-and-found Facebook page has been created to help producers locate their missing livestock, Miller said the neighborly attitude of neighbors helping neighbors has long been a fixture across the region.
"It's not something that's new by any means," he explains. "They were doing things like this long before we had Facebook."
The cattle lost-and-found page is at facebook.com/
cattlelostandfound/.
Neither Miller nor Ebeling had an estimate on the number of cattle which have died as a result of the blizzard, but losses could be significant.
"It could be a week before we start counting numbers," Ebeling said, "but there's sure to be some deaths, particularly from inhalation (of blowing snow)." Miller hasn't received any reports of livestock deaths at his office, but acknowledges that both livestock producers and dairy operators likely suffered animal loses due to the harsh conditions. "That's inevitable when you're dealing with a storm of this nature."
Owners of the stray cattle can generally be determined through ear tags and brands, Miller said.
"They don't really go through our office to get the cattle returned," he added. Instead, the producers normally rely on more informal means in addition to social media and local law enforcement personnel.
Miller added that area 4-H and FFA members raising livestock projects for upcoming stock shows fared much better than their counterparts in both Farwell and Friona. Heavy snowfall in those communities over the weekend left community livestock pens buried in snow. "Our kids for the most part didn't have any significant problems keeping their show animals fed and watered because of the storm."