“Can I help you find anything?” Asked the sporting goods clerk.
“Maybe, I need big treble hook.” I said while standing in the hook isle.
“How big?”
“Big enough to catch four-hundred-pound calf.” I said looking over the assortment of fishing tackle.
“What are you fishing for?” The confused clerk asked.
“Calves,” I replied.
Winter brings its own hazards to raising cattle. I mentioned in an earlier post that John Wayne never chopped ice to water cattle in a western. Western movies and books rarely depict the more depressing side of cowboy or ranch life. Larry McMurtry’s Hud is an exception. If you have not read the book or seen the Paul Newman film of the same name, I highly recommend it.
Ponds are sometimes a necessary water source but can be deadly for livestock in sub freezing weather. Ponds can freeze over and cattle and calves walk across them. In the case of heavy snow, the snowpack can weaken the ice. A heavy animal can fall through. If the water is deep enough that animal can drown. Sometimes they struggle out to die a few minutes or hours later.
A sickening sight greeted me early one morning just a few weeks ago as I drove into the pasture. Two large calves were visible in the ice. Chunks of ice had broken and refrozen around the carcasses. Both were heifers I had intended on saving for cows. The water was about seven feet deep where they fell through. They never had a chance.
Fourteen days later the weather warmed enough that the pond thawed allowing me to use my newly purchased fishing tackle to snag the carcasses and pull them close to shore. With an easy toss of my lariat tied hard and fast to the feed truck, I was able to drag the carcasses out and over the pond dam.
Such a waste. In today’s cattle prices those two calves represent a potential Fifty-thousand-dollar loss over a ten-year period. Yet I am thankful the rest of the herd survived. The loss of the two will not break me.
I cannot help but think of the blizzard of 1886-87. The ranchers on the plains called it “The Great Die Up.” Hundreds of thousands of cattle died that winter due to massive blizzards and cold temperatures. Surviving cattle lost ears, teats, and tails to frostbite. Steers rubbed hair off their legs and bellies wading through snow drifts. Cowboys found piles of carcasses in canyons and creek bottoms. By springtime, the Missouri River flooded and backed up because of cattle carcasses created dams in river bends.
Theadore Roosevelt who ranched in Dakota Territory at the time commented on the winter in a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge. “The losses are crippling, for the first time I have utterly been unable to enjoy my ranch.”
The winter of 2025-26 is not over and a lot can still happen between now and when the calves go to market. I have a feed truck with a heater. For the perceivable future I have good weather
