Somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 cows slow-cooked to death on the plains of Kansas. Officials continue to insist that nothing could have prevented this tragedy. Sweltering heat and humidity are to blame, the Department of Agriculture insists, not humans who manage these cows.
Kansas beef industry in chaos
Estimates vary, our Agriculture Department explains, because Kansas ranchers aren’t required to report dead livestock. Media are using a figure of 2,000 dead cows based on a Reuters report stating “the number of carcasses state officials were asked to help dispose of.”
The real number of carcasses, experts admit, is a lot closer to 10,000. Maybe more. “Several weather factors,” a department spokesunit notes, “led to heat stress for cattle.”
Everything was fine with temperatures in the 80s and low 90s “until a sudden spike to 100 degrees on June 11, followed by two more days of triple-digit heat.” The heat all by itself wasn’t the problem. High humidity was another huge factor, combined with a total lack of wind.
“This is a very unique and unfortunate event,” Scarlett Hagins, Vice President of Communications for the Kansas Livestock Association, informs. Heat stress deaths do happen but not on this scale.
There is a limit to what cattle can endure. The high temperatures in the day wouldn’t have mattered as much if things cooled off at night. They didn’t, at least not far enough. That was because of “uncharacteristically high humidity.”
When unfavorable conditions continued across southwestern Kansas day after day, it was too much. “This worsens with consecutive days of high heat, and as such, the cattle couldn’t get any relief.”
A dry part of the state
The humidity is the freaky thing but nobody is allowed to even mention that “geoengineering” spray-on weather control might be to blame.
“Normally western and southwestern Kansas is an arid part of the state. Although it gets hot, it’s not humid,” Hagins ponders. “The sudden change … is what really caused the losses. It didn’t give the cattle time to acclimate.”
Kansas temperatures, the forecasters predict, “are rising again.” Highs around 103 are expected to continue. The Department of Agriculture has been downplaying their DOA acronym as they report that they’re working with local ranchers to provide “information and assistance as needed.”
Rancher Steve Stratford is heartbroken. “If that happens to you or to your place, you know, it’s devastating to go out there and deal with that.” He’s been ranching his whole life. “It’s terrible. You feel bad for the animals. I mean, you have the love and care.”
Everyone involved was doing what they could to get relief to the animals and it was horrifying to all of Kansas that there wasn’t much more they could accomplish.
“You know, of the numbers that people are reading and hearing about, there’s a whole lot of cattle we saved. There’s a whole lot of cattle that we were able to mitigate risk on and get them cooled off,” declares veterinarian Tera Barnhardt. Temps were over 100, humidity above 40% and wind below 10 miles an hour. “This was a perfect storm of all three being in what I would say is very much a crisis for cattle.“
