Heavy Snows Strand Livestock,
Force Hay Airlift At Roswell

By David Bowser

ROSWELL — New Mexico officials were still trying to tally the damage to livestock producers this week after mounting a rescue effort in the southeastern part of the state to save cattle and sheep stranded for days by heavy snow.

A series of storms over the Christmas holidays dumped two to three feet of snow in southeastern New Mexico, closing roads and isolating pastures and ranches in the area. What made the situation worse was that the snow was deep enough and broadspread enough to keep temperatures depressed, delaying a thaw.

While the state's Emergency Management Crisis Team initially was worried about people stranded in the area, officials with the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau pointed out that there were also animals at risk.

"When it became obvious that there was a serious problem and that cattle and sheep hadn't had water or feed for five or six or seven days, we got in touch with the Governor's office," says Eric Ness with the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau.

"We explained to them that there were hundreds of thousands of head of livestock in jeopardy, too. The Governor flew to Roswell, and we flew over and met him. He immediately called in four or five airlift contingents of the Air National Guard from several other states."

Shortly after noon the next day, Dec. 30, the National Guard was there loading hay to drop to stranded livestock.

"They continued through the weekend, dropping hay constantly," Ness says.

Six Air National Guard C-130 cargo planes came from Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Wyoming.

Estimates of the amount of hay dropped and the death loss among livestock are still fuzzy this week.

Ricardo Rel with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture was busy Monday morning trying to establish the damage done by the holiday storms. Caren Cowan, executive secretary of the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, was also trying to find the extent of damage to livestock in the area.

Ness says the estimates he's seen vary widely.

"The state emergency management people are just making guesstimates right now," he says. "I don't think anybody really knows, especially with regard to dropped calves. I don't know how long it will be before anybody knows."

Mark Marley of Roswell, president of the New Mexico Wool Growers Association, agrees that it will be a while before final numbers can be compiled.

"It will probably be when they gather them to shear before people realize what kind of death loss they've had," says Marley.

Ness says the Albuquerque Journal was reporting that 900 tons of hay had been dropped to the livestock, but he estimates it was quite a bit more than that.

"I would say thousands of tons," Ness says. "This thing went on for days."

A C-130 has a rated load capacity of about 21 tons, though the bulkiness of the large square bales used in the airlift operation prevented loading to anywhere near weight capacity. Reports from ground crews at the Roswell airport indicate that a typical load would consist of eight to 10 bales, each estimated to weigh about a ton given the moisture they had accumulated.

The Associated Press is reporting nearly one million pounds of hay was dropped and that death losses reached about 9600 cattle and sheep. They reported 180,000 head of cattle stranded in the region.

Local observers question the latter figure, however, and suggest the bulk of death loss was among dairy calves, not range cattle.

By Monday, New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson had declared 10 counties disaster areas. At least one more was expected to be added to the list this week.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has offered emergency aid to reimburse ranchers for up to 30 percent of their feed costs.

Overall costs, however they are funded, will be high. Aside from the expense of the aircraft and the hay itself, each bale was strapped to a sheet of heavy plywood to facilitate movement across the planes’ roller-equipped floors. The plywood went out the rear door with the hay.

And then there were innovative — and costly — private solutions.

When snow closed the highway and prevented him from reaching his ranch west of Tatum, Bob Bean bought two new snowmobiles in Albuquerque, hauled them as far as he could, then he and a son-in-law rode them the rest of the way in. They stripped the hoods off two ranch trucks, rigged them as sleds, loaded them with feed, then towed them to the stock with the snowmobiles.

It's still not clear how much snow fell in the region.

State Climatologist Dr. Ted Sammis said the Roswell area had almost 14 inches of snow between Dec. 21 and Dec. 26, although wind may have caused drifting in some areas.

Marley says from the neighbors he's talked to it appears to be between 20 and 30 inches of snow. This week it seems to be melting, but the melting snow is also causing problems now with mud.

"It's been warming up," Marley says. "Roswell still seems to be cold. It's melted more north and west of Roswell."

Marley says in the country just west of Roswell, there is still a lot of snow on the ground, but in the foothills of the Capitans, it's opened up a bit.

"It's real hard to get around," he says. "We're hitting the slop right now, and we still have a lot of snow cover. There are spots that really got hit. That stuff was sure deep."

But Marley is optimistic that the damage won't be as bad as it could have been.

"I don't have any idea what the losses are going to be, but I hope we're all going to be pleasantly surprised," he says. "I think a lot of livestock have made it fairly well. We're seeing some sheep that seem to be taking it pretty good. The ewe lambs and the old ewes are the ones that are catching it."

In some pastures, he says, he's not seeing any sheep. In other pastures, he's seeing quite a few.

"We're going to make it through," Marley says.