Ranchers in Northeast Texas have spent the past few days getting ready for a winter storm that’s set to hit on Thursday morning. The National Weather Service predicts snow and icy conditions into Friday morning.
Jessica Humphrey, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension agent for Red River County, has been helping ranchers prepare for the storm. She spoke to the Texas Standard about what that entails.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: What’s the latest you’ve heard on the weather coming your way?
Jessica Humphrey: Well, I checked the weather on my weather app last night, and luckily, they have pushed the snow to hit us until [Thursday] afternoon, which I hope that’s true. And they’ve also decreased the amount so far. So it’s looking better and better for us every day.
Let’s hope that that trend continues. What about folks in the area and what they’ve been doing to get crops and animals ready for the storm?
Well, as far as crops are concerned, there’s really nothing they can get ready. It’s more of the equipment that they have to get ready for this storm.
As far as getting the equipment ready, it’s just like all your machines that take diesel fuel, you make sure you have some anti-gel in your diesel fuel. That way, your tractors and everything still crank.
If you have a shop or a shelter to put your tractors under, that’s even better because it’ll catch the wind break off of them, and that’ll be able to allow you to crank your tractor basically when you need it to. Because if those tractors get too cold, they won’t crank. It doesn’t matter if you have the anti-gel in the diesel fuel or not. Those batteries don’t want to work when it’s too cold.
But as far as like the livestock, people are scrambling right now. They’ve been scrambling actually the last two days, especially those larger producers with cattle scattered all over the county. They’ve been working probably the last three days trying to prepare for this.
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What about those critters? Is there any way to prepare them for this oncoming weather?
Yeah. There’s a whole list of things you can do. As far as cattle and like ruminant livestock that require forage to eat, the more hay you can put out for them, the better. The way ruminants work – their digestive systems work – is the more forage, which is hay, that they have in their belly, it generates internal heat.
So you’re actually allowing those cattle and those livestock to generate their own heater inside of them. So the more hay that you can furnish them, and the more good hay you can produce them, the more energy they will create inside their stomach. And then they will keep themselves warm.
You can provide them shelter. Most of these places around here don’t have actual, like barn shelters or shed shelters, but they have trees, and trees provide a windbreak. And so if you can put your hay out at a windbreak, that’ll help the cattle out a lot too. Especially cattle, they can withstand below zero temperatures as long as they’re dry, they have adequate feed and they have shelter or a windbreak.
Now, let me ask you, how costly can this get for producers and ranchers out in your part of Texas? Is this a costly event or is this more, we got to get busy and it’s sort of a hurry-up-and-wait situation.
It’s a little bit of both. I mean, it’s going to cost you a little bit because you’re going to have to put out more hay than you normally would. So in a way, you’re probably wasting a little bit of that hay. But then again, you’re not because you’re doing it for these extreme conditions.
So that’s costing you a little bit of money there, but it’s more of a hurry up, prepare and then wait and see how bad it is.
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And is it possible that some of these producers may have to get back out there and put out more hay and food?
Absolutely. And something that’s really important that they can do is after it gets done snowing, especially if they have baby calves being born right now, or baby calves that are already born, they need to get out and take more hay out. But instead of just setting it out for the cows, they need to unroll it.
And that way, those cows will make those baby calves lay on that dry hay, and it gives those baby calves a dry, warm place to lay down. That way they can rest, and that prevents them from getting too cold. It prevents them from getting sick. And if they’re brand-new babies, it’ll prevent them from freezing to death.
How rare is this kind of weather in your part of Texas, and do you think people are ready for it?
We’re experienced with it, yeah; the experienced ranchers are experienced with it. It’s not like super common. It doesn’t happen every year, but usually every other year we get a good amount of snow or ice.
But luckily, fingers crossed it doesn’t hang around too long. It’ll hang around for a couple of days and we can make it work until then.
