In Snowy Northern California, Stranded Cows Receive Emergency Hay – NPR Liberal-news

Rancher Robert Puga’s cattle had been stranded and starving in the snow for weeks.

“We’ve never seen record snow like this, ever. And we’re losing cattle left and right,” Puga said.

His ranch is in the far north of California, in Trinity County, in an area that has been hit hardest by the recent wave of unprecedented snowfall in the state.

Spring is calving season and there is usually plenty of grass to feed the newborns. But this year, the grass has been buried by up to two meters of snow on some ranches. Puga was running out of hay when she received a call offering a life preserver to her herd.

State, federal and local officials from neighboring Humboldt County organized an emergency rescue operation to drop hay bales of stranded cattle from the air. They called it “Operation Hay Drop.”

Humboldt County Supervisor Michelle Bushnell says many cows in the area are starving because of the snow.

“They have absolutely no food,” he said. “The grass doesn’t grow.”

Bushnell, who also raises cattle, said he called other ranchers in the area to check on them, and when he heard that some hadn’t been able to get to their cattle for over a week, he realized he had to do something. .

John Rice, a longtime Humboldt County rancher, had told Bushnell that when the area faced a similar storm in 1989, the Coast Guard was called in to drop hay from helicopters to the stranded cows.

So Bushnell called Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal and proposed a helicopter rescue for the starving cows. Honsal went to the Coast Guard with the idea, and by noon on Sunday, March 5, Operation Hay Drop was underway.

Authorities collected the coordinates of the stranded herds and then flew out in search of cows.

“The pilots are essentially looking for footprints in the snow,” Honsal said. “They will drop the hay in the area where they are, and what they found is [the cows] start coming out from under the trees and head for the hay as soon as the helicopter takes off.”

So far, Operation Hay Drop has been a success, said rancher Puga. The mission covers some 2,500 head of cattle over several kilometers.

“If it weren’t for them, I guarantee 110% that there would be thousands of head of cattle dying. Thousands,” Puga said.