How long should you let your car warm up before driving? The answer may surprise you
18 January 2024
VALLEY CENTER, Kan. (KSNW) — The cold temperatures have ranchers putting in extra hours. Producers tell me they watch the weather closely and prepare.
“You never know what winter is going to be, whether it’s going to be muddy, extreme cold, or really actually mild like last year or the year before,” Marcine Moldenhauer, Tallgrass Land and Cattle owner, said. “And so the preplanning makes life easier once you get there, not knowing what to expect and trying to just make sure that whatever gets thrown at you by Mother Nature, we have planned for the best you can, and you’re ready, but as well as making sure your livestock are ready.”
Preparations include ensuring they have enough fuel, getting water tanks and feed bunks in the correct position, bringing more hay nearby, and cleaning hay pads. When it snows, they go right to work moving it.
“Got the tractor ready to go, the skid steer ready to go, all your equipment ready to go,” Moldenhauer said. “So when the snow’s done, you move the snow off to where, when it melts, you don’t have mud again.”
She says ice makes tasks take longer.
“You have either a hammer in your pocket to open gates to hammer the ice off or, you know, a fencing tool,” Moldenhauer said. “Getting twine off of bales is a challenge, and normally, it’d take a box cutter and cut it and pull it off. And so you use a hatchet or an ax, or every once in a while, if it’s really icy, we use a sawzall.”
They make sure cattle have multiple locations for hay so they can eat all they want because more food keeps them warm. They also bed areas for warmth. During calving, the heifer is put into the barn, where it is warmer with space heaters and blankets.
“When they hit the ground, even when it’s in a barn outside with hay, if you think about the analogy of sticking your tongue to something metal, at that cold, it’s almost the same effect,” Moldenhauer said. “The cattle can only do so much. She can work so hard, but Mother Nature can throw some things at these babies that they can’t tolerate, and you just have to be there and intervene.”
She says although it is a lot of hard work, she loves what she does.
“We enjoy it even though there are times when it’s really exhausting, and not that other jobs are not exhausting, but the cattle industry takes a lot of pride in handling our cattle and trying to do everything to where we give them the best from the start in life clear to the very end,” Moldenhauer said.
At Rogers Ranch, they are not calving but still working extra to make sure cattle are taken care of. They are making sure cattle have water by breaking ice and hauling it.
“Where the stock tank is, there’s not a well there, and it’s kind of exposed to the wind and stuff,” Sherry Rogers, Rogers Ranch owner, said. “So it freezes pretty good. Right now, there are two different icebergs on each side of the tank, and then we’ve put in freshwater, and that’s a challenge. If the wind’s blowing 60 miles an hour and it’s minus five out, you still got to track out in the cold and check the animals.”
Rogers says it takes five to six hours for her husband to get everything checked and taken care of in the freezing temperatures. The cold can make diesel gel, which impacts the feed truck and other equipment, and keeping everything running is one of the biggest challenges.
“We had both generators ready to go just in case because what some people don’t realize is if we don’t have power, we don’t have water because you have to, to those wells. They have to run,” Rogers said.