'Til the cows come home

Wednesday, Dec. 14, around 1:30 a.m., Mark Lutze heard an unknown noise coming from outside his home. His wife, Mendi, lay in the bedroom at the building’s opposite end. Beyond the walls, a snowstorm coursed into darkness over the surrounding fields northwest of Holyoke. Aside from the mysterious sound, the Lutzes were alone in the house. Mark took a step back. Then, he decided to investigate.

Mendi awoke soon afterwards; her husband told her cows were looking through the front window. She thought he was talking in his sleep. They were farmers after all, not ranchers. But then she entered the dining room: From the window, a sleet-covered bovine met her gaze.

“It was a little bit of a surprise,” she said, laughing.

Between 50 and 60 cattle had arrived to the Lutzes’ front door, traveling west from corn stalk circles north of Paoli as wind gusts howled above at more than 30 miles per hour. The journey, in all, had taken them roughly 15 miles.

Later that morning, Mark called rancher Russell Horton, who owned the cattle and about 175 more bovine escapees scattered between Paoli and Holyoke. For every local rancher who used corn stalk circles for winter feed, Horton said, it seemed the wind had driven some of their herd through the fences. 

“When we have that heavy snow, [cattle] bunch up into a group to stay warm,” he said. “The wind will push them and they usually travel in the direction the wind’s blowing.”

By an interview that afternoon, Horton had talked to “four or five other” ranchers; all experienced a similar exodus. Another two,  just then, attempted to reach him by phone.

“More news is coming as we speak,” he said. “I need to call these guys back.”

A difficult start

A cow can live “a couple days” by eating snow, Horton said, but to keep them healthy, they need actual food. With horses and snowmobiles, he and fellow locals got to work, gathering cows when possible, and bringing them hay and feed. 

Neighbors helped contain the wandering herds, Horton said, whether by pen or another place “they [could] capture them.” Though Mark “isn’t really a cowboy,” Mendi said, her husband managed to bring their portion of bovine visitors across the street to members of the Haynes family, who in turn housed them temporarily within corrals.

Blizzards have occurred in the past, Horton said, but ranchers had become used to relatively fair weather; the storm had taken them by surprise. Tim Becker, a rancher from the Holyoke area, managed to keep his own cattle penned, but experienced consequences nonetheless: When he dug out a place for them during the storm, it soon “drifted back shut.”

“Guys have to do their best...and get them back in,” he said Thursday regarding the missing cows. “That’s the thing: Ranchers don’t get a snow day.”

At first, it proved slow going. Later, Horton would recall sleepless nights as he worried about the situation.

“I spent the whole day trying to locate cattle,” he said Dec. 14. “We can’t get too far because of the drifted-in roads.”

Bringing in the herd

By the following Monday, however – bit by bit – he and fellow locals had pushed through and gathered up all of his herd; they also brought 250 more to Haxtun for the Anderson family at Zion Farms. While the cows are “super tired,” Horton said, all of them seem to have thus far survived. His currently are taking in fresh water, he continued, “which they needed badly.”

“It’s been a great community effort,” he said. “Everybody’s pitching in to help gather them.”

Despite their success, he noted, those “less fortunate” still have cattle wandering outside their ranches. As a community, he hopes they can bring them all home.

Going forward, Horton believes he and local ranchers will continue to send their cattle out to the corn stalk circles. Though future storms may arrive, he continued, the price of hay and feed remains “too outrageous” for those in agriculture to house and nourish livestock for an entire winter.

“That’s kind of the nature of the beast,” he said. “It’s [the] risk we have to take to operate.”