Cattlemen fight for herds' survival as flooding takes toll

BAYOU GAUCHE — While other people headed for family gatherings or last-minute shopping Christmas Eve, Steve Thibodeaux of Bayou Blue stood in a waterlogged field, the eyes of more than 100 hungry cows fixed on him.

“I had 240 acres and might have had 10 acres out of water, The cows were standing together like sardines,” said the 50-year-old Thibodeaux, who once worked offshore but for the past five or six years has been a cattleman. “I had cows that had calves in the water and the calves are gone. I couldn't find them. I was watching the cows and they were fixing to calve, and I'd come back the next day and there's still afterbirth hanging out but she couldn't find the calf because it fell in the water. A cow can't find a calf in the water.”

Thibodeaux is not alone. Nearly two weeks after southeast Louisiana highways and homes flooded due to days of torrential rains, cattlemen in St. Charles, Lafourche and Terrebonne are coping with the effects of water in the fields. Those who could wrangled their herds into big trailers and moved them to higher ground. Those who could not struggled to get hay to animals stranded by water and unable to graze, on tractors that in some cases broke down because of water and motor-wrecking mud.

‘WHERE THEIR HEARTS ARE'

“These are some of the toughest people you will ever meet in your life,” Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture Mike Strain said last week after meeting with cattlemen in Bayou Gauche, just over the parish line from Lafourche. “Farmers are by their nature strong-willed, strong-natured people. They have faced the elements and the challenges because that is where their hearts are. And you will see them continue to farm when they are in waist-deep water, all the farmers working together.” Strain's office, in cooperation with LSU AgCenter parish agents, wrestled up hay for south Louisiana farmers from donors in Amite and Monroe.

The biggest problem has been getting the hay to areas where farmers need it most. The cows need the hay because they are unable to forage for grass in the floodwater. The alternative is using feed from grain, which can be prohibitively expensive.

In Lafourche Parish there were more than 13,000 head of cattle in 2008. There were 1,730 in Terrebonne and 2,108 in St. Charles. Combined, that's 3 percent of Louisiana's total population of 615,782 non-dairy cows.

Some local farmers use their herds for extra income while holding other jobs. Others, like Thibodeaux, are almost totally dependent on what income they can squeeze out of their farms.

Parish agents say those farmers have an impact on local economies where they buy tractors and trucks, fuel, feed and hardware.

A FOUR-PRONGED THREAT

Small industries such as the Thibodaux livestock auction are also dependent on the farmers.

Farmers who don't have large family farms graze their cattle on land they lease or borrow. Bayou Gauche is home to cows owned by farmers from Terrebonne and Lafourche, as well as those who live close to its pastures or in neighboring Des Allemands.

The cattlemen, regardless of what parish they call home, are a tight-knit community who help each other out when they can, and whose collective fortune is dependent on what happens to each individually.

The flooding has created a four-pronged threat, and could not have happened at a worse time.

In Louisiana calves are generally born in December. Stressed cows seven and eight months pregnant — just short of their nine month gestation — are at higher risk for premature delivery under the worst possible conditions.

The need for hay is far greater than if there was no flooding, but the rain has destroyed some hay that's already been harvested. Cows are more prone to disease and sickness, especially pneumonia — a problem that was becoming more evident Christmas Day — and the lack of food is resulting in mothers not being able to properly nurse their calves, radically altering their chances of survival.

As he prepared to feed his cows, Steve Thibodeaux scooped up grassy, brown dirt from a ditch running near his fence.

“This will kill cows,” he said, explaining that when they are hungry cows will eat such debris, which contains impurities and wreaks havoc on their digestive systems.

That makes it even more important, he said, that feed and hay get to the cows wherever they are.

‘A N EMERGENCY WITH CATTLE'

On Christmas Eve the St. Charles Parish AgCenter agent, Rene Schmit, met with Thibodeaux and other farmers.

“This is probably as worse as I have ever seen a disaster in terms of an emergency with cattle. With Katrina and several of the hurricanes, they didn't dump water. We lost fences and had damage to some barns. But nothing like this,” Schmit said. “Twelve days later we are not that far advanced. We have some progress, a little bit in terms of drainage. We have hay from Abbeville and we are still moving cattle.” About 20 miles from Thibodeaux's fields, near the north Lafourche community of Kraemer, the pastures on either side of La. 307 are normally full of cattle too accustomed to passing cars and trucks to bother looking up as they graze.

Friday morning there were no cattle present on fields that resembled lakes. A lone bald eagle surveyed the scene from a mound of hay in an abandoned, soaked field.

Emmett Granier and Ricky Mahler of Bayou Boeuf moved their cattle – except for two that ran from the herd – in a caravan of six trucks and trailers when the water got too high.

“It was a lot of work. They had to go on horseback and round them up. He came back soaking wet and dirty and all they did was pass out after they took a bath,” said Granier's wife, Melanie.

A section of their pasture was planted in rye grass, a favorite of the cattle. But they don't know if that grass will survive the flooding and the pasture could become useless.

Richard Chiasson of Bayou Gauche was unable to move most of his cattle, and watched helplessly as they foundered in high water.

“I been through hell for 3 ½ weeks, said Chiasson, a stocky man with a ruddy complexion who has farmed cattle most of his life. “I moved 75 for myself, but I got 300 head. I split them into other pastures.”

One of his cows miscarried.

A GOLDFISH AND AN APARTMENT?

Thursday morning he and his brother, Wayne, retrieved hay from a shed previously unreachable.

Wayne Chiasson guided a blue tractor carefully on a narrow ridge of land above the floodwater, at times running it through high water where no land was visible.

After loading it onto a flatbed, the brothers brought the hay to a pasture where cows waited. As the truck pulling the hay trailer to a high area where the cows could feed, hundreds of them followed, slowly but steadily moving ahead.

As the Chiassons fed their cattle, Gerald Mahan Jr., a second-generation Des Allemands cattleman, coped with his own problems, a tractor stuck out in a field where he had tried to check on a portion of his herd.

“It's been pouring down rain and we are running through 6 and 8 inches of mud just to get to where the cattle are at. There is no end in sight,” he said. “I really enjoy being a cattleman, but sometimes I want to have just a goldfish and an apartment. If it dies you just flush him down the commode.”

Senior Staff Writer John DeSantis can be reached at 850-1150 or john.desantis@dailycomet.com