Cattle effected by the fires in Texas

[Sheryl]

Ranchers saw the end of their world Monday.

Dead cattle mottled the landscape a day after winds whipped fire into a murderous frenzy across six Texas Panhandle counties.

"It's like Armageddon out here," McLean-area rancher Bill Bryant said.

"We hauled - I don't remember - 15 to 18 calves that were dead. They just get into a corner and the fire consumes them."

Worse than the dead were the dying.

Cattle without ears.

Tails amputated by fire.

Eyelids melted shut.

Ranchers had no choice but to put the burned cattle down.

"Imagine your worst nightmare, and it can't even come close to this," said Brad Overstreet, a hand on the Taylor Ranch.

Fire killed four horses in a pasture on the ranch six miles north of Alanreed.

"All the horses were dead when we found them," Overstreet said. "They didn't have a hair on them.

"It's the worst thing you've ever seen in your life."

Wind swept across ranges that looked eerily barren - worse than land sucked dry by months of drought, said Mike Darsey, who ranches the Les Darsey family operation six miles north of Alanreed on state Highway 291.

"It almost looks like a desert around here," he said. "In a lot of places it looks like sand dunes. It's not charred and black like you normally would think of after a fire."

Ranchers toiled Monday not just to deal with the dead and injured, but to feed those that remain.

Hay already hard to come by due to months without rain went up in a puff of smoke.

Ranchers who had learned to deal with the shortage found themselves scrambling to provide sustenance to the living.

"We have no moisture, we have no grass, the hay is burnt up. What do you do?" Bryant said. "I'm numb."

He described a highway north of McLean strewn with cattle carcasses.

The fences designed to keep them safely penned had been consumed by fire.

"There's miles and miles of fences burnt up," Darsey said.

At $10,000 per mile, replacing the fences segmenting more than 650,000 acres of Panhandle ranchland will be highly costly, said Dr. Bob Robinson, agriculture regional program director at the Texas A&M University Extension Service in Amarillo.

The now-porous fencing in the fire-stricken area once held in about 25,000 cows, some of them pregnant, since it is calving season, Robinson said. It was unknown Monday how many perished.

Every one loaded up and hauled away represents an investment of $1,200 to $1,800, he said.

And a rancher's time, sweat and tears.

They'll have to closely observe the surviving members of their herds for weeks, Robinson said.

Cattle that seemed fine after a Stephenville fire became crippled by hoof problems that didn't show themselves for two weeks.

Firefighters have performed heroics in saving much of anything from Sunday's inferno, the ranchers said as they tried to look forward.

"Last night we were driving about 2 (a.m.). There was fire to the north, fire to the west and fire to the east," Bryant said. "It's just devastating."

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/031406/ ... 4034.shtml

I haven't driven around out in country much to see the damage done, we've been lucky so far in our country. Our neighbors haven't been so lucky.

[minks]

so tragic

[Jives]

I wonder if that will trigger the return of the "Dust Bowl" days?:(