Snow still lays in drifts, power lines are still down, and dead cows still litter the pastures west of Union Center down State Highway 34 and were still entirely too easy to spot as I drove down New Underwood Road, onto Interstate 90 toward Rapid City.

Snow in October in South Dakota isn’t a rarity, really. Snow sometimes can fly as early as Sept. 1. In fact, there has been recorded snowfall in June, here in this state.

But 48 hours of rain with 60 to 70 mph winds, followed by up to 48 inches of snow (with that same wind) over the following day was more than anyone expected, and more than thousands of cattle, sheep and hundreds of horses could handle.

Power lines gave out from the snow and ice, leaving tens of thousands without power for weeks. Animals died from hypothermia, drowning, and exhaustion.

Kristina Smith, a third-generation rancher running cattle in Meade, Ziebach and Harding counties, says, “My father is 90 years old, been ranching his whole life and has never seen a storm this time of year that has done this kind of damage.

"He’s seen his share of devastating blizzards in the spring and late spring, long winters, hard winters – never anything that took a toll on livestock this hard.” They found cattle in one of her pastures, from 14 miles away.

Cattle drift with the wind; they’re smart and they know how to protect themselves. Cattle in South Dakota live to tell about the many blizzards they’ve seen, but not this one. Most cattle were still in summer pastures, and most ranchers were mere days away from selling their calves.

George Ann Cobb, from Red Owl, South Dakota, says, “We’ve been in the gumbo 40 years, and we’ve never left there before Nov. 1. Oct. 1, there’s no reason.” Cobb has been ranching with her husband for 40 years; their son and his wife ranch with them.

For people like Smith, it would take days to gather all her cattle from summer pastures in three counties. Cobb says it takes them five hours to gather their pasture, and it’s 20 miles from where they live. It’s not something you just rush out to do. “There’s no way you can do anything. You just prayed it wouldn’t be that bad. And it was.”

The fact that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the deaths will haunt many ranchers for years to come.

“They’re the family that takes care of us. Cows are our family,” says Cobb, who brought half the cows they had in that summer pasture home in a bucket of ear tags.

Removing those ear tags, she says, was like “preparing your own family for the grave.” She told her neighbor, “When you get ready to do that, call me.”

Despite the estimated $1.7 billion in economic damage to the state’s $3.8 billion cattle business, the ranching community perseveres, and the stories of a community of people coming together are heartwarming, thoughtful and will renew one’s hope in humanity.

Smith has encouraged the many pharmaceutical companies she’s worked with over the years to provide vaccines and antibiotics to the ranchers that need them.

CHS donated $100,000 to the Rancher Relief Fund, and Merck donated $50,000 worth of medications. This storm will have lasting effects, says Kristina, who recently “doctored eight out 13 fall pairs for pneumonia.”

A couple days after the Cobb family got their live cattle situated, their son decided he wanted to bring them home. So, they began calling neighbors to borrow trailers and get help. Their daughter-in-law called her dad from Kadoka, South Dakota, who brought help from even farther away.

The next day three huge trailers and cookies arrived from Kadoka. Folks that the Cobb family didn’t know had come to help. “They were going to do whatever it took. We spent one day getting ours home.” And the good news doesn’t end there.

The Cobbs own a nice set of corrals, complete with a scale. It wasn’t long before folks started bringing live cattle to their corrals, so they could be sorted. Sorted by brand, by ear tag, any way they could figure to match them up.

When they got that done, “people backed up and loaded them; didn’t matter if they went 30 miles the opposite direction. They just started hauling for people. It didn’t matter if they were their neighbors. It was amazing.”

There are also sale barns all over the country holding rollover auctions. The barn in North Platte, Nebraska, raised $84,000; the first rollover auction in Mobridge, South Dakota, raised $23,000, and shortly there’ll be a truckload of heifers from Montana on their way to ranchers here.

The AgChat foundation partnered with Tyson, and folks “tweeted” their way to a $50,000 donation from Tyson. These monies will go to the Rancher Relief Fund.

Smith and Cobb worry about the mental and emotional well-being of their ranching brethren. You’ve got to “get it off your chest so you can move forward. You have no choice. Either pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep moving forward or get out of it. Those are your two options,” says Smith.

For two weeks, as a family, they rode together daily, fixing fence, burying cattle, helping their neighbors – “You’ve got to share it. You can’t bottle it up. You can only be so tough. We got on our horses.

We gathered our cattle. We took care of them. We brought them home. We didn’t go looking for the dead. We went looking for the living. We will deal with the dead later,” says Cobb.

When asked what is the most effective way to help, Smith and Cobb both agree that the first order of business is calling our congressmen to get a farm bill passed.

Cobb took it a step further, saying that if you could come help fence, and bring supplies, that’d be super. And finally, if making a monetary donation is more your style, since maybe you’re not able to come fence, you could do so by visiting Ranchers Relief. 

Jenn Zeller lives on a ranch with her family in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. You can follow her on her blog, The South Dakota Cowgirl, as well as her Facebook page.

PHOTOS
Snow in October in South Dakota isn’t a rarity. But 48 hours of rain with 60 to 70 mph winds, followed by up to 48 inches of snow (with that same wind) over the following day was more than anyone expected, and more than thousands of cattle, sheep and hundreds of horses could handle. Photos by Jenn Zeller.

How you can help
The South Dakota Rancher Relief Fund was established by Black Hills Area Community Foundation (BHACF) to provide support and relief assistance to those in the agriculture industry impacted by the blizzard of Oct. 4-7, 2013.

The fund will be administered by BHACF in cooperation with the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association and the South Dakota Sheep Growers Association for the direct benefit of the livestock producers impacted by this devastating blizzard.