Day: August 8, 2011

Six-hundred miles south of Lincoln at Canadian, Texas, Jim Haley was up at 4 a.m. Tuesday to round up cows and calves for a trip to the sale barn. Haley, 55, is one of many ranchers who doesn’t like to talk about how many cattle he owns. But he admits the number is dwindling rapidly, as drought, wildfires and grasshoppers turn grazing ground in the Texas Panhandle and much of the rest of the state into a scene from hell. “God only knows how long this thing is going to last or how deep it’s going to

Heat making you miserable? You’re not alone. A persistently hot July — the hottest on average in nearly 60 years — is taking its toll on Iowa livestock. According to the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, between 3,500 and 4,000 cattle have died as a result of the recent weeks of overbearing heat and humidity. That accounts for less than 1 percent of Iowa’s 1.2 million head of cattle, according to the Cattlemen’s Association. “We definitely have put the livestock herd under stress this year with the weather,” said Dave Miller, director of research and commodity services for the