‘Ice on Backs, Icicles on Bellies.’ Louisiana Ranchers Battle the Cold

By Faimon Roberts

The Times-Picayune

Vincent Cannatella exited his truck and grabbed a shovel from the back.

Gripping the shovel tightly, he stabbed down repeatedly, eventually breaking through the inch-thick layer of ice that had formed across the top of a water trough on his St. Landry Parish ranch.

Normally, the cows on his ranch will keep drinking from a trough to break up any ice that forms when temperatures drop. But with the thermometer dipping into the teens in many places across the state, the ice was too thick Tuesday.

“I probably could have stood on it,” Cannatella laughed. “This was solid.”

Cannatella isn’t the only Louisiana livestock producer taking unusual measures this week. Across the state, ranchers and farmers are doing what they can to battle temps and wind chills that, in some cases, approached zero.

Tuesday morning, temperatures at Cannatella’s ranch had risen into the 20s and the sun was out. But his pasture had a layer of frost and some cattle had ice on their backs from rain that had frozen. Nonetheless, he said, they were handling it well.

“I got some wooded areas where they can get out of the wind,” he said. “This morning, they are out in some sunny spots where I am feeding them.”

Temperatures into Wednesday morning were expected to be even colder before a gradual warm-up.

Perhaps the biggest challenge the cold presents to cattle ranchers is putting out extra food that the cows need to eat to help them stay warm. Normally, that would be hay that the ranchers grew the previous year. But with this past summer’s record heat and drought, hay production was cut by half or more for many ranchers. Cannatella has supplemented his hay with some baled corn stalks and a cotton plant-based feed he purchased for the first time this year.

“I feed off trailers, usually five bales on a trailer,” he said. “I put eight bales on the trailers” this week, he said. With the extra feed, Cannatella thinks he’ll just make it through the winter.

Further north and west, Marty Wooldridge said his cows were holding up, despite the cold.

“The cattle had some ice on their backs, icicles hanging from their bellies,” said Wooldridge, who has ranch land in northern Caddo Parish. “People are going to burn through a lot of hay.”

Wooldridge said some of his pastures are wooded, and he put cattle in those or in creek bottoms so that they could get out of the wind. His calving process, which for some begins in late December, won’t start for about another month. Cold weather can kill calves or put stress on pregnant cows, he said. After a 2021 cold snap, many ranchers saw lower conception rates, Wooldridge said.

The cold also affects equipment. It can cause diesel and other fluids in tractors to thicken and make them hard to start and run, he said. Wooldridge has shut all his extra projects down and is focused on making sure his cattle have enough to eat and drink.

A couple parishes to the east of Wooldridge, Mitch Marsalis took some of the same precautions with the cattle on his Claiborne Parish farm. But Tuesday morning, he was more concerned with the truckload of new chicks he had in two of his four chicken houses. For the chicks to grow, it needs to be about 90 degrees inside the houses, he said.

“We are burning probably six or seven times the natural gas than we normally would heating these poultry houses,” he said. “It’s almost impossible.”

When it gets cold, the chicks huddle and won’t eat or drink. The ones that survive that will struggle for the rest of their lives, he said.

Marsalis said he would have preferred it snow like it did in 2021, when more than 8 inches fell across portions of north Louisiana. The snow provides a layer of insulation that keeps the ground and buildings warmer, he said. The freezing rain doesn’t do that.

“It’s like deep freeze ice everywhere,” he said.