As a Cattle Person, I Need to Weigh-in on the “Mass Cattle Die-Off” Video That’s Going Around

I know that video clip going around looks awful, but let me give some context here.

There has been extreme heat and humidity in Western Kansas and cattle have died. This is normal, and 10,000 head total statewide is not a “mass die-off that will cripple the beef supply.” Not even close.

There are roughly six million cattle in Kansas. Of those, over two million are “on feed” in confinement feedlots in the western half of the state.

In the former United States, something like 125,000 head of cattle are slaughtered per day, Monday through Friday, with a reduced kill on Saturday. So, as you can see, 10,000 deads in a heatwave is statistically insignificant.

The cattle shown in the video were not on pasture, they were in a confinement feedlot, as we can see by their size and the reportage says “fat cattle”. That means: in the feedlot approaching slaughter weight. They were not on ranches, grazing. They were in feedlots. Standing on dirt, in fenced pens, eating grain (corn) and drinking water from feed troughs all day every day. These cattle hadn’t seen a ranch, or eaten a blade of grass, in months.

The reported “epicenter” of this heat event was Ulysses, Kansas That’s my old stomping grounds, and I would take a spitball guess that within a 100 mile radius of Ulysses, Kansas, there are close to a million cattle on feed in confinement feedlots, maybe more.

So 10,000 dead, statewide, really isn’t a “massive die-off”.

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