Judy Jenkinson, who owns her own farm in Athens County near Albany, hasn’t been allowed any snow or cold days, but she’s spent many early mornings monitoring the weather forecast, trying to start her tractor and bundling up to check on her week-old lamb.
Jenkinson has been a farmer for five years, boasting an Athens farm with sheep, chickens and cattle, among other animals.
Although many farmers said January in Southeast Ohio typically promises temperature lows in the 20s, prompting them to prepare adequately, last month presented problems of its own when temperatures dropped below zero almost weekly.
Kyle Clem, a forecaster from Ohio University’s Scalia Lab, said in a previous Post article that the winter Athens is experiencing probably occurs only once every 20 years.
“I’ve grown up here,” Jenkinson said. “It’s one of the coldest winters that I know of.”
Keeping livestock alive isn’t the only problem winter poses, she said. Often, equipment such as tractors do not start in the cold, and temperatures are too frigid to trek out to the barn and feed the animals.
“We have two chicken coops in the barn, and the chickens need extra light so we have a heat lamp going at all times to keep their water from freezing,” Jenkinson said. “We usually give them extra hay and straw for protection to cut the wind down, too.”
Several local farmers cited an October snowstorm that killed nearly 8,000 cattle in South Dakota as their reason to fear severe cold and prepare early.
Rose Smith, a livestock specialist with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, said the freak storm hit farm cattle hard when their coats had not yet adjusted to winter weather.
“Quite a few cattle froze to death because it was wet, rained and froze quickly,” Smith said.
She said that animals are generally safe, though, and even will opt to stay outside if their coats are thick enough. She added that this particularly frosty January was expected by local farmers, giving them time to prepare their livestock.
“It’s not anything that’s incredibly out of the ordinary; this isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with winter,” Smith said. “But this winter has been a bigger problem than usual.”
She said most complaints the association received were regarding the state’s propane shortages, which have left local farmers in the cold.
“If you can’t get propane and you can’t keep it warm, it’s not going to do much good,” Smith said.
Some local farmers were more concerned than others, depending on the type of livestock they raised and the thickness of those animals’ coats.
Marilyn Wentworth, a local alpaca breeder, said she often worried she’d find an alpaca dead in the morning.
“I lost so much sleep,” Wentworth said. “I was worried I’d come out and find one of them in terrible trouble and have to bring them in the house. They’re 150 pounds and not house trained. I didn’t want to do that.”
Farmers like Wentworth and Jenkinson accept that this cold winter isn’t quite over yet. Sometimes, it just takes a little human compassion to keep livestock safe, happy and warm, Wentworth said.
“I’d go over to (an alpaca) and hug his head and breathe my warm breath on his face,” she said. “And after that, he’d relax after I warmed him up.”
@eockerman
eo300813@ohiou.edu
