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Natural disaster strikes Kansas killing an unofficial number of fat cattle

A heat index crisis hit parts of Southwest Kansas recently causing an unconfirmed number of deaths in fat cattle.  

Scarlett Hagins with the Kansas Livestock Association tells Brownfield temperatures unexpectedly reached record highs from June 10-12. “They increased from about 90 degrees to 107 to 108 degrees and that held steady there throughout the weekend. In addition to the increase in temperatures, they also saw an increase in humidity and a significant decrease in wind to basically no wind.”

She says cattle were unable to cool down because overnight lows dropped into the 70s and that caused extreme heat stress. “Normally that region is very ideal for fed cattle because they are low in humidity and they typically have plenty of wind and that’s a great place to raise cattle. But when you have a weather situation like this, it just didn’t allow the cattle to acclimate because things changed so quickly.”

Hagins says many videos and reports on social media claim animal mistreatment, but this was just an act of Mother Nature. “It was not anything else other than that. This is not something that would normally occur.”

She says the losses shouldn’t have an impact on the cattle markets or beef prices.

Scarlett Hagins, vice president of communications with KLA: