Ranches recover, tally losses after 'relentless storm'

By Nancy Vigran

The “bomb cyclone” that hit California in the early days of the New Year brought winds exceeding 50 miles per hour and torrential rains. Van Exel Dairy in Lodi soon found its 500-acre property underwater.

For dairy farmer Hank Van Exel, one of the worst immediate challenges was trying to keep most of the 2,200 cows and ca Tyler Ribeiro, of Rib Arrow Dairy in Tulare, lves on the farm bedded down, with the wind blowing sideways under the paddock c overs. The farm kept tractors moving for cleanup for at least six to seven hours nonstop.

“It was the most relentless storm I’ve seen in my life,” said Van Exel, who described multiple rain events he endured as “the worst two weeks of my life.”

The series of nine atmospheric storms through January affected ranchers and farmers up and down the state. Some producers were hit harder than others, and some in the livestock and dairy business suffered losses while other regions were spared.

For Van Exel, the storms and ensuing cleanup and challenges were an ordeal. For starters, there was a lack of bedding for the cattle, as the nearby farm where Van Exel gets rice hulls for his calves was also underwater.

“The wind, to me, was the worst of it,” he said. It blew the roof off the hay barn and shred tarps on other stacks. “The hay I lost was big.”

He said some 500 tons of premium-grade alfalfa, valued at $400 per ton, were lost. While he will try to salvage what he can, he said, “that kind of loss is something you just cannot plan for,” he added.

In Auburn, Dan Macon, a University of California livestock and natural resources advisor who serves Placer, Nevada, Sutter and Yuba counties, said most cattle ranchers in the Sierra Nevada foothills above Sacramento suffered little to no losses and minor to moderate damage.

But he said some sheep and goat ranchers were not so lucky. He measured the storms as dumping 13.83 inches of rain in December and another 13.93 inches in January in a region that averages 32 inches annually.

For producers who were lambing or kidding on alfalfa fields in southern Sutter and western Placer counties, Macon said, “the relentless rain and wind created exposure problems for the new kids and lambs, not so much for the ewes and does.”

Access to the animals also became an issue. Roads became too wet to allow vehicles to get to the animals or to move them to higher ground.

Those conditions made it challenging for the Livestock Pass Program implemented in Nevada, Placer and Yuba counties. Livestock pass programs, authorized under Assembly Bill 1103 in 2021, are intended to allow entry by ranchers for evacuation or checks on livestock during storms, floods, fires or other disasters.

Macon said the events revealed how it is critical in floods and other events for ranchers to connect with incident commanders and work with emergency responders to ensure safe access for caring for animals.

At Van Vleck Ranch in Sacramento County, ranch manager Jerry Spencer said he was relieved that 2,000 head of Angus cattle, including 250 fall calves, all survived the surge of storms.

Spencer said other ranchers weren’t as lucky. He said some were not able to reach parts of their herds for days.

The Van Vleck Ranch suffered relatively modest damage, including washed-out roads and knocked-out creek banks, along with downed fencing and trees. In early February, crews were still doing cleanup on the 11,000 acres under management by the ranch.

The power was off for three days, Spencer said. While the rain was welcome, he said, it would have been nice if had been spread out rather than all coming at once.

Whether the ranch suffered any seed grass damage is yet to be determined. The 60 acres of forage grass and 150 acres of pasture hay should be all right, Spencer said. But its 30 acres of alfalfa were underwater for some time, and the crop’s condition remained unknown.

On the bright side, the ranch’s reservoir was full for the first time in five years. While there are no concerns of running out of water for this year, the ranch will still be conserving, Spencer said, “because you never know.”

In the southern Central Valley, Tyler Ribeiro of Rib Arrow Dairy in Tulare said, “It’s been a beautiful mess.”

“We need it. We need all of the rain we can get,” he said. Although the storm aftermath created considerable work, “for the most part, we’ve been doing very well.”

Ribeiro said he hopes the rain from the storms will extend to an improved water year—and perhaps lead to some price relief for dairy farmers and ranchers facing rising feed costs, which ballooned amid supply-chain challenges as pasturelands also diminished due to drought.

Macon said, “Feed-wise, the rain is a real blessing.”

He added, “Not only do we have soil moisture to grow grass as the days grow longer and warmer, we have refilled stock ponds, which will allow ranchers to access feed they couldn’t use through the dry years for lack of stock water.”

Van Exel suggested recent weather events underscored the need for improved state and local water infrastructure for capturing water during major storms and maximizing water storage. He said he watched in frustration in his local water district as massive amounts of stormwater flowed away, uncaptured.

“We experienced a normal yearly rainfall in those two weeks,” he said. “We could have easily taken care of two years’ water needs.”

(Nancy Vigran is a reporter based in Placer County. She may be contacted via news@cfbf.com.)