BELLINGHAM — Erica DeWaard was up hours before sunrise on Monday, Dec. 27. But that was business-as-usual for the co-owner of Lynden’s Legacy Custom Ag, which currently cares for 50 calves younger than two months old.
What was different about this morning was that the single-digit temperatures had frozen the farm’s water pipes, which meant DeWaard couldn’t refill the calves’ troughs or make their milk formula.
But the show must go on — that’s the life of a farmer — and DeWaard manually hauled water to the calves using a five-gallon bucket until she could thaw the pipes an hour later.
“The calves always have to come first,” she said. “I’m the one who doesn’t sleep so they stay warm and dry.”
For almost a week, Whatcom has been steeped in record-breaking low temperatures and snow that just keeps coming. This has forced the county’s dairy farmers to work double-time to care for their animals and keep milk production going.
Whatcom farmers have been coping with the cold by setting up small heaters in their barns and milking rooms, diligently breaking up ice in their animals’ water troughs and laying down extra straw to keep cows warm. They are putting sawdust down on the ground so their cows don’t slip and fall. Some are feeding their calves electrolyte formulas and caffeine, piling up hay bales to create wind blocks and even buying their animals vests.
Rich Appel of Appel Farms said his team is working 12 to 14 hours each day just to do the “very basics” to make sure the cows stay comfortable.
DeWaard said she worked from 5 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Christmas day, only stopping at home for 15 minutes.
Luckily, Appel hasn’t heard of any Whatcom dairy animals dying due to the recent frigid weather, but he’s already bracing himself to find broken pipes around the farm as the snow melts.
“Dairies in the Midwest are built to handle this weather,” Appel said. “Dairies on the Pacific Coast are not.”
When cows get stressed, which can happen during extremely high or low temperatures, they tend to produce less milk, said Brianna DeBruin of Van Dellen Farms.
“Lactation is a luxury,” she said.
Van Dellen Farms milks 800 cows between two locations in Whatcom, and each cow is currently producing a couple pounds less of milk daily, estimates DeBruin. While that sounds like a lot of product, she doesn’t expect the loss to have a significant financial impact on the business.
What would be problematic is if the grain truck could not deliver feed or the milk truck couldn’t pick up product, she said. That has not happened to Van Dellen Farms during the recent cold snap.
As Appel looks toward the new year, he is optimistic. That’s how farmers have to be, he explained. He hopes that the coming months bring high milk prices and fair weather.
“Spring will come,” he said. “And this will pass.”
