Words by Tess Becker
California has been home to a lot of extreme weather of late, like storming leading to flooding and mudslides, and record-breaking snowfall, unofficially reported in some areas as much as 30 feet.
All of this can have implications. For example, cows in northern California had been isolated and starving for weeks.
This is normally a season for newborn calves, with a lot of fresh springs grass for cows to feast on but that grass has been buried under feet of snow, so State, federal, and local officials from Humboldt County had put together an emergency rescue operation to airdrop stranded cattle bales of hay called “Operation Hay Drop.”
The officials met with plans to help save cows in the region, and after going to the Coast Guard, the plan was a go.
“The pilots are looking essentially for tracks in the snow,” Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal said. “They'll drop the hay in the area where they are, and what they found is [the cows] start coming out from under the trees and going towards the hay as soon as the helicopter takes off.”
The mission has been able to feed the cows and covers about 2,500 cattle in the region.
