More On Fires and Cattle

More On Fires and Cattle

More On Cattle and Fires. I’m Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.

Jack Field, Executive Vice-President for the Washington Cattlemen’s Association has been busy pulling together information for cattle producers who are being affected by wildfires. Everything from grazing to the loss of cattle.

FIELD: There’s a program through the Farm Service Agency, the LIP, the Livestock Indemnity Program in which producers will have the ability to file claims for losses documented from the wildfire. Folks are going to want to basically be able to break things out into two different categories when they go in with FSA. They’ll be looking at mature cows, two-years of age or older and then they’ve got brackets for yearlings, anything as long as they’re over 500 pounds and less than two-years of age.

Patience is also important as there may be a bit of a backlog for some of these programs as a lot of producers may be applying. Replacement forages is another important issue.

FIELD: In many situations we may have ranchers that are grazing on U.S. Forest Service or State DNR land, maybe Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife lands or in some situations Bureau of Land Management, BLM land, each of those different agencies may have a different approach in regards to how long depending on the severity of the burn and impact of the landscape that cattle would be required to rest in regards to no grazing on specific parcels.

And there’s other things to consider.

FIELD: The miles of fencing that will be lost to these fires, not know what folks are going to be looking at in terms of replacement costs.

And that’s Washington Ag Today. I’m Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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