Untimely Blizzard Devastates Ranchers - MSM AWOL

Update: An update on the aftermath of the storm has been penned here and you may contribute to the clean-up/relief efforts at: https://www.giveblackhills.org/27677 . If you are a T-shirt kind of a person, A T-shirt has been created with proceeds to go to the aid of the ranchers here.

 Our nation's cattle ranchers have suffered a serious blow - one that will undoubtedly have economic repercussions and yet there is no word in the national MSM news. Well here is some coverage by non-national sources and individuals who care and are asking for our prayers.

From Dawnwink on Wordpress, a woman whose parents live and ranch where the storm hit hardest:
"I searched the national news for more information. Nothing. Not a single report on any of major news sources that I found. Not CNN, not the NY Times, not MSNBC. I thought, Well, it is early and the state remains without power and encased in snow, perhaps tomorrow. So I checked again the next day. Nothing. It has now been four days and no national news coverage.

Meanwhile, ranchers on the plains have been dealt a crippling blow the likes that has not been experienced in living memory. The Rapid City Journal continues, ”Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, said most ranchers she had spoken to were reporting that 20 to 50 percent of their herds had been killed. While South Dakota ranchers are no strangers to blizzards, what made Friday’s storm so damaging was how early it arrived in the season. Christen said cattle hadn’t yet grown their winter coats to insulate them from freezing wind and snow. In addition, Christen said, during the cold months, ranchers tend to move their cattle to pastures that have more trees and gullies to protect them from storms. Because Friday’s storm arrived so early in the year, most ranchers were still grazing their herds on summer pasture, which tend to be more exposed and located farther away from ranch homes.”

In addition to the financial loss, when a rancher loses an animal, it is a loss of years, decades, and often generations within families, of building the genetics of a herd. Each rancher’s herd is as individual and unique as a fingerprint. It is not a simple as going out to buy another cow. Each cow in a herd is the result of years of careful breeding, in the hopes of creating a herd reflective of market desirability, as well as professional tastes of the rancher. Cattle deaths of this magnitude for ranchers is the equivalent of an investment banker’s entire portfolio suddenly gone. In an instant, the decades of investment forever disappear.  It is to start over again, to rebuild, over years and years."

Look here to see the rest of this report on wordpress.

The author asks for your prayers, but I'm sure you could contact local organizations and churches in the area and they would be able to guide you about how to help in a more physical way.

See more via local news reports here and here.
Unbelievably enough, some have taken to the comments sections in local reports as if it were an opportunity to upbraid America for "their meat addiction" and play politics. They should be ashamed of themselves.

" And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have served thee, and how thy cattle was with me.
 For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it is now increased unto a multitude; and the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also?
 And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock.
 I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire.
 So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me.
And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word.
And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons.
 And he set three days' journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks.
 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.
 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle.
 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.
 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.
 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses."~ Gen 30: 29-43