(Bloomberg) -- Ranchers and dairy farmers in New Mexico andwestern Texas have gone online in their search for thousands ofmissing cattle a week after an historic two-day blizzard buriedherds.

The storm that began Dec. 26, dubbed Goliath, may have killed asmany as 27,000 cows in Texas, according to industry estimates. Thefollowing Monday, Landon Weatherly, a rancher from Friona, Texas,who’s still trying to find some of his family’s runaway cattle,created the Facebook group “Cattle Lost and Found,” which now hasover 4,000 followers. It’s full of posts seeking livestockidentified by ear tags and brands, as well as videos, anecdotes andnotes of encouragement.

“When you can’t see your cattle, it’s probably one of the worstfeelings,” Weatherly said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It wasa mess, and it still is.”

Locals are still struggling to get dairies, ranches and feedlotsrunning again, digging animals out from under snow, using thebodies of those that didn’t survive as compost or taking them tolandfills. Farmers and industry observers say the region’s dairyindustry will take a hard hit.

Goliath’s winds

Goliath brought 90 mile-an-hour winds that created 15-foot- high(4.6-meter) snow drifts. Weatherly said he could only pray for hiscattle during the storm. He spent days preparing, puttingout protective bales of hay, but whiteout conditions kept him fromgoing into the pastures and checking on the animals. Weatherly andhis family lost as many as 80 cows in the storm, some of which havebeen found alive by neighbors.

The Texas Association ofDairymen reported 15,000 cows died. The Texas &Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, which tracks cattlegrazing in pastures, said as many as 8,000 perished, while theTexas Cattle Feeders Association said 4,000 died on feedlots. Thereare no firm estimates for dairy cow losses in New Mexico, thoughthe damage is serious, said Robert Hagevoort, a dairyspecialist at New Mexico State University.

New Mexico

The dairy industry was hit harder than the cattle industry inNew Mexico, said Katie Goetz, a spokeswoman at the state’sDepartment of Agriculture. Cows there are among the most efficientin the nation, largely due to the state’s normally arid andtemperate weather, said Beverly Idsinga, executive director atthe Dairy Producers of New Mexico. Output is likely to decline aseven surviving animals will produce less because of stress causedby the storm.

Dairy cows in the region are housed outdoors, and in the stormthey instinctively huddled together in corners of their corrals,where the snow piled over them and froze them to death, Hagevoortat New Mexico State University said. Calves are housed in5-foot-tall calf bungalows and also were buried, but they werefound alive as the hutches acted like igloos, keeping the animalswarm and calm inside.

Some producers in Texas were able to get out to open lots andbreak up the clusters of cattle, but conditions were too dangerousand deadly in other areas, said Ellen Jordan, a professor at TexasA&M University.

Cheese output

Much of the milk produced in the region affected by the storm isused to produce cheese. Despite the death of so many cattle, theU.S. dairy market is still weighed down by large inventories andbooming Midwest production. Losses at Texas and New Mexico dairiesmay bolster a price recovery in the long term, said Eric Meyer,president of HighGround Dairy in Chicago.

“When we see the turnaround, it could occur quicker because wewon’t have the cows in the pipeline to fill that need or demand,”Meyer said in a telephone interview.

Farms are already picking back up. In Texas, dairy operationsaffected by Goliath are 80% to 95% of pre-storm production levels,said Texas A&M’s Jordan.

Alan Anderson, the owner of Anderson Dairy Inc. in Portales, NewMexico, lost 82 of his 1,450 dairy cows. Some of his survivinganimals could still die from frostbite and related complications,he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Anderson, who’s beenin the area for about 30 years. Neighbors and friends have sincehelped the dairy farmer shovel out hutches, break ice- ridden pathsand drag out dead cows. Anderson is trying to move forward.

“You get up,” he said. “What you do is just forge on ahead.”

You’re invited to join us on Facebook!

Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.