The U.S. Drought Monitor map released for the week of Thursday, September 13, 2018. My region of Western Arizona has a D3 Extreme drought designation.

I have debated whether to post anything about this for an entire week, but have decided to do it with a specific caution for those who may be sensitive to animal suffering. The current 2017-2018 drought in my area is extremely severe after more than a year with less than 50% of normal rainfall, which of course is already low since this is a desert region. The U.S. Drought Monitor has rated almost all of Arizona as being in at least a Level D2 severe drought situation, and my region is classed as being in Level D3 extreme drought. The Four Corners sector is rated as Level D4 exceptional drought, the worst designation of all. This means that there is very little for animals to eat, including for the cattle of the local rancher. One tragic result of this is that the cows are starving to death.

Turkey vultures (Cathartes aurea) gather atop Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) near the site of a dead cow in a nearby wash channel. I observed about 20 to 25 of them in one area on my drive home last week (Friday Sept 7, 2018) and decided to look into what they were attracted to.

I was driving home from town late last week when I noticed a large number of turkey vultures sitting in the Joshua trees, indicating that something had died. I decided to investigate and came across two thin young calves standing weakly near a watering tank, seriously underweight and with ribs, shoulder blades, and hip bones showing. They were alone, no adults in sight, not much more than two or three months old, and weighing no more than maybe 65 or 70 lbs when they should be closer to 125 lbs by now.

I parked and got out of my car and walked quietly over to the two calves, encouraging them to come to me and maybe let me pet them. I felt compelled to offer some sort of comfort and affection in the absence of my ability to offer actual food. They didn’t want much to do with me however, and moved off into the desert scrub. Letting them go, I decided instead to grab my camera and head off towards the groups of vultures occupying the Joshua trees to see what they were congregated around. I suspected I knew the answer already but it never hurts to check and be sure. I noticed some linear drag marks and tire tracks and figured that that would be the logical first place to start, especially since the vultures were all off that direction.

These tracks lead out from underneath a mesquite tree where a cow had died to a nearby dry wash channel. The rancher must have hooked the deceased cow up to the hitch of the vehicle and dragged it away from the water trough, not visible here but located about 100 feet away, behind the tree. Presumably they would rather not have the rotting carcass be too close to the water tank and corral.

The cow’s final resting place.

I don’t think that the cow had been dead for very long, perhaps less than 12 hours. The vultures hadn’t really started picking it apart yet, there was still very little odor, and there wasn’t much evidence of decay. In late summer heat all of those things would have rapidly progressed within 2 to 3 days, so this wasn’t very far along at the time I came across the scene.

A turkey vulture awaits its meal. While these vultures are fairly large and strong as far as birds go, for them to penetrate the thick hide of a cow in order to start feeding upon the viscera is pretty difficult for them. They may actually need to wait for a larger animal such as a coyote or even a mountain lion to tear into the carcass first, and then they can more easily feed. Either that, or they will need to wait for the cow to decay enough so that they can get started that way. Vultures are patient.

Knowing that the dead cow was now at peace, I decided to return my attention to the calves. I had not taken any photos of them earlier and wanted to at least document them in case I decided to make a blog post about them. I was feeling a bit maudlin about their distressing plight, and when I am upset my usual reaction is to want to look closer at it so that I can better understand it, even if it bothers me more. I’m not really one to turn away from disturbing content, because I’d rather know what’s happening than not, at least in most cases. Including this one.

Here I am catching back up with the two calves, who had managed to find an adult cow some distance away from the water tanks where I’d first seen them. It took a bit of looking, but eventually I found them.

At any rate, I wasn’t sure at the time of how much I wanted to blog about this or post it on Facebook, but I believed that this was a potentially educational story despite the sorry subject matter. And if you want to do something useful with a sad scenario, you have to have material to work with. Therefore it became important to me to get the photos, even if I would decide to not utilize them in the end. Well of course, here we are….

These two cows are seriously underweight, with bones protruding and hollow abdominal cavities from a lack of nutritious food. The calf, which was a female, was bumping her head against her mother’s udder, trying to get it to yield milk. Given the gaunt state of her mother, I doubt that her efforts were a great success.

Even sadder was the presumably orphaned male calf. This heartbreaking little guy was very weak and even more malnourished than the female nursing at her mother. His tongue kept lolling out, leading me to wonder whether he was dying of thirst, but there was accessible water in the cattle trough. Just no food.

The orphan male calf’s tongue wasn’t always hanging out like this, but I saw it a half dozen times in the 30 minutes I spent with him. I didn’t see the female calf who had her mother do this.

Without knowing what is happening with the rancher economically, I assume that they are unable to afford feeding their cattle with supplemental hay or grain, and that this is why they are starving. Ranching is a tough business to make a living in and even good years are precarious while bad ones can be devastating and expensive. I doubt that the calves I saw will be able to survive much longer, as there isn’t enough food available for them to maintain their frail body weights, much less actually grow bigger like they are supposed to.

This was the scene. Not much of what is visible is actually edible to the cattle.

Although the Joshua tree woodland surrounding me is fairly biologically diverse for a desert environment, much of that diversity is hidden in dry years when plants are leafless, dormant, or hidden beneath the soil as seeds, bulbs, rootstocks, or crowns. Water will bring the desert to life, but in the midst of a severe drought the browsing options are very limited. After over 150 years of grazing pressure, almost all of the truly palatable plant species that might otherwise also exist in this ecosystem have been browsed out of existence, leaving mainly tough, fibrous, spiny, or chemically well-defended species.

Tragically thin. I’d estimate that the little male calf’s weight was not much more than that of a typically-sized Labrador retriever dog, 65 to 70 pounds (30-33 kilos) at most. He feebly nibbled at the dry vegetation, which couldn’t possibly contain much sustenance.

Malnutrition is difficult enough for adult animals (including humans experiencing famine) to survive, but it’s even more damaging to juveniles, babies, and children since their bodies need more nutrition in order to develop properly. If young animals and human children don’t get enough to eat, their brains and bodies can be permanently stunted and severely damaged in ways that are less challenging for adults to survive. Adults are in more of a maintenance mode once they are full-sized, and their nutritional demands are less critical and more flexible than those of growing young bodies.

Obviously adults can starve to death too, but if food should become available once again then even a severely malnourished adult is more likely to recover fully. This little calf is so thin that even if he were to be fed, whether he could ever grow normally again is very questionable. As a presumed orphan, his future looks bleak and his time remaining on earth limited. There is no one to help him anymore. His mother is gone, the rancher isn’t feeding anyone, and he’s too weak to wander farther away in search of better forage.

The desert immediately adjacent to the water tank and corral is impoverished in terms of edible plant materials, since the cattle hang out there so much that everything palatable has been gone for decades. Most of the shrubbery within a mile or two of the water tank and corral is thoroughly inedible due to decades of grazing pressure thanks to the proximity of the watering station, which draws cattle daily to drink (and eat along the way.) There might well be more nutritious food several miles away, but the starving calf is now too frail to travel there anymore. My guess is that he’ll simply starve to death within a few hundred yards of the water tank. Since I am writing this post a week after I saw his plight, I suspect that he may already be dead.

The female calf who still has her mother is not quite as underweight as the orphaned male calf, but without supplemental feeding or immediate rainfall her future looks dark as well.

I was truly saddened by seeing this situation. While I don’t want cattle on my property eating my garden and nursery plants (a thing that has happened to me and infuriated me in the past, not to mention costing me a couple thousand dollars) and I had to build a fence to exclude them, I also don’t enjoy seeing them suffering like this. But the truth of the matter is that cattle raised for beef production like these are destined for short, difficult lives wandering in a highly marginal desert environment in an endless quest for food and water. Even in good periods these cattle will probably not live more than 2 to 3 years before being shipped off to their fate. But seeing the misery of such innocent young calves was rather heartbreaking.