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Once his cattle move up to higher elevations, Tim Ritschard will only see them once a week. There will be concerns about what he will find.
KREMMLING, Colo. — Wolves, so far this year, have killed 10 cattle in Colorado. With concerns about the apex predators lingering, ranchers are starting to move their cattle to public lands for the summer.
“They’ll be on public lands now until August or September,” Tim Ritschard, a Grand County rancher, told 9NEWS.
Ranchers move their cattle to free up their land to grow hay for their livestock for the winter. They often lease land, sometimes owned by the federal government, for the cattle.
Last week, Ritschard led about 500 head of cattle down a county road and eventually onto BLM land. The move took about two hours. Then, they wait until the moms find their calves.
“Since we just moved these, they get all mixed up, and so we want to make sure that they find their babies so they don’t end up all the way back at home,” he said. “Because what a cow will do is they’ll go to the last place they saw their baby. So what we try to do is send them off as pairs, so they know this is the last spot they saw them, so we don’t have a big wreck and stuff going back and forth.”
9NEWS met Ritschard two days after the state confirmed the latest cow killed by a wolf. Most of the cattle killed this year have been in Grand County. When that happens, Ritschard puts his other hat on, leading the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association.
The organization has made multiple requests to have wolves that have repeatedly killed livestock euthanized. The state keeps saying no, but Ritschard keeps asking anyway.
“We’re just keeping the pressure on,” he said. “We’re not going away and they’re not going away. So we’ll figure it out somewhere in between, but I think ultimately if we get rid of these two wolves and maybe even whatever’s going on in Walden, then we don’t have an issue.”
Once cattle move up to higher elevations, Ritschard will only see his livestock once a week. There will be concerns about what he will find.
“It’s kind of eerie not knowing what’s out there,” he said.
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