Big storms challenge livestock farmers

Some P.E.I. livestock owners haven't had an easy go of it during — and following — the recent storms.

"Worst week of my life, says Ranald MacFarlane, a farmer from Fernwood who has free-range pigs and a dairy operation.

Last Monday night, MacFarlane was in Ottawa for meetings when the big storm hit the Island.

It knocked out the power on his farm and the electric fencing.

With the fencing buried in snow, his pigs easily escaped.

"We had pigs everywhere. I couldn't contain any of them," said Claude Marcotte, MacFarlane's farmhand.

'Everything frozen'

Marcotte tried to keep the errant pigs out of the dairy barn, which had its own problems.

"The barn, everything in there was frozen because there was no power. The hot water was frozen, the cold water was frozen, so we couldn't milk the cows. And the milking crew couldn't get in," said Marcotte.

MacFarlane says cows "don't do well" when they aren't milked.

"I'm sure they were quite relieved by the time they got milked," he said.

MacFarlane is grateful he lives in the country.

"Probably just as well I don't live on Route 2. They'll not get hit by the car because nobody comes out here in the winter time anyway," said MacFarlane.

Shovelling snow and poop

Meanwhile, horses at the Hughes-Jones Centre for People and Animals in Cornwall were trapped in the barn by a nearly two-metre snowdrift for 24 hours until the owners were able to shovel them out.

"As long as they have food, they're quite happy, so they were quite excited to get down to where we normally feed them and stretch their legs after being cooped up for sure," said owner Ellen Jones.

"It's like cabin fever."

And the shovelling continued, both to clear snow and the piles of manure inside the barn where the horses spent much of last week.

"Each horse poops about 50 pounds a day. And when they're inside, we have 18 horses, you can do the math that way. They were in for about three days in through the last bout of winter," said Jones.