Goliath: Claimed 10 percent of the dairy cow herd at Nature's Way

PORTALES — When Nature's Way Dairy northeast of Portales lost 10 percent of its herd last December, it took six months to rebuild the numbers, said General Manager Jamie Kulesa.

Kulesa said his dairy lost more than 300 cows, with 88 dying in the storm and 232 having to be sold to be butchered, because their teets had frozen, which was the case with many of the cows lost locally, according to Kulesa.

"I think initially I was dealing with the logistics of getting back to normal. It was mainly taking care of cows and people. Energy was spent just doing that. That was a time consuming, painful thing to go through," Kulesa said. "Then you go, 'OK, now what?' The next thing was trying to purchase cows and get them built back up."

Kulesa said one of the toughest parts was dealing with insurance paperwork after his losses.

"There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through to file your paperwork. There's a lot of red tape that has to be gone through," he said. "Being organic, it takes a little longer to find cows, because you have to find (certified) organic, so you have a much more limited supply."

But, Kulesa said, he fared better than many.

"From the cows that died, we were much more fortunate comparatively speaking," he said.

Kulesa said the important thing is that most local dairy owners seem to have gotten back on track for the most part.

"It just proves how resilient the dairy industry is. Everybody just said, 'Hey, we've got work to do.' The cows had to be milked the next day, so not a lot changed," he said. "I think that's maybe one of the things that made it easier is you had to just keep going. You didn't have time to sit back and reflect. There wasn't a whole lot of time to process. It's kind of business as usual."

But through it all, the support of the community shined through, Kulesa said.

"If anything good comes from something like that, that's one thing someone can take, is there were a lot of people there to help and support," he said. "Everybody really helped each other out, and there were a lot of offers of help from people. I think it showed the best in people as these things do."