Cold weather kills 60,000 cattle in Vietnam

[Coast]

HANOI - Updated: 2008-02-18

An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern region, which started on January 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle, mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday.

By February 17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai and 5,571 in Bac Can province, Pioneer newspaper quoted Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, as saying.

The cold weather also killed 104 hectares out of 260,000 hectares of the Winter-Spring crop in the Northern region, mainly in Thanh Hoa province, Nghe An province and Hai Phong city.

The Vietnamese government has agreed in principle with the ministry's proposal on providing local farmers with a total financial assistance of nearly 149 billion Vietnamese dong (9.3 million US dollars), Vietnam Agriculture newspaper reported.

By February 17, the ongoing spell has lasted for 35 days, breaking the 31-day record in 1989, Youth newspaper quoted Bui Minh Tang, director of the National Center for Hydrometeorology Forecast, as saying.

During the spell, forecast to end in the next few days, the temperature has sometimes decreased to below 10 Celsius degrees in many northern localities. And temperature of minus two degrees Celsius has been recorded in some areas in the two border provinces of Lao Cai and Lang Son.

Source: www.chinadaily.com

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thats a lot of cattle

[Coast]

BangkokPost.com

Ice and snow cover the Hoang Lien Son Mountain and even Sa Pa town in northern Lao Cai province of Vietnam, with outdoor temperatures around 3 degrees below zero (Celsius), local media reported. News agencies said it was the most severe frost on Hoang Lien Son Mountain in at least 40 years - and the longest cold snap ever recorded in Vietnam.

The reports are complete with photos of snow-covered trees and brush in the northern province. The severe and chilling cold spell has killed nearly 1,000 cows and buffalo in the province, reports said. The record month-long cold has killed several thousand cattle across the northern provinces near southern China, particularly in highland areas, with 2,000 animals frozen in Ha Giang, nearly 1,500 in Son La and 1,000 in Lang Son, said Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat.

The ministry’s cultivaion department director Nguyen Tri Ngoc reported that the cold had devastated more than 53,000 ha of rice and 5,000 ha of grain in 16 provinces, including Hai Duong, Thai Binh, Phu Tho, Hung Yen, Ha Nam and Haiphong City.

Mr Ngoc attributed much of the heavy losses to farmers’ negligence of the cold and the ministry’s warnings. The record 30-day cold spell started on January 14. The previous longest cold spells lasted for 26 days in 1968 and 28 days in 1989.

[Rustynailer]

It is surprising (considering that these cold spells are not that rare an occurrence) that so many cattle died, the lowest temperature was only -2, surely their DNA or ancestry takes this into account. I can understand the rice failing however and the same can be said for any other non-hardy crops.

Russ

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was it defiantly the cold or could it have been as disease as well?