Recent earthquakes cause premature cattle births at local ranch

WONOWON, B.C. — A family-owned cattle ranch located north of Fort St. John says the recent earthquakes caused premature calving births and impactful damages to the property. 

Robert “Bo” Hedges, who helps run the ranch along with his parents and brother, spoke to Energeticcity.ca about the earthquake that occurred in the late hours of Tuesday, February 11th.

The Dead Horse Creek Cattle Company LTD. ranch is located south of Wonowon, nine kilometres off the Alaska Highway on the Upper Halfway 117 Road.

According to Hedges, the ranch is more than halfway through calving season, and the event caused distress for some of the animals.

‘Calving’ is a controlled period when calves are born within a small and predicted time frame to keep ranch operations more organized. 

After the earthquakes, 40 calves were born within 55 hours, including two premature births that were not due for a few weeks.

Hedges says the newborns are safe and in good health. 

“They seem to be doing all right, they probably should have been in for maybe another week, maybe two weeks, but they have full hair,” said Hedges. 

Hedges says the quakes have also caused damage to the ranch’s water sources that may have long-term consequences. 

He explains that the ranch has a water spring located behind it as a consistent water source. However, the water flow has been significantly reduced since the quake.

“It’s run at a very consistent flow rate for basically the almost 50 years that we’ve been here and it has basically slowed to a trickle,” Hedges explained.

“I don’t know whether that would count in their structural damage, but in terms of our ranch and its functionality, that’s a huge structural blow.”

Hedges says he was displeased to hear that there was no reported damage by the Government of Canada regarding the earthquakes. 

“When it says that there’s no damage, there is damage out there, and it is impacting people in our region’s lively lifestyles and livelihoods.” 

Taimi Mulder, an earthquake seismologist with Natural Resources Canada, explained that the Government of Canada website only reports damage done to buildings. 

“We still would not consider this damage because we are talking about structural damage,” said Mulder.

Hedges also says lasting financial damage may have been caused to the ranch and its operations. 

This is not the first time the ranch has had problems with earthquakes. Hedges says they had a similar quake in April 2024 that seriously scared the animals. 

“It spooked our heifers and they went through a fence and ran up and down the valley for a couple of days, so they got pretty spooked at that point in time as well from the vibrations of some of those shakes at that point.”

Hedges hopes to see more regulation and enforcement be put on the BC Energy Regulator (BCER).

“We feel that the government isn’t regulating this enough. We understand that companies [have] to do their business and they’re out there to pull the gas out, but when it starts to impact us directly and severely, that’s when we take some issue with it and think that the government is allowing too much to happen here,” Hedges says. 

Mulder encourages residents to report any and all damages to the ‘did you feel it’ questionnaire on the government’s website.