The wolf is at the door

TAYLOR, Wis. — The morning after the final fireworks went off for the Fourth of July, Nathan Kling set out to the barn to check on a cow that had fallen the previous day. When he walked around the side of the barn, what he saw looked more like a crime scene than a peaceful recovery area.

“The wolves had gotten her,” Kling said. “She was dead. We had the vet out to confirm that it wasn’t natural. The (department of natural resources) and wildlife services came out and confirmed it was a wolf.”

Wolf tracks dotted the sand that was serving as the cow’s recovery area. Teeth and bite marks were evidence of the cause of the cow’s untimely death. The sand pile sits within 20 feet of the rear entrance of the farm’s freestall barn. The area is well lit, with an outdoor light above the entrance of the barn.

Kling owns two dairy farms within a mile of each other. One is an organic dairy farm milking 300 cows in a double-12 parallel parlor. The conventional dairy milks 270 cows with four robotic milking units. At each farm, the milking herd is housed in freestall barns equipped with waterbeds and top dressed with sand. The organic dairy has access to pasture as weather allows.

Kling bought the organic farm in 1999 from his grandparents, who had farmed conventionally, and transitioned it to organic in 2016. In 2018, the neighboring farm was up for sale. Kling purchased that farm and the land that joins his original farm. He now farms 2,000 acres organically, with 230 acres used for corn silage on the conventional dairy.

Wolves are native to Wisconsin and have been considered an endangered species since 2022. Over the last eight years, Kling has seen wolves around the conventional farm, specifically near his feed storage area, but never has one gotten close to the farm’s buildings or its animals.

“Normally we don’t have cattle outside at the conventional dairy, but given the situation this cow was in, we thought she’d be better suited to lie on the sand,” Kling said. “It’s never been a concern. We have cows outside on pasture on the organic dairy and have never had an issue.”

To recoup his loss on the cow that was killed, Kling must wait until the end of the fiscal year for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It started just five days before the incident.

“We won’t be compensated for the loss until next July,” Kling said. “There are some budgetary issues they have to work through and they don’t know the number they’ll have to work with until next year.”

The incident raises new concerns for the Wisconsin farm that has coexisted with the gray wolf population. When the number of wolves started to increase, Kling hoped a symbiotic relationship could form between the predators and the farm.

“Up until this point, I thought there would be a benefit to having them around,” Kling said. “They could help us fight deer damage to crops. We thought they would help us eliminate that. It’s been a working scenario, but when they start working on damaging and killing livestock, that’s when it’s become an issue.”

In rural Jackson County, Kling faces issues with damage to his crops from a high deer population that was thought to be limited with natural predators becoming more populous in the area.

“The deer population seems unchanged,” Kling said. “We still get ag tags, and it’s nothing for us to have between 30 and 40 deer in each farm feed pad every night during the winter.”

As Kling moves past the incident, he plans to take what he has learned to continue to protect his herds.

“It’ll be on the back of my mind when I put the organic herd out to pasture,” Kling said. “Our biggest concern is with the youngstock.”

The freshening pens of the Kling farms are located near buildings, giving Kling and his employees the chance to observe any potential issues with the calving process. After weaning youngstock from the bottle, the calves are placed in pens with access to a pasture.

One of Kling’s neighbors faced a similar issue just four days before the incident at Kling’s farm, as a beef calf was killed in a wolf attack.

“We put a lot of effort into raising these animals,” Kling said. “These animals are our livelihood, and then to have something come in and kill them off, it’s disheartening. We don’t have any way of controlling it.”