(Photo: courtesy of Melissa Rommens)
The morning after New Brunswick ‘s most recent snowstorm on February 5, was a traumatic one for a dairy farmer in Melrose.
Con Rommens owns Roga Farm Limited near Port Elgin. They specialize in purebred Holstein and Jersey cattle.
He woke up Saturday morning at around 4:30 to find the roof of one of his barns had collapsed under the weight of the snow, “My chin dropped to the ground and tears came to my eyes.”
His fear was for the 12 cows trapped inside.
“I was worried, wondering if any of the animals were dead. We had live wires laying everywhere, so we had to call the electrician first so he could shut the power off and check all of the lines. I got a flashlight and went all the way around to see if I could see them. We looked all around and it appeared they were all moving. Then we still had to wait a little longer to clean the roof off and try to get the trapped cattle out,” Rommens says.
Rommens says luckily, all of the cows survived, “We got them all hauled to a barn around 50 minutes away to an empty dairy barn. It was all my young cattle we had to send, about 90 head.”
The barn will have to be rebuilt, at a cost of around $300, 000.
He says insurance doesn’t cover a loss like that.
Rommens says around 60 to 70 dairy cows remain on the farm currently, but milk production is down since the collapse, “All of the milk cows, are spooked from the collapse, and are not up to par with milking. We’re starting to clean up, and they’re hearing all of the noise, so it’ll probably be three or four months before they get back to normal.”
Rommens has been a farmer all his life. He says he and his wife Rose were starting to look at retirement, but they’re staying positive, “We had plans to start to retire but now, we’ll keep going for a little while now. At least it wasn’t the house, I was pretty lucky because I up early, at around 4:30, but it happened before that, so I wasn’t in the barn. We have to rebuild, life goes on. Life goes on.”
A fundraiser has been set up by Melissa Rommens, in the hopes of helping the Roga Farm. So far, over $40, 000 has been raised.
Full of emotion, Rommens says he is grateful for all of the support they’ve received, ” Thank you to everyone for all of the donations.”
Roga Farm Ltd. is a modern Canadian Dairy Farm located in Melrose, New Brunswick. We are specialized in purebred Holstein and Jersey cattle.
(Photo: courtesy of Melissa Rommens)
