CHIMACUM — Even though a state investigation into tainted hay that killed 14 cows at a Beaver Valley dairy established it wasn’t the farmer’s fault, Gerald Bishop is still pleading with his insurance company to help cover his losses.
“They said I bought low-quality hay so they won’t pay me,” Bishop said.
The veteran rancher says he did nothing different than he’s done for a half-century on his Egg & I Road farm.
He bought the feeder hay for 28 bred heifers, young dairy cows pregnant for the first time, from a supplier he had done business with before.
That was last year. He fed the cows the hay for two months before he noticed something was wrong in early January.
By February, his cows were dying.
The hay was contaminated with common groundsel — a noxious weed that is toxic to many forms of livestock.
Bishop estimates his loss in the thousands of dollars.
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