Fort Collins company helps DOW feed starving deer

BY REBECCA BOYLE

rboyle@fortcollinsnow.com

FORT COLLINS -- Everyone wants a little more food when it's cold, Bonnie Szidon explains. An extra snack provides comfort on a snowy day.

Furry and feathered creatures especially need extra sustenance in winter, and Szidon is an expert at providing it.

Her company, Ranch-Way Feeds, has made crunchy, sweet-smelling winter food for horses, cattle, deer and other domesticated animals for years. When the Colorado Division of Wildlife came calling this month, she was ready to help.

The Ranch-Way mill, situated along the Poudre River near Old Town, is busy churning out about 500 tons of specially formulated food for thousands of starving deer in the Gunnison Valley.

Szidon has been following their story closely.

Workers buzz around her, driving forklifts and milling around the pallets. She greets them all by name.

"You're hitting us at our busiest, busiest time," she said of the bustling warehouse. "We always know we're going to be busy in the winter."

The DOW's order is keeping them even busier.

Ranch-Way has been tapped before to help when heavy snowfall prevents deer and other wildlife from reaching their winter food supply. Sales Manager Bill Conrad said the last big order came during the 1997 blizzards that blanketed the state.

The DOW ordered about 500 tons so far, equivalent to about 20 semitrailers full of food. As of this week, the feeding operation was to last about 60 days, and ideally, each deer would eat about three pounds per day.

Wildlife biologists formulated the food, which is high in minerals and tasty ingredients a deer would never find naturally this time of year, such as corn, barley and cottonseed. The pellets smell slightly sweet, thanks to the molasses they contain, and are about the width of a cigar and the length of a battery. The cylinder-shaped pellets are slightly flattened so they sit better on snow without sinking. They seem hard as rocks, but Bonnie Szidon pointed out that they're better than a deer's normal meal this time of year, which consists largely of twigs and other harsh forage.

About 250 volunteers and 30 wildlife officials have been distributing the food using Sno Cats, spreading out the food over several hundred square miles. Roughly 8,000 of the 21,000-head Gunnison Valley mule deer herd will be fed.