High Water Cattle Rescue

About 15 head of cattle made it out of a sticky situation on the Colorado River Sunday morning. 

The incident happened on property near the boat ramp in La Grange where Clinton Lueders Jr. keeps a small herd of cattle. Lueders had loaded his herd onto a gooseneck cattle trailer earlier that morning to save them from the rising river. That was about the time rain started pouring at a rate of nearly one inch an hour. 

When Lueders attempted to pull the trailer away from the pens, his one-ton 4x4 Dodge pickup sank into the mud. 

Lueders left in another vehicle to get his tractor – all the way in Mullins Prairie. The river was rising fast. Desperate, Lueders called La Grange Volunteer Fire Department for help, who put him in touch with a bulldozer operator. Lueders made it back to the property in his tractor, but even it wasn’t enough to pull the truck and trailer loaded with nine cows and six heavy calves.

Before the bulldozer got to the property, though, a good samaritan with a jacked-up Ford came to the rescue.

Mike Chilek of La Grange heard about the cattle and showed up in his well-lifted Ford 4x4. Chilek hooked to the front of the tractor. The two in tandem were able to pull the truck and trailer away from the pens and out of the pasture.

“I offered him some money but he wouldn’t take it,” Lueders said after the ordeal.

By Monday morning, that pasture was covered in several feet of water.