The key to LIP is to document and report all losses including normal death losses and those losses attributed to a qualifying event (i.e. extreme weather). Calving records are usually sufficient as long as they are complete (dates and description of animal(s), in particular). Best advice is to check with the FSA office and make sure what they are recording in their calving records is good enough.
Animals that die up to 30 days after the qualifying weather event due to the event itself can count as an eligible death loss for LIP payment. What you describe below of calves dying two weeks after the extreme cold event when they have been treating them since then should fall into that category. They need to document what they have told you about what happened in their records.
The importance of documenting all of their death losses throughout the year can’t be overstressed. Once you have a qualifying event, any animal losses attributed to that event that exceed the normal annual mortality rate (5% for calves) may be eligible for payment with proper documentation. All of the “normal” death losses during the year that are not attributed to the qualifying event are important to document because they push more animals that did die due to the qualifying event into the exceeding 5% category and eligible for payment.
With the looming storm in mind, it is possible to have more than one qualifying event in a calendar year. As a matter of fact, you can have many of them of different types. It’s actually more common than you might think with winter storms out west and also losses due to predators. It’s up to the county FSA committee to decide on what makes a qualifying event under the guidelines. You just need to pay attention, document and report and request payment (you can do that more than once, too).
For example, suppose a producer had 260 pregnant cows to calve out this year. Preg check records in the fall together with January 1 inventory records verify it. Say they lost 5 calves during calving before the March weather event, then they lost 17 calves during the March weather event and they lost two more this week like your producer below. That’s 24 calves lost. Since normal death loss is 260 x 5% = 13 calves, they could file everything with FSA on a CCC-852 form and request payment for 11 head at this point. Say, they lose 10 more head between now and when they sell them in the fall. Four of those die in another qualifying event. That bumps the total losses to 34 calves with 23 having died due to a qualify event. If they file and document everything properly they could then be eligible for payment on 21 head. Since they have already been paid for 11 head, they would file again for payment and get paid for another 10 head.
Note, if the producer had not documented all of the normal death loss (5 during calving + 6 post calving = 11 total), they would have only been paid for 10 head instead of the 21 head they ended up getting paid for due to the eligible events (storms). All told, they got paid for 21 out of the 23 head they lost in the storms. The other two got counted toward their normal death loss along with the 11 normal deaths they documented.
I hope this helps. We just need to make sure producers know this is not simply a matter of filling out paperwork to get paid for what they lost during a storm or weather event. Many who only do that will be greatly disappointed with the check they receive, if any. Without good documentation, they could be leaving more money on the table than they are depositing in their bank accounts.
--Jay Parsons
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/vrpk