DENVER — Colorado launched a haylift yesterday to try to save thousands of cattle stranded by 10-foot-high snowdrifts left after back-to-back blizzards paralysed life on the Plains.Across four state, from the Rockies to the Oklahoma Panhandle and Nebraska, utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes. Grocery store shelves went bare, and airplane crews searched highways and fields for stranded travellers, in some places using heat-sensing equipment to locate cattle.

Colorado National Guard troops and state workers planned to take groceries into snowbound areas with Humvees and drop hay bales into pastures.

The livestock situation was grave in Colorado as the state competed with Kansas to find enough helicopters capable of hauling hay bales that weigh up to 1,300 pounds, said Department of Agriculture Executive Director Don Ament said. He said many of the state’s cargo helicopters are in the Middle East.

Ament said an aerial survey on New Year’s Day turned up 100 sites where cattle had gathered.

“These cattle have already gone a number of days without food and water. They’re just going to lay over dead if we don’t do something soon,” Ament said.

A first flight of two small Huey helicopters took off yesterday morning. Pilots headed for herds mapped the previous day by spotter planes, said Capt. Robert Bell, a Guard spokesman. They had to deal with snow whipped up by their rotors, and searched for level, hard-packed spots to set down, but were more likely to be forced to simply drop the feed, he said.