The upcoming flood has a lot of people in Vicksburg and Warren County pondering their uncertain future as the river forecast creeps higher and higher, but for one family, if the forecast inches any higher, it will mean the demise of a 15-year legacy.

Sherwood Lyons and his wife Melissa keep 250 head of commercial beef cattle out on the levee between U.S. 61 North and Eagle Lake Road, and with a rising river, they may be forced to sell out their herd.

“If we do have to move them, it’ll put us out of business,” he said. “We’ll have to sell out because we don’t have anywhere to put them.”

Lyons said this time of year is a particularly bad time for a flood to be coming because there’s really nowhere else he can move his cows.

“It’s a terrible hardship for us if we do have to move them and sell them,” he said. “We’ve been building our herd up for 15 years, and it’s really depressing to think about it, but we don’t have any control over it.”

The past few days have been a roller coaster for the Lyons, as they’ve been left to wonder what will become of their herd.

“We were told two days ago that we had to get all of our cattle off the levee,” he said Wednesday. “They reconsidered on that, and they’re going to let me leave them there unless the forecast changes. I don’t have to move them immediately.”

For now, Lyons said everything depends on the forecast.

“I just found that out yesterday about dinner time,” he said. “We were getting prepared to move them out, because we did have to move them out in 2011. We’re hoping and crossing our fingers we won’t have to move them this time.”

A lot of that depends on the rain on the landside of the levee in the delta, Lyons said. Too much water means there just won’t be enough space for the cattle.

“It’s a nightmare to be honest,” he said. “Those cattle get real nervous when the water’s coming up, and they’re hard to manage. They’re hard to get them in the pen because they’re so nervous about the water.”

Lyons said he’ll probably have to get people to come in on penning horses with dogs to help trap the cattle if he has to evacuate the herd.

“The bad thing about it is there hasn’t even been a sale barn open in the last two weeks,” he said. “They’re having sales starting next week. That was a real problem as far as moving them, because we haven’t had anywhere to go with them.”

At this point, Lyons said he and his wife are preparing for the worst.

“We are making preparations — just in case the forecast changes and it gets worse — to get them out of there,” he said. “Even if we have to herd them out with horses, they’ll have to go.”

For now, Lyons said he’s just hoping, waiting and praying.

“I worked so hard to build my herd up, I don’t want to lose them all,” he said. “I’ve raised these things and kept them and selected the ones I’ve kept for years. It’s tough to think about parting with them.”

Lyons said his cattle are now in their second and third generation, but his family’s history with cattle is also generations deep.

“My wife’s father owned a sale barn, and they’ve been in business for a long time,” he said. “It’s in our blood. We hate this, but we don’t have any control over it, only God does.”