Cutting to the Chase - "Be Right, Then Stand up for What is Right"

A great site for beef producers to keep an eye on for issues that impact the beef industry is MeatingPlace.com. Membership is free, and you'll have access to blogs such as the one below that caught my attention this morning. Click the title link for the source page. Over the past several months more and more folks are finding their voice in regard to what many now feel is a real issue impacting all aspects of the beef industry - methane gas from cattle and Global Warming.

In industry blogs and in blog commentary there is to be found much debate and opinion about the impact to the future if in fact Cows are ultimately found to be a 'non-essential' food and destroyer of the Ozone.

Cutting to the Chase - Happy New Year: get ready for a fight
By: Raoul Baxter

January 07, 2010

(The views and opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the author.)

"I think 2010 is going to be a very tough year for agriculture of all types, primarily because we have a panel of government appointees who have a much different agenda than the state of agriculture.

During 2010 we as agricultural professionals have to learn to listen to conflicting if not adversarial views. We get nothing out of talking to each other to reaffirm what we already believe. If you want to remain ignorant about anything just talk to or read things written by people who agree with you. You have to understand where adversaries are coming from, if nothing else to understand where they're coming up with what they think is true. We can agree to disagree, and we may actually agree on some things. Loose-cannon fanatics are just going to be part of the landscape.

We must push relentlessly for facts, common sense and truth. Also, provide people with proper perspective. There aren't many people who take personal tours of the agriculture Twilight Zone. We must be aggressive and nonstop in dealing with truth and facts. Don't allow people to lie, fabricate or fictionalize facts about agriculture. The time to be passive is over. These people are trying to destroy us, so why should we just sit and watch them distort everything? But we must be honest and open. It's not so hard to say, "It was a mistake," if that happens.

In 2006, the United Nations, famous for its self-interest and usually incorrect information, did a "study" on how much methane cows give off. They said it was 16 percent, and then every pseudo expert began to run with it for three years. Then the EPA, U. of California at Davis and U. of California independently found this number was actually 2.8 percent. So the UN was 150 percent wrong.

This is the kind of challenge we face. Be right and then stand up for what is right."

Hey Baby! It's Cold Out There!

What a day!  Iced over water troughs, frozen water hoses, frozen water lines and a frozen nose to boot!  I would include a photo with this blog, but I don't want the camera to freeze.  Can camera's freeze?  Everything else seems to be quite capable.  Including the pump on the tank sprayer.  Not sure about that though, would have to go back out into the cold and inquire just how that very major problem has been resolved, if it's been resolved.

The entire day has been focused on busting an inch plus deep layer of ice on all of the water troughs every few hours, and figuring how to get the tanks refilled.  It was apparent the water lines were quite comfortably frozen and the sun wasn't going to show up and give us a thaw.  Two of the water troughs are close enough that we can string together water hose and refill them.  But, it seems we didn't leave them in the old trailer with the heat running quite long enough to clear them completely, so it's a slow fill of those tanks right now. 

The biggest probems was the BIG herd, as I call them.  My bright idea was to fill the tank sprayer with water and haul it to them.  Sounds plausible.  We've used it to haul water for lots of other things, and that antique tank sprayer has always been reliable.  But not today!  Not so far!  The last word on that, before I hustled into the house to tend the fire (I like that job), was an old-fashioned syphoning of the water from the tank sprayer to the trough.  Hopefully, if that is the last resort, it works.  We have a spare pasture and water trough we can move the BIG herd into, but my plan was to leave that for tomorrow. 

My weatherman, Mike, says it will be even worse tomorrow, and so no guarantees the two faucets we managed to get running will give us the slightest gurgle tomorrow.  Worst case scenario, I'll pull all but one bull, open up all the gates, and let the herd meet and greet each other and go to the pond to water. Kind of an Open House at the ranch for my British White girls, let them graze the buffet in one another's pastures.

All this effort and worry about the cows and the extreme cold!  They're enjoying every minute of it!  Getting extra alfalfa rations, seeming to grow longer fluffier hair right in front of me, while my own is in a perpetual squashed down bad hair day deluxe. They look at me in my heavy insulated coveralls and strange hat pulled low, and just about shake their head in wonder and I swear think I look kind of scary.  It could be that I'm kind of walking like the little bundled up boy in A Christmas Story -- definitely not the normal human they are accustomed to.

If this is Global Warming and more is yet to come, I'll definitely start making plans for more stock ponds.  Or maybe lay in a mile long supply of water hoses and provide them with their very own heated storage area.  Of course, we could have thought to drain a few of the ones we own before this hard freeze hit.  But, hey, we aren't in Alaska for crying out loud!  Who knew they'd become so vital today -- a simple water hose, or rather, several simple water hoses, preferably thawed.

UPDATE:  Just came back in from feeding Donny, my old horse (who has a new stable coat thankfully!), and checking on the water situation.  Mike and Brian were filling the last water trough with a big blue fire hose looking thing hooked up to a generator, which was all hooked up to the tank sprayer somehow, and with major water pressure!  I was very impressed to say the least. 

On my walk back to the house I remembered a couple of things I intended to mention here.  Cow Patties.  I picked up somewhere along the years of my life that Cow Patties/Paddies? can be used as fuel for a fire.  I have never stopped and thought that through at all.  Today, it hit me.  Frozen Cow Patties, they are like bricks!  You could probably use them to clobber somebody - I know they kick across the pasture pretty well.  I've always thought, yuck, about using cow patties, actually picking them up and piling them up?  Couldn't figure it.  Now I can figure it.

Muddy Boots?  If you live in frozen country, it's not a problem!  The big plus to the past couple of days is walking on in the house with your boots on, and leaving them inside and warm and ready for the next trek to the troughs for a little ice-breaking.

From the BornAgainAmerican.Org Web Site

Received the link to this web page in an email today, I think it is so very much something we all should watch and listen to.  The message is beautiful and compelling, as are all the people. Click the embedded video below, or visit the web site by clicking on the blog title link. 

The American naturalist, Volume 21 By Essex Institute - Establishing the Presence of a 'dun black' or white Hornless/Polled breed in 9th century Ireland

Click the embedded pages provided by books.google.com for additional reading...............
"The fourth is the Maol or Moyle, the polled or hornless breed similar to the Angus of the neighboring kingdom -- called Myleen in Connaught, Mael in Munster, and Mwool in Ulster. In size they were inferior to the foregoing although larger than the Kerry, or even the old crook horned Irish, but were comparatively few in numbers. In color they were either dun black or white, but very rarely mottled. They were not bad milkers, were remarkably docile and were consequently much used for draught and ploughing.



"....The range of date of that crannoge has been fixed from AD 843 to 933.  From these localities as well as in deep cuttings made for the same purpose, and in peat bogs, etc other specimens of bovine remains have been deposited in the museum.  I have selected twenty heads of ancient oxen and arranged them in four rows each row characteristic of a peculiar race or breed viz the straight horned the curved or middle horned the short horned and the hornless or maol all of which existed in Ireland in the early period to which I have already alluded.   According to my own observations we possessed four native breeds about twenty five years ago.

 . . . .Third the Irish long horned similar to but not identical with the Lancashire or Craven. The fourth is the Maol or Moyle, the polled or hornless breed similar to the Angus of the neighboring kingdom, called Myleen in Connaugh.t Mael in Munster ,and Mwool in Ulster.   In size they were inferior to the foregoing although larger than the Kerry, or even the old crook horned Irish, but were comparatively few in numbers. In color they were either dun black or white, but very rarely mottled. They were not bad milkers, were remarkably docile and were consequently much used for draught and ploughing.

One Cowboy, A Deaf Dog, & 723 Steers Moved with No Stress...........

Check out this video! The link was included in Cattlegrower.com's newsletter today. Many of the steers in the video look like they are out of a British White bull; a very high number of them are white with black ears.

It was posted by Bob Kinford with the blurb: Taking 723 steers through the second gate of a three mile, six gate move with only one cowboy and a deaf dog with no stress. The Kinford's web site is NaturalCattleHandling.com.

A British White Bull Gets Himself in a bit of a Jam

Original Blog Posted Sunday, October 21, 2007:

This picture was Sunday a week ago today, and it was, as is often the case, a weekend just as busy as a week day. Mazarati, better known by the nickname Mo, had made his way along a puzzling course in the hay barn, until he'd reached a dead end -- much like a maze meant for humans that takes many attempts to find the right course out. Unlike a person, Mo couldn't figure out that if he just took those same steps backwards he would be able to find his way back to the beginning. It could have been a disaster, fortunately, he was not injured.

Amazingly, he was quite calm about the whole ordeal; though his new owner, Carol Diodene, would agree with me that he wasn't exactly happy -- his eyes were quite a bit rolled back as tried to look up at us. The first question a cattle rancher would be sure to be asking themself right now is how did he gain access to the hay barn. Well, that would be my fault; and, yes, I am generally a stickler about those gates always being secured even if you are quite sure you'll go right back through that gate within minutes. But, the day before I obviously failed to do just that.

Another herd bull, King Cole, was headed to his new home in the Canton area on Saturday morning, and I opened the hay barn to get a hefty handful of alfalfa droppings from the floor of the barn to use to coax him on into the pens -- and I didn't go back and close the gate, it was merely pushed together, and thus a perfect trap for an unsuspecting cow or bull with access to the corral that adjoins the hay barn. And of course Mo and the two bred heifers leaving for Ocala, Florida had access.

I can't tell you how happy I was to see Mo stroll out of that hay barn with no obvious injury from his ordeal. Two 12' high stacks of 3x4x8 alfalfa bales had to be removed to give him a way out. With all but the bottom row removed, Gentle Mo didn't lunge at the open space as I feared he might -- I could see how easy it would be for him to now try to climb over that remaining 4 foot high bale, but he didn't. Perhaps it was because Carol and I were patting him on the head and telling him to just wait a bit longer, or perhaps it's because he is a British White and his calm disposition saved his life from serious injury while trapped and during his release. 

Most amazing perhaps is that Mo didn't bolt out into the corral following his release. He merely strolled and inexplicably stopped to munch on one of the alfalfa bales that had been removed to give him passage out. Carol was great through the whole ordeal, and convinced that this was surely a sign that Mo was meant to join her farm in Ocala, and I think he was as well. He arrived safely at his new home the following day, along with a pot load of great females that Carol found at the British White and Lowline auction in Henderson that weekend.

See Carol's Southern Cross Ranch web site at this link, give her a call if you'd like to hear more about Mazarati and his calves.

Christmas - The Original 12 Days

CHRISTMAS


"The Twelve Days of The New England custom during those early years of the present century was to observe Christmas from December 25 to January 5, the twelve days being generally given up to receiving and returning family visits. Contemporary with this custom was the belief inculcated in the minds of the children that if they would visit the cow stables at midnight of Christmas eve, they would see the cattle kneel before the mangers.


". . . On the night or eve of Old Christmas, January 6th, perhaps better known as Twelfth Night, the cattle in the stable kneel down and pray. One informant positively asserted the truth of this belief, because in order to test the matter she had once gone down to the stable on this night, and sure enough she found the cows kneeling on the ground and making just the masterest moanin'."


A poem of the twelve days shows the gift for the first day of Christmas to be a parrot on a juniper tree, instead of a partridge on a pear tree. The verse for the twelfth day which embodied the entire list of days and gifts was as follows. The twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me twelve guns shooting, eleven bears chasing, ten men hunting, nine fiddlers playing, eight ladies dancing, seven swans swimming, six chests of linen, five gold rings, four coffee bowls, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a parrot on a juniper tree." JOHN RODEMEYER JR NYS

Parsnips and Potatoes.......Alternatives to Feeding Grain to your Cattle?

The Journal of agriculture, Volume 2, On the Culture of Parsnips, 1852
(......and comparison to feeding steers POTATOES!)

Comments on Robert Bakewell's Approach to Cattle Breeding - 1856

IMPROVEMENT OF THE BREEDS OF CATTLE AND SHEEP IN ENGLAND

We find the following in Rural New Yorker extracted from the London Quarterly Review for April 1856

". . . The cattle of ancient days were chiefly valued for dairy qualities or for draft, and were only fatted when they would milk or draw no longer. The greater number of breeds were large boned and ill shaped, greedy eaters and slow at ripening, while as very little winter food was raised except hay, the meat laid on in summer was lost or barely maintained in winter. Fresh meat for six months of the year was a luxury only enjoyed by the wealthiest.
      First class farmers salted down an old cow in autumn, which with their flitches of bacon, supplied their families with meat until the spring.   Esquire Bedel Gunning, in his Memorials of Cambridge, relates that when Dr Makepeace Thackeray settled in Chester about the beginning of the present century, he presented one of his tenants with a bull calf of a superior breed. On his inquiry after it in the spring,the tenant replied, "Sir, he was a noble animal, we killed him at Christmas and have lived upon him ever since."
      The improvement of the breeds of live stock is one of the events which distinguish the progress of English Agriculture during the last century. Prominent among those who labored to this end was Robert Bakewell of Dishley, the founder of the Leicester sheep. He also had his favorite long horn cattle and black cart horses, and though he failed in establishing these he taught others how to succeed.

     Surrounded by the titled of Europe, he talked upon his favorite subject, breeding, with earnest yet playful enthusiasm, there utterly indifferent to vulgar traditional prejudices, he enumerated those axioms which must be the cardinal rules of the improvers of live stock. He chose the animals of the form and temperament which showed signs of producing the most fat and muscle, declaring that in an ox all was useless that was not beef, that he sought by pairing the best specimens, to make the shoulders comparatively little, the hind quarters large, to produce a body truly circular, with as short legs as possible, upon the plain principle that the value lies in the barrel and not in the legs, and to secure a small head small neck and small bones.
        As few things escaped his acute eye he remarked that quick fattening depended much upon amiability of disposition, and he brought his bulls by gentleness to be as docile as dogs.

. . .  But fine boned animals were not in fashion when Bakewell commenced his career, and to the majority of people it seemed a step backwards to prefer well made dwarfs to uncouth giants.
 . . . In 1798 the Little Smithfield Club was established for exhibiting fat stock at Christmas time in competition for prizes, with a specification of the food on which each animal had been kept. This Society has rendered essential service by making known the best kind of food, and by educating graziers and butchers in a knowledge of the best form of animal.
      In 1806, in defiance of Mr Coke's toast, "Small in size and great in value," a prize was given to the tallest ox.  In 1856 a little ox of the Devon breed of an egg like shape, which is the modern beau ideal, gained the Smithfield gold medal in competition with gigantic Short Horns, and Herefords of Elephantine proportions.   In 1855 a large animal of Sir Harry Verney's was passed over without even the compliment of a commendation -- because he carried on his carcass too much offal and more threepenny than nine penny beef."

Charles Dickens - An Unusual Christmas Essay on the Grandeurs of Roast Beef - 1853

Exceprt: "If we neither ate beef nor drank milk we should have little room for oxen in this country, all the herds that have grazed upon our pastures, oxen and cows that have reposed so tranquilly and looked so much at home upon our fields, all those creatures and the whole sum of happiness they have enjoyed would never have been called into existence. Compare the ox and fox community. Truly it is a good thing for the cattle that man was created with a taste for milk and beef. Nothing can be shallower than the appeal made to humanity by Vegetarians. It is a fine thing for the ox that man is glad to eat him."

Note:  If you have difficulty with the small type, click the image to go to the source document, it's clearer reading.

 


Mr. Dickens' essay continues on another two pages or so. Click the linked image above and it will take you to the source document on Google Books. It's worth continuing to read, as Mr. Dickens gives us his impression of the various breeds at the cattle show, as well as good commentary on how feeding methods had changed from a hundred years prior, and improvements in the quality of the beef.

Transactions of the Natural History Society of Glasgow - Chillingham Cattle

EXCERPTS FOLLOW FROM THE ABOVE MENTIONED VERY OLD WORK BY R. HEDGE WALLACE. IT IS FAIRLY LENGTHY, BUT WORTH THE READING TIME TO PERUSE THE EXCEPRTS AND HAVE A LOOK AT THE SOURCE DOCUMENT BY FOLLOWING THE BLOG TITLE LINK OR CLICKING ON ANY EMBEDED DOC IMAGE..............



























???Doesn't exactly look like the Chillingham Cattle of today, does it? Perhaps they evolved on their own? Doubtful.......

The U.S. Beef Breeding Herds Numbers are the Lowest since 1971..........

Dairy, Meat Prices Will Spur Food Inflation, Wells Fargo Says

By Jeff Wilson

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Rising milk, beef, pork and chicken prices will double the pace of U.S. food inflation next year as livestock supplies shrink and rebounding economies boost demand, said Michael Swanson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co.

Food prices may jump as much as 6 percent in 2010, Swanson said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Nov. 25 forecast 3 percent to 4 percent food inflation next year, up from an estimated 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent in 2009.

Producers of cattle, hogs, dairy cows and poultry cut output after a jump in feed costs last year, reducing supplies as demand for meat is rising at home and abroad, Swanson said. Corn, the main source of animal feed, will rally next year because of record demand for grain to make ethanol, he said.

Beef Herd

The U.S. beef-breeding herd on July 1 totaled 32.2 million head, down 1.4 percent from 32.65 million a year earlier, and was the smallest since the government started collecting data in 1971, the USDA said July 24.

“Protein inflation is going to be much higher than people are anticipating,” Swanson said Dec. 9 in an interview from Minneapolis. “Corn is a proxy for feed costs, and right now the value of all meat and dairy output is below the price of feed on a long-term relative basis.”

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a Dec. 3 report that cattle futures will increase over the next year by the most since 1978, and hogs will gain the most in six years. Cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will reach $1.10 a pound by December 2010, Goldman said. That would be up 32 percent from 83.275 cents on Dec. 11. Hog futures will reach 80 cents a pound, the bank said, which would mean a 22 percent rally from last week’s close at 65.425 cents.

Sustainable Rally

“As we start a new decade with the global economy emerging from the worst recession of the postwar era, we expect the commodity supply-side constraints of the past decade to once again re-emerge, reinforcing the sustainability of higher long- term commodity prices,” Goldman analysts including Jeffrey Currie wrote in a note to investors. “Economic recovery suggests rising meat demand amid tighter supplies.”

Follow the title link to read the rest of this article.......