rancherfred
Well-known member
Double post, sorry.
Grassfarmer's Pharo post
- Thread starter RobertMac
- Start date
rancherfred
Well-known member
Silver said:
Now is this the point at which I am supposed to put up an angry post because someone disagreed with me and swear off Ranchers.net for ever? Or maybe not forever, maybe for a few months, or weeks, or days, or maybe a few minutes until I come back and see what the response to my "last post ever" was? Was that too snarky?
I figured this would probably go the route that it did. Calving in cold weather doesn't make you a better animal husbandman, in your words "more diligent." It simply opens you up to a lot of weather related problems that aren't there if you calve later. That is where our profound disagreement about animal welfare comes from. The thing to keep in mind when considering this situation is that the enemies of animal agriculture want the pictures. That is all. A calf with frozen ears and tail setting in a snowbank or humped up with his tail to a driving blizzard makes a pretty easy emotional appeal. Pictures of cattle with the hair frozen off their hind quarters from the awful blizzards are all things that are going to be hard to counter with claims of our animal husbandry.
I am not going anywhere, but I do think that we need to be thinking pretty serious about how to deal with the public relations problem that winter calving is going to present.
Big Muddy rancher
Well-known member
rancherfred said:
You right on winter calving but I think many of our husbandry practices could be call by the likes of HSUS or PETA. Remember consumer are led to believe cows talk they are Happy and come form California :wink:
WyomingRancher
Well-known member
Let's not pretend either system is perfect. I've managed to freeze calves in cold weather, and I've managed to dehydrate calves in hot weather FWIW :? .
Northern Rancher
Well-known member
Yes wrecks can happen-there would be more furor over a froze up calf than over the poor bugger in the city last week that got dumped out of a dumpster and compacted. I heard there's a bison/spca wreck going on down in soutrhern Alberta.
rancherfred said:
Perhaps you have take the word diligent out of context. My point is that any one person that calves in cold temps will be out there checking more often and be a little more careful than that same person would when it is substantially warmer. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would dispute that. When it gets -30 at night here we are out every hour, and those showing signs of calving are placed in a barn. When it is warm at night we back off to checking every 2 1/2 hours or so. We become a little less ..... ummmm.... diligent :wink:
And Soapweed is quite correct, hot temps stress cattle more than cold temps. It's gotta be awful cold for cattle to stop eating (somewhere around 60 below F), but it doesn't have to be very hot before they're holed up fighting flies and losing weight.
At any rate, if you're looking at removing potential public relations fiascoes perhaps hot brands and any form of castration that isn't done by the vet should top the list. A good close up photo of a calf with it's eyes bulged out, mouth open bawling, smoke rolling off it would make a pretty good tool for the PETA movement.
flyingS
Well-known member
There are poor managers in every situation. As a whole the industry is doing a way better job than maybe realized. Big Swede mentioned earlier that numbers are down signifigantly. They are for sure, but statistics show we are still producing the same pounds of beef that we were before the decline. The reason silver is saying he is more diligent is because he has to due to weather and temperatures in order to achieve the success he wants. Big Swede and Rancherfred are achieveing their goals without putting in the same hours tending to cattle. They can spend time on other tasks because the weather allows it. Not to mention they don't have to be up all night pulling calves into the barn when it is cold and snowing and the wind is blowing. I am sure they both still night check heifers, not as many of them go through the barn(that has to be a healthier environment). To each his own, I have a preference and an opinion but am not going to cram it down someone else's throat. Extreme conditions are an easy target for Activist. Weather is the easiest of those conditions for someone who knows absolutely nothing about ranching to target ( I think this is Rancherfred's point.)
Big Swede
Well-known member
When it comes to animal husbandry the general public is very ignorant. Someone from our small town asked me the other day how calving was going and I told them I didn't start for another month. They didn't think that was possible because everyone calves in March. I didn't go into alot of detail about the 9 month gestation thing but this person finally realized that it could be done at a different time. If that thinking came from a rural SD resident you can imagine how much urban people know about what we do.
Silver, I can tell from your posts that you work very hard and are a good manager. Nobody is denying that, but of those 100,000 cattle that perished last year in North Dakota alone, I would guess that at least 85,000 would have survived if they had been born later in the year. That many calves would have paid a lot of North Dakota bills I'll bet. I didn't mean to start the calving season argument again. Everyone will do what they think is best or until they think there is a better way and they change. Hell some may even move there calving dates earlier.
Silver, I can tell from your posts that you work very hard and are a good manager. Nobody is denying that, but of those 100,000 cattle that perished last year in North Dakota alone, I would guess that at least 85,000 would have survived if they had been born later in the year. That many calves would have paid a lot of North Dakota bills I'll bet. I didn't mean to start the calving season argument again. Everyone will do what they think is best or until they think there is a better way and they change. Hell some may even move there calving dates earlier.
Big Swede said:
I also forget that the weather you can get in the Dakotas can be lethal. Storms don't kill cattle here, so as long as a calf can be delivered, mothered dry and suckled, it need not be worried about again generally speaking. Thus if an operator is 'diligent' in his/her checking and has the appropriate facilities things will run reasonably smoothly. I think if one is going to calve in the spring around here it's best to try to do most of it on dry frozen ground rather than mud. We usually catch some very cold, some very muddy, and the last ones come on the first blades of green grass. Two cycles cover a lot of weather up here :wink:
Back to the original controversy now, do people really think that cold weather calving is really the facet of our industry that will be the poster child of the animal rights groups? I suppose it could be, but I think many people are more forgiving of these 'natural' disasters. I think things that show an obvious human intervention are what we need to be the most wary of. Say, starving cattle, cattle kept in squalid conditions, hot branding, castration, de-horning, etc. A guy I know tells me that in England you now must have a vet castrate your "bullocks". Is that true?
At any rate, the public has a vision of the cattleman as a Marlboro Man cowboy in a big hat that rides the range and does everything from horseback and doesn't put up hay or anything unromantic like that. And anything that strays from that image seems to make them squeamish and consider the product 'unnatural'. Perhaps the cattle industry needs to be more proactive in producing a more practical image that people can get used to, so they have a better idea of where there beef really comes from at a grass roots level. That way activists wont get the shock value they depend upon to get people upset and force change.
Sorry for being long winded but those are some of my thoughts.
leanin' H
Well-known member
The anti-cattle crowd will not win if we put our message out front and keep it there. Too many millions like beef. Especially when they see the families and the stewardship of the land and the effort put into our cattle. But they can't see that if we keep our mouths shut or are timid or hard headed. I have had folks drive over 100 miles because they wanted to see for themselves the conditions under which my cattle are raised. I could tell them it isnt any of their beeswax or go somewhere else as I dont have time for it. But by taking a half hour to explain and show and teach, I have sold beef! What makes complete sense to you & I is completely foreign to a lot of people. What seems trivial to me might be a brand new experience to somebody. Wether that experience is a good one or bad one is up to us! Regardless how we all raise, work and market our product, if we don't take the lead we'll just have to follow the herd. :wink:
Kato
Well-known member
In 36 years, we've had two calves that were so hypothermic they needed to be brought into the house, and put in a bathtub full of warm water to revive them. They were both born in April. :shock: :shock: :shock:
I will say one thing about later calving though. It's been the best thing that ever happened to my guard donkey sideline. :wink: It's like the Shamwow guy says... "They practically sell themselves." :wink:
I will say one thing about later calving though. It's been the best thing that ever happened to my guard donkey sideline. :wink: It's like the Shamwow guy says... "They practically sell themselves." :wink:
Used to pat myself on the back when the home raised cleanup bulls calves had a higher 205 adjusted weight then the AI sires- until I realized those older calves had a much lower average daily gain because they spent the early part of their life huddled up against the cold. I know a number of people who moved their calving dates back and actually weaned more pounds of calf.
Big Swede
Well-known member
The point I was trying to make about the city dweller not knowing you can calve any time other than March might work in our favor. When that person watches the news and weather every night and sees how tough it is for the stockman fighting against the weather to save his calves or lambs, he probably thinks that it is just a fact of life on the ranch and that the rancher is doing everything humanly possible. Maybe we have nothing to worry about from the far left radicals who would rather abolish the consumption of meat as anything else they can think of.
Big Swede said:
I understand what you are saying, at goes with my point that people are more likely to forgive a 'natural' disaster than one perceived as caused by man. Hopefully.
Perhaps in the future some of these controversial check off dollars could go towards redefining the cattleman's image and making it more familiar to the public.
Big Swede
Well-known member
I think that would be a good idea. If a customer at the meat counter could see a picture and a story of the family that produced the steak they were about to buy it could be a win win.
They sell more pounds of calf because they sell more live calves. There are five weights today that are bringing more then eight weights last fall. The big weaning weight = profit deal has been disproven a million times.
John SD
Well-known member
WyomingRancher said:
WR, I've had calves die from being too hydrated in hot weather. The cow had delivered them too close to the dam or creek and they fell in it. :roll:
That said, I'm with Big Swede on the later calving. I wouldn't go back to early spring calving by choice. I am calving a bit earlier this year, by the bull's choice.
Thank God we don't all calve at the same time, since everyone would have the same weight of calves for sale at the same time. For our resources, calving early is not an option or very profitable. But we have several neighbours that are set up and have paid for their ranches calving early.
I think the solution is to keep the cows in the house and send the cowboy out to live on the range...
I think the solution is to keep the cows in the house and send the cowboy out to live on the range...