Sheriff Gives Ride-Along Tour
Through Remote Border Ranches
By John Bradshaw
ALPINE, Texas — Not long ago the Brewster County Sheriff's Office received a call from a rancher in an isolated area reporting several men surrounding his house in the darkness, yelling and daring him to come out.
By the time the officers made their way down the many miles of highway and then miles of rough ranch roads, the men were gone.
Unfortunately, that's the way it's been going much of the time in the rough and remote ranch country. There are just too many square miles to control the hordes of drug smugglers and illegal aliens who make their way through the country to the highway above the Border Patrol checkpoints.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson agreed to give a ride-along as he patrolled some of the hardest hit areas in his county. The 12-hour trip was spent on the move nearly the entire time, much of it at high speed. Even so, only a small portion of the county was covered. Brewster County, at 6198 square miles, is the largest in Texas and has the longest border with Mexico. There are only eight deputies and Sheriff Dodson.
Many of the ranches are so isolated that their residents are basically on their own, facing an increase in illegal activity and knowing of the widespread violence not far to the south.
Dodson said his county has seen an increase in activity but not yet violence. Law enforcement officers in the area fear further increases because of the crackdowns in El Paso and Del Rio.
"That will funnel in to us," Dodson explained.
Most of the ranchers around the county report somewhat minor disturbances such as open gates, trash and tracks. Others are harder hit. Several years ago two ranch hands were overpowered and tied up during a home invasion. The robbers shot the tires out of all the vehicles except the one they stole.
Ranch homes are routinely burglarized, but Dodson said the goods stolen have changed in recent years.
"In the old days they would come in and take a little food and take off. Now they're taking the guns, they're taking the jewelry, anything they can take with them. It's a different breed of folks that is coming across."
Many of the Mexicans, whether good people or bad, become desperate enough from hunger, thirst and exhaustion to do some crazy things. Dodson told of one group that later admitted to eating a skunk. A rancher reported that his dog was stoned to death and then eaten.
That desperation comes from the distances many of the men cover on foot. It is approximately 60 miles from the border to Highway 90, which is a common destination because it is north of the checkpoints. Much of that trip is through mountains, brush and desert.
Dodson began the field trip by stopping at the Catto Gage Ranch between Alpine and Marathon. The sheriff said more smugglers and illegal aliens are caught off the Catto Gage than anywhere else in the county.
Catto Gage manager Brent Charlesworth explained that both he and the ranch hands rarely see anyone, but they regularly find the signs. Some of the Mexicans have even been making little huts to spend the night in.
Both men told of the skill the smugglers have in hiding and even disappearing into the brush. Charlesworth has seen people one second and had them disappear nearly before his eyes. He was once surprised when a man appeared only a few feet from him and asked for water.
"He could have killed me, he was that close," Charlesworth said.
Nearly everyone coming through is packing marijuana, he said. Charlesworth has a wife and kids, so he is of course somewhat nervous about all the nighttime traffic. He keeps plenty of dogs around and recently bought a Great Dane. He has noticed that since he got the bigger dog with a bigger bark, the tracks and other signs are farther from the house.
All the ranch hands know the tire tracks from the ranch trucks and the Border Patrol vehicles, so they can tell when someone else has been around. They also remember how they left things, and then often find that those things have been moved or changed. Gates are regularly left open and fences are cut. Charlesworth said all this has really added to the labor costs, mostly from just having to re-gather pastures.
So far there hasn't been any trouble for their hunters, and Charlesworth said for the most part their commercial hunters don't even know about all that goes on.
Like some other ranchers in the area, Charlesworth isn't a fan of the Border Patrol. He wouldn't say much, though, other than calling them disrespectful and goofy, especially the many new agents recruited from far away.
After the visit to Catto Gage, Dodson headed to southeastern Brewster County and the now-closed La Linda crossing, which is a starting point for many of the smugglers. The abandoned Mexican village of La Linda sits across the river.
The bridge has concrete barriers set up every few feet all the way across, with a pipe and expanded metal human barrier in the middle. Dodson said the barrier stops no one. A broken pay phone stands next to the bridge. In the past it was used by smugglers and illegal aliens to schedule pick-ups and make other plans.
From La Linda, Dodson headed up to a dirt ranch road that begins on Highway 385 and heads mostly east before eventually turning in a northerly direction as it leads up to Highway 90 not far west of Sanderson. Before the day was done the sheriff's pickup would log 90 miles of rough ranch roads, in addition to more than 150 highway miles.
Dodson drives a nearly new, four-door, four-wheel-drive hotrod Dodge truck with leather interior and all the bells and whistles. On the tailgate is a sticker that reads, "This Vehicle Purchased With Money Seized From A Drug Dealer."
A while back a deputy had information that a semi loaded with dope was traveling through Brewster County. Instead of stopping the truck, they followed it, all the way to Alabama. The house it stopped at held more than $600,000 in cash. The sheriff's office's split was more than $130,000, part of which paid for the new pickup and another deputy's car.
Dodson loves seizing drugs, but he prefers cash. The drugs actually cost them money because they must pay for incineration. Their cut of the cash can be spent by the department.
Between the sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies, a large amount of drugs is confiscated in Brewster County, but Dodson knows it's a small percentage of what actually comes through. Landowners across the county send him game camera photographs showing men with backpacks traveling through.
"We never caught those guys," Dodson admitted. "It's just a hit and miss kind of deal, and I always figure we catch the dumb ones."
The majority of the smugglers are just average guys looking for work, Dodson said, not hardcore criminals. They're paid up to $300 to carry a 50-pound backpack 60-90 miles across the desert, a trip that usually takes 7-11 days.
When Dodson was asked what 50 pounds of marijuana is worth, a question he doesn't like, he replied, "Most of it is worth, for each person, two to 10 years in prison. That's what it's worth."
Most of the smugglers carry marijuana. Dodson said some cocaine comes through, but the vast majority is marijuana and lots of it. While driving down the ranch road five to 10 miles north of the Rio Grande, he pointed to a spot where he once found 1600 pounds of marijuana. It was camouflaged and appeared to have been stocked from Mexico and awaiting someone to pick it up.
It is difficult to happen upon smugglers or illegal aliens in a vehicle, Dodson said, because they can hear the truck long before they are sighted. Even so, he's spotted plenty of people over the years. Usually they don't even run; they know they're caught and just give up. The rules may be changing some, though.
"We haven't experienced any violence ourselves. Earlier this year we did encounter two abandoned marijuana loads with guns in them, one gun each. That's unusual."
Dodson has been told that the Zetas in Mexico have told their smugglers to defend their loads and not to come back unsuccessful.
"We've heard rumors that they torture those guys pretty bad when they get back, almost to death," he said.
Last year the sheriff's department caught a group of smugglers in the middle of a snowstorm. The men were in terrible shape from the cold, Dodson said, and one later died in the hospital.
Traveling through the country, the sheriff occasionally pointed out dirt or grass airstrips on the remote ranches. He said at night small planes can often be heard flying low over Brewster County, because the secluded runways make nice spots for the smugglers to land. The sheriff explained that in the old days many ranchers even had agreements with the smugglers, allowing them to land planes on their ranches.
When he first became sheriff, Dodson often saw tin pie pans sitting along the edges of those airstrips. He said at first he didn't know what they were for, but he soon learned that the smugglers filled the pans with coal oil, lit them and used the fires as landing lights.
No pie pans could be found during Dodson's patrol, but recent campfires could be seen along the ranch road. It is not surprising that the smugglers and illegal aliens light fires during the cold nights, but they do it right in the middle of the roads, apparently unconcerned with the attention it might attract.
The trip is tough for the Mexicans, and Dodson has helped haul out a few who didn't make it. He believes many of those who get sick become that way from drinking water out of dirty stock tanks.
Those unfamiliar with the country could easily become lost amid the mountains, and many do. Dodson said many of the travelers end up flagging down a vehicle or walking to a house to give themselves up. Some know to follow the powerlines, though, and the experienced ones know the route, which Dodson pointed out, that can take them through the canyons and on good roads the entire way.
Dodson knows all the back roads and believes he has visited every ranch in the county at least once. A rancher once told the sheriff that he had never been on his ranch. Dodson replied, "Oh yeah, I landed a helicopter there once."
One of the ranches he often visits is the Desert Mountain Ranch, a scenic cattle and hunting operation only a few miles north of the river. Manager Chris Kirby said the ranch has had people crossing it almost daily for several months now. He explained that the men come out of Reagan Canyon, over the mountains and onto the ranch, where they usually follow the fencelines or occasionally the roads.
Kirby had two pistols sitting on his kitchen table that day, and he carries a gun with him everywhere he goes on the ranch. If he is away from his pickup or ATV, a pistol is in his backpack. He said he can often tell when people are around by watching the cattle. They're mostly unconcerned with other animals, but they perk up and watch when people are sneaking around in the brush.
In the eight years Kirby has been on Desert Mountain Ranch, his house has been broken into several times, which he pointed out is fewer than some other places. His neighbor was recently broken into twice in one week. One of Kirby's break-ins was known of because the intruders called 911 themselves.
"They were lost and gave up," Kirby explained.
When the law enforcement showed up, though, the men were outside and claimed to have never gone in the house, despite their 911 call. That night Kirby got a beer from his refrigerator, only to find that the bottle was empty. The men had drunk all his beer, screwed the caps back on the bottles and replaced them in the case.
Kirby laughed about another time when someone broke in and stole, among other things, a large canister of Metamucil. The men probably thought it was Kool-Aid or some other powdered drink and were likely surprised at its effects.
Dodson continued his patrol of the county after leaving Desert Mountain Ranch, telling stories and pointing out things as he drove. The sheriff's department delivers toys to underprivileged children each Christmas. One year they took toys to a home in Marathon, and once inside they immediately saw that the walls were lined with bunk beds. The house was a stopping-off point for folks headed north. They haven't been invited inside since.
One time Dodson caught several smugglers, all carrying 50 pounds of marijuana except one, who only had 20 pounds. He told the sheriff that the dope was too heavy so he threw it away. Dodson took the man in the pickup to find the dope, but the man claimed he spoke no English.
"He was real smart, though, because he spoke great English by the end," Dodson said.
After a while the man pointed out a stock tank, and neatly stacked next to it was 30 pounds of marijuana bricks.
In the past, many of the ranchers left food and water for the illegal aliens, but Dodson discourages the practice. Maps are often found on captured Mexicans. These maps are for sale in Mexico for one dollar and show trails, water supplies and even ranch homes that will feed the travelers.
Now the Zetas have their own checkpoints in parts of Mexico so they can charge illegal aliens to cross the border. A couple of months ago a dead drug dealer was found in the Rio Grande, but Dodson said it was determined that he was closer to Mexico than the United States, so the man became the Mexican government's problem.
The common working man is still crossing the border, Dodson said, but the number of criminal types crossing has increased. Illegal aliens caught by the Brewster County Sheriff's Office are arrested and charged with agricultural trespassing.
Arrested illegal aliens are brought in, charged with the class C misdemeanor trespassing and put in the system. The next time they are caught they will have a criminal record and not be able to have what is called a "voluntary return."
Along the sheriff's route were several nice, empty ranch houses. He said there are many of these homes scattered around the county, mostly owned by absentee landowners. The smugglers and illegal aliens basically come and go at will, and anything of value is long gone.
Lately the federal and state governments have sent plenty of extra money to the Border, and Dodson said it has been used for overtime and new equipment. The sheriff's department is buying some new sensors with cameras, which Dodson believes will be very effective. These sensors will be placed in areas where the Border Patrol currently doesn't have sensors, and also in some places where the Border Patrol isn't welcome.
"We would definitely love to have more manpower, though," Dodson said.
As for recommendations to ranchers or landowners, Dodson said most in Brewster County are pretty savvy and can take care of themselves. He does always recommend that they are neighborly with each other, because if trouble comes, that neighbor will be the first person who could get to them.
"You definitely need to be neighborly, and keep your gun with you," he advised.
Dodson isn't too hopeful about the situation along the Border getting much better. He said as long as there is money in it, people will keep doing it.
"It's been going on for a lot of years, and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon," he said.
Throughout the day Dodson said from time to time that he knew he was setting off some Border Patrol sensors while driving down the ranch roads and that someone might come to check it out. No one did. At dusk his pickup rolled out on Highway 90, north of all the checkpoints.
"What if someone had offered you $100,000 to drive to La Linda and pick up a load of dope?" he asked.
"From here on, as long as you don't speed, you're home free. You just made $100,000."
http://www.livestockweekly.com/papers/10/01/21/index.html
Through Remote Border Ranches
By John Bradshaw
ALPINE, Texas — Not long ago the Brewster County Sheriff's Office received a call from a rancher in an isolated area reporting several men surrounding his house in the darkness, yelling and daring him to come out.
By the time the officers made their way down the many miles of highway and then miles of rough ranch roads, the men were gone.
Unfortunately, that's the way it's been going much of the time in the rough and remote ranch country. There are just too many square miles to control the hordes of drug smugglers and illegal aliens who make their way through the country to the highway above the Border Patrol checkpoints.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson agreed to give a ride-along as he patrolled some of the hardest hit areas in his county. The 12-hour trip was spent on the move nearly the entire time, much of it at high speed. Even so, only a small portion of the county was covered. Brewster County, at 6198 square miles, is the largest in Texas and has the longest border with Mexico. There are only eight deputies and Sheriff Dodson.
Many of the ranches are so isolated that their residents are basically on their own, facing an increase in illegal activity and knowing of the widespread violence not far to the south.
Dodson said his county has seen an increase in activity but not yet violence. Law enforcement officers in the area fear further increases because of the crackdowns in El Paso and Del Rio.
"That will funnel in to us," Dodson explained.
Most of the ranchers around the county report somewhat minor disturbances such as open gates, trash and tracks. Others are harder hit. Several years ago two ranch hands were overpowered and tied up during a home invasion. The robbers shot the tires out of all the vehicles except the one they stole.
Ranch homes are routinely burglarized, but Dodson said the goods stolen have changed in recent years.
"In the old days they would come in and take a little food and take off. Now they're taking the guns, they're taking the jewelry, anything they can take with them. It's a different breed of folks that is coming across."
Many of the Mexicans, whether good people or bad, become desperate enough from hunger, thirst and exhaustion to do some crazy things. Dodson told of one group that later admitted to eating a skunk. A rancher reported that his dog was stoned to death and then eaten.
That desperation comes from the distances many of the men cover on foot. It is approximately 60 miles from the border to Highway 90, which is a common destination because it is north of the checkpoints. Much of that trip is through mountains, brush and desert.
Dodson began the field trip by stopping at the Catto Gage Ranch between Alpine and Marathon. The sheriff said more smugglers and illegal aliens are caught off the Catto Gage than anywhere else in the county.
Catto Gage manager Brent Charlesworth explained that both he and the ranch hands rarely see anyone, but they regularly find the signs. Some of the Mexicans have even been making little huts to spend the night in.
Both men told of the skill the smugglers have in hiding and even disappearing into the brush. Charlesworth has seen people one second and had them disappear nearly before his eyes. He was once surprised when a man appeared only a few feet from him and asked for water.
"He could have killed me, he was that close," Charlesworth said.
Nearly everyone coming through is packing marijuana, he said. Charlesworth has a wife and kids, so he is of course somewhat nervous about all the nighttime traffic. He keeps plenty of dogs around and recently bought a Great Dane. He has noticed that since he got the bigger dog with a bigger bark, the tracks and other signs are farther from the house.
All the ranch hands know the tire tracks from the ranch trucks and the Border Patrol vehicles, so they can tell when someone else has been around. They also remember how they left things, and then often find that those things have been moved or changed. Gates are regularly left open and fences are cut. Charlesworth said all this has really added to the labor costs, mostly from just having to re-gather pastures.
So far there hasn't been any trouble for their hunters, and Charlesworth said for the most part their commercial hunters don't even know about all that goes on.
Like some other ranchers in the area, Charlesworth isn't a fan of the Border Patrol. He wouldn't say much, though, other than calling them disrespectful and goofy, especially the many new agents recruited from far away.
After the visit to Catto Gage, Dodson headed to southeastern Brewster County and the now-closed La Linda crossing, which is a starting point for many of the smugglers. The abandoned Mexican village of La Linda sits across the river.
The bridge has concrete barriers set up every few feet all the way across, with a pipe and expanded metal human barrier in the middle. Dodson said the barrier stops no one. A broken pay phone stands next to the bridge. In the past it was used by smugglers and illegal aliens to schedule pick-ups and make other plans.
From La Linda, Dodson headed up to a dirt ranch road that begins on Highway 385 and heads mostly east before eventually turning in a northerly direction as it leads up to Highway 90 not far west of Sanderson. Before the day was done the sheriff's pickup would log 90 miles of rough ranch roads, in addition to more than 150 highway miles.
Dodson drives a nearly new, four-door, four-wheel-drive hotrod Dodge truck with leather interior and all the bells and whistles. On the tailgate is a sticker that reads, "This Vehicle Purchased With Money Seized From A Drug Dealer."
A while back a deputy had information that a semi loaded with dope was traveling through Brewster County. Instead of stopping the truck, they followed it, all the way to Alabama. The house it stopped at held more than $600,000 in cash. The sheriff's office's split was more than $130,000, part of which paid for the new pickup and another deputy's car.
Dodson loves seizing drugs, but he prefers cash. The drugs actually cost them money because they must pay for incineration. Their cut of the cash can be spent by the department.
Between the sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies, a large amount of drugs is confiscated in Brewster County, but Dodson knows it's a small percentage of what actually comes through. Landowners across the county send him game camera photographs showing men with backpacks traveling through.
"We never caught those guys," Dodson admitted. "It's just a hit and miss kind of deal, and I always figure we catch the dumb ones."
The majority of the smugglers are just average guys looking for work, Dodson said, not hardcore criminals. They're paid up to $300 to carry a 50-pound backpack 60-90 miles across the desert, a trip that usually takes 7-11 days.
When Dodson was asked what 50 pounds of marijuana is worth, a question he doesn't like, he replied, "Most of it is worth, for each person, two to 10 years in prison. That's what it's worth."
Most of the smugglers carry marijuana. Dodson said some cocaine comes through, but the vast majority is marijuana and lots of it. While driving down the ranch road five to 10 miles north of the Rio Grande, he pointed to a spot where he once found 1600 pounds of marijuana. It was camouflaged and appeared to have been stocked from Mexico and awaiting someone to pick it up.
It is difficult to happen upon smugglers or illegal aliens in a vehicle, Dodson said, because they can hear the truck long before they are sighted. Even so, he's spotted plenty of people over the years. Usually they don't even run; they know they're caught and just give up. The rules may be changing some, though.
"We haven't experienced any violence ourselves. Earlier this year we did encounter two abandoned marijuana loads with guns in them, one gun each. That's unusual."
Dodson has been told that the Zetas in Mexico have told their smugglers to defend their loads and not to come back unsuccessful.
"We've heard rumors that they torture those guys pretty bad when they get back, almost to death," he said.
Last year the sheriff's department caught a group of smugglers in the middle of a snowstorm. The men were in terrible shape from the cold, Dodson said, and one later died in the hospital.
Traveling through the country, the sheriff occasionally pointed out dirt or grass airstrips on the remote ranches. He said at night small planes can often be heard flying low over Brewster County, because the secluded runways make nice spots for the smugglers to land. The sheriff explained that in the old days many ranchers even had agreements with the smugglers, allowing them to land planes on their ranches.
When he first became sheriff, Dodson often saw tin pie pans sitting along the edges of those airstrips. He said at first he didn't know what they were for, but he soon learned that the smugglers filled the pans with coal oil, lit them and used the fires as landing lights.
No pie pans could be found during Dodson's patrol, but recent campfires could be seen along the ranch road. It is not surprising that the smugglers and illegal aliens light fires during the cold nights, but they do it right in the middle of the roads, apparently unconcerned with the attention it might attract.
The trip is tough for the Mexicans, and Dodson has helped haul out a few who didn't make it. He believes many of those who get sick become that way from drinking water out of dirty stock tanks.
Those unfamiliar with the country could easily become lost amid the mountains, and many do. Dodson said many of the travelers end up flagging down a vehicle or walking to a house to give themselves up. Some know to follow the powerlines, though, and the experienced ones know the route, which Dodson pointed out, that can take them through the canyons and on good roads the entire way.
Dodson knows all the back roads and believes he has visited every ranch in the county at least once. A rancher once told the sheriff that he had never been on his ranch. Dodson replied, "Oh yeah, I landed a helicopter there once."
One of the ranches he often visits is the Desert Mountain Ranch, a scenic cattle and hunting operation only a few miles north of the river. Manager Chris Kirby said the ranch has had people crossing it almost daily for several months now. He explained that the men come out of Reagan Canyon, over the mountains and onto the ranch, where they usually follow the fencelines or occasionally the roads.
Kirby had two pistols sitting on his kitchen table that day, and he carries a gun with him everywhere he goes on the ranch. If he is away from his pickup or ATV, a pistol is in his backpack. He said he can often tell when people are around by watching the cattle. They're mostly unconcerned with other animals, but they perk up and watch when people are sneaking around in the brush.
In the eight years Kirby has been on Desert Mountain Ranch, his house has been broken into several times, which he pointed out is fewer than some other places. His neighbor was recently broken into twice in one week. One of Kirby's break-ins was known of because the intruders called 911 themselves.
"They were lost and gave up," Kirby explained.
When the law enforcement showed up, though, the men were outside and claimed to have never gone in the house, despite their 911 call. That night Kirby got a beer from his refrigerator, only to find that the bottle was empty. The men had drunk all his beer, screwed the caps back on the bottles and replaced them in the case.
Kirby laughed about another time when someone broke in and stole, among other things, a large canister of Metamucil. The men probably thought it was Kool-Aid or some other powdered drink and were likely surprised at its effects.
Dodson continued his patrol of the county after leaving Desert Mountain Ranch, telling stories and pointing out things as he drove. The sheriff's department delivers toys to underprivileged children each Christmas. One year they took toys to a home in Marathon, and once inside they immediately saw that the walls were lined with bunk beds. The house was a stopping-off point for folks headed north. They haven't been invited inside since.
One time Dodson caught several smugglers, all carrying 50 pounds of marijuana except one, who only had 20 pounds. He told the sheriff that the dope was too heavy so he threw it away. Dodson took the man in the pickup to find the dope, but the man claimed he spoke no English.
"He was real smart, though, because he spoke great English by the end," Dodson said.
After a while the man pointed out a stock tank, and neatly stacked next to it was 30 pounds of marijuana bricks.
In the past, many of the ranchers left food and water for the illegal aliens, but Dodson discourages the practice. Maps are often found on captured Mexicans. These maps are for sale in Mexico for one dollar and show trails, water supplies and even ranch homes that will feed the travelers.
Now the Zetas have their own checkpoints in parts of Mexico so they can charge illegal aliens to cross the border. A couple of months ago a dead drug dealer was found in the Rio Grande, but Dodson said it was determined that he was closer to Mexico than the United States, so the man became the Mexican government's problem.
The common working man is still crossing the border, Dodson said, but the number of criminal types crossing has increased. Illegal aliens caught by the Brewster County Sheriff's Office are arrested and charged with agricultural trespassing.
Arrested illegal aliens are brought in, charged with the class C misdemeanor trespassing and put in the system. The next time they are caught they will have a criminal record and not be able to have what is called a "voluntary return."
Along the sheriff's route were several nice, empty ranch houses. He said there are many of these homes scattered around the county, mostly owned by absentee landowners. The smugglers and illegal aliens basically come and go at will, and anything of value is long gone.
Lately the federal and state governments have sent plenty of extra money to the Border, and Dodson said it has been used for overtime and new equipment. The sheriff's department is buying some new sensors with cameras, which Dodson believes will be very effective. These sensors will be placed in areas where the Border Patrol currently doesn't have sensors, and also in some places where the Border Patrol isn't welcome.
"We would definitely love to have more manpower, though," Dodson said.
As for recommendations to ranchers or landowners, Dodson said most in Brewster County are pretty savvy and can take care of themselves. He does always recommend that they are neighborly with each other, because if trouble comes, that neighbor will be the first person who could get to them.
"You definitely need to be neighborly, and keep your gun with you," he advised.
Dodson isn't too hopeful about the situation along the Border getting much better. He said as long as there is money in it, people will keep doing it.
"It's been going on for a lot of years, and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon," he said.
Throughout the day Dodson said from time to time that he knew he was setting off some Border Patrol sensors while driving down the ranch roads and that someone might come to check it out. No one did. At dusk his pickup rolled out on Highway 90, north of all the checkpoints.
"What if someone had offered you $100,000 to drive to La Linda and pick up a load of dope?" he asked.
"From here on, as long as you don't speed, you're home free. You just made $100,000."
http://www.livestockweekly.com/papers/10/01/21/index.html
