You can definitely tell what time of year it is because the posts on Cattle Call have been real thin lately.  Most of us are calving and I guess the college kids are gearing up for spring break.  Calving is going well here so far.  With all the blizzards we’ve had here this winter I am calving in the most insane mud I’ve ever seen.

We had this one birth that caused me to reflect back to years ago.  This cow was acting funny most all morning.  My dad decided to get her in and palpate.  What he found led him to call me. I was at the other place feeding cattle and when I answered my phone and he said “I have two heads and two feet.  Come help.”

When I got over there I felt three feet and two heads.  I found a fourth foot after reaching around for a bit and figured out whose appendages went with the first head.  We pulled that one out and when I bent down to get the straps off the first calf, the cow pushed the second out on top of me.

My dad congratulated me on a job well done.  This for some reason made me realize how good my skills have gotten.  I remembered the first time my dad had me pull a calf on my own.  The details are a little fuzzy now, seeing how it was about 17 years ago.  The calf had an abnormal presentation, and dad figured it was dead and would make a good learning experience for me. 

This was the first time I ever had to put my hand inside a cow.  I was nervous, and a little apprehensive.  But dang it, I was a cowboy after all and I couldn’t back out right?  I put the sleeves on and felt around while dad talked me through what I should be doing.  It was a lot of work to get everything aligned just right.  My arms were burning from being so worn out.   After getting the straps on the calf’s feet dad helped me pull the calf out.

I remember feeling so relieved to have that over.  Having my arm inside a cow felt weird.  We were both amazed when the calf started to shake its head and gasp for air.  I felt a special pride every time I looked at that calf, knowing that I helped to save him.

The new twins are doing fine.  All of us here feel some kind of attachment to them.  I took this picture of them on my Blackberry just moments after they were born.

Beef is beef, and good beef is good beef.  That's my motto.

 If you look around the country, you'll find a lot of black cattle.  When I was a the sale a feew weeks ago - a sale of 4,800 head - there were a lot of black yearlings moved through the ring.  And, just for the record (and to save my own rear), I am not against black cattle.  At all.  There are a lot of good black cattle out there.  At the same time, I don't have any reservations about letting my partiality to red cattle known.  It's the type of operation I grew up on, and I can't lie about how much I like seeing a hundred head of reds scattered across the hillside.

I called up my dad a few weeks ago to talk cows.  I'd been thinking about this color topic for awhile, so I asked him if he ever noticed a disparity between the way his sets of red calves sold in the ring compared to blacks.  Apparently, two or three years back, dad took his heifers to town.  They were the second tier set as he'd already pulled his replacements out.  That same sale, a black cattle breeder brought some of the replacement heifers he'd kept back and didn't need.  They were the best of a quality black operation, and dad's red heifers topped the sale.

That was the long answer to a question that simply could be answered with "No, color doesn't matter.  Quality does."

And that's just one example.  Like any cattlemen knows, sometimes the quality just isn't there due to a variety of reasons. A bull that doesn't produce like he should have.  Bad weather.  Poor feed.  My dad's set of calves this year wouldn't top a cull cow sale, it sounds like; it's just been one of those years.

Everyone has their preferences, just like my preference is for red cattle.  But I think it's easy to get too focused on one particular trait at the cost of others.  On a world that is bent on black cattle, sometimes hide color becomes too much of a priority.  The same goes for any other breed of cattle.  My dad doesn't keep a heifer as a replacement just because she's got red on her back, and he won't load a cow for town simply because she's black.

Beef is beef, and good beef is good beef.  Quality wins every time; that's my motto. 

(Disclaimer: Views expressed below are not representative of the WCA. Solely reflective of the author.)

Another year rounded the corner and I found myself with another tally on my age card. This new found age came with an epiphany. I realized I am not getting any younger. I found myself like a deer-in-the-headlights, suddenly faced with a need to stop wasting years and hunker down to change a few things. My changes are not like the ones that will bring you to a gym for the first two months out of the New Year with the promise of finally sticking with it this time. Instead, I realized some very serious changes were in order. The government was not looking any smarter, the lottery hadn’t called my name, and to top it all off now I was getting old. The tipping point came when I passed by a mirror and instead of finding Obama or Pelosi, the only idiot I found staring back was ME! It was go-time.

Thanks to my newfound “hope and change” 2010 kicked off with gusto. January brought a call from the American National Cattlewomen President-elect wondering if I would oblige them as Legislative Committee Chair. With this new position I had less than three weeks to try and get myself down to the NCBA Annual Convention to meet the ANCW crew I would be working with this next year. My cattle industry trip-planning style hadn’t failed me thus far so in keeping with tradition, I gathered enough pennies and nickels for a plane ticket to San Antonio the day before I flew out! Thanks to the PNW YCC trip the weekend prior, University of Idaho students offered up a spare bunk in their room my first two days at convention. The latter part of the week I bunked with my friend Amanda, whom I met last spring on the Young Cattlemen’s Conference trip. At the end of convention we steered her rig down a back highway en route to Fort Worth so I could take in the Texas landscape. I had less than 24 hours to experience Fort Worth, but we knew from our YCC trip we could efficiently use every hour while I was there! My only trip to Texas had been as a stop-through on my way to Mexico for a church mission trip when I was fifteen. This trip to Texas gave me the opportunity to actually experience the culture and environment while learning invaluable information at the NCBA convention.

As a first-time attendee at the NCBA Convention, it felt similar to a first day at college. Over 6,000 NCBA members from across the US attended this year. Also in attendance was a majority of my 2009 Young Cattlemen’s College classmates! More...

Before you sharpen your pitchforks, let’s see what Mary Kay has to say.

   Yesterday, HumaneWatch.org made an announcement that the famous Mary Kay brand was supporting an HSUS fundraiser event in Dallas. Obviously, agriculture groups and people are up in arms. And it didn’t take too long before the word started to spread, just like the Yellowtail fiasco.

  But, before we clean our medicine cabinets of our Mary Kay products and stop our next orders maybe WE should ask some questions. Does Mary Kay really know how their name is being used, and what HSUS stands for, likely not. I guess I am maybe a bit too much of an optimist, but I would think there are just too many rural and agriculture women that sell and wear this brand to let their name be associated with HSUS.

 According, to several posts on HumaneWatch’s facebook page Mary Kay is already working to resolve a problem that they weren’t even aware of. It appears that Mary Kay has been involved in a case of fraud to be quite frank. I would hate to see agriculture women suffer because of lies that HSUS has spread.

  I am asking that agriculture does the same thing that we are asking corporations to do – research. Research what you see in the media, research where you are putting your dollars, and continue to research the moves that HSUS is making so we can fight against them.

  It looks like it is going to hopefully be safe to keep on supporting the pink!

   Update from Mary Kay - March 9, 2010

  Humane Society Concerns

  Some fans of Mary Kay® products and independent beauty consultants have expressed concerns over a recent sponsorship of a Dallas-area event. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. We have heard you and want to clarify any confusion.

 First and foremost, Mary Kay is not a sponsor of this event. Mary Kay’s owner’s wife was approached to make a personal contribution towards a local event here in Dallas sponsored by the Dallas chapter of the Humane Society. This event specifically supports efforts to stop puppy mills and the organization’s stop puppy mills campaign. Out of caring and compassion for addressing puppy mills, our owner’s wife agreed to make a personal contribution. Mary Kay has contacted the Humane Society to clarify that we are not sponsors of this event and the company logo is being removed from the website.

  As a company, we sincerely apologize for any confusion or causing any offense to members of the Mary Kay community.

I turned the first draft of the last chapter of my Master’s thesis in today! I’m sure I’ll share more about my thesis project with you as I get closer to defense time. My project focuses on how beef producers can effectively communicate with an urban public. For now, I’ll share one of my recommendations and a bit of my personal experience.

In my tactical recommendations for producers, I encourage them to advocate for agriculture in a variety of communication mediums – from printed letters to the editor and news media to the online environment and face-to-face communication. Social media in particular is a place I think is a good fit for “agvocacy” (agriculture + advocacy).

In my personal experience, social networking advocacy works. The Humane Society of the United States is an organization that – despite its misleading name – does not operate any animal shelters or spay and neuter clinics but does spend a considerable amount of its time and money lobbying against animal agriculture. From time to time, I utilize my personal Facebook page to share this with others. Below is a screen shot of an interaction where my friend Craig’s opinion of HSUS changed based on my Facebook advocacy. Craig is a law student specializing in administrative law with an interest in politics.  

I had a similiar interaction recently with my friend Tina, a Wichita nurse.

The smoke drifted hazily up to the rafters, and the cadence of the auctioneer's voice sounded just like I remembered. The cattle in the ring, a nice set of black steer calves, sold just under a dollar, and I smiled. The market was up, the buyers were in the seats - it was gonna be fun.

I haven't been to a livestock auction in years. I used to go with my dad when I was growing up. We didn't go that often - there was too much work to get done, but when he was looking for replacement heifers or selling the cull cows, we'd hay and feed and then head to the sale. Oddly enough, I don't ever remember looking around and wondering why there weren't many other girls there, especially young ones as I was. Everybody knew dad and I just thought that's where I was supposed to be.

The best sales to go to, of course, were the yearling sales. There's an energy surrounding yearling sales that doesn't exist at a cow sale. Maybe it's because all the feedlot buyers are there. Maybe it's because a year of hard work and hard times are sitting in the ring. Maybe it's because there's just something about seeing a nice set of red steers...or black, white or yellow...milling about in the ring. Everyone in the crowd kind of leans forward when one of those nice sets of calves come through the gates. There is an appreciation for good beef at a livestock auction that doesn't exist outside of this world.

The thing is, the cattle business can feel awfully lonely. If it's not calving struggles, it's shortage of feed, bad weather or slow market prices. And all of those lead to the ultimate problem of the banker knocking on the door wanting his money. Pretty soon, it feels like you're the only one facing these problems. Cubicle workers don't have to fight mud or lie awake at night wondering if they should keep the steers on feed for another two weeks in hopes of the market improving, and sometimes the overwhelming task of trying to beat the odds gets pretty heavy.

Popping into the sale last week reminded me what I liked so much about the livestock auction. It's a culture. It's a support group - in an informal, unspoken way. Just looking around, you realize you're not in this business alone, and sometimes, that's all it takes to help you jump out of bed ready to face another day.