Sight

How does the saying go? If you want to give god a good chuckle, make some plans.

I had planned to post up the first part of a series on the use of antibiotics in food animals this week. But things didn't work out as planned.

I woke up last Friday morning with something wrong with the vision in my right eye. Things were clear in the left, blurry in the right. Not terribly blurry, but enough to bother me. The right eye felt full, too, almost as if someone had popped me a good one and given me a shiner. In the mirror, though, there was no black eye, no swelling. As nearly as I could tell, both eyes looked normal. But the blurry vision persisted, seeming almost like I was looking through a nearly transparent curtain.

As the day progressed, the eye stayed pretty much the same, but toward evening I started seeing fleeting shadows and bright spots in my peripheral vision. There was no pain, and only the fairly mild symptoms I described above. Maybe I was just tired, I thought. With the onset of calving I’d been putting in a lot of hours.

Saturday morning brought no change, however. The eye was no worse, no better. I decided to give it another day. No change Sunday morning. I managed to muddle through the weekend, but by Monday morning I knew I needed to get it checked out. So off to Cheyenne.

I’m blessed and fortunate to be able to get my medical care through the Veterans Administration system. I called ahead, talked to a nurse, and reported to the emergency room at the VA Medical Center.

Almost before I could take a seat in the waiting room, I was whisked in to see the ER doc, then quickly whisked upstairs to ophthalmology. Within a few more minutes the eye doctor was putting drops in my eyes and conducting a thorough examination. When she completed the exam she said that there were signs of swelling at the optic nerve in my right eye. My symptoms and the swelling, she said, were consistent with Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA), also called Temporal Arteritis. GCA is an immune disorder, related to Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The cause of GCA, just as in RA, is unknown. The pathology of the disease – how it affects the body – is the formation of so-called giant, multinucleated cells in the lining of medium and large arteries, commonly those in the head. The giant cells are a form of swelling, and the swelling reduces the flow of blood through the affected arteries. In my case, the swelling was probably reducing blood flow through the optic artery, which supplies the eye, she said.

If the blood flow to the eye is reduced for long enough, or interrupted entirely, the eye doctor said, it would lead to loss of vision in the eye. Blindness, in other words. This is why, she quickly added, that she would treat my symptoms as a medical emergency. The important thing is to quickly reduce the swelling, she said, and for that they would give me intravenous steroids for 24 hours.

So back to the ER, where I was punctured for lab work and an IV. Within a few minutes the crack ER staff had administered 250 mg of an IV corticosteroid. Over the next 24 hours I received three more doses of the steroid at six-hour intervals. By the time I had the second dose, the feeling of pressure in my eye was easing, though the vision remained blurred.

On Tuesday morning the eye doctor put me on oral steroids and scheduled me for an MRI on Wednesday, to take a close look at my eyes and at the vasculature of my head. “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe there’s something in there after all.”

The eye doctor also scheduled me for a biopsy of my right temporal artery on Friday. The only way to confirm the diagnosis, she said, is to look at a piece of artery under the microscope and see if the giant cells are present.

While this turn of events has been sudden and has come as something of a shock, it looks (as I write this) like we caught the problem soon enough to give me the chance of an excellent outcome. Only time, and a few more tests, will tell.

One thing is certain, though. The care I continue to receive through the VA system is absolutely top-notch and state of the art. The staff of the Cheyenne VA Medical Center are simply wonderful, from top to bottom. They do a tough job and see an enormous number of patients. They are always busy. Yet they take the time to treat each patient as an individual, and go out of their way to treat each veteran as an important person. At some point, nearly every staff member I’ve met has thanked me for my service. The level of concern and quality of care shows that those are much more than empty words.

Regardless of how this thing turns out, I’ll never be able to adequately tell the Cheyenne VA staff how very much their care and dedication mean to me. And by extension, since you taxpayers foot the bill, how very grateful I am to each and every one of you.

It's not rocket science

Last week I had an interesting exchange with a reader regarding the use of antibiotics in food animals. While we don’t agree on how antibiotics should be used, my reader and I do agree that understanding basic science is extremely important when it comes to assessing reports on this (or nearly any) topic addressed in the media in general.

Let me point out here that there's nothing wrong with, and everything right with, divergent informed opinions. My reader is an extremely bright person and one whose opinion I value a great deal. Objective debate is one of the best learning tools ever developed.

The reader pointed me to an article posted in a blog at Discover Magazine’s Web site. The article – about gene transfer among E. coli bacteria – was interesting, though at a slight tangent to our discussion of antibiotic use in food animals. The name of the blog, however, caught my attention and forced my thinking in a new and promising direction. A tiny “ah-ha” moment in the life of a curious person.

The biggest problem in the debate, which seeks to answer whether the use of antibiotics in food animals causes the development of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains that threaten human health, has nothing to do with food animals, antibiotics, or bacteria. The problem is getting thoughtful people on the same page so far as understanding the basic science of the debate. The major media and many science writers have fallen short in this.

I'm going to make Katie Couric stand as the typical media journalist here. I’ve taken Couric to task before. It’s not fair to appoint her the  representative of her profession, but life isn’t fair, and my points are valid.

The approach Couric chose to take in reporting on the debate was to take sides, assign blame, and sensationalize. These things are forbidden by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. To do this she cherry-picked data from several studies, reporting only those data that supported her side of the argument and ignoring data from the same studies which did not support her side.

In essence, her special report stated that U.S. farmers are knowingly putting the health of food consumers in jeopardy by pumping their livestock full of antibiotics. This practice, she argued, causes the development of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains which are directly passed to humans who consume animal food products. She sensationalized the story by announcing that “…drug resistant infections have sky-rocketed over the past two decades, killing an estimated 70,000 Americans last year alone.” U.S. farmers, she said, are knowingly, though indirectly, causing these deaths in their zeal to increase profits.

Branding, vaccinating, and treating calves for parasites during fall weaning on the EJE Ranch near Kimball, Neb.

In thinking about why many major media reporters, and even some scientists, seem to be willing to hide or alter information, I had long ago drawn the conclusion that they were willing to cast aside professional ethics for what was in their mind (or in their collective narrative) the “greater good,” and that they were aided in this by an unknowing and unfortunately scientifically illiterate public.

If so many media types are bent on duping the public, thought I, then my own professional responsibility must be to educate the public. Nice theory, but wrong. I had fallen neatly into the same trap that snapped up Couric and so many of her peers.

Reading the blog post suggested by my reader, or rather, reading the name of the blog, snapped my thinking onto a new avenue. The name of the blog? Not Exactly Rocket Science.

In thinking about the name of the blog, I thought about how true it is as a statement of the fundamental character of science. Not even rocket science is rocket science, at least not by the definition of the very popular phrase. You know the one, where one person chides another who is struggling with a seemingly simple problem. “C’mon Joe, it’s not rocket science.”

But as I said, neither is rocket science. In fact, while rocket science is complex, it is simply the application (for the most part) of Newtonian physics, the basics of which have been known for centuries and which nearly all of us are introduced to in elementary school as the laws of motion.

As I thought about this, I realized it was simply wrong to accuse the U.S. population in general of being scientifically illiterate.

If you’re able to read this, and most of you are, then you’ve almost certainly been introduced to the basics of scientific methodology. And those basics are pretty straightforward. You think about a problem and you wonder “why?” In thinking about it, you come up with a possible explanation, or hypothesis. You think about it some more and come up with a way to test your hypothesis in an experiment. The results of your experiment tell you whether the hypothesis was right or wrong, and if it was wrong, you often get a feel for how far off you were and an idea of how to refine your hypothesis into a theory.

The scientific method seems to be fundamental to the way we all learn and grow in knowledge. From the earliest age, we observe and explore our environment, trying and learning new things, finding what works and what doesn’t work.

In doing science, however, we have to add rigorous honesty and objectivity to the mix. These things are the foundation of science, and when honesty and objectivity are lacking, the resulting product is a sham, little better than astrology or tarot card reading.

In one sense, it’s a bit unfair to expect lay people to apply rigor to the process of understanding the stories they view, listen to or read. But as I’ve said, the world isn’t fair. If the individual wants to better understand the world, the individual must do the work of thinking honestly and objectively.

Grandkids feed bottle-calf Haji on the EJE Ranch.

Journalists, on the other hand, have a code of ethics to fall back on. Manipulating data is ethically wrong, and I hold journalists who do so in contempt. There are some few signs pointing toward a slow, halting return to ethical standards in journalism. This should be strongly encouraged.

I'll write more on the use of antibiotics in food animals. It's an important topic for food producers and consumers alike. From a rancher's perspective, antibiotics provide an important tool for keeping livestock healthy so that they can become safe and nutritious food. From the consumer's perspective, objective information about food production is at a premium, particularly when so many are fed by so few, and only a small fraction of consumers have any experience with agriculture. I hope you’ll follow and enjoy the series, but most of all I hope you’ll read it with a skeptical eye, checking my data and hypotheses and calling me to task where I stray from the path of objectivity.

Food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans

The U.S. food system, in which American ag producers make up the foundation, has been under attack on various fronts for the past several years. Attacks have come from intellectual leftists, global warming alarmists, trial lawyers, animal rights activists, school administrators and boards, and the major media, among others.


The food system in general, and farmers and ranchers in particular, have been accused of contributing to man-made global warming, of producing and marketing foods tainted with pesticides, herbicides and hormones, and of inhumane and cruel treatment of livestock. In a neat contradictory claim, ag producers have been accused of causing obesity and diabetes by producing too much cheap, nutritious food, while at the same time of causing food anxiety and hunger by charging high prices for under-produced crops.

Few of the claims made against the food system are objectively true. Often a single incident or hypothesis has been the basis for wildly improbable claims. Most of the attacks are logically inconsistent, yet reported with righteous fervor. Recently, in a prime-time exclusive reported by Katie Couric of CBS News, livestock producers were accused of driving up antibiotic resistance in humans through over use of antibiotics in their animals. Couric essentially argued that producers in the U.S. heavily medicate their livestock from birth to slaughter for the sole purpose of increasing growth. More pounds equals more profit, she argued, at the expense of causing a potentially devastating epidemic of untreatable bacterial disease across the country.

Couric’s report was chock-full of inaccuracies, false claims and wildly off-base assumptions and conclusions. On February 10, 2010, the former USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Food and Safety responded to the report. Dr. H. Scott Hurd, now an Associate Professor of Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine at Iowa State University, said that Couric got the story far wrong, and that the story as reported was wrong on nearly every point.

Here are the claims made by Couric, followed (in italics) by Dr. Hurd’s rebuttals. Hurd notes that the facts he provides represent the best available and most current knowledge regarding antibiotic use in livestock and its impact on animals, humans and food safety.

COURIC: A University of Iowa study last year found a new strain of Methicillin-Resistant StaphAureus (MRSA) — in hogs (70 percent), and workers (64 percent) — on several farms in Iowa and western Illinois. All of them use antibiotics, routinely. On antibiotic-free farms no MRSA was found.

HURD: This very small pilot study sampled fewer than 300 pigs. In it, only six farms used antibiotic-free production methods. The claim that usch production is always free of MRSA is not true as there have been organic farms in other countries that have been found to be 100 percent positive for MRSA. On the other hand, in this Iowa study, some of the conventional farms that did use antibiotics were 100 percent free of MRSA. A University of Iowa study which went unreported by Couric found conventional farms with MRSA rates in pigs of 23 percent, not 70 percent. In personnel, the rate was 58 percent, not “nearly two-thirds.” The type of MRSA that has been associated with livestock is unique and has not been found in human disease surveillance. It is very unlikely that the people interviewed for the Couric story had livestock-associated MRSA, rather, it’s much more likely these people had the very common community-acquired strain of MRSA from being in close contact with infected people. also, the antibiotics used in modern pork production are not associated with the development of MRSA. Methicillin has never been used in animals in the United States.

COURIC: Health officials are concerned if workers who handle animals are getting sick – what about the rest of us? Drug resistant infections have sky-rocketed over the past two decades, killing an estimated 70,000 Americans last year alone.

HURD: The drug-resistant infections referred to here have little, to no, relationship to any antibiotic use in animal agriculture. The types of drug-resistant infections that are lethal are often associated with hospital-acquired infections – and the antibiotic used in those facilities. According to the FDA, resistance in food-borne illness is stable to declining over the last several years. Scientific risk assessments conducted by myself and others have shown a person is more likely to die from a bee sting than have a few extra days of diarrhea due to a resistant infection acquired from on-farm antibiotic use.

COURIC: Antibiotic resistance is an emerging health crisis that scientists say is caused not only by the overuse of antibiotics in humans, but in livestock as well. Antibiotics fed to healthy animals to promote growth and prevent disease.

HURD: Strategic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture prevents disease and produces safer food.A side benefit of this use is faster growth. Antibiotics have been used in humans for more than 60 years and in livestock for about 50 years, if there was going to be an epidemic of resistance related to antibiotic use in agriculture it would have occurred by now. The fact that it has not means that antibiotic use in animals is not a major risk to human health.

COURIC: “My fear is that one of these days we are going to have an organism that's resistant to everything that we know, and we'll be left powerless,” said Dr. Thomas Cummins. “There are a lot of concerns about antibiotics being added to animal feeds that may be contributing to MRSA as well as other antibiotic resistance. Certainly the more bacteria are exposed to antibiotics in any shape or form, the more tendency there is for resistance.”

HURD: While the types of antibiotics used in animal feeds do not contribute to the development of MRSA, the concern over the development of antibiotic resistance is why veterinarians and farmers have spent more than 20 years continually improving their antibiotic use. The results of these improvements are evident in FDA-monitoring studies that show that resistance in target pathogens is stable to declining.

COURIC: There are different types of drug-resistant bacteria. Some, like E. coli and salmonella, can be passed on to people by consuming undercooked meat and poultry. Now, scientists are worried that Americans may be acquiring drug-resistant MRSA – not from eating, but from handling tainted meat from animals that were given antibiotics.

HURD: Research demonstrates that when MRSA has been found on meat, it is present in extremely low levels. Because of this, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Food Safety Authority both conclude that the likelihood of MRSA being spread by handling or eating meat is very low. As always, when meat is handled and cooked properly, there is virtually no risk of becoming sick from a food-borne pathogen.

COURIC: Evidence of MRSA has been found in the nation's meat supply. But it's unclear how widespread it may be, because only a small fraction is tested for MRSA.

HURD: MRSA is not a food-borne illness, thus testing meat is unnecessary. The CDC and the European Food Safety Authority agree that the risk of MRSA from handling or eating meat is very low.

COURIC: ‘If the bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics, it can actually spread in many ways,” Hearne said. “It could be in the food supply, but it also can be in waters that runoff in a farm. It could be in the air. It can happen very quickly in many different ways. It's why it's a practice that has to stop on the farms.”

HURD: There is no evidence to support that these routes contribute to the human health concerns around antimicrobial resistance. Food-borne illness rates are declining, and resistance in those pathogens is stable to declining. Environmental spread of these pathogens is largely theoretical.

COURIC: Using antibiotics to help animals absorb and process food so they grow bigger, faster is a selling point pushed by the pharmaceutical industry. Because animals are packed into confinement pens, antibiotics are also used to keep disease from spreading like wildfire.

HURD: Antibiotic use is one very important tool to maintain animal health in farms of all sizes and structures. Other tools used include hygiene, proper diet and nutrition, providing the proper environment and vaccination. Antibiotics help the animals grow healthier, improve animal well-being and help provide safe food.

COURIC: But the bottom line on antibiotic use is this: no one is really monitoring it.

HURD: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates antibiotic use in both humans and animals. The FDA inspects the feed mills that would produce medicated feed. The agency also evaluates the safety of antibiotics used in animals for human safety. And, the FDA works with the USDA to conduct tests in processing facilities to make sure those regulations for antibiotic use are followed. It’s clearly a highly regulated practice.

COURIC: Antibiotics in Denmark are used sparingly and only when animals are sick.

HURD: That is true. So sparingly in fact that farmers and veterinarians are not even allowed to use antibiotics to prevent common illnesses they know are coming. They must wait until pigs suffer and die. The Danish Pilot Program resulted in an increase in diarrhea in pigs and a 25 percent increase in deaths. Many small farmers were driven out of business due to this ban. The number of farms went from 25,000 in 1995 to less than 10,000 in 2005. What appeared to be a ban on antibiotic use in healthy pigs actually pointed out the benefits of its use in helping pigs grow healthy.

COURIC: The experiment to stop widespread use of antibiotics was launched 12 years ago, when European studies showed a link between animals that were consuming antibiotic feed everyday and people developing antibiotic-resistant infections from handling or eating that meat.

HURD: No studies ever showed such a linkage. The government records clearly show it was a precautionary action due to the possibility of risk. Denmark is a very small country which produces fewer pigs than the state of Iowa. Their experiment was not on a national scale in terms of size.

COURIC: Since the ban, the Danish pork industry has grown by 43 percent – making it one of the top exporters of pork in the world. All of Europe followed suit in 2006. But the American Pork Industry doesn't want to.

HURD: In 1997, the Danish pork production was 21.2 million head. In 2008, the industry had grown to 27 million, but about 5 million pigs were exported to other European countries to be fed for market. That means that net growth in the industry was approximately 5 percent, not the 43 percent reported by Couric. The Danish Government’s own report states that since 1998, the first year of the ban, active kilograms of antimicrobials used to treat animals increased 110 percent while animal production has only increased 5 percent.

COURIC: Without growth-promoting antibiotics, it only costs $5 more for every 100 pounds of pork brought to market in this country.

HURD: According to a recent analysis by Iowa State University, a U.S. ban would increase costs by approximately $6 per animal in the first year. The total cost of a ban to all U.S. pork producers, spread across a ten-year period, could be in excess of $1.1 billion and lead to a 2 percent hike in consumer pork prices. Even though the ban raised pork prices and put small producers out of business, cost is not really the issue. The focus should be on public health. Did the ban in Denmark improve public health? Neither the World Health Organization nor I find any evidence that it did.

COURIC: Dr. Ellen Silbergeld said, “I think the Danish and European experience indicate that there will be real and measurable public health benefits. There’ll be improvements in food safety and actually in the prevalence of drug resistant infections in people.”

HURD: The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated there was no evidence of improved public health. In fact, resistant rates in human Salmonella cases have increased, and Denmark is currently experiencing their largest outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA) in its history. Denmark has seen a largest increase in human MRSA cases since it banned antibiotic growth promotion in animal agriculture.

COURIC: According to one study, when different countries introduced certain antibiotics on farms, a surge occurred in people contracting antibiotic resistant intestinal infections one to two years later. One infection, Campylobacter, increased 20 percent in Denmark and 70 percent in Spain.

HURD: The example of resistant Campylobacter does not relate to the use of antibiotics for growth promotion or even of any antibiotics in feed. The type of antibiotic, fluoroquinolones, was used to treat sick animals, and in the United States required a veterinary prescription. In pigs, they were delivered by giving the animals a shot. The antibiotics that have been used in feed in the U.S. are old— most have been used for more than 40 years. In addition, risk assessments have shown that they do not pose a risk to human health. FDA surveillance shows that resistance to these antibiotics in pork products is steady to declining.

COURIC: After the ban, a Danish study confirmed that removing antibiotics from farms drastically reduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and food.

HURD: The only resistance that decreased was in Entercoccus spp., which is not a food-borne pathogen. The total tonnage of antibiotic used in Denmark decreased after the ban, however, the amount of product used to treat sick pigs increased 100 percent. The key point is that the type of drug used to treat sick pigs was different than those used to prevent disease. The World Health Organization notes, “It is probable, however, that termination of antimicrobial growth promoters had an indirect effect on resistance to tetracycline resistance among Salmonella Typhimurium because of an increase in therapeutic tetracycline use in food animals. Increased tetracycline resistance among Salmonella may result in additional human Salmonella infections… since persons who take tetracycline for other reasons are at increased risk of becoming infected with tetracycline-resistant Salmonella.” Based on this, there might be more risk now than before the ban because of an increase in treatments. Also, resistance in human food-borne pathogens, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter has not decreased at all.

COURIC: Danish scientists believe if the U.S. doesn't stop pumping its farm animals with antibiotics, drug-resistant diseases in people will only spread.

HURD: That’s simply not an accurate description of what America’s pork producers do at all. Drug resistance in food-borne disease is not the major concern with human-resistance issues. Less than 1 percent of food-borne illnesses require antibiotic therapy. The human-health crisis with resistance is focused on pathogens that are often hospital-acquired. Bans, such as what Denmark implemented, will not address those issues.

COURIC: It costs very little to convert a farm to antibiotic-free. And it doesn't cost consumers much more either. The example was given showing that antibiotic-free pork production would only cost farmers $5 more per hundredweight or 5 cents per pound, so why not just do it to improve human health?

HURD: U.S. economists have shown that if those same antibiotic bans occurred in California, it would add $5 to the cost of every pig. Because I spent three months working in Denmark, I can assure you these effects are real and still present. For this reason, I hope U.S. decision makers will balance this information with the goal of protecting finite resources while feeding a growing population. Attempts to ban antibiotic use in livestock won’t improve human health, and indeed may result in an increase of food-borne disease.

Share your story

Spring arrived on Sunday, March 20, and so did the EJE’s first calf of 2011(click on the pictures for a larger view).

The little red and white goggle-eyed heifer weighed 75 pounds and was already dried off and had nursed by the time the sun was topping the east horizon. A lively little thing, she was already prancing around a bit in the warming dawn.

As the first day of spring arrived on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb., so did the first calf of the year. This little heifer was born without any problems at all to a four year-old cow.

When I came back to tag her a few hours later she was dozing in the sun, digesting a belly full of rich milk. Tagging, vaccinating and weighing her took no time at all and her mother, a five year-old cow, watched carefully but quietly from a few feet away.

As she sticks close to momma, this newborn heifer calf looks at a brand new world, including the photographer, with curiosity.

It was a good day to be a newborn calf, with temperatures climbing into the low 60’s and only a bit of south breeze.

This little newborn heifer calf seems to be wondering what the bright thing in the sky is as she gazes heavenward last Sunday on the EJE ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

On the day before, Saturday, March 19, a ranch visit by family members from Sidney and Chadron prompted an afternoon prairie hike.

Several members of the Evertson Family enjoy a prairie hike Saturday on the EJE Ranch.

The weather was nearly perfect for mid-March on the High Plains. The sky was deep and wide and blue, with only a few fleecy clouds hunched around the horizon. The sun was bright and warming but not yet hot, and illuminated a shortgrass prairie ecosystem coming alive after months of frozen winter.

Jake, Julia, Austin and puppy Desi pause for a rest in a canyon cave Saturday as they hiked across parts of the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

Underfoot the ground was pleasantly springy; no longer frozen hard as iron in winter’s arctic grip. While in the long view the prairie still looked drab and sere, covered with dry, stem-cured grass, in the near view the green of new growth was fairly bursting from the warming soil.

Julia, Austin and Jake take a breather in a dry wash Saturday during a family hike on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

As the five of us – myself, brother Matt, and his kids Jake, Julia and Austin – meandered across the quickening prairiescape, we slowly walked through the scattered cow herd. It was a good opportunity to field the endless stream of questions posed by the youngsters. Though they’d all been to the ranch many times, this was their first excursion afoot among the cows, and they were a bit apprehensive at first. “Will they chase us?” Will they stampede?” Will they eat us?”

As they relaxed into the experience, their questions changed. “Are they really going to have babies soon?” “How come that one is pooping?” “Why do they eat this yucky grass?” “Do they really drink that yucky water (from the stock tank)?”

I think that sometimes they ask questions just to hear a story. But at another level, they seem to have a great deal of interest in the how’s and the why’s of ranch life and raising cattle.

Regardless of the motive, though, their questions provided a great opportunity to explain. And explaining our ranching operation, or “telling our story,” is an important part of preserving our ranching lifestyle and heritage.

Whether to family, friends, or visitors, telling our story is vitally important to all of us in the production ag sector. Most people in the US are three or more generations removed from the farm/ranch experience, and most have only a superficial and simplistic understanding of what we do to produce their food. With a very few exceptions, what people “learn” about farming and ranching from newspapers, radio, television and in the classroom is incomplete at best, misleading and dishonest at worst.

The slick anti-ag efforts of HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) and other well-heeled and well–organized activist groups to legislate livestock into extinction are coming closer to fruition each day. HSUS Chairman Wayne Pacelle is on record as saying that he wouldn’t be bothered by the extinction of food animals, as they are essentially “man-made” creatures and therefore not “natural.” He’s also said he has the time and money to spend the rest of his life on a quest to rid the US of animal agriculture.

Pacelle can only succeed with the consent of the American people. But so far, his voice has been the loudest, the most heard, and has carried a superficially reasonable message. Who doesn’t love animals? If you love animals, you must rid the country of “brutal factory farming.”

So share your story whenever you find the opportunity. Be honest, forthright, and open. People are smart, and few if any Americans want Wayne Pacelle to mandate veganism as the law of the land. They’ll understand if they have the opportunity to see and hear the truth.

Circle of life

I find that grass scouting on foot can be a very enjoyable way to spend time. Monday I hiked out across parts of the ranch where we are running cattle, as well as adjacent areas where we plan to move the herd for calving.

As I strode across a drab and, to the cursory glance, barren prairie, I could just begin to feel the first inklings of spring. Temperatures have been creeping up for a couple of weeks and bright sunshine has both melted the recent snow and begun to warm the ground, slowly releasing winter’s frosty grasp.

The warming air was still coolish. Monday was, after all, only March 14. Yet the breeze was no longer blowing across snow cover, and as the day wore on, the temperature climbed steadily into the low 60’s. I did the math in my head, and deduced that it was the first day of the last week of calendar Winter. By the time many of you read this note, calendar Spring will have arrived.

A week ago the air, though warm at times, smelled sterile and lifeless. There were a few hardy insects out and about in the warmer afternoons, but it was still clearly winter. A fading winter, but nonetheless still winter.

On Monday the coolish air felt and smelled different. There was a strong touch of a muddy, earthy, growing smell in the air. The southwest wind carried the mating song of Western Meadowlark, the first of the season.

Golden-green leaves of crested wheatgrass

Underfoot, the first golden leaves of early grass were making their appearance. So far there was crested wheatgrass, smooth and downy brome, and thread- and needle-leaf sedge. There wasn’t a lot of it; the few tiny golden-green leaves I saw were the first to emerge. The cattle were finding them, though, and I marveled once again at their ability to find and harvest the most delectable and nutritious morsels of browse as they move across the vast and quickening prairiescape.

There will still be snow and frost and hard freezes. Across the south Panhandle the average last day of frost falls sometime in mid-May. But the birdsong, the insects, the smell of warm and fertile soil, and the new golden-green shoots of grass point to the annual rebirth of life across the region. These things put a spring in my step.

A young bull crops new grass

As I hiked along on Monday and meandered through the cow herd, I counted and looked the animals over. Many are beginning to spread in the rear as birth canal ligaments begin to loosen. Most were beginning to “make bag” as their udders swelled with development. They were all obviously far along in their pregnancies, roly-poly fat with calves. They were intent on grazing and on feasting on the new, greening grass. The sun was warm but the breeze cool, and to my eye, the cows seemed content. The youngest cows, still technically heifers, did a bit of pushing and chasing. The bulls, aloof and apart from the rest of the herd, placidly grazed along, heads to the ground.

I finished my inspection and count and came up one cow short. Since I was on the east edge of the pasture, I struck off to the west, knowing I’d likely find the cow off by herself with a new calf. As I hiked along I enjoyed the day, enjoyed the physical exertion, enjoyed watching the prairie wake from her long winter snooze. I topped a rise and spied the missing cow about a half-mile away, just south of a windmill near the slope of an old gravel pit. Sure enough, she was licking off a new calf.

As I drew closer, though, I could see that something wasn’t quite right. The cow was doing more sniffing than licking, and the calf, flat out on its side, didn’t seem to be moving. The cow nervously eyed me as I approached. She would look at me, pace a few steps away, then turn and walk back to the calf, nudging and sniffing.

At fifty or so feet from the pair, I realized that the calf was probably dead. At twenty feet I was certain. The calf was still and motionless, eyes open but glazed and unfocused. As I approached I spoke reassuringly to the cow in a low voice, “easy girl, easy momma, whatcha got here girl?”

The calf was a pretty little red heifer, brockle-faced just like the cow. Looking a the still little form, she seemed a near-perfect miniature of the cow. As I eased closer, the cow was clearly excited by my proximity, instinct and hormones telling her to protect her baby. But her excitement was only half-hearted, as if she knew that something was badly wrong.

I leaned over and placed my hand on the calf’s side, feeling for movement, for heartbeat, for breathing, even though I knew those things wouldn’t be there. The calf was dry and still warm; she must have expired only minutes before I arrived. The cow sniffed my hand, licked the calf a few more times, gave my arm a half-hearted shove with her nose, then took a few steps back and watched.

I sat down on the cool, newly growing prairie next to the calf and did the mental gymnastics of coming to terms with the death of a calf, the death of the first calf of the season.

I was saddened by the fundamental loss of the calf. She seemed pretty and well formed. She was a bit on the small side, only 60 pounds or so, but that was to be expected with an early birth. Still, there must have been some kind of fatal defect. An otherwise healthy, albeit early, calf would have long since been up and about. The sadness I felt was for the life the calf wouldn’t live. No long summer of growth and play and calf-socialization. But nature knows best.

I also thought about the economic impact of a dead calf. This one, had she lived, would probably have made a fine replacement heifer. She had the right genetics, anyway. But even if not a replacement heifer, she would still likely have brought $700-$800 in the late fall. Perhaps more. As they say, you can’t sell a dead calf.

As I hiked away I felt bad about the dead calf. It’s fair to say that I grieve when I lose an animal. Doesn’t seem tough, macho, or manly, but there it is. But I also understand how nature works, and I understand the fundamental nature of the business I’m engaged in. I grieve, but I work through it. I’m fortunate that I’m not a purely emotional being. I know many of those, and I feel bad for them.

I’m fortunate – blessed, really – that I grew up on a ranch and learned about the reality of life and death from an early age. The great circle of life has always been a comfort to me. I’m not sure whether a person who is never exposed to life’s harsher realities can reasonably deal with them when they inevitably crop up.

As I trudged across the awaking prairie my heart was filled with the joy of the season and tinged with the sadness of loss. A bittersweet moment, but on the whole, far more sweet than bitter.


A Llama and new cria were as curious about me as I was about them.



Winter Pause

I wrote this for publication but got rejected. I'm afraid you poor readers are going to have to suffer through it. Click on the pictures to see a larger image.

As I feed calves on a bright February morning, I hear it calling. A whisper at first, barely audible, borne on the barest whiff of breeze, like the first cranesong of autumn. “Let’s go.”
It gets louder, clearer. “C’mon, let’s go. It’s been too long. Let’s go….” It’s the prairie calling me, and the prairie is right. It’s been too long.

Autumn was long and warm and filled with work. Fencing, corrals, weaning, sorting, moving cattle, setting stock tanks, getting hay in, hauling feed. The sun moved south and the days shortened and the weather stayed unseasonably warm and mild.

Winter arrived with a bone-chilling blast of arctic air. Temperatures fell below zero and stayed there. Dry snow came in spurts and gathered in dirty, untidy piles, blown here and there by a biting, constant wind.

Work became physically hard and demanding. Tough enough in fair weather, feeding cows and calves became a miserable chore when the cold and snow and wind came. Winter conspired to carve away summer fat and pared deep down into the heart of me, to the core of will and duty perseverance.

And then winter paused for a few short hours.

Dried and empty, last year’s yucca pods lend texture to February’s shortgrass prairie landscape in the southwest Panhandle of Nebraska.

Yucca, buffalo and grama grasses and deep blue sky line a prairie canyon rim south of Kimball Feb. 19.

The day was one of those you dream about while mired in the arctic depths of winter. The sky was clear and blue and cloudless, the sun was bright, and the air was still and warm, its temperature hovering somewhere in the mid-60’s.

Lovely February days come to the High Plains, but they don’t come every February. Forecasters forecast them, but they don’t always materialize, and when they do, they usually haven’t been presaged. When a lovely February day appears, unbidden and unanticipated, I hear the call. “Let’s go. It’s been too long.” When everything breaks right in mid-February there’s only one thing for me to do. Grab my gear and follow the call.

I stride out across the uneven shortgrass prairie. From a distance, it looks agreeably flat, but hiking it reveals a different truth. Every square foot is a mountain range cast small, with peaks and valleys of native bunch grasses; wheat grass and needle grasses and grama grasses and Little Bluestem and buffalograss, to name but a few.

As evening comes on and the day cools off, cattle graze along a prairie swale Feb. 19 south of Kimball.

The uneven prairiescape makes good footwear a must, and I hike unashamed in $200 boots and $20 socks. I carry my usual load; rucksack and rifle, pistol and camera, GPS and water. The weight of my load enhances the workout value of the hike. The firearms do too, but more importantly, they ensure that I properly exercise the moral and ethical responsibility which attends my constitutional right.

In mid-February the grass is sere and brown and gray, winter-dormant, roots still gripped by frozen earth. The snow is mostly gone, but there’s no mistaking the winter landscape, nor the feel of deeply frozen ice beneath an inch or so of sun-mushed topsoil.

I head roughly north, where a pair of wells and windmills need checking. They lay over the horizon, two and three miles away. The prairie may call, but water for the herd has priority. Mixing the two is a fine solution.

As I hike along the pain in my ankles is intense and, at first, distracting. Experience tells me the pain will ease at some point, become less bothersome, recede from the forefront of experience. I earned bad ankles during years of service at sea. Walking and running on steel decks causes cumulative injury. For some it’s knees or hips or the back. For me it was Achilles tendons. Surgery has helped, but my young ankles are gone forever, traded away in good cause.

As the pain recedes and muscles loosen I push harder, stretching my stride and driving my heart rate into the fitness range. I begin to sweat and breathe more deeply. As the terrain rises my heart begins to pound and the air rushes in and out of my lungs. I begin to feel the ache of lactic acid building in leg muscles.

As I top a rise and put the first mile behind me, I catch sight of the windmills. I move easily now, muscles warm and working smoothly, heart pulsing and lungs breathing at an elevated but comfortable rate. The pain in my ankles eases and seems but a distant ache. I feel giddy and happy and content. The weight of everyday human existence falls away and I am suffused with a sense of peace. Surrounded by beauty, I go in beauty. The prairie may wear a drab coat this season, but it is no less striking than when it wears the colorful coat of spring and summer.

Ahead of me scampers a jackrabbit, cutting back and forth between clumps of yucca and appropriately-named rabbit brush. With a final zigzag, he disappears down the scree-covered bank of a dry wash. The prairie becomes more broken as I draw closer to what we call the canyonlands, deep cuts and draws and washes accumulated over millennia of natural erosion. High overhead, a pair of Ferruginous hawks soar in the warm air, tracing a broad, mile-wide oval in the crystalline sky. The air may be warm for the season, but it remains winter air, sterile and devoid of growing season odors and insects.

I drive on, pausing only to check my windmills. Both are functioning, turning slowly in the light breeze and pumping cupfuls of water into filling stock tanks. As I finish with the second windmill, I bend my course around to the east, eager to walk the floor of a canyon not visited since summer. Signs of cattle are everywhere; muddy hoof prints and hair-adorned rubbing rocks and piles of fresh manure.

I summit the last of the high ground and find the cow herd spread out before me in the swale leading to the canyon. They watch me closely but are unafraid; they know me and know that I’m as likely to appear before them afoot as in my trusty pickup. The rise is a good place to pause, so I shrug off my rucksack, lean my rifle carefully against it, and squat down to snap a few photographs.

I take in the scene before me, trying hard to pack every detail into the vault of memory. The camera is a wonderful device, capable of producing stunningly beautiful images, but it can’t capture everything, and often misses the most important parts. I know that someday my memories will have to serve when I hear the prairie call.

Rested, relaxed, and memory-filled, I take up my ruck and rifle and enter the canyon. It runs roughly northeast to southwest, in the general direction of home. Eroded out of limestone and siltstone, the canyon floor is mostly sand, packed firm enough for walking by melting snow. At its widest the canyon is about 50 feet, narrowing here and there to not much more than 20 inches. The walls vary from vertical, fractured rock to gentle, grass-covered slope. There are eroded caves scattered along the walls; some tiny and some large enough to shelter in. A few of the larger ones have soot-covered ceilings and other evidence of human habitation.

I climb up out of the canyon along a grassy slope and find myself less than a mile from home. The canyon offered relatively easy walking, but this last stretch is a long march up a steepening slope. I could go around the hill, but I crave the challenge of hard exertion. I drive myself up the slope, pushing hard against gravity and the visceral inclination to shorten my stride. Heart pounds and muscles ache and I’m not sure whether the roaring in my ears is an external or internal sound. Air dashes in and out of laboring lungs and my eight-pound rifle seems to weigh a hundred pounds.

Silly, winter-chasing grin

Finally the slope eases and my pickup, my destination, appears. The prairie becomes mostly level, and as I close in the pounding in my chest moderates and falls away into the background of the moment. At the pickup I lay down my rifle and slip the rucksack from tired shoulders. I’m lightly winded and my clothing is soaked in sweat. I check my GPS device and note that I made 6.5 miles in just over 100 minutes. Free of my load, I step back from the pickup and turn a full circle, taking in the prairie all around me and showing it a grin plastered face. I’ve answered the call and I feel wonderful. For the moment, at least, I’ve chased winter completely from my soul.

March Madness

To the sporting crowd, March Madness means basketball. I think. I don’t follow basketball myself though I know a lot of folks do, with watch parties and office pools and all kinds of basketball talk.


A chokecherry grows in the cleft of a rock it split 50 years ago.

Sports wise, I’m more interested in spring training and spring football, though I don’t follow either one very closely.

March is an interesting time of the year on the EJE Ranch. On March 1 (as I write this) we’re a month away from first calves, and a lot will happen this month.


Eagle Rock

The cows are in their final month of gestation, busy putting final touches on the calves they’ll soon be producing. They’ve been “building” these calves since last summer, and during that time they’ve had to live through an autumn drought, separation from last year’s calves, and an often harsh winter. They’ve used up a good bit of summer condition to get here, and will need good nutrition to finish gestation, calve, and begin lactation.


Windmill in Googie Gulch.

While the days are getting longer and nicer, the ground is still frozen under foot and the grasses are still dormant in their winter slumber. Over the next month the ground will thaw and the grasses (forbs too, of course) will begin to green up. In the meantime, however, those gestating cows will continue to need supplemental feed – hay mostly, but minerals as well – until the grasses boom to life and start producing grazeable biomass.


Aeromotor and gossamer sky

It’s also time to get myself prepared for calving. I’ve yet to round up the equipment and supplies and put them in their calving-season places, but I’ll get that done over the next few weeks. There’s also some work to do in the barn to make sure the calving pen and headgate are ready to go.

March weather is the real madness across the south Panhandle. The days are longer, and many are quite pleasant, but it’s not yet spring. The days can be delightful, but they can also be blisteringly cold and packed with heavy snow. With La Nina conditions continuing to prevail across the equatorial Pacific, meteorologists say we could be in for a wild weather ride including heavy spring blizzards.


Vader Ridge

Last week I hiked out across the prairie on a wonderfully warm day. There was little if any wind, so the hiking was more than pleasant. Yet the warm air still held the sterility of winter. There seemed to be no odors at all. Certainly no odors of growing things were present as I trudged across top-mushy ground that was still frozen rock-hard a few inches below.


Strokeout Butte

When I hiked again two days later, things were entirely different. It was chillingly cold and snowing, with a mild but biting south wind. I stayed off the prairie and stuck to the roads. As I trudged along the snowfall stuck to my clothes, covering me in an even, white blanket. Soon I matched the world I walked in, a potentially dangerous condition since there were a few cars and trucks out and about. I was plenty warm so long as I kept hiking along at an exercise pace; the several layers of clothing I wore and continually-produced body heat saw to that.

As I hiked along I was struck once again at how very different this country can look in a single week. One day I strode out across a brownish prairie, where windbreaks and yucca provided the only hints of color. I could see for miles in the clean, crisp air, and the sky was an enormous inverted bowl of cloudless blue. Then the weather changed, and I found myself hiking a winter landscape two days later. Snow was everywhere, covering nearly everything within my sight. Visibility was less than a quarter-mile, and falling snow blurred the world into a powdery softness.

Both hikes were enormously enjoyable, and each helped, in its way, to chase most of the winter “blah” from my soul. The nice day presaged spring, and the snowy day felt more like spring snow than winter snow.

Today I hiked the prairie again, and nearly all of last week’s abundant snow has gone. The ground is getting softer on top as winter’s frozen, vice-like grip begins to loosen in the soil. Still no green showing, but I did spot a grasshopper and a beetle out and about. The seasons, they are a changin.’

As I count down the days of March, drawing ever closer to calving, I’ll continue to see signs of the annual rebirth of spring. It’s not here yet, and there’s still liable to be far too much snow left in the season, but that’s okay. It’s part of the deal here on the High Plains, and spring is within reach.

Cattle prod: tool or torture device?

Monday was a pretty good day for the EJE Ranch. We sold last season’s calf crop and the strong feeder market ensured a good price. These were steer and heifer calves we chose to background after weaning, and they gained well in our little home-place feedlot, adding an average of just over 200 pounds per head since Nov. 1.

High corn and hay costs bit deeply into our margin, of course, but the market was strong enough to ensure a reasonably tidy profit.

Shipping day, unfortunately, was not such a good day.

It started badly, when I was late for loading. Just a misunderstanding; I thought 1 p.m. was the appointed time but it was actually 11 a.m. After receiving a call from the boss, I arrived only a few minutes later than the truck.

The boss, a couple of nephews, and the truck driver were already in the pen, moving the calves into the loading pen. My heart sank as I noticed the driver wielding a “hot shot,” or cattle prod. These devices have their place, but our place isn’t one of them.

A cattle prod is essentially a large plastic stick with a battery pack handle and electrodes on the tip. The purpose of the device is to deliver a painful shock. They are supposed to be used sparingly and as a last resort to urge a recalcitrant critter forward. Unfortunately, some folks zap every animal they can reach, and they do it constantly, regardless of the situation. Our truck driver was one of those.

My personal dilemma was figuring out how to educate the driver on the proper use of the cattle prod without losing my temper. My gut reaction – which I did not employ – was to snatch the hot shot from his hands and either smash it or give the driver a dose of his own medicine, perhaps accompanied by a few punches and kicks. There was a time when I would have instantly applied the physical approach. As a responsible adult, however, physicality has to remain a backup method.

Education is really the key, and in this situation, knowing the driver and his personality, teaching by showing seemed to be the proper approach. So I waded into the fray and tried to demonstrate proper low-stress cattle handling techniques.

It didn’t do much good at first. The driver continued to lash out with his hot shot, zapping every calf he could reach, regardless of the situation in the pen. He was also bellowing at the top of his voice, “YAH— YAH — YAH!” The calves swirled around the pen, wild-eyed, skidding and scampering, desperate for a way out. Each lash of the hot shot prompted a pain- and terror-filled bellow.

The scene nearly made me physically sick. And it made me intensely angry. For the first time in their lives, these calves were being mistreated. After nearly a year of watching them grow from birth, of husbanding to their needs and treating them with the care and respect they deserve, I was incensed by the driver’s actions.

Fortunately, he gradually slowed and finally stopped his use of the cattle prod. Perhaps he picked up on my tight-lipped, white-faced anger. Perhaps he realized that my methods were working better (and more quickly) to load the calves. Or maybe his arm just got tired. I don’t know.

But I do know he was physically mistreating those calves, and while such treatment may have been the norm in the past, it needs to be stamped out in the present and future. For many reasons.

Firstly, capturing such treatment on video and posting it on the internet is the dream of every animal rights activist. These people want all animals set free, and for the human consumption of meat to end immediately and forever. These are goals I clearly don’t agree with, but I do agree with such activists when they say that the indiscriminate use of cattle prods is simple torture. So long as anyone in the food-animal production business, including our truck driver, is torturing a single animal, the animal rights folks potentially get free ammunition to use against the production ag sector, and proof that at least one of their claims is true.

Secondly, and most importantly, we have a responsibility to treat our livestock with best practices and with the care and respect they deserve. They feed us and clothe us, make possible our chosen life and lifestyle, nourish our grasslands, and provide us joy and delight in our daily lives. Intentionally mistreating livestock is the antithesis of animal husbandry. It’s a sick and disgusting practice.

Thirdly, proper animal husbandry is an economic plus for the producer. Study after study after study proves that reduced stress for the animals equals increased profitability. Unstressed animals are simply healthier animals which grow better and produce an excellent, flavorful and highly nutritious product. Adding stress decreases health and vigor and adversely affects the meat product.

After Sunday’s debacle, the boss said he’s going to talk to the owner of the trucking company, making it clear that drivers who mistreat our cattle will not be tolerated. We’ve agreed to put signs banning the use of cattle prods around the corrals and loading area. And in the future we’ll clearly brief the help – including truck drivers – on their responsibility to practice low-stress livestock handling techniques on our ranch.

As I said, there is a place for the cattle prod. In the hands of stockman it can be the right tool for the right job. In the hands of a sicko or a fool, however, it's a torture device in the hands of a torturer.

a miss is as good as a miracle

As I got out of my pickup, parked behind the hardware store, my hand went automatically to the cell phone pouch on my belt. The pouch was flat. Empty. The cell phone was gone.

Bad word!

Where could the darned thing be? My mind began to race. I checked in the pickup, but that was a forlorn hope. I’d never be that lucky. Okay, let’s see…

The tractor! I’d used the tractor earlier to feed cows, since the hydra-bed pickup was down. And I’d lost the phone in the tractor twice before. Something about the seat design (or my body design) seems to push the phone up and out of the pouch sometimes.

After finishing in the hardware store, I sped back out to the ranch. “C’mon, cell phone, be in the tractor!”

But it wasn’t.

I fairly tore the cab of that ol’ John Deere apart, pulling out tool boxes and chains and pins and clevises. I found the small crescent wrench I’d been looking for for two years, and a chain hook that I’d given up on and replaced, but there was no cell phone to be found. Rats!

Oh, well. Nothing to be done. If the phone is gone, it’s gone. As I replaced the gear in the tractor cab, I thought about all the steps I’d soon be making to replace the cell phone. Call the company. Select a new phone. Maybe one of those phones with “aps.” There’s a cool one, GPS enabled, that shows you the stars in the night sky, complete with all the star names. Yep, one of those “3-G” gadget phones with a keyboard for texting. I wondered how much they cost. Will I have to change my plan? Can I afford a phone like that, particularly as I occasionally loose the darn things?

Mind whirling with possibilities, I climbed down from the tractor and strode toward my pickup. Then a glint of light caught my eye, and I looked back toward the tractor. There was my cell phone, laying in the rutted snow no more than three inches in front of the left front tire.

I stood there looking at it for a few moments, thinking. Somehow I’d managed to drop the phone on the ground, drive the tractor right past it (I’d made a jog to the right when I started so I could look at the ice in the corral tank), went and fed cows, drove the tractor back to where I’d begun, minus three critical inches, and managed to save my cell phone from certain, crushing death.

Was it a miracle? I chose to think so. It was my birthday, after all. Had to be a miracle.

Grass 101

Originally published February 4, 2011.

##########

Stemless hymenoxis, a native perennial forb in High Plains rangeland, provides a splash of color on this shortgrass prairie in the southwest Panhandle. Grass species in the photo include green needlegrass, buffalograss and blue grama, and scattered crested wheatgrass.

Though we're mired in the depths of winter today, spring is just around the corner. As air and soil temperatures begin to creep up, the praire, pastures and rangeland of the High Plains will begin to wake up. Grass is more important than you might think, so let's talk grass. If you got here looking for information on hippy lettuce and left-handed cigarettes, you're on the wrong blog.

Whether a herd numbers thousands of head or comprises a single 4-H goat, grass is one of the two most vital requirements for the livestock producer. Without good forage and water, livestock production is simply impossible. Leaving water aside, it follows that grass is so vital to producers that each operation must arm itself with graduate level knowledge of grass in general and an intimate and comprehensive understanding of their owned or leased rangelands.

Nearly all producers possess such knowledge and understanding. They simply wouldn’t survive otherwise. But often their knowledge exists as scattered bits of formal and informal information, institutional memory and habit, and the kind of sixth sense developed over years of experience.

Cows and calves on a native shortgrass prairie south of Kimball, Neb. Grass and grass-like species providing forage on this pasture include threadleaf and needleleaf sedge, green needlegrass, western wheatgrass and crested wheatgrass, buffalograss, blue grama and hairy grama.

Let’s take a look at the basics of the High Plains rangeland ecosystem, and in particular, grass.

A semi-arid vegetative zone generally has annual precipitation between 10 and 20 inches and an overnight temperature falloff during the summer months. Another characteristic is the wide annual variation in the timing of precipitation, as well as the quantity of precip delivered during the events. The possibility of drought is never far away on the High Plains.

With grass such an important part of livestock production, it pays to know as much as possible about the rangeland used for the operation. Whether owned or leased, the operator needs to know what’s available for grazing, what shape it’s in and what its growth characteristics are to make the best short- and long-term use of this vital asset.

This curious 13-lined ground squirrel stands amid the bounty of the shortgrass prairie, surrounded by cool and warm-season grasses and native perennial wildflowers.

This knowledge starts with a basic understanding of what grass is and what it does. Simply put, grass is the major energy source for all terrestrial (land) animals. Grass photosynthesizes carbohydrate from sunlight, atmospheric carbon dioxide and water, storing the energy-dense nutrient in above ground foliage and below ground roots. Grass makes up the base of the terrestrial food pyramid and constitutes the main (or a significant part of) food source of terrestrial herbivores, which are in turn consumed by omnivores and carnivores. It’s no exaggeration to say that all terrestrial life is grass fed.

Rangeland is a discreet ecosystem, easily as complex as the most pristine rain forest. Rangeland grasses are unique in the plant world in that their root systems are more extensive than their above ground herbage. In shortgrass rangeland root systems can be five or more feet deep; some tallgrass stands root to a depth of better than 30 feet.

These extensive root systems allow grasses to find and use water and nutrients throughout the soil profile, which helps them survive in dry years and explode with herbage production in wet years. They also anchor soils and provide a rich environment where symbiotic microorganisms thrive and boost soil fertility. Many rangeland grasses reproduce through their root systems as well, pushing rhizomatous stems out beneath the soil from which new plants arise.

Here on the Wyo-Braska High Plains, native and reintroduced rangeland grass species include cool and warm season grasses and grass-like plants (sedges). Native range is shortgrass prairie, and reintroduced grasslands shortgrass species with a scattering of mid-height grasses.

Sedges are usually the first to green up in the spring, followed by cool-season and then warm-season grasses. There is considerable variation between species and even within species according to location, but most grass growth occurs during 30-60 day rapid growth periods corresponding to the onset of particular air temperatures. In general, maximum growth in cool-season grasses occurs when air temperatures are 65 to 75 degrees, while max growth of warm-season grasses occurs with 90-95 degree air temps.

Such growth characteristics allow range grasses to produce the bulk of their above ground herbage during a relatively short period each year. The staggered peak growth periods between types and species generally provide a three to four month annual period of lush, palatable and preferred forage for selective grazers, likely as a result of rangeland ecosystem evolution. Peak growth occurs relatively early in the season, and once past this heavy herbage production period, above ground growth slows markedly, with the plants essentially in maintenance mode until hard freeze.

Herbage production and plant growth during peak growth is highly correlated to soil moisture and air temperature. Both are required. Under severe drought conditions grass may remain essentially dormant. If moisture is available, however, peak growth will occur when air temperatures are appropriate and will be limited by moisture availability. In wet years herbage production will be abundant, in dry years production will be sparse.

Aside from herbage production, which is so essential as forage to livestock producers, root growth and development is at its highest level during peak growth. With root systems making up the bulk of grass plants, root development is obviously vital to the range ecosystem. Carbohydrates derived from photosynthesis provide the plant with the energy needed for both above and below ground growth. When carbohydrate production is reduced by grazing, the plant diverts energy from root development to herbage production in an effort to maintain photosynthetic carbohydrate production. This shift from below to above ground growth has been called root mining. Depending on factors like grazing pressure, soil moisture, and air temperature, root mining can be detrimental to the long and short term health of the plant, and by extension, the range ecosystem. Heavy grazing during drought can debilitate an entire pasture, which may take years to recover. Even modest grazing during peak growth results in some level of root mining. The operator’s challenge is to understand his rangeland and livestock as a discrete system and introduce management practices which enhance both profitability and sustainability.

In general, most recommended range management schemes include dividing range into a number of pastures and rotating grazing dates and periods between them from year to year. In a four-year rotation, a particular pasture might be heavily grazed during peak growth one year, rested the next year, then lightly and moderately grazed in the next two years.

Range management plans will necessarily be different for different operations. No two rangeland parcels are alike, weather varies from year to year, and grazing requirements change according to economic and other variables. Designing and implementing a range management plan can be a complex and daunting task, but armed with knowledge and experience, operators can employ powerful strategies to maximize both profitability and sustainability.

##########

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Taxpayers may be at odds with 2012 Farm Bill spending

To paraphrase former Vice-President Al Gore, “the budget economics are settled.” And this time they really are.

Last Thursday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its new ten-year federal budget baseline and the numbers are shockingly bad, showing an unprecedented $1.5 trillion deficit for this fiscal year – an increase of $95 billion over their last estimate – and the third consecutive year of trillion-dollar deficits.

The Heritage Foundation, a not-for-profit, donor-supported, conservative research organization, notes that the reality is likely far worse than the CBO figures indicate. Researcher Brian Riedl finds that the federal government will add $19.1 trillion in new debt between 2009 and 2021, a whopping $140,000 per household over 13 years. Annual budget deficits will never drop below $1 trillion, and the debt is now projected to reach 100 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020.

Riedl also found that the trillion-dollar deficits are being wholly driven by rising government spending. While tax revenues will return to their historic norm of 18 percent of GDP by 2018, federal spending will jump to 26.4 percent of GDP, nearly seven percent higher than the historic norm, by 2021.

Our federal budget deficit, of course, is the difference between what the government spends (including interest paid on debt) and what it generates in revenues. Those revenues are almost entirely tax revenues.

Though the 111th Congress (2009-2010) never passed a budget, federal spending in 2010 was $6.037 trillion, or 6,037 thousand billion dollars. Federal revenues were $4.537 trillion, or 4,537 thousand billion dollars, leaving a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit. That’s one-and-a-half thousand billion dollars. Keep those numbers in mind and compare them to federal agricultural spending numbers as you read on.

Why should farmers and ranchers be concerned? Leaving aside the reasonable concerns most ag producers share with other business owners regarding the federal government’s unsupportable spending spree, those of us in the ag sector should understand that taxpayer pressure is likely to force changes in federal spending, including the 2012 Farm Bill, which will fund the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

A study conducted jointly by economists from the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank and Oklahoma State University supports the notion that real changes are likely to be made to federal ag spending beginning with the upcoming Farm Bill. A paper prepared for the study will be presented this weekend at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting in Corpus Christi, Tex. To read the full text of the paper, visit http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/98597/2/SAEA%20complete%20document.pdf

The study included a survey of 1,200 consumers and taxpayers from across the country, asking what the spending priorities of the 2012 Farm Bill should be. Respondents were asked to prioritize ag spending in six areas: rural development, food safety and inspection, natural resources and environment, food assistance programs, research and education, and farm support programs.

All of these areas receive federal dollars through the so-called Farm Bill, which when it becomes law usually bears a different name. The 2008 Farm Bill, for instance, is called the “Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.” Despite this, the roughly pentadal, or every-five-years, acts are almost universally referred to as the Farm Bill.

As a refresher, total spending for the 2008 Farm Bill was $57.6 billion annually for a total of $288 billion over five years. The entire $288 billion equals 0.047 percent of all federal spending in the single year 2010, or just under one-half of one percent. For comparison, 32 percent of federal spending went to Social Security and Medicare, 14 percent to defense, and 14 percent to education.

Of the $288 billion in Farm Bill spending, about 20 percent, or $57.6 billion, went to farm support payments, including federal crop insurance. The other 80 percent, roughly $230 billion, supported non-farm programs, including the five mentioned above. The lion’s share, 60 percent or about $138 billion, went to food assistance programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called the food stamp program) and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. The remaining $92 billion funded all other USDA activities, including conservation, food and animal inspection, education and research, among others.

The preface of the study paper notes that while 80 percent of those surveyed favor government subsidization of farmers, more than 80 percent of professional economists feel that farm subsidy payments should be eliminated. The preface also notes that President Obama wants to cut direct payments to “mega-farmers” with more than $500,000 annual sales revenue and reduce crop insurance payouts.

So how did the 1,200 U.S. taxpayers surveyed think new Farm Bill dollars should be divided? What do these non-farming/ranching citizens see as priorities when it comes to federal agricultural spending?

Respondents were asked which of the six primary USDA programs was most important. They were also asked to divide an imaginary $100 between the six programs in the spending ratio they believed proper for federal ag spending.

Food safety and inspection has probably been the biggest ag related topic covered by the major media in recent years, and unsurprisingly, 50.7 percent of those surveyed felt that it was the most important USDA program. In the current Farm Bill, food safety and inspection receives just over three percent of USDA dollars, about $90 million, or $3.14 per $100.

Just over 20 percent felt that food assistance programs were the most important. In the present Farm bill these programs receive $60.40 of each $100 in USDA spending.

Farm support programs were felt to be the third most important priority. Such programs currently receive $22.03 of every $100 spent by the USDA. Respondents felt this number was too high, however, and set their dollar figure at $15.82 per $100.

Respondents were found to be in favor of redirecting some farm support dollars into research, which they felt would benefit both farmers and consumers alike.

In summary, the researchers find that in “…looking at an overall distribution of funds, we can see people prefer a more equitable allocation of dollars. On average, respondents would like to see more dollars going to food safety and inspection, natural resources and environment, research and education, and rural development and less dollars going to food assistance and farm support.”

Congress is going to swim through a lot of red ink as they fumble through the budget process. There’s a good chance that whatever the 112th congress does, it will be historic. Possibly historically bad, possibly historically good. As farmers and ranchers, we make up far less than two percent of the population. We’ll be mostly bystanders.

But we don’t have to be completely silent. Use some of these numbers in your morning and afternoon coffee sessions. Send this article on to your congressional representatives. Write a letter to the editor or put something up on a blog. It might not make much difference, but you’ll have solid facts on your side.