Livestock “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
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FEBRUARY 15, 2012 • www. aaalivestock . com
Volume 54 • No. 2
Riding For The Bar Code by Lee Pitts
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Crooks in Cowboy Hats
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
The reports of rustling written up in small weekly newspapers tell the story: ■ In two weeks in January ten head went missing in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma; 8 head were stolen in Big Horn County,
by LEE PITTS
One For The Records
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
ne of the many benefits of being a syndicated columnist is that several of the rural weekly newspapers that carry my column send me their newspapers. So instead of getting my news from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, I get mine from papers like the Hico NewsReview, Las Cruces Sun Times, Bonesteel Enterprise and the Rural Messenger. Instead of reading about crooks on Wall Street I read about petty criminals in places like Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and Nance County, Nebraska. Lately those papers report a scary trend in rural America: the stealing of cattle is on the rise. Although there’s no federal agency that keeps track of such thievery, it seems that bovine theft in rural America today is on par with Wild West days when rustlers built great fortunes, some of which still exist, with nothing more than a long rope, running iron or a red-hot cinch ring. And the foolish courage to use them, of course.
Riding Herd
“A fool and his money are soon elected.” Wyoming, since the summer 2011; and five head of cattle were rustled in Elko County, Nevada, during the same period. Around Van Castle, Wyoming, in the last three months 14 cattle were stolen. Whereas ranchers usually can count on a one percent loss from theft, these days the total is closer to four and five percent. So far we’ve only talked about the work of petty crooks, although it wasn’t petty if it was your thousand dol-
lar beasts the crooks got away with! Then there were these thefts that took rustling up a notch: ■ 150 head cattle weighing around 700 pounds have been stolen in the Ruby Valley, Elko, Nevada, since June 1, 2011. ■ In Jasper County, Missouri, 100 head were snatched during six-weeks and in the first eight months of last year 150 cattle were stolen in the immediate vicinity. ■ In Texas some 4,500 cattle
were reported missing in less than a year! ■ As in the Old West, sometimes it’s one of our own who’s doing the stealing. One Colorado rancher was out trying to rid his ranch of prairie dogs who were stealing his grass when he spotted evidence that neighbors were stealing his cows, too. When he called in the law they found 67 head worth $68,000, belonging to nine different people. ■ In Montana and Nevada authorities broke up a multistate cattle-rustling ring that had stolen at least 61 head in Oregon, Nevada and Washington. ■ Idaho State Brand Inspector Larry Hayhurst says that the incidence of cattle gone missing under suspicious circumstances in Idaho during just three months (250) exceeded the previous year’s total. Two hundred cattle were stolen in a four-county area of western Idaho alone. ■ Authorities in Montana have recovered more than 7,300 stolen continued on page two
Can Bad Meal Deter Wolves? Managers To Link Sickness, Cattle by SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, The Associated Press
ildlife managers are running out of options when it comes to helping Mexican gray wolves overcome hurdles that have thwarted reintroduction into their historic range in the Southwest. Harassment and rubber bullets haven’t worked, so they’re trying something new — a food therapy that has the potential to make the wolves queasy enough to never want anything to do with cattle again. As in people, the memories associated with eating a bad meal are rooted in the brain stem, triggered any time associated sights and smells pulse their way through the nervous system. Wildlife managers are trying to tap into that physiological response in the wolves, hoping that feeding them beef laced with an odorless and tasteless medication will make them ill enough to kill their appetite for livestock. Cattle depredations throughout southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona have served as an Achilles’ heel for the federal government’s efforts to return the wolves. Conditioned taste aversion — the technical term for what amounts to a simple reaction —
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is not a magic bullet for boosting the recovery of the Mexican wolf, but some biologists see it as one of few options remaining for getting the program back on track after nearly 14 years of stumbling. “Just the very fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying something new ought to send the message that they really are seriously concerned about the ranchers’ concerns,” said Dan Moriarty, a professor and chairman of the psychological sciences department at the University of San Diego. After four decades and tens of millions of dollars, the federal government was recently able to remove the animals from the endangered species list in several states. The case is much different in the Southwest, where the population of the Mexican wolf — a subspecies of the gray wolf — continues to be about 50 despite more than a decade of work. Biologists had hoped to have more than 100 wolves in the wild by 2006. About 90 wolves and some dependent pups continued on page three
ecently I heard a couple talking-heads on TV bemoaning the popular sentiment that today’s kids graduate from high school, and even college, without ever being taught how to balance a checkbook or build a budget. I don’t know what school they went to but I can assure you that they were never Future Farmers in high school. The FFA turned me into a serial entrepreneur for the rest of my life and I’m proud to say that I’ve started, or been a part of starting, eight businesses. Everything from a stationery store to an auction newspaper, and everyone of them was profitable from day one. I even got to pursue my lifelong dream of ranching despite the fact that one magazine said it was high on the list of businesses most likely to go broke, right after vending machines and bookstores. I didn’t have an MBA from MIT like my brother, and I never took a business course in college. My professors were Professor Oink and Mr. Moo, and I learned how to keep records in the blue FFA record books we were required to keep. I still have mine and they tell the tale of a business man in training. I was busier than Paris Hilton’s publicist and I did anything to make a buck; from shearing sheep to growing orchids. That’s right, call me a sissy but I profitably raised flowers for a florist who made corsages out of them for high school dances. Although I was way too busy to ever attend a prom, my orchids went to every one. And they were a lot more popular than I ever was. I started my first record book in 1966 when I was 14 and my initial FFA project was two commercial ewe lambs, inappropriately named Amos and Andy. My second project was a 450-pound show steer named Abe who cost $157.50 to buy and lost continued on page four
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