Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
June 15, 2018 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 60 • No. 6
No Feet, No Bull
BY LEE PITTS
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NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
he first time I got an inkling we were headed for a wreck was when a rancher called me several years ago and asked me to buy some bulls for him at an upcoming sale. He gave me a list of bulls to buy and his decisions were based solely on birthweight, weaning and yearling weight EPD’s. I asked, “You want me to look at the bulls for structural correctness and report back?” “Not necessary,” he said. Over the next few years I met many more ranchers like him who were taking the lazy way out by not bothering to look at the bulls they were buying over the Internet, sight unseen or by merely looking at a video screen or still shot without seeing the bulls in person. I knew from my collegiate livestock judging team experience that any evaluation of cattle should begin with their structure because a dead animal doesn’t grow very fast or sire many offspring. I especially enjoyed judging horses and felt it took a more talent than merely assessing which bull or heifer was the tallest, longest or fattest. With horses we had look at hoof size, if they were cow-cocked or sickle hocked, their way of going, and if they had the right slope to their pasterns and shoulders. I’ll never forget the old adage,
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. “No feet, no horse.” You could say the same thing about cattle.
Is Your Cookie Crumbling? Structural correctness has turned into a big problem. One of the reasons why is we’ve added 55 pounds of weaning weight to the average Angus calf in a relatively short time, and in many cases 200 to 300 pounds to the slaughter weight and we’ve put all that weight on the same infrastructure. Muscle development has simply outpaced bone and carti-
lage development. The industry knows of the problem and at 2017’s Cattlemen’s College during the NCBA convention the subject of lameness in cattle was addressed. But it remained under the radar of most commercial cattlemen and was one of our dirty little secrets in the cattle business until the subject exploded in April when a two page, full color ad for Herbster Angus Farms of Falls City, Nebraska, appeared in several cattle publications nationwide. In the colorful ad there was a big picture of a sugar cook-
ie in the shape of an Angus. It was the kind of cookie your mom used to bake, only this cookie was broken off at the knees. The heading read, “Is this the way your cookie crumbles?” And then the bombshell: “At Herbster Angus Farms we believe there is a growing problem in the cattle business that continues to be overlooked - the physical structure of the most basic part of a bovine... the feet! The American Angus Association is hoping to develop a foot score EPD. Unless every breeder measures exactly the shape, length and slope of every foot, giving a constant score, the EPD will never be accurate. DON’T RELY ON THE NEW EPD. Look at the foundation of your herd and make your own deductions on foot structure. Herbster Angus Farms strives every day to provide customers with the best-footed and soundest continued on page two
The Government Relies on Flawed Data to Determine Endangered Species BY KEVIN MOONEY / DAILY SIGNAL
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mericans who live in or near a community built around a lake should be careful about stepping outside to mow the lawn if the temperature isn’t just right and the grass isn’t a certain height. They should keep pets indoors. They should forget about using weed killer. And they should be prepared to pony up a steep home owners’ association fee. That’s because there may be snakes in the area protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), which imposes stiff penalties and fines for violating its rules and restrictions. Rob Gordon, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, discovered the situation while researching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) 1999 decision to list the Lake Erie water snake as a “threatened” species. The FWS estimated the population of that particular water snake to be somewhere between 1,530 and 2,030 at the time. But just a few years later, the agency revised it to 5,690. The government either made a “substantial underestimation” with the initial listing or the water snake had “a truly miraculous population growth rate” in a short time, Gordon observes in a recently published research paper that finds the listing process under the Endangered Species Act to be riddled with “erroneous data.” Gordon concludes that “essentially half of
the species” identified by FWS officials as “recovered” never should have been listed in the first place. The regulatory fallout for developers, home owners, and business owners who run up against the endangered species law is the same regardless of whether federal officials used sound science or flawed methodology, Gordon told The Daily Signal in an interview. “Once a species is listed, it is regulated and the way it’s regulated doesn’t vary dependent upon the quality of the data the agency used,” Gordon said. “If one listing is legitimate and another listing is illegitimate based on erroneous data, the practical consequences are the same to the property owner or the business owner. He or she still faces the same restrictions whether or not these restrictions are legitimately based on science.” After reviewing the FWS’s documentation in the case of the Lake Erie water snake, Gordon found the agency worked to impose “surreal regulatory hurdles” against a developer who sought to build seven houses on 15 acres. The FWS called for easements to be placed on over five acres of lakefront property that would be donated to a nonprofit organization. The agency also sought a $50,000 “contribution” from the developer to cover construction of a hibernation habitat for the snakes, and continued on page four
You May Be A Dude If...
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n the sorting alley it’s easy to separate the dudes from the real cowboys. You may be a dude if... There are sheets on your bed in the bunkhouse. The camp cookie is a three star Michelin chef. When you set out for the day’s work you are provided a sack lunch and a wine cooler. The ratio of riders to cows exceeds two to one and the “trail boss” sends you and three others to go retrieve one old wayward arthritic cow. You have to pay for the privilege of getting baked past well done by the sun, bucked off, gored, or losing your finger in a dally or a squeeze chute. Your horse has one speed: slow. And there’s a seatbelt on your saddle. Instead of waking up the rooster, the rooster wakes you up. You must sign a stack of waivers before working cattle absolving the owner of all responsibility in case of your death. In the evening you sit around a campfire and roast your wienies, burn your marshmallows, toast your buns and sing old cowboy songs like “Happy trails to you, until we meet again.” There’s more than one course for supper and one of the courses is pheasant under glass; you’re given a full setting of silverware to work with; and the chef lights your dessert on fire. The ranch where you “hired on” has a gift shop. After a long day of riding you “get your kinks worked out” by a gorgeous Scandanavian massage-babe who doesn’t speak English. Instead of playing poker for matchsticks in the evening you sip wine while playing chess or backgammon. You and your fellow hands are all wearing matching “scarves”. There is heat in the bunkhouse that doesn’t originate from someone chopping wood. One of the afternoon activities includes a seminar titled “Living with the wonderful wolf.” You spend all day push-
continued on page five