As soon soon as I posted the last scoop loop Sammy Blossom sent me these nice photos.  He has taken lots of good pictures and sold lots of ideas over the years and it was worth the trip to Mississippi just to see Sammy.

The cattle we used in the demo were real nice and I like the way they wanted to see what was going on with the calf I layed down.  It worked out real nice on a young horse that had been started right and could take the pressure of being roped on.

Ol Mississip

I do believe the people in the “deep south” are some of most content, kindest people I have come across in my travels. They are all about hospitality and well being.

We just finished up the third regional Stockmanship and Stewardship event. It was in conjunction with the “Deep South Stocker Backgrounder Conference. Again lots of valuable info on best management practices for all types and levels of producers of beef.

They had a session on castration and dehorning that I think is a very important subject, especially for the south. We need to understand the impact these practices have on our industry. Pain is never a good thing, but I think wild animals deal with pain differently than humans do. An animal can take more extremes than a human can ( like surviving birth at -20 degrees) but that doesn’t mean it’s ok. It’s easy to get very used to these practices, and therefore comfortable with them. Any one that has ever castrated , dehorned, or branded a calf knows it creates fear from the pain. The thing we can’t see is the long lasting effects of the pain that lasts through healing process. When these animals are stiff and sore, I feel this causes them to become lethargic and decrease the desire to eat and explore their environment. We could say they get depressed to understand it in human terms.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, but I am saying we ought to think about and figger out if there would be anything we can do to make it easier on the animal, and increase the odds of success for us. The age of the animal is important. The younger an animal is the less fear from pain they will show, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact them and the development of the immune system.

I hear lots of talk in Canada about pain management with drugs. Many are giving a pain reliever at branding time to help recovery. I’d be willing to bet we will see more of this in the future. I feel we can watch animals and see what they need in the area of exercise, rest, clean ground and comfortable surroundings. Older animals that are castrated or dehorned really get timid in a herd situation and the other animals take advantage of that. We need to manage the situation similar to what we would do for human recovery.

I also know that a big problem that many don’t see in the beef industry is pregnant heifers in the feedlot. This is a terrible thing animal welfare wise and economically.
I was visiting with someone from Mississippi and they were telling me how many cattleman in the south use the cowherd as a savings account. There is lots of grass and folks will have twenty cows or so and when the need money they sell some calves.
If you have a herd of cows you always have something to sell and get a little money.
This is great, but many, not all, are not very professional in the management of the herd. This is why there are so many cuttin bulls purchased in the area. It’s also why so many heifers get bred unknowingly. We need to really work on getting this problem fixed. This is another advantage to enjoying good stockmanship. You will spend more time with your cattle and have more pride in what you do.

So much to learn, so little time to learn it. That’s why I feel it’s important that we keep educating and being educated. Sharing knowledge is so important to the improvement of the industry. I tip the short brimmed Greeley to Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama extension for partnering with Mississippi Cattlemans and NCBA to bring this information forward in the Stockmanship and Stewardship event.

Now a little more on the airline adventures. My flight from Houston to Denver was oversold. They we horse trading on the price to take a later flight. When they said they would give an $800 dollar voucher to take a later flight I decided it was time to make the deal. So I went and had a nice meal on them and when I got back to the gate an hour later the plane I would have been on was still parked at the gate. Lightning shut the ramps down. The gate agent told me they may not get out tonight. So I made $800, got a free meal and a better flight. I’m starting to believe my new Greeley is alright, even if some folks don’t seem to care for it.

Keep riding forward!

Las Crusas, New Mexico with Dean Fish and bringing cattle up feed alley on Marcy Wards nice mare.

Starkville, Mississippi demo with Ron Gill laying them down and loading them up!

I got one response to the article in Drovers. Interesting. The one response didn’t like the questions or the answers. Interesting.

Stockmanship and Stewardship are my passion. Actually Stockmanship is really a part of Stewardship. Actually Stewardship is all about soil health. That’s what was very interesting to me in the article. They were not talking about removing animals, but using manure to improve soil health.

If we go back in to what we can imagine through history, biblical or caveman times, we had grazing animals and predators, as well as weather events. This created a system that kept the soil pretty healthy. As a hunter, man played a role in this as well.

In my part of the world we had huge herds of bison, and predators such as wolves, bear and Native Americans. Fire, natural and Native set played a role in soil health.
Flooding distributed silt and soil from the higher elevations to the valleys to create very fertile valleys. Grazing animals grazed, predators kept them bunched and moving, insects forced them to higher elevation, and all the while they were fertilizing the soil with manure and urine, and disturbing the soil with there hooves.

This changed when we built fences and stopped or changed the natural movement of animals, both predators and grazing. Dams have had a huge impact on flooding and fertilizer in the form of silt. Farming has changed the game as we mine the soil with crop production and don’t put back all the nutrients that happened when grazing animals (termites in humid areas)broke down the cellulose in plants and redistributed it through waste or death of the animals.

With fences we control the movement and grazing of the animals. It can be good for soil health or bad, depending on the how it is done.

We are learning as we go. If you are focused on soil health, you will learn to manage your grazing to improve soil health. If it is not important, you will focus on what is important to you.

I am seeing more composting and utilization of waste around the confined animal feeding systems. Many farmers in the Midwest are learning that by feeding animals they can really improve soil health and production and therefore profit potential from marketing crops through livestock and benefiting from the natural fertilizer it creates.

I was just in the desert near Las Crusas, New Mexico. Soil health from grazing is achieved from proper grazing. Cattle need to spread out more there than in my part of the world. Rest periods need to be longer in the desert than In real humid fertile high rainfall areas that cattle need to be bunched and graze often. As I head to Mississippi, the benefits of grazing for soil health will be achieved in a different way than in the desert I just left.

Mother Nature used to do this naturally. We as stewards of the land need to observe and understand what happened in the past, and recreate it in the future.

We must take on the part of predator and grazier and understand the benefits of both, because of our control of the movement of animals, and the type of animal we choose.

This is where the Stockmanship comes in. The human has replaced the wolf and the bear as the predator. Our method of harvesting animals is much more humane than other predators. If you have ever seen a live animal with part of its body eaten or its guts hanging out compared to an animal properly loaded in a knock box and euthanized quickly and humanely,you know what I mean.

The buffalo has been mostly replaced by the cow. They have been bred and selected to adapt to fences and feed and have a much easier life(like the humans that raise them) with much less fear of death in the life they live while rebuilding our soils.

I feel we all need to understand the importance of soil health and work together to create it. City folks depend on us country folks to create it and country folks need the city folks need to pay us so we can keep improving the soil.  It’s a great system and we shouldn’t be at odds.

We all need the same thing, we just don’t always know it, and if you don’t know you need something, how can you try to get it?

This is why I believe stockmanship is so important to stewardship, and Stewardship is so important to us all.