Category Archives: Learning

Time well spent with United Farmers of Alberta

I have spent most of the month of January in Canada.  United Farmers of Alberta is a farmer owned co-op that hosts a series of “Cattlemen’s Colleges” each year and I spoke about cattle handling.

They were great learning experiences for me.  The speakers were top notch. Marketing, finance, nutrition, forage management, and best calving practices were presented.  I did not hear one sales pitch to buy anything from the store.  One  speaker on nutrition explained how a certain blue block of salt had little value nutritionally, and was like licking metal in the subzero temperature.  He recommended loose salt added to mineral to get the best value and health from the purchase of salt.  That was real good information, but the funny thing was the store was giving away several blue salt blocks for door prizes.  Now that’s humor!

I think it is real smart what they were doing.  If I owned a store I would want my customers to be educated enough to purchase things that made them a profit.  It is in the store’s best interest to help the customer become a professional beef producer.  The more they learn and implement for-profit practices, the longer they will be in business, and when you are profitable it allows for more expansion.

Knowledge is the first step, then learning how to use the knowledge. Then keeping that knowledge and skill learned in practice and improving is the big challenge.  This kind of beef production is what it is going to take to get it done in this era of ranching.  This is also what the consumer of beef wants, a producer that treats and cares for the environment and the livestock up to their moral standards.

I am a little embarrassed when I speak in front of the Canadian rancher.  They are good people that have had a tough go of it.  You can’t believe how bad they felt for the South Dakota storm victims.  These are the same ranchers that R-CALF and other groups has cost thousands of dollars.

I am not a political person.  I am a dedicated proponent of the proper production of beef.  If you are Mexican, Canadian, or from the U.S., we all are North Americans and if we can work together it sure seems like a lot better way to go about it.

I look at this in the same way as I look at neighboring in ranch country.  I’ll bring my crew to your branding and you bring yours to mine.  If there is a range fire we all go to it and help each other by putting it out, no matter whose land it is.  In the Southern U.S. they put everyone’s cattle together in groups to improve the marketing of the cattle. Good neighbors help each other, no matter if it costs them a little, because at some point it may save them a lot, and I am not talking only financially.

I’ve seen quite a few people bad mouth their neighbor when they weren’t around, and then not say a thing when they are present, but they can’t look them in the eye.

So all you folks that are for putting politics in to the beef industry, go to it.  I hope it’s not to just raise money for your organization or cause.  I am going to stay with doing the right thing for the industry, not for my own selfish greed.

If you get in a bind and need some help give me a call.  I bet I can get some of my Canadian ranching friends to come help us out of a tough spot.  You see there are some things you don’t learn at a Cattlemen’s College.  It’s called doing what’s right, it’s called integrity, it used to be the “Code of the West.”

~ Curt Pate

Get hooked on animals

After thinking about this addiction thing, it is becoming clear to me I am addicted to handling animals.  Just about everything I do in my life has to do with animals or people that work with animals.

I was very lucky growing up the way I did.  My Grandfather always had me help him take care of the chickens, feed the sheep and cows, and I went with him as much as I could when he would haul, buy, and sell cattle at the livestock auction.  Everything we did evolved around the care of livestock.

When I visited my Grandpa Ed and Granny Alice it was at a huge feedlot.  Everything there was about riding horses and working cattle and going to rodeos.

In my youth it was all about the care of animals.  My grandfathers, my mother, and stepfather were just incredible at taking care of animals. The animals always came before anything else in our lives.  This was a great influence on me.  We had a hog operation that I just loved.  I could pretty much take care of the sow barn and the finishing pens.  Someday I want to have pigs again.

We also had a custom slaughter house and meat cutting business.  I did not like it but I sure learned a lot about the meat side of the business.  My main jobs were hauling guts and salting hides, and that was just fine with me.

Every one I was around was very much into the care of animals but not really into the handling of animals.  They just got it done.

When I started getting real interested in horses and horsemanship the addiction started.

From then on I made all my decisions and work involve working with horses and grazing animals. If I had to irrigate I did it on a colt and learned it is a great way to get a horse real good.  I don’t put up hay, but graze intensively.  This allows me to work with the animals much more.  When I don’t know what to do, I go do something with animals.

I feel I am addicted to working with animals.  It is not as good always as I’d like but I keep working at it.  For a long time my work with cattle was about cowboy skills with a real emphasis on roping.  That was real good, but now my focus has really gone to getting animals to work better, and I am really focusing on getting the animal content mentally.

To me this is real satisfying to my addiction. I still like to rope, but working on getting animals to really trust me and want to be around me is my real goal.

I think this is a healthy addiction and am glad my addiction has turned into my work.  It seems to me that many of the people I observe involved with animal agriculture or horsemanship get so involved in the care and performance of the animal that they miss the the mental part.  The important thing to realize is that if the animal is not content you may not be getting the performance you are seeking.  You may not be as content as you could be with your involvement with animals. I hope you will search for a better deal as long as you are working with animals.  I hope you get addicted.

~ Curt Pate

Addictions

I have been thinking over the idea that humans are just living addictions.  We all get stimulus to our brain from something that pleases us and we try to get as much of it as possible.

This is such a simple thing to realize and it could make it real easy to improve our quality of life by managing our addictions.

We all need some essentials in life.  Shelter, food, and water are the main essentials we must have.  The more time and energy it takes to cover those needs the less time and energy we have for addictions.

If you judge how good of times we are living in by how difficult it is to get, and the quality of food, shelter, and water, I would have to say we are living in the best times ever, or at least the possibility of the best times ever.

The reason it would maybe not be the best times ever for an individual would be the addictions in your life.  If your addictions create pleasure in the moment, and don’t create problems in the future your quality of life is good.  If your addictions create problems in the present or the future your quality of life will suffer.  If the people you are around have bad addictions they could impact your quality of life as well.

I would like to challenge you look at the addictions in your life.  Maybe list them in the order of how they control you.  I feel the real threats to quality of life are, uncontrolled emotion, unhealthy eating, lack of physical activity, living beyond your means, and lack of belief in a higher power.

Another thing that seems to me to be a real addiction is technology.  I think it will add to the quality of life as much as anything, but it is so important not to become so addicted that it replaces some other great addictions we can have to improve our lives now and in the future.  Don’t get to far away from the basics of survival. All of this technology could be gone in the morning and your addictions might quickly change from Facebook to getting a drink of water.

I hope this is as fascinating to think about for you as it is to me.  It seems like such a simple way to improve things in our life.  You have not heard the last of my thoughts on this.

~ Curt Pate