British White Beef Cattle - Super Performance on Grass and in the Feedlot - J.West Cattle Company

A Day in the Life of a Cow-Calf Farmer -- Don't Let the FAO and the EPA Put the Cow in A Feedlot or a Zoo for your Grandchildren to Visit !

2010-03-18T13:06:00.000-05:00

Global Warming and Cows -- this has become the focus of so much of my time and energy for several weeks now. Today, my time was more occupied with my actual real British White cows, one cow in particular. She's a cow I nicknamed Donna long ago, in honor of an elementary school classmate who was quite the dominating child -- enough so that I actually remember her taking charge of the classroom when I was in the 3rd grade. She might have been full of honey do this and that in the first and second grade as well, but I was quite occupied in those years with standing in corners and defending my right to 'talk too much', which my teachers heartily disagreed with. Did you ever have to stand in a corner and keep your nose precisely within a small circle?

That's pretty much what the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations would have the Cow-Calf farmer in the United States, Canada, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, and certainly Central and South America -- that is precisely what the FAO would have us all do -- stand in a corner with our nose in a circle and try not to move, try not to squirm, because to do so might bring down the wrath of our individual governmental authorities directly on us.

It has been interesting to note that when I first began blogging and writing hubpage articles regarding the bogus indictment of livestock in the big Global Warming picture -- that a new visitor to my blog and to my hubs is none other than..........the FAO. What should I think about that? What should YOU think about that? Let your Congressman and Senators know that you heartily OBJECT to the Cap and Trade legislation waiting to come back to the forefront of American legislators and the American media.

If you would like to know just what happened with my day in the life of cow-calf farming, and really my day in the life of Donna, my British White cow, then visit my hub about Donna, it was a very good day in my life as a cow-calf herdswoman.

"Halifax Agricultural Show - cattle section: Say hello to a rare native who's looking good"

2009-08-11T17:49:00.007-05:00

Over the past few days I have had to go through the tiresome explanation of just exactly what British White cattle are, and even explain that the American British White Park cattle were not wild things. This afternoon this article popped up and it seemed well-timed. The "White Park" cow in the photo (click the article link above for the photo) is a horned beautiful white cow with black points, with a gentle look about her, and a fat and beefy look about her -- sound familiar? You can clearly see in her photo that she is halter broke, and she and the humans about her look quite agreeably comfortable at her side.

In no way is this cow some fearsome "wild" white park creature, not now, and not ever in her genetics. The cow is said to be 11 years old -- are we supposed to believe that in those 11 years she hasn't managed to knock someone over and have her halter privileges pulled forever -- if she's from "wild" stock, that surely should have happened along the way.

In England the horned White Park is considered the oldest native breed of Britain. Your polled British White cows are also the oldest native breed of Britain, and don't ever forget that. Don't let the pocket book politics of the likes of the British author Lawrence Alderson forever change history to suit his goals and the goals of a select few highbrows in England.

Yes, the polled breeders of the old Park cattle (that's what both horned and polled were called when the first registration was established for them, until about the 40's) implemented a breed up program to save the breed and increase their numbers. In no way does that justify the absurd notion of Alderson's that the two varieties are genetically distinct, it's not even scientifically supportable -- but he doesn't really care!

(Great efforts have been made, both in the early years of the breeds establishment to the present, to bring both full pedigree semen and live polled Park cattle from the UK to the USA, to both preserve and integrate the best genetics available. In England, they have curtailed their breed-up program and I applaud that, and hope to see that happen in the USA. But in the meantime, the BWCAA American Fullblood program has successfully encouraged the pursuit of Fullblood herds.)

The reality is that both horned and polled Park cattle were found on the same farms and on separate farms for hundreds of documented years. The reality is the White Park of today in England was mixed with English Longhorn and Welsh Black, among other breeds. The fact that they stopped this at some point 40 years or so ago, makes them in no way significantly purer in the grand scheme of things. The genetics of Park cattle are powerfully strong and heritable. These cattle have been treasured and bred in the lands of the British Isles for a millennia of time. We know this from their presence in the ancient oral tales that have come down to us from Ireland, Wales, and Scotland - not England.

If I had my way the polled Park cattle in my pastures would bear a breed name that reflects their fine heritage and place in history -- Park Cattle. And if I have to see or hear another person use the word "whites" in reference to my beloved breed, I sometimes think I'll break my computer screen or punch someone. The breed deserves a high degree of respect, and referring to them as "whites" is demeaning slang that curls my lips and it shouldn't be perpetuated.

I have no idea, and doubt anyone alive today does either, why the folks in England decided to call my polled Park cows, British White. I sometimes feel like simply saying they are Park cattle. England is across the ocean, we already know following their lead leads to societal ruin, or at least it looks that way right now. So I no longer see any need to label my cows anything but what they historically were called in Britain before modern pocket book politics and meddling intervened to create a new breed name.

EXCERPT from the UK Article: (Click title link above for full text and photo.)Published Date: 11 August 2009
THIS rare breed was among an impressive turnout at the cattle section of the Halifax Agricultural Show. More than 150 animals were shown by 43 exhibitors – including standout White Park cow Freiya.

David Graveston, who was showing her, said: "She's 11 and a half years old – but she looks good for her age. White Parks are the oldest native breed in the country, and they are an endangered species as well."

There are only about 450 breeding adults in the UK, he said – 35 of which are part of his herd at his family's Park House Farm in Lancashire.

Mr Graveston, who was at the show with 16-year-old daughter Catherine, said: "We've only had the herd three years, so we've never really shown any before."

David Hamer, cattle section secretary, said it was a first for the show, too.
He said: "We've never seen this breed here at Halifax before."

Did You Know? Cash for Clunkers $ Taken from Alternative Energy Stimulus Dollars

2009-08-11T12:35:00.004-05:00

In the midst of this really bad economy, at least corn prices have backed off their record highs, though how much that's reflected in the price of a bag of feed at your local feed store is quite variable. Once a higher price point is reached, it takes a while for the retail products to see a matching decline, if ever. While I don't feed corn to my cattle, I'm very aware of how the rising price of corn and other grains used in ethanol production has negatively impacted the value of livestock in the USA.

One possible hint of relief from the disastrous impact of increasing corn ethanol production is the growing research and ingenuity in designing electric cars, and getting our vehicles and machinery out of the lead acid battery dark ages (Lead-acid batteries were invented in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Planté.) Also a possible source of relief from dependence on ethanol and fossil fuels is solar energy.

These collective alternative energy areas received much play in the days of the last presidential campaign. Theoretically, we now have an administration and Congress that has provided for the subsidy of these expensive new technologies (In most of Europe, the government has subsidized alternative energy growth with great success.) However, of the mere $6 Billion or so that was designated for alternative energy in the Trillion Dollar Stimulus Bill, Congress now proposes to riddle the original concept with red tape and wrinkles, and even worse they propose to take ~$2 Billion dollars of the $6 Billion, and divert those monies to the Cash for Clunkers money pit (IMO). Where is the logic there? I've not even noticed this focused on in the news!

Alternative energy companies are a natural to put folks back to work in places like Michigan where solar companies are already positioned and there is a ready labor force for production of solar panels and batteries, etc... Yet, this piddling bit of $6 Billion dollars for alternative energy has not only been NOT disbursed, it is now in danger of being given away to a program that pulls money out of your pocket and straight into the pocket of the automotive industry. In no way does this help the USA get off the ethanol track and put our corn back to use as Food for ourselves and our livestock.

August 10th Credit Suisse Alternative Energy Report:
Solar US market: Developments in the last week diminish the positive impact of the DOE's loan guarantee program for commercially viable solar PV technologies. There is a possibility that only ~$750mm is available to cover credit subsidy costs for commercially proven technologies (versus $6bb we thought 3 months ago). $2bb from the $6bb allocated for DOE loan guarantee program could be diverted to "cash for clunkers.”

Ethanol crush spreads have strengthened over the past few months, driven by lower natural gas and corn prices plus stable ethanol prices. Ethanol production volumes have been kept in check, helping to support ethanol pricing. Cash margins for ethanol producers have again turned positive.

Follow this link for the full Credit Suisse comments and analysis regarding the Cash for Clunkers ripping off the Alternative Energy sector.

The Economics of AI Breeding vs. Natural Breeding in Beef Heifers

2009-08-09T12:50:00.004-05:00

Suggested Guidelines for Beef Heifer Selection

**Moderate frame & milk - 425 lbs at Weaning, 600 lbs at Yearling, 700 lbs at breeding, Frame Score of 4
**Large frame & milk - 500 lbs at Weaning, 750 lbs at Yearling, 875 lbs at breeding, Frame Score of 5

"The University of Minnesota maintained records and summarized the net profit or loss for heifers sold during a developmental period during a three-year period. Heifers culled on the basis of pelvic area, average daily gain, reproductive tract scores, disposition, or structural soundness at the time of the prebreeding exams and finished in a feedlot had a 3-year average net profit of $9, whereas heifers diagnosed as nonpregnant shortly after the breeding season were sold for a net loss of $86. The loss for pregnant heifers that were then diagnosed nonpregnant after wintering on native pasture and sold at a sale barn was $133."

"These figures indicate the importance of identifying heifers that will not breed during the breeding season and culling those heifers before they become an economic liability. Heifers that were diagnosed pregnant during the breeding season were allocated to three groups: first-service AI, second-service AI, or natural mating. Average profits were $163 for first-service AI heifers, $139 for second-service heifers, and $83 for heifers naturally mated. These figures take into account all synchronization costs."

"Therefore, the advantage of AI over natural mating is certainly evident from these analyses, but without sound data these results could not have been noticed. In fact, many people would (and still do) shy away from AI because of the initial costs associated with synchronization, management, and an AI technician. Nonetheless, these results would encourage a producer to seriously consider AI, realizing that the profit potential is far greater than just using natural mating.

Net Profit or Loss Associated with the Sale of Heifers at Various Stages of Reproduction . . . follow the link in the article title above for the remainder of the cost analysis provided by this Cattle Network article.

Source: Steve Boyles OSU Extension Beef Team

Pending Legislation That Will Impact the Family Farm and Rural Landowners

2009-08-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) email update yesterday included a call to members to contact their Congressman during this August recess to express their Support and Opposition to critical legislation that will have a huge impact on our economic lives as cattle raisers. I've included links where I could find them, to the actual text of the bills at issue. Perusing the actual text of the bills is enlightening, and something I think we all should do more often in these days of minimal debate and rapid passage of bills which will effect our lives in both Texas and the USA.

SUPPORT

The Affordable Food and Fuel for America Act ". . .would phase out government subsidies for corn-based ethanol over five years and promote the commercial development of second generation biofuels. This legislation would force corn-based ethanol to become commercially viable without the assistance of government dollars and eliminate competition with other commodities that use corn"

In 2008, I blogged on the devastation that I percieve has been and will continue to occur in the USA as a result of the government's blind and dumb subsidy of corn ethanol. Not only is it forever changing the landscape and air quality of states such as Nebraska and Minnesota, it is forever changing the economics of our food supply. In particular to cattle raisers, it has increased the input cost of feedlots to a point of zero profitability at times, and thus the value of our feeder calf crops at market is reduced.

The Family Farm Preservation and Conservation Estate Tax Act(couldn't find a direct link to this bill) ". . .would exempt working farm and ranch land from the death tax, as long as the land is kept in production agriculture. The bill also provides estate tax relief for land under qualified conservation easements." I could find no link to the text of this bill, instead I found references to it being from the 2007/2008 legislative sessions. TSCRA's summation of it's benefits to the continuation of family farms, rather than their liquidation due to death, makes it clear this is a bill we should all want passed.

OPPOSE

The Clean Water Restoration Act ". . .would expand federal control over all wet areas within Texas including stock tanks, drainage ditches, ponds, small and intermittent streams, creek beds, playa lakes and mud holes." The impact of this legislation on every day life in rural America is boundless, and would mire the average family farm, the average hunter or fisherman, in red tape and legalities that will forever change our historical and current concept of private land ownership and freedom to live as we wish on our land.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (the Cap & Trade Bill) ". . .will drastically increase the costs of fuel, electricity, feed, fertilizer, equipment and other production costs necessary to run a successful ranching business. The costs to ranchers far outweigh any benefits this legislation offers."

I absolutely need to read and try to understand for myself the impact of this bill. It is somehow still shrouded in mystery to me despite my obsession with the news. One has the sense that it is the ultimate boogey-man of bills, without even understanding the actual mechanics of its impact on our economy today and in the future. One thing that is abundantly clear, is major corporations such as General Electric stand to benefit hugely from the passage of this bill.

Tom Sawyer Bull Calf born to Wanda Mae

2009-07-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

A wonderul British White cow is my Wanda Mae. She was one of my original heifers and she was nicknamed for a childhood friend who wasn't the most popular or the most beautiful girl in my neighborhood - she was more importantly the most trusted. Wanda Mae gladly took in my Midge doll for safe keeping forever and always when a very bad lady was going to throw her away. I will always remember her fondly for taking care of my Midge.

My cow, Wanda Mae, is as equally unforgettable as my childhood friend. Wanda Mae is a fertile myrtle, a feed efficient femme fatale, a carcass queen, and the most gentle British White cow I've ever encountered in any herd in the USA or the United Kingdom. Why am I talking about Wanda Mae this evening? Well she gave me a surprise Sunday morning. A bouncing bull calf was mewling and hobbling around and announcing his brave entry into his new world.

I had noticed Wanda Mae looked like she was putting milk on, but she keeps a nice udder in between calves, and she stays fat, and with her deep well sprung rib area she always is mistaken for being pregnant by visitors when she's not! But I poked her udder and squeezed the nipples about a week before, wondering just what was going on. Nonetheless, I was surprised.

Fortunately, I make a habit of recording when any bull jumps a fence, plows through a fence, or seems to magically fly over a fence. In this case, it was Tom Sawyer who was the culprit, and sure enough Wanda Mae is one of three cows jotted down as possibly cycling when he made his pasture break to the girls.

Follow this link for a very short video of this handsome Tom Sawyer sired bull calf. He measured 27.5 inches, which puts him weighing about 67 pounds at birth. The video is from this afternoon, and he is now three days old. Most three day old calves in other breeds will absolutely not let you fool with them. This little guy is above and beyond friendly. I couldn't take a single stretch of video that didn't find him walking straight to me and my camera.

In this clip at the very end his Dam, Wanda Mae, puts her nose right in my camera as well. That's gentle. Make no mistake that the British White breed is truly gentle; from the day they hit the ground they have a God-given curious and friendly nature, or not.

Fox Hill Farm - New York

2009-07-24T10:14:00.001-05:00

Larry Lampman is a successful boutique beef producer in upstate New York, where he is now primarily working with British White and Murray Grey cattle. Larry uses lots of Artificial Insemination in his breeding program, and J.West Cattle has been pleased that he has chosen to work with semen from our herd as well, including our senior herd bull, J.West's Elvis, pictured here. The following article is found at CountryFolks.com , and Larry Lampman was as well featured in the past April issue of the Stockman Grassfarmer. Larry's approach to cattle production and marketing of his product is a lesson in perseverance and success.

The following are excerpts from this article, please follow this link for the complete article.

by Sally Colby
"Larry Lampman is the third generation farmer to live on a scenic Berkshire foothills property that was established as a farm in 1882. Larry’s grandfather raised driving horses and sheep, then Larry’s father and uncle established a dairy farm. When his father and uncle gave up farming, Larry started a herd of beef cattle with a herd of what he refers to as ‘old-fashioned’ Angus and Herefords in 1999. Larry said the idea of a cow/calf operation appealed to him, and was aware that people are interested in beef raised on pasture.

........After a few years of raising traditional beef breeds, Larry started to add heritage breeds known for their ability to thrive on grass: Red Devon, British White and Murray Grey....... Right now, the herd totals 90 animals, 50 of which are brood cows. Larry uses British White and Murray Gray A.I. sires, respectively, on those breeds.
.............“I like to have calves born in May,” he said. “The only time I don’t calve is January through March. But since I feed baleage, I can finish steers at pretty much any time of the year.” When selecting sires, Larry is most concerned with temperament and breed type rather than EPDs. “I want the animal to be tame, and in the case of British White, properly marked,” he said. “Type is most important — the kind of offspring that results from a sire.” As he built his herd, Larry retained many heifers, but he’s now ready to market some registered adult British White females.

.........Larry notes that consumers have an interest in purchasing locally produced food, but with a lack of local, small-scale inspected slaughterhouses, it’s difficult for producers to serve this need. He envisions customers getting together, purchasing an animal, sending a check for their portion; then hiring the farm owner to take care of the on-farm slaughter. “To sell retail, you have to go through a USDA-inspected slaughterhouse,” said Larry, adding that the public actually finances inspected USDA slaughter facilities. “My goal is to be able to call the inspector and make an appointment for him to come to the farm; the farm would be an approved facility for slaughter. It’s the least-stress ending to the animal that’s had a good life on the farm.”

..........Animals for retail sale are processed at a USDA facility in Litchfield, CT. In addition to an array of traditional cuts, an extremely popular offering is custom-recipe hot dogs. “They’re our best seller,” he said. “People love these hot dogs. Senator Gillibrand, a strong advocate for agriculture and on the Senate ag committee, uses these products.” The executive chef at the governor’s mansion purchases locally grown meat whenever possible, including that produced at Fox Hill Farm.

........Larry spends time simply observing his animals, and finds that this, along with routine vaccinations, is the key to keeping the herd healthy. “What we’re trying to do is responsible, sustainable agriculture,” said Larry. “I’m interested in food security and growing more food close to people, and doing it sustainably without using a lot of fossil fuels. I have to run tractors, but I haven’t used any commercial fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides since I started.”

Visit Fox Hill Farm online at www.foxhillfarmgrassfedbeef.com

Why You Should Choose British White Cattle

2009-07-20T10:14:00.000-05:00

Click on the title link above to visit this blog found at edublogs.org.

EXCERPTS:

"A breed of beef cattle know as British White Cattle has made a remarkable transition from being status symbol in medieval Britain to a mainstream purebred beef breed.. ."

"A British White Bull is very hard to beat in a crossbreeding program. If you are wanting to follow the experts recommendation and keep your herd half British and have a preference to white he is the bull for you. He will instill easy calving into your herd and the calves will have lots of grow in them. British Whites are know to have strong genetic traits and the ability to pass them on to their calves. . ."

Randall Cattle Breed

2009-04-12T10:28:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across an interesting breed of cattle this past week - Randall Cattle. The following is an excerpt from the breed association's web site:

The Randall Cattle Breed

"Randall cattle are a rare breed of purebred cattle developed in Sunderland, Vermont, on the farm of the late Everett Randall. They are considered to be a landrace breed, descended from the indigenous landrace cattle common in New England in the nineteenth century. Randalls have historically been used as a dairy breed, although they also possess meat and draft qualities.
Randall cattle are variable in size and conformation and have a constitution that is uniquely adapted to extensive or low input farming systems. Historically, the most suitable and natural environment for these cattle has been on small scale forage-based farms, subsistence farms, and homesteads. It is on such farms and homesteads that the unique genetic attributes of the Randalls can be fully expressed."

"Randall cattle are classified as "Critical" by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC), although their numbers, once fewer than 20 total animals, have increased since they were first rescued from extinction in 1985. Randall cattle originated on the farm of Everett Randall of Sunderland, Vermont, starting with his father, Samuel J. Randall, around the turn of the 20th Century. Much of the breed's history is surmised, based on anecdotal and other evidence, but the common thread seems to be that the Randall family kept, bred, and selected their cattle in virtual isolation for over eighty years. This selection and isolation resulted in the Randall breed of today, a distinct animal uniquely adapted to its environment."

The Randall Breed web site has a very large collection of photos, in particular a quite lengthy slide show that seems a thorough representation of the population of these cattle. Reviewing the slideshow you see from time to time white cattle in the mix. It's like a mirror image of a British White herd of cattle where they are predominantly white with black points and you find as well limited numbers of the black-sided example of the British White breed, what we consider 'line-backed' markings.

Also of particular interest to me is the beautifully lyre-shaped horns of this breed that are tipped with black. A review of the photos reflects black-tipped horns not being occasional, but rather most predominant, as is the lyre shape of the horns. The ancient Park Cattle of the British Isles originally had lyre shaped horns, based on the surviving literary references to the breed, and they were tipped in black.

". . . when the milk-white bull with gilded horns. . ." The Georgics of Virgil (c.29 BCE)

Today, you often times see more of a spreading type horn in the remaining horned Park Cattle herds in the USA as well as in Britain, which would be the result of the introduction of English Longhorn into herds of horned Park Cattle most likely in the 18th and early 19th centuries. An example of this would be the photos of horned Park Cattle presented at the Seedsavers Exchange web site. While the verbiage indicates the cattle have the traditional lyre shaped horn, the photos are clearly of the wide spreading variety of horn, not a distinctive upward rising lyre shape.

The Randall cattle were kept and bred in isolation and this perpetuated a distinct type, not unlike the Chillingham herd of England. The critical difference being that this herd was not kept in human isolation, and it is apparent that they are intelligent and gentle animals. The Randall family likely had an original fondness for the line-backed markings and thus they are the predominant physical appearance of this breed today. But, it is very informative to the genetics of this breed to find the occasional Randall that is white with black points. Kevyn Miller of Conner Prairie in Fishers, Indiana with his Randall working steers

One day I hope that someone with both the interest in the antiquity of these genetics and the wealth to take on such a project, will decide to pursue a thorough genetic analysis of the polled British White, the horned White Park of England and the USA, and this very interesting Randall breed of cattle. Perhaps we could try to get some of that federal stimulus money for such a project!

The photo above shows both a red and a black point Randall steer. Apparently, when the breed was originally taken on for rescue there were no red-pointed animals, but over time the recessive red gene presented itself. This is also consistent with the ancient Park Cattle we know today as British White and White Park.

Do you know anyone with deep pockets and an interest in exploring and preserving the ancient genetics of these special breeds? I'll give you a beautiful heifer if you can find someone who will commit to seeing this done and done right!

British White Heifer Shown at South Texas State Fair

2009-04-02T21:03:00.000-05:00

A British White heifer is included in the first Spring South Texas State Fair in Beaumont, Texas. Previously a fall show for many years, this transition to spring seems to be going well. The fair grounds are clean and fresh and the rides and the food are all tasty and fun; in particular the food has lots of variety, I really wanted to try one of those pork chops on a stick, or a cajun egg roll, but alas I looked on in envy, and decided to wait until another day. This video is a short clip of my niece with her heifer, Mazey. Mazey is a small framed heifer, should mature to at most a Frame Score 2 and weight of about 1000 lbs at full maturity. She stands out in the show barn as much for her small frame as for her distinctive beauty and good nature. Follow this link for a short video, and look for more videos to follow on youtube!

Beef Recipe from the Late 60's - What does it tell us about beef 40 years ago?

2009-03-13T20:20:00.000-05:00

I've had some time on my hands lately, and one thing I've done is browse through some of my late mother-in-law's many cookbooks. I just love cookbooks, they tell as much about a period in our history as, well, probably as much as a history book in our schools today. We know our school history texts today are skewed and stretched and squashed together bits of information on life in our great country since our English, French, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh and more cousins first settled this great country some 300 plus years ago (I count way before 1776, just so you know :).

But, those old cook books are NOT telling any lies, changing any facts to suit a social agenda. The cookbook is the agenda, and the women who pulled together the recipes, unknowingly pulled together and left for us a glimpse into their lives, and life in general in the good old USA.

Here's a recipe from a 1968 "Favorite Recipes from Country Kitchens - Casseroles Edition". It particularly struck my eye as it calls for the use of "beef suet" rendered in a skillet for the fat, and the fat is then used to brown the ground beef. Makes me think that just maybe the ground beef back in those days was NOT full of water and fat like supermarket ground beef is today. What do you think?

RAILROAD PIE

Chopped Beef Suet
1 lb. ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
1 10 1/2 oz. can tomato soup
1 soup can water
1 tsp. salt
Dash of black pepper
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 12-oz. can whole kernel corn
1/2 c. chopped green pepper

Render beef suet in thick skillet over moderate heat until there is grease enough to brown meat. Remove rendered suet; stir in ground beaf and onion. Mix and brown lightly. Pour off excess fat and add remaining ingredients. Bring to boil and simmer 15 minutes. Turn into 1 1/2 quart greased casserole. Pour Corn Bread Topping on top of meat mixture. Bake in 350 degree oven 30 to 40 minutes or until Corn Bread topping is done and brown-crusted.

CORN BREAD TOPPING:

3/4 cup cornmeal
3/4 tsp. sugar (I'd need more sugar than this, probably 3 Tbsp.)
1 tsp.salt
1 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. soda
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp. bacon drippings

Measure the 6 dry ingredients and sift together into bowl. Make a well in center; add egg mixed with buttermilk and bacon drippings. Mix well.
Yield: 6 - 8 servings

Found the following desert recipe at Cooks.com, may be the perfect complement to old-fashioned Railroad Pie!

RAILROAD PUDDING
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. molasses
1 c. raisins
1 c. cherries or other fruit, drained well
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. cream of tartar or baking powder
1 tsp. soda
Cream butter and sugar. Sift flour with the soda and cream of tartar and put together in usual manner. Put in baking dish and cook at 325 degrees until it looks done, about 50 minutes.
SAUCE:
1/2 c. butter
2 well beaten eggs
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 c. sugar
1 c. boiling water
Beat all ingredients together, cook over low heat. Then add another cup of water, stir well then serve on pudding. May only want to use 1/2 cup of extra water.

RED ANGUS BULL IN COLORADO IS PRACTICALLY FREE TO A GOOD HOME!

2009-03-13T19:52:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know, this is a blog for British White Cattle! But, exceptions have to be made sometimes, and I think this is one of them. This photo is of a very nice-looking registered Red Angus bull that needs a good home, a good job, and a good life for several more years. Here is the text of the ad found at agads.net:

"Five year old registered ease of calving bull. Guaranteed breeder. I am 73 and sold my small herd of mother cows. I don't want to sell him for slaughter as he is a gentle old friend and I want him to have several more years. He could easily bring my price at livestock sales. Great Bull for heifers."

Price $1150

Contact Information

Contact Name Bob Fritzler City Keenesburg
State Colorado
ZIP 80643
Country United States
View Map Click Here to view map of area
Telephone 303 732 4880
Website
Email

Follow this link for more photos of this good-looking Red Angus bull.

White Park Brewery in Bedfordshire - Make a refreshing stop at this unique brewery on your next visit to England!

2009-03-08T11:24:00.001-05:00

"A Bedfordshire based brewery with a passion for all things natural and wholesome. The brewery is sited in a farm courtyard barn and run by a team of enthusiastic brewers! The name of the brewery evolves from the owner's love of keeping rare breed animals, including White Park cattle, an ancient Britsh breed famed for its good eating - especially when fed spent malt from a brewery! Good eating of course goes hand in hand with a great pint..."

It is always interesting to find new web sites of other breeders of both polled British White and horned White Park cattle in the UK. Recently, Alan Kelly of the White Park Brewery in Bedfordshire very kindly contacted me to let me know of a quite unfortunate spelling error on one of my pages. I most appreciated his taking the time to do that!

Alan has quite an interesting operation, and one that I suspect is a quite natural fit. Follow the link in the title above to Alan's web site and your mouth will water for a taste of his various White Park ales and porters, as well as a taste of his rare White Park beef fed 'spent malt' -- no doubt that makes for some uniquely flavorful beef.

Should I be so fortunate as to make another trip to the UK in the coming years, I plan on adding a stop at the White Park Brewery to my itinerary. Certainly memorable from my prior visit was looking forward at each new stop to trying the local brew in a colorful pub. Having a pint and some good conversation seemed the most natural thing in the world there, and I swear I think English brew is actually healthy.

I encourage everyone to have a look at the White Park Brewery web site. They have a very nice herd of White Park cows, and it is well worth noting that in this herd the pedigree cattle have lyric shaped horns that are tipped in black, which is consistent with old descriptions of the original horned 'milch white' Park cattle of old.

You will also find photos of White Park 'cross' animals, and sometimes the black tipped horn comes through, and sometimes not. But, of the photos of crossbred calves I looked at, the White Park color pattern, excepting horn tip color, dominated on the cross. The photo above is a White Park 'cross' female that did retain classic Park markings, including black tipped lyric shaped horns. She's quite a nice looking girl.

The size of the Brewery's White Park cattle appear to be fairly moderate, nothing of an extreme nature struck my eye. And of course the Shetland cattle, which the Brewery has a small herd of as well, are very moderate to small framed cattle.

Cheers to Alan Kelly and the White Park Brewery!

BeefTalk: There Is No Profit From Calves That Cost $2.80 Per Pound?

2009-03-07T17:03:00.000-06:00

Source: Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, North Dakota State Ag Extension

I found this article of great interest. There is NO mention of the breed of bull chosen to cover these 26 heifers. However, great care was given to selection in terms of documented EPD's, and this bull's numbers fell in the sought after top percentile for key EPD's.

Despite this, the Dickinson Center had a miserable ~30% dead or difficult calving percentage. That costs money, not just the $2.80 a pound ceasarian births, but the assists, and the deaths, as well. Such calving results are virtually unheard of in any British White herd of cattle. And we certainly don't have to worry about 'ornery' heifers that want to hurt us -- another potentially costly event.

In today's economic environment cattle producers should start thinking more about the costs of these 2000 pound plus high pedigree, drowning in EPD's bulls. The cost of their potentially big calves born, or not born, successfully to heifers, is not a cost any small producer can bear.

The British White breed is small in numbers, we do not have sophisticated EPD's for use in choosing sires and dams -- but do we really need them to add value to our breed? I don't think so. The British White breed naturally puts low birth weight calves on the ground that grow off with vigor, fatten well on grain or grass, and grade 80% plus choice and better under traditional feedlot production.

EXCERPTS OF THIS ARTICLE:

"The Dickinson Research Extension Center started calving with mixed results. The weather has not been horrendous and the first-calf heifers are up close. the first calf born, however, was dead. The feeling of seeing the desire and efforts of a cow that wants to be a mother and is licking and nudging her dead calf is not good.

The second heifer was calving and having difficulty, so life moves on. The birth was assisted, but she ended up with a 96-pound calf. However, the heifer was belligerent and ornery. Her intent on inflicting damage to us or the calf was obvious, so out of the pen she went. She will spend her remaining days with us in the feedlot, but with us out of her reach.

Fortunately, heifer 7037 was still looking for a calf and adopted the calf with no questions asked. Sometimes things actually do work out.

The center has tried to keep birth weights low and calving ease high when selecting bulls for heifers. This year's sire of the calves was listed in the top 15 percent of the breed for calving ease and the top 45 percent of the breed for birth weight (the smaller birth weight expected progeny differences (EPD), the better).

The bull was a high-growth bull that is in the upper 15 percent of the breed for weaning weight, upper 10 percent for yearling weight and has very good carcass EPD values. The bull is a good bull, but is he a heifer bull?

In this case, the four calves that had difficult pulls or cesarean sections have averaged 84.5 pounds. Out of 26 heifers, we have lost three calves and assisted five births (one light assist). of the dead calves, two were born dead and the third was a cesarean section. Of the four difficult assisted births (other than the cesarean section), they are doing fine, but had big calves.

The four calves that needed assistance averaged 98 pounds and ranged from 92

to118 pounds. Of the 21 heifers that had no birthing problems, their calves averaged 82 pounds at birth and are doing fine.

Although hard to document, when a set of calving heifers are slow to recoup after calving and the calves are cumbersome at best, you should know you are pushing the envelope. We pushed the limits and created a manageable, but difficult situation.

Is the return for the added performance of the calves worthwhile? We will wait and see, but I can tell you it costs $2.80 a pound to produce a calf through cesarean section. There is no profit from calves that cost $2.80 per pound and have no heartbeat."

Your comments are always welcome at http://www.BeefTalk.com.

Flip Video - A Great No-Brainer Tool for Cattle Promotion

2009-03-07T15:58:00.000-06:00

A few months back, Morris Halliburton, of Halliburton Farms in Bells, Texas, told me about about a neat little camcorder that was easy to use. I checked it out and knew I'd really like to have one. Well I got lucky, and Santa Claus brought me one for Christmas! I've only lately started putting it to use, and it has been fun and really easy to work with.

It's smaller than a pack of cigarettes; it's so small you might even lose track of it in your purse! So I highly recommend a good case for it. I'm using a hard leather cell phone case for mine; and the clip comes in handy to keep it safely handy in one spot in your purse, your pocket, or your belt.

You can also make still photos from it, and oftentimes they are better photos than I can take with a standard still camera -- at least better posed फोटोस।The video quality is not perfect। The really really nice HD video camera I have takes awesome quality video in comparsion -- but, that doesn't much matter if the software is too much of a pain to work with to get it from the camera to the computer and then to the web!

For a video of my handsome herd bull, JWest's Elvis, follow this link to it's location on Youtube captured from my Flip Video camera

Old18

2008-12-11T21:38:00.000-06:00

Well it has been much too long since I’ve posted a blog, and it’s been a longer than normal several months for me as well। Does that ever happen in your life? Time just seems to stand still and fast forward all at the same time – no doubt that’s a sign of age, and I suppose approaching that ‘half a century mark’ gives me a bit of an excuse for a blip in my blog posts। Life is just a big old box of chocolates as old Gump’s Mom would say, of late it’s been mostly those tart cherry filled chocolates that I don’t much like। One after another seems to come my way some days, and those nasty ones that you can’t even identify what’s actually in the middle, they really make me cringe! Yuck, just what is supposed to be likeable about some of those confections? I much prefer nut-filled chocolates, identifiable nuts -- a good solid crunch to accompany my enjoyment of chocolate. And I like the events of life to be a good solid crunch, things I can identify and enjoy, rather than chew on a while and decide to just spit out. Some of life we need to spit out and go on down the road – it’s just a bit hard to recognize those times and we chew too long, while with unacceptable chocolate confections we make the decision just real quick, a few chews and we’re done if it’s just not satisfying those taste and texture buds – it’s one big YUCK.

I sold a bull recently to some folks and they came by and picked him up, which was a good thing, I’m always happy when one of my bulls finds a forever home. But what struck me most, was the lady buying the bull recognized my ‘Old 18’ cow at pasture, she had read my blog about her from last October and guessed correctly that she was Old 18. Old 18 has shuffled along this past year with no complaints about finding herself sometimes alone, sometimes with young heifers, or young bulls, and both young groups seem to irritate her at times, and sometimes she’s with the whole herd. Trying to rotate pastures and keep this old girl happy and close by creates times when most anything can happen. When she was first with the large bull crop of calves at weaning this fall, she actually seemed to enjoy that. There were two bull calves that were often found resting right at her side, enjoying the comfort of her age and gender, I have no doubt. I could tell Old 18 liked being needed by these weanling bulls, and that was a good period for her and me.

Yesterday, winter set in and left a calling card. We had probably 5 inches plus of snow, which is quite unusual for deep East Texas. The last time I remember a snow that actually stuck and was significant was 1973, I was in junior high in Woodville, about 10 miles south of me. Regardless of the weather, Old 18 had it all worked out – she had been fed her special ration; she was tucked up in the shed by the big barn here close to the house. But, I put a kink in all that inadvertently. Last night the main cow herd was fairly vocal about this weird snow falling, and I, in sympathy and worry, opened up a gate and let them come on here to the pasture by the house, which also happens to be where Old 18 is always hobbling around.

These much stronger, more agile, cows very quickly usurped Old 18’s position under the shelter of the lean-to shed of the big barn. At about 10PM yesterday evening I checked everyone – as in, I buzzed around in my coveralls in the Ranger trying to see them all, and the windshield was clogging with snow, and I was afraid I could even run over a sleeping calf the evening was so blurry -- so it was a new check-on-the-cows experience. But, I did find Old 18 all the way down the hill with a small group of cows and couldn’t imagine that she would have gone so far from the shelter of the shed, or the wind break of the barn.

This morning Old 18 is not moving so well – she’s as stiff and slow as I’ve ever seen her. And yes I can understand that the colder weather likely has her stiffer and in more pain with her hip, but I think it’s more, and I think I see her faltering much more when she walks. Last night was a trial for her I have no doubt, and she’s appreciated all day every special thing brought to just her to eat, and she’s appreciated having the shed by the barn all to herself again to get out of the cold wind. But, nonetheless, this evening she was all the way to the fence line where I moved the main herd, sitting down and looking toward them, and I imagine wishing she was with them. I don’t know anymore whether how I handle her age and infirmities is the best approach, the happiest approach, for her – maybe no one does as most old cows are sent to an auction barn. But, I think again of our elderly human loved ones that are in poor health, as I recalled last October when I spoke of Old 18, and I again wonder at our care of an elderly cow, or an elderly dog, or even a new young pup – in comparison to some folks’ care of their elderly and infirm human family.

Without a doubt, my Old 18 enjoys her time with the herd, and maybe even wishes she was with them regularly, she probably does – but her hip wouldn’t have survived all the walking and tussling that goes on regularly. Would she have cared? Does she care? Would she just rather be always with her peers no matter the trials of each day? I will never know – because I can’t ask her, I can only watch her and try to figure out what she needs from day to day. But, we can ask our human family what they need, what they want, what makes them happy. And we should ask and listen with real sincerity, and we should try to make that answer happen if we can, or do the best we can in that direction. I imagine if Old 18 could talk, and listen, she would likely understand why she can’t be with the main herd all the time, that doesn’t mean she won’t sit at the fence and watch them and wish she was with them.

Too many elderly humans in this world are unappreciated by their children, are not respected for the trials of life they’ve endured to reach that elderly age of Old 18। That is a sad thing to get our heart and mind around, when you watch simple cows and their need and wish for companionship and attention from both their human caretakers and their herd peers, and the absolutely unrelated babes that find comfort with them -- babes that want only their company -- not some empty emotionless benefice from the elderly cow when it leaves this world for the next. The understanding of the instinct for comfort and love seems quickly lost in humans when their elderly become fragile, as though their higher power of intellect gets in the way of the basics of the mammal’s instinct for family and protectiveness, this higher intellect leaves us with a human more like a cow from a breed that has little trust, runs from you, and hogs the trough – not that any cow wouldn’t hog the trough given the chance. But, hey, humans are supposed to be of a higher intellect? Why is it that this base instinct of a cow to hog the trough, to not give a care about whether the cow next to them is their Mom or not, or their sister, just hogging up all the food they can becomes paramount, becomes so often today the higher power of humans? What does it say about them? About us?
I really like my cows, they are a fine bunch of girls, and it’s really cool when I see daughters long since weaned hanging out in the pasture with their Mom’s……..

Are You Wishing for More Heifer Calves from this Spring's Breeding Season? I know I am! Maybe we're feeding them too well during hard times. . .?

2008-04-26T13:03:00.000-05:00

Mom's diet may play role in whether baby is boy or girl
By LINDSEY TANNER (AP Medical Writer)
From Associated Press
April 24, 2008 5:30 PM EDT

CHICAGO - Snips and snails and puppydog tails ... and cereal and bananas? That could be what little boys are made of, according to surprising new research suggesting that what a woman eats before pregnancy influences the gender of her baby. Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.

The British research is billed as the first in humans to show a link between a woman's diet and whether she has a boy or girl. It is not proof, but it fits with evidence from test tube fertilization that male embryos thrive best with longer exposure to nutrient-rich lab cultures, said Dr. Tarun Jain. He is a fertility specialist at University of Illinois at Chicago who wasn't involved in the study. It just might be that it takes more nutrients to build boys than girls, he said.

University of Exeter researcher Fiona Mathews, the study's lead author, said the findings also fit with fertility research showing that male embryos aren't likely to survive in lab cultures with low sugar levels. Skipping meals can result in low blood sugar levels.

Jain said he was skeptical when he first heard about the research. But he said the study was well-done and merits follow-up study to see if the theory proves true. It's not necessarily as far-fetched as it sounds. While men's sperm determine a baby's gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women's bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome, Jain said.

"It's an interesting question. I'm not aware of anyone else looking at it in this manner," he said. The study was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British medical journal. The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn't know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant. Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.

Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week. Cereal is a typical breakfast in Britain and in the study, eating very little cereal was considered a possible sign of skipping breakfast, Mathews said.

Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, "which links quite nicely with the old wives' tale that if you eat bananas you'll have a boy," Mathews said. Women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average, she said. Still, no one's recommending pigging out if you really want a boy or starving yourself if you'd prefer a girl.

Neither style of eating is healthy, and besides all the health risks linked with excess weight, other research suggests obese women have a harder time getting pregnant. The study results reflect women at opposite ends of a normal eating pattern, not those with extreme habits, Mathews said. Professor Stuart West of the University of Edinburgh said the results echo research in some animals.

And Dr. Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the results "are certainly plausible from an evolutionary biology perspective." In other words, since boys tend to be bigger, it would make sense that it would take more calories to create them, Lu said.

Still, Lu said a woman's diet before pregnancy may be a marker for other factors in their lives that could influence their baby's gender, including timing of intercourse.

"The bottom line is, we still don't know how to advise patients in how to make boys," he said.
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On the Net:
Journal: http://publishing.royalsociety.org/index.cfm?page1087

Blanco Orejinegro & Bridel Cattle Farm in the Cauca Valley of Columbia

2008-03-07T11:34:00.000-06:00

The unique markings of the polled British White, those eye-catching black ears and contrasting pure white coat, are found in a few other breeds of great antiquity around the globe. I have long been fascinated by the global reach of these markings and their antiquity. It seems to me there is a hint of a story, a long and fascinating one, in the wide-ranging presence of these markings and the absolute reverence that is held for the cattle.

One of those breeds is the Blanco Orejinegro (BON), and this very special Colombian breed has a strong future now with the Bridel cattle farm in the Cauca Valley of Colombia, which is dedicated to the preservation of this native Colombian breed. According to Jacques Diouf in August of 2007, ". . .the Blanco Orejinegro cattle breed, known for its longevity, tolerance to high altitudes, and resistance to parasites, is under threat; only 260 animals of this breed remain."
In a genetic study dated November 2003, the BON was found to be quite unique and differentiated from other heritage breeds in Colombia:
"BON is peculiar in that it lacks the most common T3 sequence seen in European cattle and in all the other criollo breeds (cattle breeds of Latin America) examined (Col1). Furthermore, five of the six T3 lineages observed in BON are unique to this breed, including the only sequences with transversions. The genetic distinctness of BON is also manifest in the PCA of CR sequence frequency . At the phenotypic level BON is unique among the breeds examined in having a white coat and black ears (Blanco Orejinegro means "white with black ears")."

Without a doubt, I can't tell you just what T3's and traversions are, but it doesn't surprise me that the BON stood out as genetically unique cattle individuals among the criollo breeds. The study referenced is worth a look, as besides the technical nature of the genetic testing, it provides good discussion on the possible pathways of today's domestic cattle to the Americas.

The following is an excerpt from Bridel's home page, translated into English:

"Bridel is a cattle farm, 100% proud of being Colombian, located in the Cauca Valley. It is dedicated to rescue the breeding, and the strengthening of the Full-Blood Colombian cattle breed " Blanco Orejinegro " as genetic source, in order to explore its hybrid vigor and take advantage of its adaptation to our tropical environment.
We cannot lose these 500 years of natural intervention.

The “Blanco Orejinegro => BON ” is a cattle breed in danger of extinction, therefore it's conservation is our number one priority as a company.

The advantages, characteristics and genetic resources of the BON breed are numerous and are usually under appreciated by the majority of the farms and the Colombian public due to the lack of understanding and marketing of the breed, since other foreign breeds are advertised and have higher commercial reach. Our Cattle farm was formed with special criteria of a company to guarantee its survival and maintenance throughout the years.
The BON has low production costs, great genetic value, fertility, resistance to the environment, adaptability, quality marble meat, and the ability to be cross-bred with other cattle breeds."

Bridel hasn't been wasting any time in ensuring the future of this endangered Colombian heritage breed. Care is taken to ensure the blood line remains pure, with BON Fullblood females always bred to BON Fullblood bulls. At the same time, Bridel is very conscious of the fact that the hardy nature and quality of the BON breed has much value to offer the commercial cattle farms of Colombia, and it is perhaps that value that will ensure the BON's continued existence.

Bridel has an ongoing cross-breeding program with the Brahman, Holstein, and Wagyu breeds. Documenting the hybrid vigor of calves, the quality of the carcass, and the quality of the resulting replacement heifers is the right path to ensuring that future generations continue to recognize the value of the beautiful Blanco Orejinegro cattle breed.

A visit to the Bridel web site is a must -- the Gallery of Photos is filled with beautiful scenery of the cattle and the Colombian countryside. After having a look you may well find yourself wishing for a Colombian vacation so you can visit this inspiring Cauca Valley cattle farm of green, mountainous pastures and quiet contentment.

American Grassfed Association - Rhetoric vs. Reality

2008-02-21T08:46:00.000-06:00

American Grassfed Association - Rhetoric vs. Reality
by Jimmie L. West
February 21, 2008

This past October the American Grassfed Association (AGA) held it's annual conference in Austin, Texas. The event was well attended with folks coming from many parts of the USA to participate in the many planned educational seminars. By far the most interesting, educational, and just plain entertaining guest speaker was the Scottish butcher, Stuart Minick -- and guess what, his finishing program for his organic grassfed beef includes oats and molasses added to the final 30 days of finish.

Stuart Minick said the addition of oats and molasses to the finishing rations gives the resulting fat a smoother, tastier eating experience, and he indicated this method of finish is one of longstanding tradition. It was apparent that the American extremism of 100% grassfed was anathema to him. But is that American extremism of 100% or 99% (you see both purported) fact or fiction?

Prior to attending the AGA annual conference, I would have staunchly defended all AGA grassfed producer/members as 100% forage -- now, I question the integrity of that statement, and left the conference more than mildly disillusioned and just plain irritated. I have for years now rigidly pursued a 100% forage based feeding program, and have made harsh breeding decisions based on animal performance under this regimen. The result has given me a clear picture of what British White cattle genetic lines will best perform under this regimen, so I have no regrets. But, I am irritated.

The USDA had a speaker at the conference to explain the newly created USDA grassfed standards. It was during this gentleman's presentation that I was enlightened as to what is actually taking place on many grassfed beef operations. One grassfed producer attending that presentation asked the USDA representative, "What about molasses tubs . . .?" The USDA rep. responded with the comment that he wasn't aware that was part of the feeding regimen, and the fellow assured him it was and that ". . .everybody fed tubs." I chimed in at that point, asking just what tubs he was feeding, as so far as I knew there were no molasses tubs on the market that were just that - plain molasses. I didn't get an answer, instead another grassfed producer spoke up and said she fed molasses tubs as well and that they were all natural and okay to feed. Okay, I thought, well that's interesting.

Over the past few years I've heard on the grapevine that things like molasses, beet pulp, and whole cotton seed were okay to feed your grassfed herd -- but as it wasn't in the standards I stuck to 100% forage. The enlightening conversation in this meeting, to which no AGA employee or other AGA member objected, confirmed that grapevine information so far as feeding molasses. This past summer my pasture grasses seemed to be lacking some element of nutrition that always keeps my cows fat and happy and ready for winter, and a test of it in early summer showed a low brie(sp?).

This lack of brie or sweetness to my grasses got me thinking about adding molasses to their diet this winter. I had spent a great deal of time a few years ago and more trying to locate a source for pure molasses -- which is what Stuart Minick feeds his beeves in the finish phase, pure molasses -- and I couldn't find a source beyond going straight to a sugar mill in Louisiana and getting it by the barrel to haul to the ranch. After this USDA meeting, I queried one of the heads of the AGA on just where I could get these acceptable molasses tubs, and I was given the name of a manufacturer to contact. I was thrilled for two reasons. One, that apparently the AGA was truly totally okay fine with the feeding of molasses (you can't find the feeding of molasses addressed anywhere on their web site); and Two, I now had a source of healthy molasses tubs for my girls when they needed an extra boost in the winter.

Boy was I disappointed. The manufacturer did not have molasses tubs for AGA producers, had in fact worked with the organization in the past to develop one, but there had never been agreement reached on the content of the tubs. Strange indeed.

Try as I might, I cannot find a single mention in the AGA's "Grass Ruminant Standards" dated December 2006, of the feeding of molasses tubs -- either pure, natural molasses, or molasses tubs with their typical added protein boosters of questionable source. Section 3.2.7 of the Standards does allow for "incidental supplementation" defined as ". . .less than one percent of the total energy consumed during the animal's lifetime." It's from this section of the Standards that we get the 99% grassfed minimum. This 1% is to allow for inadvertent exposure to a dreaded grain, and to provide a little help in maintaining cow health in times of adverse conditions. Quite laudable, but it doesn't provide for regular use of molasses tubs with added energy/protein sources, which is exactly what some members are providing their "grassfed" herds.

The AGA has had a web site up and running for quite some time, has been an established organization for quite some time, has had a set of Standards for grassfed producers for quite some time. But, they have never implemented adherence to those standards with a resulting certification label as AGA Grassfed. The new USDA standards for grassfed meat production also provide a protocol, but do not provide audit of the producer with resulting certification -- it's a voluntary program -- which is obviously what the AGA's has been up to now. Perhaps if there'd been a certification process in place with the AGA, the USDA would have done likewise.

This week we learn that ". . The American Grassfed Association said Wednesday its board has voted to start certifying grass-fed meat operations under a new industry-backed standard administered by Food Alliance (FA), owner one of the most comprehensive agricultural eco-labels in North America." That certainly makes for great press, but what is the back story on this new development?

At the Austin conference the proposal to join up with Food Alliance was on the agenda; with Scott Exo, Executive Director of Food Alliance, being a primary speaker during the discussion session for this marriage between the AGA and Food Alliance. From the get go, the questions from the floor were negative on this proposal. The producers attending had done their homework and were quite concerned that the extensive and whole enterprise encompassing requirements to produce grassfed meats under Food Alliance would leave the small grassfed producer out in the cold. My read on the Food Alliance program was precisely the same.

The question uppermost in my mind was why the AGA needed Food Alliance. The USDA provides for specialty certification for a wide variety of producer protocols, and why not work with them. The newly minted USDA voluntary standards for grassfed production does not preclude the AGA or any other group from implementing a USDA certification program. I raised that question and was told that the bison people tried to do that and it cost them lots of money and they never got anywhere with it -- end of discussion.

There were a variety of questions from the floor put to Scott Exo when he took the podium. The concerns were centered around the obvious need to have a big operation and deep pockets to qualify as a provider to Food Alliance; not only would there be the expected production protocols, but the producer would have to meet various other requirements -- labor issues being one area of a particularly rigorous nature to the small shop producer. Scott Exo apparently tired of these questions from these hard working farmers and actually 'bowed up' at his audience, an expression you hear in East Texas when somebody gets suddenly real defensive.

Scott Exo made the statement along the lines of ". . .we've been courting you for while and we're taking you to the dance. . ." -- something like that, it was quite unprofessional, and his physical posture was one of somebody ready to have a fight. It certainly raised my eyebrows, and my suspicions of just what exactly was at stake here for Food Alliance and for the AGA. Obviously, Food Alliance will garner revenues from the large producers who can comply with all their protocols, but until the specifics of the financial arrangement between Food Alliance and the American Grassfed Association are fully disclosed, we can only speculate as to the root of his distress.

Food Alliance now has the AGA at "the dance"; and AGA affiliated grassfed producers will have to perform the dance steps required by Food Alliance to ever get an AGA label for their product. The small producer whose funds have supported the AGA is potentially pretty much out of the picture. In the AGA press release much is made of the standards that will now be finally implemented via Food Alliance as superior to the USDA standards.

For sure, the new USDA grassfed standards were hotly discussed at the Austin conference and used as a general prop to justify striking a deal with Food Alliance. The press release states ". . . AGA's grass-fed marketing claim standard is intended to exceed the requirements for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's grass-fed standard announced in October, which allows animals confined to feedlots, given antibiotics and growth hormones to still be labeled 'grass-fed' as long as they were fed a forage diet."

Actually, the USDA does provide for Antibiotic Free and Growth Hormone Free labeling, just not within the new USDA grassfed standards, they see it as a separate issue. The important issues with the new USDA grassfed standards are potential feedlot confinement due to loophole type language in the standard, and their wholly voluntary nature. The American Grassfed Association could have implemented their own standards under a USDA certification program to address those concerns, but of course that cost those bison folks lots of money and they ended up with nothing.

Let's get back to those molasses tubs. I still haven't found one that has nothing but forage based protein added to it -- I'm not even sure that's doable, but I'm not a chemist, or scientist, or whatever. But in the AGA press release we find again that "total forage" comment and one can't help but ponder where these molasses tubs fit with the program. The following statement is made, "The AGA standards, on the other hand, are primarily based on four precepts: total forage diet, no confinement, no antibiotics and no added hormones."

Molasses isn't allowed under those basic precepts, although it is not a grain, and has long been a boon to meeting the energy requirements of cattle during stressful periods. In the good old days it was fairly easy in big sugar cane and beet growing areas to get real molasses to supplement cattle in times of additional energy needs. From various things I've read, it appears that adding molasses helps cattle to process high protein diets, like dairy quality alfalfa, more efficiently -- they don't poop out as much of that valuable and expensive protein. As I said before, I'm not a scientist, so don't quote me on that. Depending on what manufacturer is selling what, you can find all kinds of reasons and justifications for why you should buy their feed stuff -- which is precisely why I originally converted to an all grass/forage based cattle operation, and precisely why I wanted to find a source for pure unadulterated molasses.

I don't care for all the gobbly gook ingredient lists and conflicting sales pitches on why something is good for my cows; and I haven't found a molasses tub yet that doesn't have something in it that I don't like. Are they feeding molasses tubs with things like feather meal in them? Sounds too much like eating a chicken, and I don't think my cows would knowingly eat a chicken. But without AGA guidance and oversight, how is the grassfed meat consumer to know whether the steak they have on the grill ate feathers?

What exactly is in those molasses tubs that "everybody feeds"? Open and clear communication with members as to what is acceptable is sorely needed.

So how could molasses fit in to a "total forage" certification program? Is it that open ended 1% of a cows total intake over their lifetime? Is that little item of much greater importance to the grassfed producer than I ever ever considered? At this point, I'm thinking that is one big loop hole that's been jumped on and in by the savvy grassfed meat producer. Calculating that 1% could become as complicated as doing my taxes. The British White cow has an amazingly long and productive breeding life. So what would be the lifetime 1% for my breed, versus 1% for a breed with a shorter life span? Of course, the average weight of your cow herd has to be taken into consideration when calculating this 1% as well. Generally, a cow is said to consume about 3% of it's body weight every day of it's life.

The whole thing just gets really complicated, makes me want to get an excel spreadsheet up and running to work it all out -- but then, without a video camera, how is the grassfed producer supposed to know how much of a molasses tub was consumed by what cow or bull or maybe a pet llama running with the herd? Sounds ridiculous, and it is.

Of course the grassfed beef steer has an average finite life. Generally he'll be ready for slaughter by at least 24 months old, and of course he'll be putting on weight every day and eating incrementally more every day. So maybe what the grassfed meat producer is doing to put that final finish fat on their steers is feeding every bit of that allowable 1% in the final 30 days! Like the Scottish butcher, Stuart Minick, does on his Aberdeen Angus beef operation in England. It makes grand sense to me, and at first thought sounds like it makes it a heckuva lot easier to calculate that allowable 1%. But no, I just gave it a brief thought, got out my calculator even, but darn if it's still somewhat complicated to figure out. Perhaps the Food Alliance protocols will have some hard and fast formula for determining this small, but apparently highly pertinent, loop hole in the AGA standards.

Perhaps I'm wrong about this loop hole providing the opening for these molasses tubs AGA members are feeding; but if I am wrong, then the problems within the AGA are much worse than I concluded they were after attending the AGA conference in Austin, which in general was poorly organized. I would like to be able to say that AGA's partnership with Food Alliance is a great step for the members, but I don't beieve it is. ". . . Exo said those passing certification under the specific AGA grass-fed standards will be able to market products with both FA and the AGA's American Grass Fed seals."

"[Producers] will be getting a twofer," he (Exo) said.

Grassfed producers shouldn't have to get that "twofer". Large and small producers of grassfed meats could have been certified by the AGA itself; and those large producers desiring Food Alliance certification as well, certainly wouldn't have been prevented from garnering that quite respectable designation. The whole concept of grassfed has an inherent simplicity. The AGA's own comments highlight that simplicity, ". . .primarily based on four precepts: total forage diet, no confinement, no antibiotics and no added hormones."

Just how hard would that have been for them to audit and certify? Not terribly hard at all. Now, that "twofer" is forced on the producer who wishes to have the AGA's certification label. Exo calls this simplification, "That is the kind of simplification that the marketplace is looking for," Exo says in reference to growing consumer desire for meats raised humanely, naturally, etc...

I can't find a single thing of great consumer importance that the FA designation provides that wouldn't have been provided by the AGA's own simple precepts: ". . .Total forage diet, no confinement, no antibiotics and no added hormones." The FA certification ". .addresses labor conditions, humane animal care, and environmental stewardship." The labor conditions are usually the owner's own sweat; humane animal care is intrinsic to growing grassfed meats; and the grassfed producer can't be a grassfed producer without environmental stewardship -- it's the life blood of their operation, next to superior feed efficient animals.

Simplification?

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THE AGA'S PRESS RELEASE:

American Grassfed Association E-Update
February 20,2008

Grass-fed beef producers approve new labeling standard
Food Alliance may start inspections under new grass-fed standard by May

by Sustainable Food News
February 20, 2008

The American Grassfed Association (AGA) said Wednesday its board has voted to start certifying grass-fed meat operations under a new industry-backed standard administered by Food Alliance, owner one of the most comprehensive agricultural eco-labels in North America.

"We can now begin the process of developing the audit protocols that will allow our members to certify their farms and ranches as grassfed," AGA Beef Director Will Harris told Sustainable Food News.

The AGA represents more than 300 grassfed livestock producers. FA certifies farms, ranches, food processors and distributors for sustainable agriculture certification, which addresses labor conditions, humane animal care, and environmental stewardship.

Certified businesses can use the green, FA eco-label on its products to show off social and environmental responsibility.

FA Executive Director Scott Exo told Sustainable Food News earlier that it could his group could start taking applications and undertaking inspections of producers wishing to be AGA-certified by May.

AGA's grass-fed marketing claim standard is intended to exceed the requirements for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's grass-fed standard announced in October, which allows animals confined to feedlots, given antibiotics and growth hormones to still be labeled 'grass-fed' as long as they were fed a forage diet.

The AGA standards, on the other hand, are primarily based on four precepts: total forage diet, no confinement, no antibiotics and no added hormones. The AGA grass-fed claim applies to ruminants only - cattle, sheep and eventually goats - not poultry or pork.

And since producers seeking FA certification are already assessed against rigorous animal welfare standards including no hormones or non-therapeutic antibiotics, Exo said those passing certification under the specific AGA grass-fed standards will be able to market products with both FA and the AGA's American Grass Fed seals.

"[Producers] will be getting a twofer," he said.

Grass-fed meat producers have waited for years for the department to develop certification standards and procedures, like the organic certification and seal, to distinguish grass-fed animals from conventionally raised animals.

And though the USDA did ban the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in its 'naturally raised' marketing claim standard it released in December, it still leaves out the issue of confinement.

The comment period for the proposed voluntary standard for a naturally-raised marketing claim for livestock and meat was recently extended to March 3.

Still, Exo said splitting sustainable agriculture practices into separate marketing claims can be especially frustrating for producers.

"The problem with slicing things so thinly is that a producer has to put words all over packaging to get his marketing message across," he said.

Exo said with both Food Alliance and AGA grass-fed certification producers are able to have a host of practices assessed to standards that consumers are calling for; all in one certification process and indicated by the FA and AGA seals.

"That is the kind of simplification that the marketplace is looking for," he said.

Please note - Our mailing address has changed!
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Denver, CO 80206

"How Could You? A Sad Story" Copyright © 2001 Jim Willis

2008-01-15T13:26:00.000-06:00

Excerpt: "They clung to my fur and pulled themselves up on wobbly legs, poked fingers in my eyes, investigated my ears, and gave me kisses on my nose. I loved everything about them and their touch — because your touch was now so infrequent — and I would’ve defended them with my life if need be."

When I was a puppy, I entertained you with my antics and made you laugh. You called me your child, and despite a number of chewed shoes and a couple of murdered throw pillows, I became your best friend. Whenever I was “bad,” you’d shake your finger at me and ask “How could you?” — but then you’d relent and roll me over for a belly rub.

My housebreaking took a little longer than expected, because you were terribly busy, but we worked on that together. I remember those nights of nuzzling you in bed and listening to your confidences and secret dreams, and I believed that life could not be any more perfect. We went for long walks and runs in the park, car rides, stops for ice cream (I only got the cone because “ice cream is bad for dogs” you said), and I took long naps in the sun waiting for you to come home at the end of the day.

Gradually, you began spending more time at work and on your career, and more time searching for a human mate. I waited for you patiently, comforted you through heartbreaks and disappointments, never chided you about bad decisions, and romped with glee at your homecomings, and when you fell in love.

She, now your wife, is not a “dog person”…still I welcomed her into our home, tried to show her affection, and obeyed her. I was happy because you were happy.

Then the human babies came along and I shared your excitement. I was fascinated by their pinkness, how they smelled, and I wanted to mother them, too. Only she and you worried that I might hurt them, and I spent most of my time banished to another room, or to a dog crate. Oh, how I wanted to love them, but I became a prisoner of love.

As they began to grow, I became their friend. They clung to my fur and pulled themselves up on wobbly legs, poked fingers in my eyes, investigated my ears, and gave me kisses on my nose. I loved everything about them and their touch — because your touch was now so infrequent — and I would’ve defended them with my life if need be. I would sneak into their beds and listen to their worries and secret dreams, and together we waited for the sound of your car in the driveway.

There had been a time, when others asked you if you had a dog, that you produced a photo of me from your wallet and told them stories about me. These past few years, you just answered “yes” and changed the subject. I had gone from being “your dog” to “just a dog,” and you resented every expenditure on my behalf.

Now, you have a new career opportunity in another city, and you and they will be moving to an apartment that does not allow pets. You’ve made the right decision for your “family,” but there was a time when I was your only family.

I was excited about the car ride until we arrived at the animal shelter. It smelled of dogs and cats, of fear, of hopelessness. You filled out the paperwork and said “I know you will find a good home for her.” They shrugged and gave you a pained look. They understand the realities facing a middle-aged dog, even one with “papers.” You had to pry your son’s fingers loose from my collar as he screamed, “No, Daddy! Please don’t let them take my dog!” And I worried for him, and what lessons you had just taught him about friendship and loyalty, about love and responsibility, and about respect for all life.

You gave me a good-bye pat on the head, avoided my eyes, and politely refused to take my collar and leash with you. You had a deadline to meet and now I have one, too. After you left, the two nice ladies said you probably knew about your upcoming move months ago and made no attempt to find me another good home. They shook their heads and asked “How could you?”

They are as attentive to us here in the shelter as their busy schedules allow. They feed us, of course, but I lost my appetite days ago. When I realized I could not compete with the frolicking for attention of happy puppies, oblivious to their own fate, I retreated to a far corner and waited. I heard her footsteps as she came for me at the end of the day, and I padded along the aisle after her to a separate room. A blissfully quiet room.

She placed me on the table and rubbed my ears, and told me not to worry. My heart pounded in anticipation of what was to come, but there was also a sense of relief. The prisoner of love had run out of days. As is my nature, I was more concerned about her. The burden which she bears weighs heavily on her, and I know that, the same way I knew your every mood.

She gently placed a tourniquet around my foreleg as a tear ran down her cheek. I licked her hand in the same way I used to comfort you so many years ago. She expertly slid the hypodermic needle into my vein. As I felt the sting and the cool liquid coursing through my body, I lay down sleepily, looked into her kind eyes and murmured ” How could you?”

Perhaps because she understood my dogspeak, she said “I’m so sorry.” She hugged me, and hurriedly explained it was her job to make sure I went to a better place, where I wouldn’t be ignored or abused or abandoned, or have to fend for myself –a place of love and light so very different from this earthly place.

And with my last bit of energy, I tried to convey to her with a thump of my tail that my “How could you?” was not directed at her. It was directed at you, My Beloved Master; I was thinking of you. I will think of you and wait for you forever. May everyone in your life continue to show you so much loyalty.

Copyright © 2001 Jim Willis
All Rights Reserved

The Travels and Trials of Old 18 - Her Story

2008-01-10T16:54:00.000-06:00

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance my deride it, but in the end, there it is." Winston Churchill

"Nothing can prepare you for living or working with a sociopathic serial bully. It is the most devastating, draining, misunderstood, and ultimately futile experience imaginable." Tim Field, Bully on Sight

". . .When close to being outwitted and exposed, the bully feigns victimhood and turns the focus on themselves - this is another example of manipulating people through their emotion of guilt, e.g. sympathy, feeling sorry, etc. Female serial bullies are especially partial to making themselves the center of attention by claiming to be the injured party whilst portraying their target as the villain of the piece. . ." Tim Field, Bully on Sight

Although you hear many people using the term 'stupid cow' or some such, from my observations they are far from stupid. Each member of my herd has particular character traits and behavior that are uniquely their own. Cow family groups are often found grazing together -- the Grandmother, Daughters, and Granddaughters. Most often many traits of the sire and dam in terms of personality and behavior are passed on to their calves. Most cattle breeders are familiar with the term "heritability", and certain behavioral as well as physical traits are quite heritable in cattle. If a cow or bull is inclined to be more curious and precocious, the probability is great that their calves will have some degree of this same trait. If a cow is a pushy sort of girl, then look for that to express itself in her offspring, and so on with the whole gamut of possibilities. Old 18 was, and is now again, a gentle and quiet old girl, easily contented.

While we generally see these desirable behavioral traits of cows passed on to their calves, every now and then the odd one hits the ground -- the odd calf born to very good-natured parents that is inexplicably disconnected from kinship with it's family group, and typically much more aggressive about protecting its personal 'flight zone' space. My observations of people over the years, and particularly the past several years, is that the odd calf in a herd of cattle that is a Genetic misfit with the parents and other siblings, can be found as well in human families. The destructive types of human misfits explored in this essay are the self-absorbed humans who perceive themselves as more important than anyone else and more deserving than anyone else -- the narcissists -- they close their eyes to the needs of others, and place individuals in their family unit who might be useful to them at a careful and calculated distance -- a human 'flight zone' that is based on how much or how little the individual complies with the misfit human's needs. (See Mayo Clinic, Narcissistic Personality Disorder )

You can see it in their eyes somehow -- that they just don't have a lot to give of themselves and they like it that way -- and, yes, I'm referring to the few odd cows and calves I've encountered and the human misfits, who are quite often Sociopathic Serial Bullies, which is one of the most damaging degrees of sickness for the narcissistic human misfit. The odd bovine misfits won't be found licking the face of their sisters or their mother, hanging out under a tree with their family group, helping with the care-taking of one another just doesn't happen -- unless of course there is personal gain, but a cow doesn't generally hang with another for personal gain. While they most definitely aren't stupid, they wouldn't conceive of the using or abusing of another's emotions as the path to filling their belly with the best the rancher has to offer -- but without a doubt a human misfit will.

This summer Old 18, a very aged cow, returned to my herd -- I've referred to her as 'Old 18' in an earlier essay, and she is pictured above in November of 2004. I placed Old 18 a couple of years ago with a nice family nearby who could keep her in smaller pastures that wouldn't be so hard on her bad hip. However, this respite from life in a big herd was short-lived, and she was traded into a commercial herd where she was just one of a group of many -- her physical limitations no doubt of little consequence to the new owner. She was brought back to me because she is too aged to be of value to the typical rancher, and I did not want her taken to an auction barn where she would undoubtedly suffer from ill behavior on the part of humans -- and she did not deserve that treatment after all her years of service to us humans. Initially, I was irritated at the cavalier treatment of Old 18 by the fellow that dropped her off in the cattle pens. But upon second thought, at least he had the courage and the care to try to do what was now best for her now that her usefulness to him was over. He could have put her in a pasture corner and simply ignored her until she died a so-called natural death.

Old 18 was mal-nourished , her joints popping loudly through the air with every measured step, and perhaps worst of all, her personality had changed -- she was shy of me, of everyone. You couldn't walk near where she was resting, typically alone in the beginning, without her struggling to her feet and shuffling away. She was a tired and frightened old girl, and I'll never know what human treatment she received to make her so. I thought I was doing the right thing, letting her live in a less strenuous environment; believed that she would be cared for as the special grande' dame British White cow she is, until the day she died -- I was wrong. Perhaps, if she could, she would have articulated these questions during her sojourn away from home:

***"Question: I feel so ill and desperate I sometimes have suicidal thoughts?
Answer: These feelings, which include reactive depression, are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. You are not mentally ill, but mentally injured and fatigued. The cause is external which means someone is responsible and liable for your condition. Physical and Emotional Response to Abuse

Question: Why am I a victim?

Answer: You're not a victim, you're a target. The bully has deliberately and intentionally targeted you. It is the bully's pattern of behaviour with constant nitpicking criticisms, false allegations and so on which reveals intent."

For several months now I've again found myself in a long term babysit of Old 18. She was pretty much emaciated upon her return to the ranch, but now she has a decent amount of fat cover. While her time away from here greatly worsened her bad hip, her joints no longer pop and creak so loudly. I keep her always in a pasture near the house. At the end of every long day I seek her out and make sure she is okay, that she hasn't taken a turn for the worse, that she appears healthy and at enough of a level of ease to enjoy the remainder of her life. It doesn't take much time really to just check and say hi and make sure she's okay --

[. . . the narcissistic human has no time for such care-giving activity, unless it is perceived as a gainful approach to their selfish goals, such as known reward at ultimate death of the individual, be it parent or child, or the narcissist's projection of their self love in their offspring or parent. Self-love through offspring or parents in the narcissistic human is particularly insidious -- as it is only as constant as the offspring's or parent's constancy of agreement with the narcissist human.]

The days can be long for a rancher, it's not at all a glam pursuit. Most often the days are filled with the more gainful side of one's occupations that support the rearing of cattle -- and at the close of the day as dusk approaches you take that walk and check on those who may be in need of your attention. Sadly, human misfits have so little 'humanity' that they can't be bothered to even take this same little bit of time, this brief walk, with aged or injured human family members -- their own time, their own health, is all that matters.

The human misfit's self-importance is so great that they can't be bothered to check upon and observe the health of nearby family members that have in their view failed to supply or comply with their wishes -- a cow would never be so cold. Old 18 has another cow that has bonded with her and they are now often found together keeping one another company. If I had daughters here at the ranch from Old 18, I've no doubt they would be seen regularly at her side.

Sadly, when it's a human misfit, much harm can be done to the entire family unit when one exceedingly malicious person is born into that fold. When it's a cow that is a bad apple, eventually it's seen and accepted as such by us humans, and we let someone else see what they can do with the cow by way of the auction barn -- just maybe it would prefer different, or better, digs to call home.

With humans, we can't just dispose of the family member and let someone else try to work through their personal issues -- we can only hope the misfit human will win the lotto and just go away and stop causing such unnecessary pain and distress to the other members of the family unit -- or best of all, hope they'll surely come to their senses and be that loving and care-giving human that is a reflection of the family unit. This generally doesn't prove to happen. Instead, that human continues to cause extreme pain and distress to the vulnerable family members who can't fathom the root of their malice, and can't fathom the depth of their deceits.

But it is not theirs to fathom, it is an anomaly of nature -- much better they all would be not to try to fathom the depths of the odd misfit human, but to put them aside and go on, much like one assumes a cow family must surely do by simple animal instinct. But in the daily course of life that realization of one bad apple being a weird anomaly of nature is hard to accept by a human mother, father, or siblings -- painful to work with, and the attempt at acceptance of the misfit human puts other loved ones in harms away, drains away their spirit, and takes away their beautiful smile. . . perhaps forever.

With the misfit cow, we let it go elsewhere so it's behavior won't be a daily pain in the rear, won't perhaps influence the behavior of other cows and calves by example. With the misfit human who just doesn't go away, and most likely we don't want to go away, we remain so hopeful of a return of kindness and care to their character that we allow them to remain in our family unit.

Because of their mutual love of their mother, father, or siblings; the family unit remains in a state of hope that the human misfit will find again the clarity and gentleness of spirit of their youth, that can perhaps be likened to the young calf feeling the strength and the wonder of it's legs as it dashes across the pasture without an agenda at hand. Sounds sappy, and it is, and it's just what your human misfit wants you to do, believe . . .hope. . . there is an end to the emotional pain in sight, if you'll just provide what they seek this time -- manipulation is perhaps their greatest skill.

Old 18 seems to be handling the cold of winter fairly well. I was concerned about her being in perhaps a great deal of joint pain with the change of the season, but so far she seems to be at a constant level of ease. It's not unusual to find Old 18 resting with all the baby calves gathered around her, their dams designating the old girl as the babysitter for the day. Oftentimes, the youngsters make a mad dash to her and run around her, as though they're trying to encourage her to have some play time with them. As long as I see that she is content, she'll remain with me, and with this earth . . . I think she's well worth the extra time and care-taking.

NOTE: I most likely will post this blog again from time to time, edit it from time to time. I imagine it will only bother those people who feel uncomfortable with themselves upon reading it. And most likely the commission of 4 or 5 of these 10 Commandments below have been for many years, and remain to this day, a critical part of their sorry daily life.

5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8. Thou shalt not steal.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.

It's likely difficult for someone who exhibits the majority of the traits provided below of Narcissistic Personality Disorder to even comprehend the error of their ways, or even recognize basic moral rules of human behavior such as the Ten Commandments of even being pertinent to their lives -- they are much too special.

The DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder are:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, as indicated by at least five of:

1. a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e. unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy and is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others, (Unless it can be publicly accomplished to further the narcissistic ideal self they strive to project.)
8. is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes

Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder often cross a moral line into Sociopathic Serial Bully disorder, and the resulting damage to their family unit knows no bounds. Is your life infected with the presence of a Sociopathic Serial Bully? Serial bullies harbour a particular hatred of anyone who can articulate their behaviour profile, either verbally or in writing . . . in a manner which helps other people see through their deception and their mask of deceit. Serial bullies hate to see themselves and their behaviour reflected as if they are looking into a mirror.

Update

"Yet, the prime rule of narcissism must never be forgotten: the narcissist uses anything available to obtain his (or her) Narcissistic Supply. Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist because women are still the primary caregivers and the ones who give birth. It is easier for a woman to think of her children (or her own mother) as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive.

. . .Devoid of the diversity of alternatives available to men – the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable source of supply: her children (or parents). Through insidious indoctrination, guilt formation, emotional extortion, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in them a dependence, which cannot be easily unraveled.
But, there is no psychodynamic difference between children as sources of narcissistic supply - and money, or intellect, or any other Source of Narcissistic Supply. So, there is no psychodynamic difference between male and female narcissists. The only difference is in their choices of sources of narcissistic supply."

***********MAYO CLINIC - DESCRIPTION OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
Although some features of narcissistic personality disorder may seem like having confidence or strong self-esteem, it's not the same. Narcissistic personality disorder crosses the border of healthy confidence and self-esteem into thinking so highly of yourself that you put yourself on a pedestal. In contrast, people who have healthy confidence and self-esteem don't value themselves more than they value others.

When you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. You may have a sense of entitlement. And when you don't receive the special treatment to which you feel entitled, you may become very impatient or angry. You may also seek out others you think have the same special talents, power and qualities — people you see as equals. You may insist on having "the best" of everything — the best car, athletic club, medical care or social circles, for instance.

But underneath all this grandiosity often lies a very fragile self-esteem. You have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have a sense of secret shame and humiliation. And in order to make yourself feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and efforts to belittle the other person to make yourself appear better.
**********************************************************

Follow this link for an online Narcissistic Abuse Message Board.

Update:

While I certainly don't concur or embrace the literal meaning of the biblical passages below, they do provide a blunt metaphor worth contemplating:

. . . Jesus specifically upheld the requirement of the Old Testament law of Exodus 21:17:

And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
He did so in Matthew 15:4, where He said:

For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death (cf. Mark 7:10).

"If we would cite Jesus in support of the 5th Commandment that prescribes the honor of parents, then we should not shrink from citing Him in support of the law of God that prescribes the punishment of those who would be so vile as to curse their parents. For Jesus, these two laws are united as the expression of the moral law of God: one states the fundamental duty, and the other gives the righteous punishment for those who would violate that duty to such a flagrant and debased degree." (Source: Essay on Stoning Disobedient Children )

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a . . . Happy New Year!

2007-12-20T11:00:00.000-06:00

The close of 2007 is almost upon us, but as well the new beginnings of 2008 are around the corner. A new year to make new strides of improvement with our cattle and with ourselves. For me it has been one of the longest years I've lived in perhaps the last decade of my life. That may seem an odd thing to say, but it seems to me that the events of a given year in our lives sometimes have a sort of rush about them, or sometimes an agonizing delay.

I lost my Mom in early October, and I want to thank every one for the kind words of sympathy, and I pray and believe she is in God's Loving Care now and the stresses of the world are behind her. I also lost a cousin this summer and now this past week it seems I've lost my dog, Gabbie, who was a joy to be around, always a happy girl. She looks somewhat like a coyote, and I found out yesterday that many are being found around deer stands shot dead in their tracks. While I understand the need to control the population, I'm not so sure I agree anymore with this tactic.

I had the opportunity to see a humanely captured coyote napping in a trap in the back of a pickup yesterday. It will be taken to a hunting dog operation for use in training. I hope my Gabbie somehow has shared that same fate and someone will realize that she is a good dog, not a killing coyote. At the same time, I wonder, and perhaps hope just a bit, maybe hope really a whole lot, that the loss of Gabbie is my number '3' for this string of deaths in my family, and all will be well with those I love for many years to come.

That's an old saying I grew up with -- that death comes in threes. But I hope Gabbie is alive and well, and her disappearance is enough to count as my family's number '3'.

We had a really great annual meeting at Halliburton Farms in Bells this past month. Amazingly, a large number of people travelled great distances to attend. I don't think they were at all disappointed, and the level of enthusiasm and interest in the breed was contagious and heartening.

The speakers were both excellent and the attendees listened raptly and with great interest in their discussion. Perhaps best of all, everyone there got a bursting full large bag of what look to be perfect pecans from Morris and Jean Halliburton's very old and very prolific pecan trees. Lucky for me, Mike won the bidding as well on two bags of shelled ones which we are quite enjoying.

Not to be left out is the excellent catfish prepared by Morris' family. I could have eaten plate after plate if I'd just shut up long enough -- but the conversation was good and those who know me, know I get started talking and sort of lose all track of time and awareness of what's around -- though I did get a last piece from Dan Herrell sitting next to me -- sharing good catfish is something I consider tops on my list of good people traits.

Fortunately, Dan also let me have a warm cap he had extra with him, and on Sunday morning it was firmly on my head keeping me warm and dry as the sky fell out with a pounding rain and the air cooled down to high 30's, if not lower. Brrr. . . it was surely cold. Thanks Dan, and thanks to everyone who made the meeting a memorable one for all.

Not Good News for Turkey Day

2007-11-20T08:47:00.000-06:00

H5N1 confirmed at second U.K. site

By Alicia Karapetian on 11/20/2007 for Meatingplace.com

British officials on Monday announced that testing confirmed an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in turkeys at a second site in the United Kingdom.

The outbreak occurred at a farm deemed a "dangerous contact" premise, which was placed under restriction following the first outbreak last week. (See British AI outbreak highly pathogenic strain: official on Meatingplace.com, Nov. 14, 2007.)

Officials on Saturday completed the culling of birds on the first infected farm and those placed under restriction.

An almost 2-mile protection zone has been established around the second site, and the existing surveillance zone has been extended.

British AI outbreak highly pathogenic strain: official
By Alicia Karapetian on 11/14/2007 for Meatingplace.com

British government officials on Tuesday announced that confirmatory tests showed an avian influenza outbreak on a turkey farm in eastern England was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.

In response, the some 5,000 turkeys, 1,000 ducks and 400 geese on the farm will be culled, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Hilary Benn told British Parliament in prepared remarks Tuesday.

"The health and safety of those involved in the operations are the priority, and a strict approach is being taken," she said. "All workers on the premises already potentially exposed to infection have been given Tamiflu."

The government also has restricted poultry movement, instituting an almost 2-mile protection zone and an approximately 6-mile-wide surveillance area.

Benn's department was informed of a large number of turkey deaths at the farm Sunday. Preliminary tests conducted Monday showed the presence of the H5 strain, and further testing, which revealed the strain was H5N1, was completed Tuesday.

The United Kingdom last faced an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in February when 159,000 turkeys were culled at a Bernard Matthews farm.

Check out this Day-After-Thanksgiving Stew Recipe

2007-11-20T07:39:00.000-06:00

This sounds like an really tasty recipe for a Mexican style beef stew provided this week to National Cattlemen's Beef Association members. Check out those ingredients and add them to your grocery list, sounds like a winning combination of seasonings. For the less adventurous, a good old-fashioned soup bowl should work just fine. . . .

Easy Day-After-Thanksgiving Stew

Wondering what to serve the day after Thanksgiving to a houseful of hungry family looking for an encore? Whip up hearty Mexican Beef Stew to satisfy those day-after stomach grumblings!

Mexican Beef Soup in Tortilla Bowls

Prep time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:
1-1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1 large onion, cut lengthwise in half and cut crosswise into thin slices
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cans (10-1/2 ounces each) beef consommé
1 can (15-1/4 ounces) whole kernel corn, drained
1 can (10 ounces) diced tomatoes with green chilies, undrained
1 cup water
6 medium (8 inches) flour tortillas
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions:

Heat Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium heat until hot. Add ground beef and onion; brown 4 to 5 minutes, breaking beef up into 3/4-inch crumbles. Pour off drippings. Season beef with cumin and pepper.
Stir consommé, corn, tomatoes and water into beef. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low. Simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes.
Meanwhile gently press tortillas into 6 individual microwave-safe (2-cup) soup bowls. Microwave, 3 bowls at a time, on HIGH 5 to 6 minutes or until tortillas are slightly crisp, rotating and rearranging cups halfway.
Stir cilantro into soup; spoon soup into tortilla bowls. Garnish as desired; serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings.

Nutrition information per serving: 478 calories; 19 g fat (6 g saturated fat; 8 g monounsaturated fat); 76 mg cholesterol; 1102 mg sodium; 40 g carbohydrate; 2.6 g fiber; 34 g protein; 5.6 mg niacin; 0.4 mg vitamin B6; 2.4 mcg vitamin B12; 4.6 mg iron; 20.8 mcg selenium; 5.8 mg zinc

Traditional Breed Beef (British White) and Pork in Demand in England

2007-11-18T08:31:00.000-06:00

Traditional Breed Beef and Pork in Demand
05/09/07

(Excerpt - Please follow the link above for the full text of the article)

“Shaun bought the British White cattle because they were a traditional breed and he felt there would be a market for them. Also, at the time he was running the farm on his own and the cattle are naturally-polled and are easily handled.

“At the time the breed was classified rare but now the Rare Breeds’ Survival Trust has them on the minority list with around 1,500 breeding females in the country.

“The Middle White pigs are an endangered breed and the Saddlebacks which came last year are classified as at Risk by the Rare breeds Survival Trust.”

British White cattle at
Savin Hill

All Cattle born at Savin Hill are finished on the farm at between 24 to 30 months old and such has been the demand for the meat that the Partingtons have developed good relationships with other British White breeders around the country who now supply them with finished animals to the same standards as their own.

“We were unable to cope with the demand for beef with our own cattle and by taking them off other breeders this has encouraged people either to expand their herds or to go into the breed.

“Our over-riding philosophy with the business is about pure traditional native breeds and sustainably farming in this country which is something that a lot of people are struggling to do in the current climate of change.

“By us creating a market for a quality product, consumers can support these breeds and hopefully encourage sufficient numbers of the animals and make it viable to farm them in this country.”

With the cattle taking at least three years to produce (from conception to the final cuts of quality meat), the small acreage at Savin Hill has not been able to cope with the demand, but the faster turn-around time for the pigs has enabled them to develop this side of the meat business. “We have won several awards for our Middle White home-produced pork which is all born, bred and reared on our farm”. Michelle and Shaun Partington
with Middle White piglets

Pigs are eight to 10 months old at finishing with the Middle Whites weighing 65-80kg and the Saddlebacks will be 85kg-plus.

Meat has always been sold direct to get the best price through farmers’ markets and fine food fairs in Lancashire and the Manchester area and now there is an increasing demand for wholesale meat direct to restaurants which Michelle plans to develop.

On average, one head of Savin Hill's cattle is put through the system each month but this can rise to up to 10 during November and December when other breeders help meet the demand.

A further six pigs on average are used each week.

Michelle’s partner Paul Etherington, who has 20 years’ experience as a butcher, cuts the meat in the on-farm premises to include shin, skirt, loins, legs and belly.

Quality ready-prepared meats are also sold such as loin of pork stuffed with basil and fresh sage, pork fillets wrapped in pancetta, stuffed belly pork with apricot and ginger.

The Saddlebacks are used for bacon and their trim is used in the sausages which have around a 90 per cent meat content. They are made without preservatives or artificial flavourings and colourings.

Meat from the Middle Whites, a traditional pork pig, will continue to be used for the fresh pork cuts and the trim will go into speciality pies including Pork and Lyth Valley Damson.

“We all love to eat good food – it’s an important thing for us. My mum’s side of the family were in farming. Her grand-parents used to sell eggs and milk on Blackburn market.

“We have been brought up to think that quality food is important. These days there are too many flavour enhancers, artificial preservatives and colourings being used in foods,” says Michelle, who enjoys being able to talk to her customers about what is in their products and how the meats are naturally-reared.

A British White Bull Gets Himself in a Bit of Jam

2007-10-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, google blogger is having problems with photos posting, so this pic of JWest's Mazarati in quite a pickle is just an X on your screen most likely.
This picture was Sunday a week ago today, and it was, as is often the case, a weekend just as busy as a week day. Mazarati, better known by the nickname Mo, had made his way along a puzzling course in the hay barn, until he'd reached a dead end -- much like a maze meant for humans that takes many attempts to find the right course out. Unlike a person, Mo couldn't figure out that if he just took those same steps backwards he would be able to find his way back to the beginning. It could have been a disaster, fortunately, he was not injured.

Amazingly, he was quite calm about the whole ordeal; though his new owner, Carol Diodene, would agree with me that he wasn't exactly happy -- his eyes were quite a bit rolled back as tried to look up at us. The first question a cattle rancher would be sure to be asking themself right now is how did he gain access to the hay barn. Well, that would be my fault; and, yes, I am generally a stickler about those gates always being secured even if you are quite sure you'll go right back through that gate within minutes. But, the day before I obviously failed to do just that.

Another herd bull, King Cole, was headed to his new home in the Canton area on Saturday morning, and I opened the hay barn to get a hefty handful of alfalfa droppings from the floor of the barn to use to coax him on into the pens -- and I didn't go back and close the gate, it was merely pushed together, and thus a perfect trap for an unsuspecting cow or bull with access to the corral that adjoins the hay barn. And of course Mo and the two bred heifers leaving for Ocala, Florida had access.

I can't tell you how happy I was to see Mo stroll out of that hay barn with no obvious injury from his ordeal. Two 16' high stacks of 4x4x8 alfalfa bales had to be removed to give him a way out. With all but the bottom row removed, Gentle Mo didn't lunge at the open space as I feared he might -- I could see how easy it would be for him to now try to climb over that remaining 4 foot high bale, but he didn't. Perhaps it was because Carol and I were patting him on the head and telling him to just wait a bit longer, or perhaps it's because he is a British White and his calm disposition saved his life from serious injury while trapped and during his release.

Most amazing perhaps is that Mo didn't bolt out into the corral following his release. He merely strolled and inexplicably stopped to munch on one of the alfalfa bales that had been removed to give him passage out. Carol was great through the whole ordeal, and convinced that this was surely a sign that Mo was meant to join her farm in Ocala, and I think he was as well. He arrived safely at his new home the following day, along with a pot load of great females that Carol found at the British White and Lowline auction in Henderson that weekend.

Calf Birth Weight - Actual versus Tape Measure

2007-09-03T16:02:00.000-05:00

A Truly 'laboring' Labor Day weekend!

My fall calving got started this past few days, and because one of the calves born was so very small I decided to try out a set of old bathroom scales that have a big platform and an elevated dial with big numbers for viewing weight results. This little heifer calf was a surprise finding on August 30th when the Animal Compassion Foundation was having another visit with my herd. Anne was thinking on her feet and volunteered her belt to use to measure the newborn and a pen to mark the spot. She was obviously a very little girl, and I ventured the guess that she couldn't weight more than 45 pounds.

We got back to the house and measured Anne's belt and found that she had measured 24 1/2 inches around, and it was a good snug belt measure around her heart girth, the little heifer was totally interested and cooperative. I figured the belt measure probably, because it was a thick leather belt, added some length to the measurement, and later on that evening I went out and measured her again with my tape, and I measured her at 24 inches. While 24 inches got her closer to the mark when you use the tape conversion chart in the Breeder's Guide, I still wasn't convinced that her actual weight was 51 pounds, which is what you get when you use the 4.5 pound increments to back into an off the chart 24 inch heart girth.

The following day I decided to try out my old scales on this little heifer. I found a light weight section of that stick on the floor tile type stuff in the barn, and decided that would work fine. It was nice and sturdy, yet was very manageable. I put the section of floor tile down on the ground, put the scales on my new weighing platform, and weighed her and myself twice for good measure. She was an exact 40 pound little heifer. The difference of 11 pounds is very significant, that is over a 25% error in birth weight estimation.

I decided to go through this same process with each of my newborns. Besides this little heifer, I had four other calves born August 30th through Sept. 2nd. Of those three of them were cooperative, the 27 1/2 inch bull calf born on August 30 to Hill's Dana already found it too much grand fun to scamper about for me pick him and get an actual weight.

August 31st a heifer calf was born to MsRae. She measured 26 inches, and per the tape conversion chart should have weighed 60 pounds, but in fact she weighed more! She had an actual weight of 65 pounds. I also had Mike confirm these same results himself, and it was an accurate weight of 65 pounds -- and she is pictured here.

September 1st a bull calf was born to Madonna (and I actually happened to be out at pasture hanging around in the Ranger and she calved about 40 feet away from me!). This bull calf measured 26 1/4 inches, and had an actual weight of 60 pounds. So in this instance the tape conversion to weight was quite acceptably accurate, and again I had Mike duplicate the weighing process for confirmation.

Then on the afternoon of September 2nd, Polly (pictured here to the right)decided it was time to calve. This calving went on for a bit too long for my comfort, I even called to try to reach a vet just in case I had a problem on my hands. But in between rushing to the house and calling the vet and leaving a message of impending problems, she had delivered a healthy bull calf. (So of course I rushed back to the house and left another message for the vet that all was well!) I tape measured this newborn at a whopping 27 1/2 inches, and had Mike confirm the tape measurement as well this time. We both weighed the little guy and he weighed all of 60 pounds. But, per the tape conversion he should have weighed about 67 pounds -- a greater than 10% error, which in this business is a highly material error.

So what does all this mean to the breeder who relies on tape measure conversion to estimate weight? It means you probably ought to be getting some actual weights as well until, or if, you feel comfortable visually estimating weight and understanding how the tape should perhaps be adjusted for what your eyes tell you.

As well, it could be that I don't handle the tape measure properly. With that in mind, if I haven't been pulling the tape snugly enough around the heart girth then I have a whole lot of historical birth weights that are over-estimated. However, the results from the little study shown here indicate the tape can create error both on the high and low side. I am going to continue to both use a tape measure for weight and get an actual weight with the remainder of my fall calves to get a sense of the average error rate as well as try to understand why.

Earlier I mentioned that Polly (who is also a first calf heifer) was having a more lengthy birth than I like to see. She actually was effectively yelling with her efforts, so I was even more alarmed. It's very unusual for any of my cattle to get vocal over calving. Polly's bull calf measured 27 1/2 inches, yet it only weighed 60 pounds. So, what was structurally different in Polly's bull versus Madonna's (also a first calf heifer) bull that would create an error using a tape measure? To my eye he has wider shoulders and is thicker through the heart girth, a deeper little guy -- yet at a glance looks about the same size/stature as Madonna's 26 1/4 inch bull. So obviously the confirmation of the newborn has a great impact on using a tape measure for an accurate birth weight.

MsRae's heifer is an example of the error to the light side using a tape measure. She weighed a full five pounds more than the tape measured estimate. Why? Perhaps because she has good balance all over, her dam certainly does. How does the tape measure consider a deep evenly made newborn that extends on through to the hind quarters? I don't think it can.

Regardless, I'll continue this small study of tape versus actual weight and see what the final results tell me about my own errors in tape measuring as well as errors due to the actual structure of the calf, and periodically update those results here on my blog.

Environmental and Nutritional Effects on Beef Tenderness, Marbling, & Overall Palatibility

2007-08-25T21:24:00.000-05:00

Beef calves fed on 100% high concentrate grain from weaning to finish in a feedlot environment results in the least desirable beef eating experience for the American consumer, and the least desirable muscle to bone ratio in the final carcass, which directly impacts the end revenues of the beef industry. Conventional high concentrate grain feeding, from the zero pasture stocker phase on through to the continued high concentrate feedlot and finish of beef calves, is often perceived or touted as the only course of feeding that will result in tender, well-marbled beef in an animal genetically predisposed to marble well. The result of a 2002 study funded by Beef Checkoff dollars and conducted with the oversight of the Texas Beef Council suggests that is not the reality.
With the current corn ethanol craze and subsequent corn production targeted to fuel the new corn ethanol market, many cow/calf operations are re-evaluating the cost/benefit of their programs. The majority of cow/calf operations in the United States that provide beef to the American consumer are small shops bringing fifty or fewer beef calves to the local market annually. Browsing through this Texas Beef Council study conducted by Texas A&M one realizes that corn, or any grain, can be largely side-stepped for the majority of the beef calves life when there is ample grass and legume pasture available.

While this study has a bit of age on it, it remains the only study sponsored by the Texas Beef Council with the goal of evaluating various backgrounding scenarios and their impact on Tenderness, Marbling, Palatability, and other sensory factors involved in the enjoyment of a beef steak. The eight study groups were located in three distinct geographical areas of Texas in the interest of evaluating the impact of environment on the final carcass attributes. The East Texas studies conducted in Overton, Texas out-performed the other groups in many key areas: finish weight, ribeye area, and backfat thickness.

This 2002 Texas A&M conducted study evaluated eight different pasturing and feeding regimens to try and understand nutritional and environmental factors that impact variability in Texas beef. While the stated focus was primarily carcass tenderness, the results provided insight into all the desirable primary attributes of beef. Of the eight study groups, the "McGregor-Calf Fed" (MCF) group receiving high concentrated grain rations from weaning to harvest scored the poorest in many key areas -- but perhaps most surprising was the detrimental impact on ribeye area, backfat, and finish weight. All of these attributes were noticeably deficient in the MCF group in comparison to the Overton/East Texas and Uvalde/South Texas study groups which were backgrounded on pasture and finished the final approximately 4 months on high grain concentrate -- with the East Texas study groups providing significantly superior results overall.
There are two major factors in a consumers enjoyment of beef -- Tenderness and Marbling. The primary stated focus of this Texas Beef Council study was carcass Tenderness. While all study groups were within an immaterial range of one another for initial Tenderness scoring, the MCF high concentrate (post-weaning to finish)group had the actual least tender carcass upon initial harvest than any of the other study groups.

After 14 days of aging the Tenderness scores were comparable across all study groups. What is significantly missing from this reported study is the sire parentage of the many groups. We are told that Half-blood Bos indicus (Brahman)-influenced steers raised at the Agricultural Research Center, Texas Agriculture Experiment Station in McGregor, Texas were used in this study to understand the impact of environment (south, east and central Texas) and nutrition (low versus high grain supplementation) immediately post-weaning and prior to feedlot feeding on the growth, composition and eating characteristics of beef, but we are not told if the steers in all study groups were half-siblings, sired by the same bull. This is critical information, inexplicably withheld, for purposes of evaluation of the final, very comparable, results across the board for Tenderness and Marbling.

At the time of this 2002 study the calcium dependent protease inhibitor, calpistatin, had been identified as a key component present in a live animal that greatly increases that animals genetic potential to express Tenderness in the final carcass product. Today, a cattle rancher can pull a few tail hairs and send them off for genetic testing to determine whether his prize bull or cow has the genetics to potentially produce a tender as well as an optimal marbled carcass in their offspring. This genetic testing has become an invaluable tool for seedstock producers seeking to create key bulls and cows that will produce offspring that will excel in the commercial beef market for Tenderness and Marbling.

However, despite this stated fore-knowledge of the impact of Calpistatin, one of two key genetic attributes for Tenderness known today in the year 2007, the results of this study cloud the impact of Calpistatin on the study results. One is left with the sense that the genetic comparability of the steers evaluated, which is a stated parameter of the test, is the driving reason for the comparability of carcass Tenderness scores. While the study addresses and theoretically evaluates the Calpistatin in the resulting beef carcasses, it mysteriously couches the tested Calpistatin results in non-layman gibberish and declines to even address its existence or significance in the final narrative summation of results -- it is found only in the summation charting. As all carcasses resulting from this study had comparable Tenderness scores via Warner Bratzler Shear Force measures, it may be that the presence or absence of the identified Calpistatin gene had no material impact on actual carcass Tenderness.

Perhaps of even greater interest are the Marbling scores of the study groups. Despite backgrounding via rotational or continuous grazing in either North, South, or East Texas -- or no grazing as is the case with the high grain concentrate from weaning to finish MCF group -- marbling scores in all study groups were not materially different. However, the MCF group had significantly higher percentage carcass fat scores over all other groups, which is undesirable in today’s market and had no additive impact on actual Marbling scores of the final beef product compared to the others, and thus no positive impact on the final value of the beef carcass -- the excess fat is waste.

Of major importance to the beef cattle producer would be the expense of the constant level of "high concentrate" grain feed from weaning to finish of the McGregor-Calf Fed (MCF) group -- which had the lightest finish weight, and as well the highest fat percentage of the harvested carcass weights. While the MCF group had comparable marbling to the other groups, the higher fat level/percentage to accomplish this feat is essentially money down the drain for packing shops such as Cargill or Smith & Company, as well as for the feeder and cow/calf producer who so costly and conscientiously kept that supplemental "high concentrate" grain at the ready in their post weaning/backgrounding phase of production that they perceive should result in their highest profit at the local auction barn or via a direct order buyer..

Today, beef cattle producers are faced with increasing costs of corn. If the corn ethanol craze continues unabated in the coming years, the ease and value of shoveling corn at a growing calf will be re-evaluated for the ultimate financial gain to the beef producer, stocker, and finisher. The use of genetic testing for inherent ability to produce a Tender and well Marbled carcass will become one of increasing importance as reflected in the results of this Texas Beef Council sponsored study.

The day is likely well in hand when the small beef producer, the primary entity that grows our beef in America, must evaluate the financial pros and cons of raising their calves on expensive corn or other sundry grain mixes, or the less costly raising of their calves on pasture grasses and pasture legumes that provide both the major beef packing houses and the American consumer with an end product that has less fat and comparable to greater muscle, marbling, and tenderness on a higher nutritional plane than that of 100% grain fed and finished beef.

The small shop beef producer who raises a high end, healthy product has only one primary venue for realizing the value that should be derived from their superior beef product, and that is the direct marketing of wholes, halves, splits, or pre-packaged cuts of their beef. While this is measurably a quite profitable venue, their remains the fact that many beef consumers have neither the time, the space, or perhaps the funds to purchase healthy, clean beef in bulk in this manner. It will be the small shop grocery markets that will on the front end provide a venue for the sale on a larger scale of this superior healthy beef product.

Of perhaps even greater difficulty to the small shop grassfed beef producer, at least in this part of Southeast Texas, is finding an abattoir that is either State or USDA licensed. They are as few and far between as a cow having triplets. So a rancher producing healthy grassfed beef for the local Southeast Texas market has no retail venue to market that beef -- they are forced to sell it on the basis of hanging weight at a less than desirable slaughterhouse to their customers. Many times it matters not how much the need for aging, whether grain finished or grass finished, is important to the optimal result for the ranchers' customers. If the person in charge in the local butcher shop doesn't wish to age a carcass, or doesn't think/understand that it serves a purpose anyway, the customer gets the news when they arrive to pick up their beef --- and worse, the beef producer ultimately hears from an unhappy customer.

Maybe it is time for apartment architects, home architects, to begin to consider in their designs the presence of a large deep freeze as an integral part of home design. With this in place, more consumers who desire a healthier beef product will have the space readily at hand to store for a season the beef they wish for themselves and their family to consume as a staple in their diet.

The Animal Compassion Foundation Spends a Day with an East Texas Herd of British White Beef Cattle

2007-08-07T09:37:00.000-05:00

Pictured here is Dr. Frances Flower, an extraordinary young lady with a passion for the humane treatment of animals. Frances hales from England, and is a Research Associate with The Animal Compassion Foundation™, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and sharing knowledge to improve the lives of farm animals. Founded in 2005, the Foundation supports a worldwide network of producers and researchers, seeks to learn and share best practices, and leads and funds on-farm research and producer workshops. Were it not for a pair of dead batteries! I would be sharing photos with you of Frances and my cattle. The charming photo above was taken when Frances was working with dairy cows at UBC in Canada, a research project involving the impact of weaning age on dairy cows and their calves.

Several weeks ago Frances visited the ranch and we spent hours walking amongst my friendly British White cattle and visiting about the goals and programs taking shape within the Foundation. My cows were on their best behaviour, and I was pleased to see that Frances was impressed with both their beauty and their docile nature, which are of course my two favorite British White traits. I have to say that while the cattle were quietly contented, I found myself quite animated by the conversation and interest of Frances in both my cattle and my thoughts and practices on raising cattle here at the ranch, and believe I fairly wore her out with all my yakking. Frances is a very engaging and intelligent young lady that would make any parent proud, and her passion and tenacity of spirit are certainly an asset to this newly formed Foundation that is a non-profit subsidiary of Whole Foods Market based out of Austin, Texas.

The Animal Compassion Foundation was established by Whole Foods Market as a natural progression of the Company's efforts to help producers evolve their practices for raising farm animals naturally and humanely. The launch of the Animal Compassion Foundation parallels the development of Whole Foods Market's enhanced species-specific Animal Compassionate Standards.

Whole Foods Market is making a concerted effort to provide a market for locally produced beef -- but not just 'beef'. The demand for humanely raised beef, and for grass/forage raised beef, is a blooming niche market. American consumers are becoming more educated on the process that brings that beef steak to the glass case at the meat counter, and they are making purchase decisions based on that knowledge. It is that 'process' which can create great variability in the taste, tenderness, and perhaps most importantly -- the nutritional aspects of consuming beef.

Humanely treated beef cattle are much more likely to provide a tender carcass. This is supported by many studies that indicate docile steers well out score their more volatile peers who bullet themselves into and out of a head gate rather than taking a stroll to see what its all about at the other end of the alley. Nutritionally, grass/forage raised and finished beef far outscores the 100% grain and/or other weird stuff raised and finished feedlot beef -- which is what is found in the majority of supermarkets in the United States.

If you aren't familiar with the superior nutrition of grass/forage raised and finished beef -- I encourage you to check it out. You may find that a T-Bone steak from a grass fed steer isn't going to hurt your cholesterol and will provide you with a plethora of beneficial anti-oxidants. And if that beef steak originated with a gentle breed of cattle such as British White, then you've got a good shot at both a tender and a healthy eating experience.

The Animal Compassion Foundation™ provides educational workshops for farmers and ranchers. A recent workshop was Grazing Colorado Grass, which was held in June at a Colorado Whole Foods Market location with Harvey Sprock, Rangeland Management Specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA), as the primary speaker. Whether you are a farmer, or an interested consumer, I would encourage you to visit the web site of the Foundation and keep an eye out for upcoming workshops in your area.

American Veal Association - Confinement Phase-Out or Fake-Out?

2007-08-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

I have to wonder what kind of folks actually sit on the Board of the American Veal Association, what kind of folks it takes to actually stick a baby calf in a crate and feed it for early slaughter, and not just one every now and then -- but rather there are multitudes of mewling calves confinement crated and fed every day by humans as a matter of the course of their daily business life. It's one of those things I rarely let my mind wonder about or ponder too long. It makes my stomach hurt, and my eyes glare at unknown culprits out there sharing the same blue sky I'm looking at right now.

While one might be inclined to give a hearty slap on the back to the American Veal Associations baby (calf) step to bring an end to the crating of calves for veal production, I'd much rather give them an extra kick in the pants to see if perhaps they might cut that absurd ten year phase-out by at least half.

Further, a ten year phase-out of the crating of calves for veal production is hugely, and might I say strangely, at odds with those one would assume are it's most influential members. As per the following article ". . .considering that the nation's largest veal producers have already committed to a two-year phaseout. . ." Those two widely varying positions - by essentially the same parties- do not sit well together, smells just a little rancid.

HSUS: Statement On American Veal Association’s Veal Crate Announcement

WASHINGTON (August 6, 2007)—Humane Society of the United States President and CEO Wayne Pacelle released the following statement:

“The Humane Society of the United States welcomes the news that the American Veal Association has recommended that the confinement of calves in crates should come to an end. For years, the humane community in the United States has said that these crates are inhumane and unnecessary. We are pleased that the industry now agrees and is taking some steps to phase out this confinement system. Last November, Arizona voters approved a ballot measure to outlaw veal crates.

The American Veal Association's recommended ten-year phaseout is a long time, especially considering that the nation's largest veal producers have already committed to a two-year phaseout, but it is a step in the right direction that further makes the writing on the wall clear: Veal crates are too cruel and inhumane even for the veal industry to continue defending.”

Great Article for Guidance on Grass Genetics in Cattle and Producing superior Grassfed Beef

2007-06-18T07:59:00.000-05:00

Jolley: Five Minutes With Ridge Shinn

Q. Thousands of cattlemen read Cattlenetwork.com. What would you like to say to them?

A. I’d like to encourage those folks that love their land, their family, their lifestyle and their cattle to dig in and learn about 100% grass-fed cattle. The opportunity for profitability and health is enormous and as always the early bird gets the worm.

Ridge Shinn is a one man conglomerate - Hardwick Beef, Bakewell Reproductive Center, even a home building company. It must be that old, New England, Calvinistic work ethic that’s been buried deep within his bones. You might say he’s as genetically predisposed to hard work as his cattle are to giving up gourmet cuts of beef.

He’s a grass farmer, an avid advocate of sustainable agriculture and one of the leading experts on getting gourmet beef from grass-fed cattle. What he’s managed to do is take a product that has been uneven in quality and elevate it to a status that makes foodies drool and gourmet magazines seek him out. How many ranchers do you know that are quoted in Wine Spectator and Food & Wine magazines? And whose products are described with the same effervescent terms used for hundred dollar a bottle wines?

Have we gone from Clara Peller searching for “the beef” at Wendy’s to finding it in the most upscale of institutions? Has beef attained the status of a Joseph Phelps 2000 Insignia Cabernet Sauvignon which Wine Advocate describes this way: "The 2000 Insignia reveals a smoky, rich, cassis characteristic, medium to full body, and an open-knit, lush, generous style . . . Expansive, fleshy and seductive, it should drink well for 15–16 years."

Can we really talk about a t-bone steak that way? Let’s talk with Ridge Shinn and find out.

Q. How did you get into the cattle business?

A. I started milking cows in the 1970’s as a herdsman on a typical New England dairy (100 cows). Spent 20 years in the building business and returned to cattle when I started the New England Livestock Alliance (NELA) in 2001. NELA’s core business was figuring out how to finish and sell 100% grass-fed beef.

Q. You’re involved in Hardwick Beef, the Bakewell Reproductive Center and a home-building company called Hardwick Post and Beam. It makes for a busy daily schedule. When you do get a little free time, what do you do?

A. When I do have spare time I generally spend it on my farm. I have a home farm and lease a 150 acre farm in Hardwick and have a herd of Devon cattle there. It takes any spare time I can find.

Q. The Bakewell Reproductive Center is a cooperative venture with Gearld Fry that aims to build a “grass-based bovine gene pool that produces gourmet beef.” You’ve been quoted in Wine Spectator and Food & Wine magazines, two publications aimed squarely at the gourmet crowd, so you must be making some progress. Can you define gourmet beef for me and tell me what you’ve done to build a gene pool that meets your standards?

A. Gourmet beef is beef that is tender and tasty. All beef should be gourmet. Over the years in its quest for volume, the cattle industry lost sight of quality. The industry rewards pounds of beef and size of frame. The result is lower quality (read leaner or less marbled) and tougher beef. The continental breeds that were imported to increase size and volume brought with them lack of marling and slightly tougher beef. In a quest for gourmet beef, one always returns to the “British Breeds”. Historically they had the best fat and tenderness.

Wine Spectator and many others say our beef has a “more robust flavor”. What most people find remarkable is that we can produce beef that is well marbled and tender on a grass-only diet. Visit our web site (http://brcruminations.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html) to see the results of testing done on our meat at Clemson University‘s meat lab. In the first sample, the meat was 87% choice or better and the tenderness values measured by the Warner-Bratzler shear test were better than restaurant quality (average of 3.2 KG of force versus 4.1KG of force for restaurant quality). Remember this is a grass only diet and the cattle tested were steers produced by our Rotokawa® Devon bulls bred to commercial Angus mother cows.

Bakewell Repro imported 12 females from the Rotokawa® Devon herd in NZ and semen from Rotokawa® Devon bulls. Bakewell has harvested embryos and started new herds of Devon cattle in Wyoming, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and a number of herds in the Northeast. Using semen from these bulls on commercial cattle is the quickest way to move toward a set of cattle that thrive on grass. Every cattleman and woman has some cattle in their herd that will work on a grass-only diet-the challenge is to evaluate the herd and then concentrate on the breeding of these cows.

Q. At a time when ‘Angus’ has been marketed as the best source of top quality beef, you’re raising Devons, an old English breed. What advantages do you see in Devon cattle?

A. Angus was a premier breed for top quality beef. I use the past tense because today the “Angus” breed has been polluted by many other breeds. Because black covers all sins, any cattle bred to Angus come out black-indeed the Rotokawa® Devon cross Angus steers are black unless the mother cow has a red Angus gene. Even the Certified Angus Beef programs will admit that quality has gone down hill since it’s hey day. Recently, CAB announced they would not accept any carcasses over 1000 pounds. I am positive that none of the “good old Angus premium beef” came in a 1000 pound Hot Carcass. The success of the CAB marketing and the quality of the beef created tremendous demand and the breed made the mistake of accepting cross bred black cattle into the registry which diluted the original quality. It’s a sad story of a breed’s popularity being its undoing.

The North Devon or Red Devon breed fell out of favor in the ramp up of all other breeds to become “feedlot friendly” cattle. The Devon breeds only crime is that it is too easy-fleshing-they get fat too fast. The feed lot does not want this trait and it won’t work on the feedlot-the Devon will go to yield grade five or six in ninety days on full feed. But if your production method is grass-only you want an easy feeder that is easy fleshing that will get fat on grass. The breed also was never bred for frame size so most of the Red Devon cattle are still moderate in height (48” to 50”) a trait that correlates to early maturity and function on grass.

The Devon historically was known as the butcher’s breed and has always had an excellent meat to bone ratio because of its fine dense bone. When it was popular in the 1960’s and 70’s it won a great share of the carcass competitions they were placed in. Fortunately the breed changed little in the feedlot years and therefore the breed is ready to put back in production on a grass-only diet and return to prominence as the Butcher’s Breed.

Q. Raising grass fed cattle requires a very different management technique to be successful, something that’s foreign to most cattlemen today. Can you walk me through the process?

A. To succeed in raising quality grass-fed cattle one must choose the right kind of cattle. By quality, I mean cattle that will fatten and be tender on a grass-only diet. They need to be moderately tall and wide and deep (some folks say they need short legs but they need a deep body). Look at photos of the cattle from the 1960’s and those are the kind of cattle you need. You can choose a subset of the right kind of cattle from any of the British Breeds but will struggle with the continentals on grass---most cattle in Europe are not harvested until 36 months of age.

The major keys to success in raising grass-fed cattle are to get your breeding season in synch with nature. You want to calve when the wild ruminants have their young---May or June in most parts of the country. You want to have the calf nurse on the mother cow for at least ten months and then be weaned (with virtually no stress) onto green grass. With the right kind of easy fleshing mother cows you will develop reproductive problems if you do not make them work through the winter. Today, the industry typically weans at 6 months so our tall, hard-doing, late-maturing mother cows can build back some condition to make it through the winter. We find that the calves that stay on the mother for 10 months will gain about 15% more than the calf weaned in the fall. With this head start, and being weaned onto green grass, the steers can finish in 18 months on a grass-only diet.

Grass feeding requires grass management. There is no better feed for a ruminant than green grass. The key to success is learning how to keep the grass vegetative throughout the growing season and then figuring out how to extend the grazing season. Every ounce of stored feed fed is extremely expensive. Any time the bovine can walk out and harvest its own feed is like money in the bank. So...one has to give up on a lot of paradigms and be open to learning some new ways of grazing-MIG or management intensive grazing emphasizes the management because that is the intensive part-it is different on every farm or ranch and it is different every season of every year. Electric fence and plastic water pipe to deliver water to paddocks are two of the tools that are critical to our success. Obviously many areas of the country have different challenges, but the key is to let the cattle graze in great density and then move them to let the grass rest and re grow-the circuit around the ranch might be as long as once a year or as quick as every 23 days depending on rainfall, sunshine, etc. The model is the buffalo that moved in herds of incredible density but then they moved on. We need to replicate this with our cattle.

Another level of management of our grass is to measure the Brix of the grass with a refractometer to gauge the nutrient density and sugar content of the grass. The rumen is a remarkable compost facility that needs the proper carbon nitrogen ratio as well as the right amount of protein, energy and minerals to function optimally. It is our job as a grass farmer to optimize the inputs to the rumen in terms of quality, if our expectation is to get quality in the meat that we harvest.

Although this all sounds complicated it is not unplowed ground. New Zealand has spent years farming this way principally because, as well as being the healthiest for the rumen; it is the lowest cost of production. They have to produce efficiently if they are going to access markets that are oceans away.

Q. “Grass-fed” has become a fast-growing niche in the beef business. Some foodies even use terminology similar to that used to describe fine wines when they talk about it. Are those kinds of glowing description justified? And can “grass-fed” escape the niche business?

A. Grass-fed is the current clamor of the market. Many folks do not know what it means. My feeling is that it is critically important that people understand the terms and what they mean. I like to compare 100% grass-fed beef to pregnancy-either you are or you are not. All beef producers want the “grass-fed” claim since all cattle do eat grass for a substantial part of their lives.

The real changes to the tissue and the health benefits of the beef occur when the cattle begin to eat grain. When cattle eat just grass they cannot get Mad Cow (the consumer doesn’t want this); they have almost immeasurable levels of E. coli because acidosis does not occur in the gut. Read about the Cornell research at http://brcruminations.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html. There are no nutrient loading problems since manures are spread evenly daily and incorporated into the soil. Once you remove grain from the cattle raising equation, you eliminate plowing, petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, soil compaction, fossil fuels for tillage, harvest and transport.

The real compelling part of the story is that the fats in 100% grass-fed beef are much healthier for the human. The ratio of Omega 3 Omega 6 is very different in the grass versus grain fed and nearly a perfect 1:1 ratio.

The “story” of 100% grass-fed and finished beef is a compelling story and most people will buy it. The only way that “grass-fed” can escape the “niche” status it has today, is if producers learn to produce gourmet beef on grass and then they put a great piece of beef in the hand of each consumer that buys the “story”.

The challenge today is that many consumers have heard pieces of the story and they find it compelling once they do-the challenge is how we produce enough quality beef to satisfy the demand. As I said to a restaurant crowd in NYC a while back, it took me 2 ½ years to grow the piece of meat you are eating tonight-from a gleam in my eye, to breeding the cow takes 2 ½ years to the plate-so it is hard to ramp up a product like this.

Today with fuel prices, many cattle men and woman are beginning to be open to other options. The feedlots are feeling the pinch and the time of opportunity is upon us. It is a rare time in history when the producer is demanding quality, clean (no antibiotics or hormones), healthy food and they are willing to pay for it-It is a time of opportunity for the cattle industry.

Q. Thousands of cattlemen read Cattlenetwork.com. What would you like to say to them?

A. I’d like to encourage those folks that love their land, their family, their lifestyle and their cattle to dig in and learn about 100% grass-fed cattle. The opportunity for profitability and health is enormous and as always the early bird gets the worm.

Copyright 2007 Integrated Management Information, Inc.

Ethanol Refineries - Fair or Foul?

2007-05-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Environmental Protection Agency, just a few short weeks ago, revised downward the pollution control standards for ethanol producing plants. It wasn't exactly major news for the networks -- but it should have been. This action by the EPA no doubt is a result of strong lobbying efforts from major corn and ethanol producers. Prior to this revision, the threshold of toxic emissions allowed before an ethanol producing site must install the latest pollution controls was 100 tons annually; the EPA's April revision more than doubles that threshold to 250 annual tons of toxic emissions. In addition, the EPA agreed to allow so-called 'fugitive' emissions from small vents or pipes to be excluded from computation in reaching the new 250 ton pollution emission threshold for ethanol plants.

While many U.S. farmers and rural communities are eagerly on board for raising more corn and building ethanol plants in their communities -- many are not. The concerns abound regarding the permanent loss of quality of air and life and many are fighting to stop the building of ethanol plants in their rural communities. The EPA's willingness to relax pollution control standards for ethanol production facilities certainly strengthens the argument and position of those farming communities fighting to keep the fumes of ethanol production out of their air space.

One of the primary arguments for the use of ethanol, or ethanol mixed with gasoline, is that it reduces carbon monoxide emissions, which sounds just grand on the surface. However, what is largely absent from all ethanol rhetoric is that ethanol emissions contain "nitrogen oxides, acetaldehyde, and peroxy-acetyl nitrate". (Patzek, 2004) And that's just to name a few of the toxic by-products of cooling off the earth by pumping some ethanol into your tank.

What a joke. And the jokes on us. Do you really want to be an Ethanol Patriot and pump bio-fuel into your car? You see, ethanol is pretty volatile, it will break down while you are pumping it into your car. Take a deep breath, pull those carcinogens into your lungs - could that be the new American way to save the earth?

The State of Minnesota has embraced on a fairly large scale the construction and operation of ethanol plants, having some 16 ethanol plants in operation, and several more are under construction today. The following is an excerpt from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) web site -- and it surely must be scary for a state or region to feel like a virtual guinea pig or lab rat as the emissions from ethanol plants are studied after the fact to determine just what is coming out of an ethanol smoke stack.

"Consent decrees negotiated with the plant owners revealed underreported emissions and required pollution control equipment to be installed in an effort to accurately quantify and reduce air emissions. Most facilities consistently reported similar constituents including detectable levels of acetaldehyde, acetic acid, formaldehyde, ethanol and methanol, although there was considerable variation in quantities of analytes among facilities and among different processes at a facility. Although the data set is small, it is the most extensive available. Further systematic testing is necessary to thoroughly characterize the complex gas stream from various stages of the ethanol production process. Until additional data are obtained and analyzed, we cannot say with complete certainty whether data gaps have implications for risk analysis." Any state, any community, considering building a 'biorefinery' to produce ethanol should visit the MPCA web site -- it is pretty darn scary, and it looks like it's a money pit from an administrative and regulatory viewpoint as well.

The more than 200 U.S. ethanol plants in operation or under construction emit thousands of tons of pollutants a year, including nitrogen oxides, a key element of smog and damage to the ozone layer. As the EPA has apparently little concern for the air pollution of rural areas from ethanol production, other States are hopefully investigating ethanol plant emissions and implementing their own regulatory standards to ensure the cleanest air possible for those who must now live with an industrial smoke stack next door.

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), which bills itself as the national trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry, has a very lame response on their web site to the results of a very recent Stanford University study that concluded there were risks from ethanol emissions. Per the RFA, "this study by Professor Jacobson does show that most of the air quality “problems” he identified stem from acetaldehyde that is either emitted directly or results from excessive ethanol emissions. If these problems were found to be serious enough, then regulations could quickly be put into place that would require vehicles . . . meet more stringent ethanol and acetaldehyde emissions standards before they could be certified for sale." Excuse me? Why are we subsidizing the creation of a bio-fuel before we've even fully explored it's new and singular impact on the air we breath? How does this fella know we can find a way to lessen acetaldehyde emissions? He doesn't; he just has to be hopeful and positive, that's his job. By the way, acetaldehyde is a known carcinogen.

Within the EPA's April decision to relax the pollution standards for ethanol refineries, there is an exception made that both undermines the basis for relaxing the standards and clearly shows a lack of concern for the clean air in rural communities: The newly revised EPA standards do not apply to ethanol plants in urban areas where air pollution is already a problem. So, just what does that tell you? Tells me there is known 'bad stuff' coming out of those smoke stacks, and allowing 250 tons to be emitted into good clean country air is a cop out on the part of the EPA.

U.S. ethanol production has jumped more than 300% since the year 2000. Per the RFA in early April, there are currently 114 ethanol biorefineries (RFA's earth friendly term for their ethanol plants) nationwide with the capacity to produce more than 5.6 billion gallons annually. There are 80 ethanol refineries and 7 expansions under construction with a combined annual capacity of more than 6 billion gallons.

The National Corn Growers Association says U.S. corn growers hold the potential to produce 15 billion bushels by 2015 - a third of which could be used to produce some 15 billion gallons of ethanol. But, corn based ethanol producers and farmers don't have a corner on the ethanol market. What happens when the subsidies and tax incentives dry up? or when there is a major long term drought? The Global Warming fanatics might be right. Where does that leave corn based ethanol? Nowhere really. Can that new corn based ethanol plant in Littletown, Kansas be converted to the latest and greatest? If so, at what cost? Or will it eventually become nothing more than a massive incinerator for the worst industrial waste money can produce in the world? I'll leave that possibility for another day -- but it is quite real.

How is it that we as a country have gotten in such a rush to subsidize ethanol production when we have not fully explored all the alternative sources and arrived at the most economic and healthy approach to producing ethanol in the USA? If this were a drug, it would still be under testing.

There are many alternatives to creating ethanol other than from corn that are being explored globally. The one I find most intriguing was recently announced by LanzaTech, a New Zealand based company. They are using bacterial fermentation to convert carbon monoxide into ethanol. Per LanzaTech, this technology could produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol from the world's steel mills alone, turning the liability of carbon emissions into valuable fuels worth over $50 billion per year at very low costs and adding substantial value to the steel industry. There would be some poetic beauty to that alternative, and one that would economically and environmentally have a positive impact on industrialized areas in the USA and around the world -- including Southeast Texas.

Research is underway as well to produce ethanol from other plants, including wheat, oats and barley. Sugar cane is already a viable source of ethanol -- while it is a water needy crop, it can withstand a wide range of drought and freeze conditions, and it's a perennial crop. Others are looking at genetically engineering microbes to produce enzymes that will convert cellulose in crop waste, wood chips and other plants into ethanol. The Energy Department is investing $385 million in six new cellulosic ethanol plants around the country. More than half the ethanol made in Kansas already comes from sorghum, which requires less water than corn.

And speaking of water, do you really find much coming out of Citizen Green's mouth about the massive amount of water required to produce ethanol from corn? How about the enormous fertilize, herbicide, and pesticide requirements for those annual crops of corn, and the post-production waste water the ethanol plant has to find a home for? How will all of this impact the biology of our water, our oceans? Do you know? I didn't think so. Have a chat with a long time resident of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and see what they have to say about chemical run off from the cotton, grain, and corn fields that makes it's way to the Laguna Madre and impacts the ecosystem of that once pristine bay. Ask them if they willingly drink water out of the tap. Then magnify their response by multiples of......oh, say 100, let's think big, let's think long term ethanol production, long-term blinders. Ouch, it's just too scary. It needs to be curtailed now.

I think most of us would go back to riding a bicycle before we'd knowingly create a national dependency and drain on our water resources just to have ethanol to buzz over to Cousin Joe's for a beer, or Aunt Bet's for bowl of gumbo. We can strap a bottle of water to that bike and life goes on. Suddenly car-pooling wouldn't seem such an irritating idea, after all, we can't live without good clean water -- or air, or for that matter good old Southern cornbread. If this corn ethanol takes off, just how costly will a pound of corn meal be?

If we're going to create a whole new dynamic in America's food supply in order to mitigate our dependence on oil, let's pick something that would have a healthy impact on the American diet. After all, we are the most obese country in the world -- let's fix that problem and at the same time create an alternative bio-fuel. With those joint goals, sugar cane becomes the ultimate ethanol crop with enormous positive consequences for the health of America. No doubt with less sugar in our diet we could breathe a whole lot more of that fouled country air -- our immune systems would be much stronger without all that sugar, and we'd be a lot thinner and could more easily fit in little bitty cars that run on bio-fuel.

Copyright, May 7, 2007, Jimmie Lynn West

Links:

EnergyJustice.net - Ethanol Fact Sheet

Ethanol BioRefinery Locations in the USA

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency - Ethanol in Minnesota

Massive Water Requirements of Ethanol - Let the Ethanol Producers Tell You Themselves How Much They Need

States, EPA Raise Water Quality Concerns Over New Ethanol Incentives, April 2007

Thermo-Dynamics of the Corn-Ethanol BioFuel Cycle, Tad Patzek, UC Berkely, 2004

The United States of America Meets the Planet Earth, Patzek, 2005

Pasture raised Beef - True Natural Beef for the Consumer

2007-05-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

EATING LOCALLY

Grass fit for beef
At Betsy Ross' ranch near Granger the restored land produces natural munchies that make for tasty beef
By Patrick Beach

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

GRANGER — On the subjects of nematodes, microbes and the ever-popular saprophytic and mycorrhizal fungi, Betsy Ross sounds positively evangelical. They're the reason, she says, her beef tastes so good.

Ross, her sister, son and daughter-in-law run some 150 head of cattle a year through their operation near here, along the San Gabriel River, and once the cattle are weaned they're placed on a novel diet: grass. Rye grass, clover, Bermuda, alfalfa and native prairie grasses, grazing on 500 acres divided into 100 paddocks. They eat what, in other words, they were built to eat — as opposed to grain. Some of the cattle are sold to other producers; the rest wind up as about 20,000 pounds of packaged beef annually.

Betsy Ross beef, sold as frozen steaks, roasts and ground beef, is available at all the People's Pharmacies in Austin and, Ross says, should soon be stocked at the downtown Whole Foods Market.

Ross and a handful of other livestock producers in Texas and nationwide are no threat to conventional operations that raise huge numbers of cattle on corn: According to the Texas Beef Council, there are 140,000 beef producers in Texas alone. By comparison, Eatwild.com, a site for "grass-fed food and facts," lists just 42 grass-fed beef producers in the state. (Ross believes the number to be closer to 100.) But with the obesity epidemic, food safety scares (contaminated spinach?) and books such as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" raising public consciousness about what we put in our bodies, there are signs the movement is growing, albeit not at the rate of a pound a day as Ross' cross-bred cattle do.

The argument that Pollan and other believers make is that it's not necessarily our food that's making us sick, but what we feed our food. And when we raise cattle on corn, pump them full of antibiotics and fatten them to market weight rapidly, what winds up on a hamburger bun is invariably unhealthy.

And, flying in the face of the conventional wisdom that fat equals flavor, a lot of folks say the leaner grass-fed cow actually tastes better, too. It does. Really. A couple of years of personal eating research confirms a meatier, slightly stronger taste, but enough fat to keep the meat from being too dry or tough.

"People are connecting the dots," Ross says. "I mean, come on — people are having to drink bottled water."

Not that it didn't take Ross herself a while to connect the dots. After a career in Austin real estate and retiring as the Web master for the Texas Department of Insurance, this former West Texas ranch girl wanted to get back to the land. Ross' brother, Joe David Ross, had owned the former cotton farm 13 miles north of Taylor since 1975, and Ross and her elder sister, Kathryn, a retired geologist, moved there around the turn of the new century. They were feeding the cattle a lot of corn when they had to, Ross recalls. Not coincidentally, to her mind, they also kept a refrigerator full of antibiotics.

Her change of heart came when a grandson was born prematurely and she was worried about what the boy would eat.

"I wanted to give him some good meat," she said. "But I didn't know what that meant, either."

After perusing a booklet from the Soil and Water Conservation Society called "Soil Biology Primer" (carbon sequestration, anyone?), she was off to Oregon State University to study under Elaine Ingham, an authority on healthy soils.

The idea is simple: "Soil organisms decompose organic compounds, including manure, plant residue and pesticides, preventing them from entering water and becoming pollutants," according to the booklet. "They store nitrogen and other nutrients that might otherwise enter ground water, and they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, making it available to plants."

That means that nitrogen fertilizer, which is dumped onto farms and ranches by the barrel in conventional agricultural operations, is produced naturally.

As a result of switching to grass in the mid-'90s, Ross is known in some circles as "the crazy lady with the green pastures." But she doesn't seem to mind.

"This is sweet clover!" she exclaims in one of the paddocks. "This is just free! We're finding the old seed bank is still here. This is an old cotton farm that's been chemicaled to death. But Momma Nature is powerful. It took us 10 to 12 years to quit fighting nature. All of this is Old World knowledge that people have brought to the front again. The movement of people wanting to rehabilitate their land is moving right along with the good food movement."

She points to another section: "That's an alfalfa patch right there. They told us we can't grow alfalfa in this part of the country. It's not easy to rebuild this whole system. All grass is not equal. Until we found the soil biology, we really didn't have the cattle humming."

But all this requires a fundamental shift in thinking, summed up by Ross' son, J.R. Builta, who works the ranch with his wife, Kim Builta:

"What a row farmer considers a weed, we consider food," Builta says.

It also requires careful management vastly different from conventional farming. Each paddock, containing different warm- and cool-weather grasses, is grazed seven or eight times a year and rested otherwise. Natural nitrogen is being slowly released into the soil.

Ross likens it to conducting a symphony.

"Once the biology is in there, it has its own community," she says. "These are live critters. When you come in with a tractor (and a disc) four or five times a year, you kill the community. This is spotted clover. This is free clover! I didn't have to plant it."
Jimmie's Comment: (This clover is an example of 'free clover', both planted and sustained by nature's work.)

On the other side of the road from the clover, a calf born hours earlier is beginning to nurse while its mother eats the placenta. And next to an outbuilding there's a huge compost pile, another critical part of the operation. Running the compost through an extractor with water can produce 3,000 gallons an hour of organism-rich — 25,000 species per teaspoon — of irrigable water. (Ross is also founder and co-owner of Sustainable Growth Texas, which uses liquid compost to fertilize homes and agricultural operations.)

Ross now laughs at the memory of what her brother said when he paid a visit years ago: "Whatever you do, don't go organic." The operation follows organic principles but the beef is not certified organic. ("We just don't see any sense in it right now," Ross says of the rigid certification process.) Nonetheless, Ross says again, there's evidence the end product of all this work is better for you — less fat and better fats, including Omega-3s and no hormones or antibiotics.

No hormones also means it takes longer to raise a beef to slaughter weight: A conventionally raised animal is ready in about 14 months to 16 months; Ross' can take as long as 29 months. (That means from pregnancy to finish, it takes three and one-half years to make money on a beef.) And if the animals have to be treated with antibiotics or fail to gain weight on schedule, they're sent to the sale barn.

The market-ready animals — what Ross calls "a block of butter with four little legs" — are harvested humanely at Readfield's in Bryan. Then the cuts are aged 14 days, cut, wrapped in Cryovac and hard-frozen. In addition to People's in Austin, Old Thyme Garden, an organic nursery in Taylor, sells the meat, and Ross is partnering with Whole Foods' producers alliance to get their products into Austin's flagship store. They also do a mail-order business and will deliver if it's to a nearby destination.

Because grass-fed operations tend to be small, they can't hope to achieve the economies of scale of so-called factory farms and that translates into higher prices, even though it costs eight times as much to feed a cow out of a sack as on grass: A 12-ounce to 18-ounce bone-in Betsy Ross ribeye is $13.50 per pound, New York strips $14.25 and ground meat $5, a good bit north of supermarket prices.

But customers say the meat doesn't evaporate when it hits the grill and the more flavorful product — there's more than just texture to this cow — often means it takes less meat to feed a crowd. Ross and her sister usually split a single-serving sirloin.

There's often a three-month wait for tenderloins.

Their customers come looking for them.

They don't want economies of scale.

They want to make food that's good for you and, not to get too high-falutin', reflects the web of life.

"There's more than one way of doing things," Betsy Ross says. (And yes, that's really her name.) "Nothing sits alone. We're all so connected."

pbeach@statesman.com; 445-3603

The Economics of AI Breeding vs. Maintaining a Group of Herd Sires

2007-05-05T12:41:00.001-05:00

Suggested Guidelines for Beef Heifer Selection

**Moderate frame & milk - 425 lbs at Weaning, 600 lbs at Yearling, 700 lbs at breeding, Frame Score of 4

**Large frame & milk - 500 lbs at Weaning, 750 lbs at Yearling, 875 lbs at breeding, Frame Score of 5

"The University of Minnesota maintained records and summarized the net profit or loss for heifers sold during a developmental period during a three-year period. Heifers culled on the basis of pelvic area, average daily gain, reproductive tract scores, disposition, or structural soundness at the time of the prebreeding exams and finished in a feedlot had a 3-year average net profit of $9, whereas heifers diagnosed as nonpregnant shortly after the breeding season were sold for a net loss of $86. The loss for pregnant heifers that were then diagnosed nonpregnant after wintering on native pasture and sold at a sale barn was $133."

"These figures indicate the importance of identifying heifers that will not breed during the breeding season and culling those heifers before they become an economic liability. Heifers that were diagnosed pregnant during the breeding season were allocated to three groups: first-service AI, second-service AI, or natural mating. Average profits were $163 for first-service AI heifers, $139 for second-service heifers, and $83 for heifers naturally mated. These figures take into account all synchronization costs."

"Therefore, the advantage of AI over natural mating is certainly evident from these analyses, but without sound data these results could not have been noticed. In fact, many people would (and still do) shy away from AI because of the initial costs associated with synchronization, management, and an AI technician. Nonetheless, these results would encourage a producer to seriously consider AI, realizing that the profit potential is far greater than just using natural mating.

Net Profit or Loss Associated with the Sale of Heifers at Various Stages of Reproduction . . . follow the link in the article title above for the remainder of the cost analysis provided by this Cattle Network article.

Source: Steve Boyles OSU Extension Beef Team

Natural Beef? Doesn't Sound Like it......Do You Find Grass Mentioned Anywhere?

2007-04-26T10:44:00.000-05:00

Stika Says CAB Natural Product Line Developed To Meet The Needs Of Consumers

(Nashville, TN) "John Stika, president of Certified Angus Beef®, said the company made the decision to enter the natural beef market to meet the demands of their food service and retail partners. Stika, speaking at Ivy Natural Solutions conference for natural beef producers and brand managers, said their customers had been requesting a CAB natural product for more than 7 years. CAB made the decision to enter the natural market in 2004.

“Over the past 30 years CAB has earned a reputation for exceptional quality and consistency based on sound, science-based specifications. We decided that for us to enter the natural market with a brand other than Certified Angus Beef Natural would not be taking advantage of the franchise we have developed and would not serve us, our partners nor our customers very well,” Stika said.

“CAB does not see natural beef as better, than conventional beef. Both are excellent, safe, wholesome products. There are consumers, however, that feel natural production systems are important and are a critical part of their buying decision. By placing Certified Angus Beef Natural in the meat case along side our conventional CAB products, we are offering these consumers a choice,” Stika added.

Certified Angus Beef defines their natural program as a “never ever” program. To qualify, the animal must not have been administered any supplemental hormones, beta-agonists, antibiotics, including ionophores, nor have been fed any animal by products any time during its life.

Stika said, “Our Natural program is projected to be only 1.5 % of CAB sales in 2007, up from 0.5 % in 2006. However, the demand is increasing rapidly. The growth of CAB Natural in our food service division is currently limited by product supply.”

The conference for natural beef producers and branded beef managers was held during the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association convention in Nashville. Ivy Natural Solutions (INS) sponsored the conference as part of their first anniversary celebration. INS was founded a year ago to meet increasing natural beef producers’ demands for natural production inputs.

INS provides “plate friendly” products and services that enable cattlemen and beef brands achieve their brand specifications. INS products include ProTernative® Continuous Fed Formula – a natural, rumen-specific yeast that enhances performance and maintains rumen health and function when natural beef programs do not allow the use of ionophores, antibiotics or implants – and ProTernative® Stress Formula, a natural GI tract-specific yeast that helps improve feed consumption and health when cattle are under stress. Helping keep cattle healthy minimizes the fall-out rate if cattle are being fed in a program that does not allow therapeutic antibiotics."

Jimmie's Comments: Natural CAB beef remains unnaturally raised beef as long as it is predominantly grain fed and finished beef product. All 'natural' beef programs that fail to indicate the diet source are feeding essentially 100% grain in their programs, and as you can see from the final paragraph above, they are already looking for and using some unnatural natural additives to help boost performance.

Carbon Monoxide - Future Source of Ethanol?

2007-04-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

If the new technology discussed below proves to be a viable approach to Ethanol production one day, it will surely improve the air quality of the USA due to captured and utilized carbon monoxide emissions, and perhaps take some pressure off the demand and thus price of corn. A continued increase in the price of corn effects not only the cost of gains in a feedlot and on the family farm, but also is having 'trickle down' ramifications throughout our economy that will become increasingly apparent to the American consumer.
An alternative for the family farm is to raise their cattle on grass and legumes, rather than depend on corn and it's byproducts, and that requires moderate-framed easy-fattening grass genetics.
Pictured here is a British White grassfed yearling bull, grassfed from conception onwards.

New Zealand company converts carbon monoxide to ethanol

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, April 24 /PRNewswire/ ‒LanzaTech, the leader in technology using bacterial fermentation to convert carbon monoxide into ethanol, officially announced April 24 that it has secured US$3.5M in Series A funding, led by Khosla Ventures and supported by two existing New Zealand based investors.

This funding will support further technology development, establishing a pilot plant, engineering work to prepare for commercial-scale ethanol production and positions the company to raise significant capital in the near future. This technology could produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol from the world's steel mills alone, turning the liability of carbon emissions into valuable fuels worth over $50 billion per year at very low costs and adding substantial value to the steel industry.

The technology will also be a key contributor to the cellulosic biofuels business as it can convert syngas produced through gasification into ethanol.

"We have proven in our laboratories that the carbon monoxide in industrial waste gases such as those generated during steel manufacture can be processed by bacterial fermentation to produce ethanol. Garnering the financial and strategic support of Khosla Ventures is a significant validation of our approach, and we welcome Khosla Ventures Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Doug Cameron, to our Board of Directors," said Dr. Sean Simpson, Chief Scientist and Founder of LanzaTech.

Vinod Khosla commented, "Technology to produce fuel ethanol from waste material, such as the carbon monoxide produced in steel manufacture and other industries, makes use of a low cost and plentiful point source carbon feedstock. The opportunity is a large one as carbon monoxide is a significant byproduct of steel manufacture. LanzaTech has developed technology and a process to cost-effectively convert carbon monoxide into ethanol -- this ground breaking technology provides the tools to address the challenge of reducing emissions and turns waste into a valuable product, while developing new businesses based on innovative science."

LanzaTech was co-founded in 2005 by Dr. Richard Forster and Dr. Sean Simpson, who both have many years of experience in biotechnology and biofuels. The company is aggressively pursuing the development of advanced gas to ethanol technologies based on work developed in its laboratories in Auckland, New Zealand. As part of its two-pronged strategy of technology development and deployment, LanzaTech has sought international patent protection for its ethanol production process and is forming partnerships to commercialize its technologies and processes.

Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in both traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technology arenas but also supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies.

Favorites From my Spring Calves

2007-04-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

This little beauty was christened 'Dixie' by the girls Easter weekend. Her dam is JWest's Brigit and she was sired by JWest's El Presidente. Dixie was 14 days old in this photo and is obviously a healthy, thriving little heifer. Her dam is one of my favorite cows, having an excellent nature as well as being a really beautiful, well made British White cow that she passes on to all her calves.

Lucy Rae also had a quite friendly, well made heifer sired by El Presidente. In the following video clip I am sitting just a few feet away. She is 7 days old in this clip. Lucy Rae's Heifer

This bull calf is out of JWest's Emily and JWest's El Presidente, and is pictured here at 18 days old. His sire's thickness and muscling are apparent and his dam is one of my best cows. In the following video clip he is 8 days old. The girls didn't decide on a name for this beefy little guy, so any suggestions are welcome. :)
British White Bull Calf

This Spring has seen zero calving problems and last fall I had none as well, which makes a full year and a half without any vet calls to assist with calving, and the last one was a breach birth, which was a first here at the ranch. The typical British White herd has few calving problems, the birth weights being an average 75 pounds, and my moderate framed cows calve with ease, as well as my smaller 1000 pound cows. Check out the slideshow of my British White cow Wanda Mae giving birth to a young bull calf at Cow Calving Slideshow

British White Cattle and Early Spring in East Texas

2007-04-11T21:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it is time I got back to blogging and sharing what's happening here at the ranch with my herd. (and to Taylor and Alana, all the photos can be clicked on and enlarged. . . and of course you both are so up on things, you no doubt realize that!) It's Springtime, and it is looking to be a beautiful Spring here in East Texas. We did have a quite odd Easter, with Easter morning requiring one to hide Easter eggs beneath a thick layer of sleet from the night before, we even had lots of snowflakes the evening before! Butt, Taylor's Mom, Catheryne, hid some candy filled eggs for Taylor and Alana in the house late morning and they had quite a hunt.

My niece, Taylor, and her friend, Alana, were thrilled with the change in the weather and the snow and sleet, having nothing on their minds but the uniqueness of the experience -- which we all should, how boring if the days and months of the seasons of the year were always the same. I realize it creates difficulties for many, these odd turns in the weather, but all the same it is our life, and without these seasonal changes and oddities . . . I don't know, I think I would miss them. I spent most of the winter indoors on essentially numbers and book work, and felt like I'd missed the winter;this last bit of winter suddenly appearing in the Spring made me happy, and certainly ready to let it go and get on with the Spring. Taylor and her good friend, Alana, really enjoyed the weekend 'joy-riding' as they termed it in my new Ranger, but judging from the quite apparent track through the center of my best back pasture that ends with a few berms that lead down to a ravine, (no doubt quite fun to roar through) they will not be having free reign with the Ranger in the coming seasons until they realize the damage they can do.

Besides buzzing around in the Ranger, the girls took turns trying to blow an old horn made from a cow's horn, or maybe a bull, who really knows! The photo above is of Alana giving it one last try on the Eve of Easter with the weather turning very windy and cold. The cows were coming up for a look and a listen, not accustomed to hearing the quite odd sounds Alana managed to make with the old horn. The next picture is of Taylor, suited up in my coveralls again (and yes, I'd dearly love to find some feminine coveralls from someone somewhere....clothing manufacturers please listen!) We newby cowgirls would like to have a more ....feminine and better fitting coverall for cold days working the cows! And even some very light weight ones for the summer....

Note how Taylor is able to approach this two day old calf without it's dam, who is just to the right in the photo, having not any problem with Taylor's approach and touching of the newborn, beyond being . . .watchful. That's what is so wonderful about this breed, their trusting and docile nature. This particular cow is actually a British White half blood, her dam was an excellent registered black Angus cow who would have done much more than appear to glare a bit at Taylor's approach or touching of her calf -- her Angus dam would have knocked you down.

My newborn calves weathered the cold sleet quite well and all were fine on Easter morning, with one cow, J.West's Madison, calving late that morning just in time for Taylor and Alana to see the newborn bull's birth before they left to spend the rest of that special day with their families. We didn't have the camera going, one of those moments when running back to the house seemed the wrong thing to do, we might all miss the big event, but the girls were able to watch from a close distance, and were quite enthralled to witness their first complete birthing of a calf, and Madison the cow was quite fine with her audience.

The following photo is of J.West's Wanda Mae, an outstanding heifer, who found herself a cozy spot in native clover and wasn't much interested in moving with the rest of the herd, including her mama, through this pasture to the next pasture this past week. I think the heavy native clover growth must surely be due to all the rain this area has had the past several months, and perhaps as well to my haying of the cattle on this once red muddy hilltop these past few years, adding much needed organic matter to the soil -- as well as scraping top soil from other areas and spreading it somewhat thinly across the surface a few years back. The combination of those efforts and this very wet Spring seems to have paid off.

If I could post a video or photo that allowed you to smell the sweet scent of this pasture of clover I would. It has been quite a beautiful early Spring pasture, buzzing with the hum of bees and smelling like Spring. It's all the more amazing to me knowing that it was nothing more than a barren red hill top a short 4 years ago. The prior owner had scraped this hilltop completely down deep into the clay soil that lies beneath the sandy layers of usually about 3 to 4 feet. It has taken much time to bring this pasture back to productivity, and this Spring has seen it at it's best for certain.

This British White Cow By the Name of Beauty Looks to be Asking, Just Where Have I Been?

2007-01-14T19:56:00.000-06:00

The past weeks have been busy with Holiday commitments and now a TxDOT deadline for a ROW acquisition looms that seems to occupy all of my time. Mike snapped this picture today of a British White cow that's been called Beauty since pretty much the day she arrived. She's one of ten of my first British White yearling heifers, and she looks like she's not just real happy with my lack of attention of late. That's her bull calf standing behind her. Beauty is the Dam of Mazarati, the bull running with my big herd right now, so she's hanging out with my Spring '06 heifers in the north pasture beside the house.

Hope that Christmas and the New Year were enjoyed by all, and Sincere Wishes to everyone for a great 2007.

Have a Great Square Hay Feeder Now - With More on the Way

2006-12-21T16:40:00.000-06:00

Take a look at this square hay feeder. I keep wanting to call it a square 'hay ring'! Maybe I'll just keep calling it that instead of trying to call it a square hay feeder. Anyway, it's great. It's built extremely well, great craftsmanship, nice and heavy, but not too heavy. The cows left little waste behind after their first try with eating a nice bale of alfalfa, and I was happy to see that.

If you'd like one of these hay......... feeders, check out this link for Avery Welding in Pennington, Texas. Brian and Vicky Avery are nice folks and the Avery's have been welding reliable farm and ranch hay rings, gates, and more for a few generations and it shows in the quality products they fabricate.

I'll be posting a photo of the cows feeding at the 'ring' -- can't help it, ring just seems to be the right word -- after I get in a few more of them. Right now, all the cows mob this one, and it's pretty impossible to get a good photo of the cow's feeding. I'm putting some higher grade alfalfa in this ring, and it was a good choice, as it has done it's job of containing waste and resolving the dilemma of putting a square bale in a round ring and providing good access to the hay for a maximum amount of hungry cows.

British White Cattle - Let's Keep "Chasing" Pursuit of Hard Data to Present to the Beef Industry

2006-12-09T13:54:00.000-06:00

As British White breeders we daily face lack of acceptance in the mainstream Beef Industry as our cattle are white hided and haven't been the subject of University studies. We are likely perceived by some in the beef industry as "chasing" a goal that is unwanted or unnecessary as there are some closed-minded industry perceptions about what works and what doesn't when it comes to beef breeds and beef production, and know-it-alls such as described in the article excerpt below, think they. . . know it all.

As British White breeders we know we have cattle with excellent maternal traits, fertility, hardiness in wide ranging climates, calving life longevity upwards of twenty years, well set udders that withstand the rigors of years of suckling calves without "falling down", excellent carcass quality, genectically gentle dispositions, and more. But, we do need to pursue or "chase" documenting those outstanding qualities through some or all of the following -- Conscientious recording of growth trait data such as weaning weights and yearling weights; establishing Ultrasound Guidelines for the breed and pursuing the capture of yearling bull and heifer carcass ultrasound data by certified technicians; adding to the growing pool of DNA data for the currently identified markers for Marbling and Tenderness; establishing an annual Feedlot test for crossbred and purebred feeder steers and heifers; seeking out Bull Performance tests in our local areas for our bull candidates.

The following is an excerpt from "CAB Cattle Update: The “C” word". Click the Title link above for the text of the whole article.

". . . It’s usually better to lead than chase cattle, but one calorie-counting authority estimates a moderate walk in non-strenuous cattle chasing burns 238 calories per hour for a 150-pound person. At that rate, it would take more than three hours to walk off a Big Mac.

You may be thinking of another idiom: cut to the chase, or get to the point.

Some beef industry pundits proclaim ideal pathways for all logical producers. Dissenters are deluded and must be “chasing” something.

You can sense the judgment and condemnation in the cliché warning, “don’t chase single-trait selection.” It’s such an obvious no-no that the only surprise is that we keep seeing the warning. There is usually an agenda, such as to imply that if you so much as include some popular trait, you are off on a rabbit trail. If you know the phrase at all, you know it’s like saying, “don’t chase your tail.”

Some intense cattlemen lash out with the “c” word. They may include their goals and aspirations, which never include so much as a stray glance at what they own as a senseless pursuit. However, those who see things differently are condescendingly lamented as chasing an illusive and impractical dream.

The most chased-after end seems to be genetic selection that would add value to the beef we sell to consumers. One might as well chase ping-pong balls or a cure for cancer. Critics include the range of those who see any attention to post-weaning traits as silly, to those who see it as a noble, if impossible dream.

When the rhetoric starts flying, a critic may deplore “chasing” something or other. He will usually balance that by pointing out the further errors of “ignoring” and “sacrificing” other things. The implication is that those slighted pursuits are at least as worthy as that being chased after, but the chaser is too blind to see.

It all boils down to bias in the critic. Look at their cattle, their field of study, perhaps their life’s work. They may not realize their bias or the condescending nature of their chase to enlighten others. Or, they could be using loaded words in a calculated manner to sell something. . ."

Square Bales in a Round Ring - Not Quite a Fit! For People or For Hay..........

2006-12-03T10:15:00.000-06:00

Southeast Texas just had a few days of temperatures reaching the freezing point, seems unusual for this time of year, but fortunately no pipes burst and the ice in the troughs was minimal, but then lately I've got water leaks on what seems a daily basis, that's surely as effective at preventing pipes from bursting as setting a faucet on drip!

I've been feeding alfalfa as a supplement for my British Whites some years now, but it was only this past winter that had me wishing for square hay feeders. Prior to last winter I fed the alfalfa in flakes on top of their round bales of coastal and that worked fairly well. But last winter saw a shortage of hay and the coastal I had lined up didn't work out. With greed running rampant in the hay business, the price of good coastal hay per bale plus delivery to my place was equal to and sometimes more than the cost of shipping in cow grade alfalfa from Nebraska. Thus I chose to ship in nothing but alfalfa last winter, and my cattle thrived like no other winter.

Shipping costs ran higher this year, but the total out of pocket cost per ton for Dairy Quality alfalfa was still equal to or less than buying a decent quality 20% protein grain by the ton in 50 lb bags. So this year I'm feeding coastal baled from my pastures as well as crabgrass hay out of Louisiana, and providing alfalfa as their supplemental protein, but feeding it by the bale rather than topping round bales of regular hay forage with the alfalfa.

As you can see from the photo , the big alfalfa squares barely fit into my rings and I have to bust up that middle once they've eaten down enough of it to make it doable -- to make the hay accessible all around the feeding area of the ring (also, these girls are getting alfalfa from last summer that went through a 20 plus inch flood, thus the dark bottom side that you see!). I'm hoping a welding shop in Pennington will be able to make some square feeders for me. I've looked around online and most of what I find is very very heavy square hay feeders from up North that look more functional as stationary objects in a feedlot, which will not work here. I try to move the haying area all around my pastures to avoid excessive manure build up, and follow up with busting up the manure with a drag harrow. In the second photo you can see the adjoining pasture where my big herd is being fed and that it's time to move their hay rings to fresh ground. I try not to feed more than twice without moving the rings to clean ground, and so really heavy feeders aren't practical.

Lost Civilizations - Apocalypto - Lost Cattle Breeds

2006-11-28T20:53:00.000-06:00

The past days have been busy and filled with much of the typical demands of a cattle ranch, with some llama (the one in front in the pic) and cat crisis added in. I lost a cat to a snake bite yesterday, and it was the second snake bite suffered by a cat in the past couple of weeks, the first one, Leopold, did survive -- it's got me wondering if some odd, insidious, northern snake that kind of likes moving around in the fall weather may have made the trip from up North with a load of alfalfa. One of my llamas is just acting puny, I can't see any obvious wound, but then she's covered in several inches of hair over the majority of her body. She waits for me to bring her food and water a few times each day, and seems to be getting a bit better. I haven't ruled out snake bite for the cause of her decline, it's a good possibility under the circumstances.

Tonight, I got around to watching Primetime from a few days back, the main story was on Mel Gibson's newest movie, Apocalypto. It looks to be a very good movie, and the premise I find fascinating, the rise and fall of a powerful culture perhaps via their own inadvertent self-destruction due to greed and wish to control, to have, to be, more and more. Ultimately, this led to a quite lost and destitute Mayan culture in the modern day. Of course, the point was made that perhaps the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq is reflective of the waste of human life and other natural resources that led to the apocalyptic end of the Mayan culture.

While to some extent I can understand Gibson's wish to correlate current USA events and attitudes with the historical rise and fall of powerful cultures and nations, there's ample bloody fingerprints from prior administrations throughout US history that have had less basis and more loss of life than current events -- what struck me as most important from this Primetime coverage of the movie Apocalypto was the footage of Mayan descendants in Mexico and Guatemala today who live in poverty. An ancient and mighty people who when covered by Primetime reporters find their best stories in a young Mayan boy who sniffs glue and lives in a garbage dump; and a 'single' Mom who prepares meals over a fire and weeps and tells them her life is striving to somehow make a better future for her children.

How will those children ever have a shot at a better future? Education is the key to better futures in the USA, and certainly a lot of hard work is vital as well. But the modern Mayan culture presented as the norm during the filming of this movie was distinctly lacking in any indication of options such as education or industry that would provide a way out, a way up, for one person, much less the modern day Mayan culture as a whole.

We also learn via this Primetime coverage that Mel Gibson's last movie has made over a BILLION dollars -- that's pretty awesome. The Apocalypto may well make more, they certainly made use of lots of native 'actors' and so there isn't a big budget for greedy USA actors. So, given the horrid conditions Mel Gibson described very well himself, and Primetime covered so colorfully -- why wouldn't Mr. Gibson himself already have a University being built in either Guatemala or Mexico for the modern day Mayan descendants? A BILLION dollars from his last movie and more to come ----- I think that would build a University (I doubt they'd object to cinder block walls or lack of 'really cool' stuff necessary in the USA) and pay some profs for a couple of years, and truly change some lives in this lost, but once mighty, culture. A failing of Hollywood Democrats is their own lack of example. They make more money than any average American can ever conceive, even some governmental bodies, use their popularity as a political tool, but be assured they don't put themselves at risk financially, they most assuredly have the best of CPA's or Financial Planners to assist them in using every conceivable avenue of tax savings.

So what's the point of this on a Cattle Blog? :) Well, the British White cattle breed is somewhat of a lost culture if you will. It is up to the breeders of this special bovine to continue to fight to bring it back to the revered status it held in ancient days. We will never know what events occurred that brought this special breed from immortalization in ancient oral tales to the small population to be found in the 19th century, any more than we can really know what caused the destruction of the Mayan culture. But we can work hard to educate those around us about the British White breed. And we can make better efforts to record their growth traits, their ultrasound carcass data, their DNA, and their many other desirable traits that aren't perhaps as easily quantifiable.

A Happy Thanksgiving and a Photo Memory To Share

2006-11-23T23:23:00.000-06:00

This is an old photo from my first year raising British White Cattle -- it's my Desktop background. My niece spent such a wonderful visit with me and she'd never been on a picnic before! We spread our blanket close to the fence, and of course that first set of curious British White heifers of mine gathered to watch and interact with us........always a good memory, and one to be very Thankful For this Day........and that fairly large, quite old cow you see in the background, she was from my first 5 British White cows purchased, and remains my oldest cow here at the ranch, and she's been dubbed long since as 'Mama'

Happy Thanksgiving! from J. West Cattle Company

2006-11-23T10:18:00.000-06:00

There's not much left in this pasture to browse for, but they're doing a good job of acting content. A short while later they were mobbing the fresh hay they were served for their Thanksgiving Dinner....Hope everyone has a really nice day with family and friends

GrassFed Beef - It's What Your Wise Ancestors Enjoyed, How About Your Children's Diet Now?". . . the brain is 60 percent fatty acids. " Dr. Shalin

2006-11-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA's) - We've all heard some discussion, whether on television, in the newspapers, or at the gym about the importance of these Essential nutrients in our diets. We can either take our Omega 3's and CLA's in a pill from the health food store or in the foods we eat.

The word "Essential" prefacing the fatty acids we as humans need to live in optimum health is not an advertising gimmick, but rather a formal designation of their importance and the fact that our bodies cannot manufacture these essential nutrients - we must get them from our diet.

Why do we need Omega 3 Fatty Acids and CLA's? The cells of our bodies are geared to want them and to use them in the maintenance of our heart muscle and our blood vessels and our immune systems and more. . .

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"With all those benefits coming, we even developed particular genes to fend off the higher levels of fat and cholesterol in red meat. "There is a set of genes that allows us to eat a lot more meat without toxic effect and at the same time have longer life spans, which are unprecedented among other primates," says Caleb Finch, Ph.D., a gerontologist at the University of Southern California, who coauthored a report on how human beings became omnivorous, published in the prestigious Quarterly Review of Biology earlier this year.

But the most important evolutionary leap beef brought was the development of bigger brains. Your ability to outwit that guy in the next cubicle can be traced directly back to the switch from bananas to brisket in ancient man's diet. "Fats are essential for brain growth," Dr. Shlain explains. "Excluding water, the brain is 60 percent fatty acids." The primary source of these fatty acids in early man's diet? You guessed it: red meat. Humans are unable to easily manufacture the fatty acids our brains need; diet provides the sole source. "The more meat they ate, the smarter they became. The smarter they became, the more meat they ate," Dr. Shlain says. Which accounts for that magnetic pull you feel when you see red at the grocery store..."

Source: MensHealth.com Right On, Red - You already knew beef builds muscle. But did you know that it makes you smarter? By: Phillip Rhodes & Alex Salkever

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{"The medical profession now recognizes that some mono-unsaturated fatty acids, (i.e. fatty acids with one double bond in the chain of carbon atoms), are protective against heart disease; that longer chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, in particular those with the first double bond at the omega-3 position, such as those found in oily fish, are anti-thrombogenic (helps prevents clotting); and that conjugated linoleic acid, an isomer of linoleic acid, is protective against cancer, obesity and heart disease. These compounds are found in beef fat in varying amounts." R&H Hall Technical Bulletin Issue No. 4 ~1999 (Ireland) THE QUALITY OF MEAT FROM BEEF CATTLE. Is it influenced by diet?}

Purdue - 1997 Research - Omega 3's and Your Bones

Where do we get Omega 3 Fatty Acids? In this modern day, we have limited choices from our diet. We can turn to fish - salmon and tuna are good choices. But, we are constantly warned of the potential presence of mercury in our fish. The risk is so great that pregnant women are urged to refrain from the consumption of fish. We can turn to beef - IF it is beef raised and finished on grass. We can no longer turn to beef produced through modern feedlots.

Feedlot beef is grain fed and most of us have become accustomed to it's taste and texture. There is nothing better than a high end cut of beef prepare impeccably on your grill or in an exceptional steak house - that taste and texture is what beef connoisseur's over the decades have become accustomed to expect of the ultimate beef eating experience. Most of the flavor in that steak comes from the fat - but also much of the important nutrients that nature intended that steak to provide is contained in the fat, or would be if it were not a grain finished cut of meat.

Because it is a grain finished product, enjoying that beautiful steak is compromising your health by giving you high levels of Omega 6 Fatty acids, which are provided to the slaughter animal via the grain in their diet. Grains are high in Omega 6, while grass provides the animal and you with Omega 3. The gross imbalance of Omega 6 to Omega 3 Fatty acids compromises the optimal functioning of your heart and arteries. The optimal ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acids is firmly established. The consumption of grain fed beef raises the level of Omega 6 fatty acids well above that optimal ratio and compromises your health.

Wild game such as venison is heart healthy and lean. Deer forage on natural 'green stuff' that is high in Omega 3's and Vitamin E among other highly valuable nutrients to the human body. A steer that is raised on grass likewise provides the human consumer a lean meat product high in Omega 3's and Vitamin E. It seems pretty simple, but the traditional feedlot beef producer doesn't want you to realize that.

An Arabian Horse and a Jaguar Sharing Shelter!

2006-11-20T21:44:00.000-06:00

This isn't necessarily a normal moment here at the ranch, but with Donny, my Arabian Horse, anything is possible. I'm thinking he anticipates some rain perhaps and wants a roof over his head close to humans! But, in trying to capture this picture, I realized he was both enjoying the carport and the massive amount of live oak acorns blown in by the wind for his enjoyment in a nice 'parking' spot. I scooted him out the gate in short order where he's got ample grass still to graze, it really wouldn't do for him to get a belly full of acorns, he might founder on them.....I swear he can founder on most anything - except grass and alfalfa hay!

Donny came to the ranch a few years back, he foundered immediately his first spring on the fresh grass! Turns out it's A&M's opinion that he was an old founder horse.........so that explains the really good deal I got when I bought him. The years since then have been difficult and draining and at times had me at what I thought was the end of my endurance, much less his. Regardless, we both weathered it through (his farrier says he's the example he tells others about of a phenomenal horse and owner that has successfully survived the most severe of rotations from laminitis) and he's a fixture here at the ranch, and in many ways is responsible for my complete embracement of a natural, grassfed approach to raising my British White cattle.

It would kill him if he found his way to a pasture with grain in a feed bin, or a lick tub with weird protein sources added, or just snuck into the barn and found a feed bag that smelled good and looked like a good candidate for ripping into! I new I had to make it safe for Donny to live with some ease, for me to live with some ease from worry about him. A Grassfed approach to raising my cattle satisfied, resolved the situation. Alfalfa suits him fine, he never has any problems hanging with the cows and sharing their alfalfa, and of course I always watch my grass hay quality for anything that may hurt him.

The only problems I encounter with Donny running with the cows.........he becomes their authority figure! So he's by himself for the next few weeks, my heifers are in my Northwest Middle pasture and it has lots of pot holes towards a natural ravine and I don't like the risk of having him there. He can't run with the fall calvers because he might try to start directing my new baby calves around, and that won't do. So for now he's by himself for a bit and I leave the gate open to the grounds of the house off and on, he's a really good lawn mower! But the massive acorns that have dropped from the live oak tress around the house the past couple of weeks create some limits to how often he can come in and browse around the shrubs and hang out in the carport! He particularly likes to do a good trimming to the purple pampas grass -- it's surely good for it! Right?

British White Cattle - They REALLY are more GENTLE than Other Breeds!

2006-11-20T21:15:00.000-06:00

Too often some visitors to my ranch comment that their calm character is surely due to the "time I must spend with them".

As Breeders of this very special, uniquely beautiful, ancient breed we all know different. Their gentleness begins before birth, it's inherent in their genetic makep-up. Wanda Mae, the curious cow checking out what Mike's up to, isn't the norm in any cow herd, and she's been human-friendly since the day she arrived, as are her calves. It's a very HERITABLE trait.

Every scientific research report that one comes upon points to the fact that the calmer the feeder calf the better the carcass. One day it will be realized that when a commerical cattleman puts a British White Bull on his herd his calves are calmer, their growth is superior, and their carcass brings to them a premium over Black Angus, a highly volatile breed.

The DNA testing accomplished to date indicates the British White breed tests as well as as the much more aggressive and temperamental black Angus breed in terms of marbling and tenderness.

As DNA testing via GeneStar and/or Igenity progresses and is reported to and compiled by the BWCAA and members, I fully expect the results to continue to be superior and to further establish British White cattle as THE Beef Breed of the Future for genetic Tenderness combined with genetic Docility -- a combination no other breed can match -- and a combination that the Commercial Feedlot operator will not ignore and will demand from commerical cattlemen. Numerous articles are to be found on the positive impact on carcass quality from docile feeder calves in the chute and the feedlot.

Buddy the Dog Has a Comfy Spot on a Cold November Morning

2006-11-20T08:13:00.000-06:00

I've not been spending enough time relaxing with a good book out on the porch for some time now......so my dogs have been making good use of the chaise lounges lately. This is Buddy pictured here. Before the past few months, he would have jumped and run if I'd found him lounging on the chaise! But I haven't been staying on top of that lately, haven't been taking that leisure time myself so have begun to enjoy watching them through the window having a nice time on the porch enjoying the view. This was probably the frostiest morning we've had this fall, the pond in the picture has that eery, misty look that comes with the new cold weather. You can't quite see the mist, but you can get the idea.

The End of an Aggravating Blog Setting Up Day!

2006-11-19T21:54:00.000-06:00

Well, I didn't snap any new photos today, didn't even take nearly enough time to enjoy the pretty day outside. This new blog thing captured all my time, the HTML somehow got skewed up in and it wasn't posting with proper alignment or column width.

I've been working with these blog pages for a few weeks now and trying to get things worked out and workable before making them public. I've kept this blog available for open comments, but today I got one of those SPAM posts with quite undesirable language and links.

So, if you'd like to comment, for now just make your comment and it will come to my email and I'll permission it to post. I don't plan to edit or refuse any legit posts of opinions, questions, etc.. in regard to the British White Cattle breed. And feel free to use the Anymous post option until you're comfortable doing this!

I've also had to rework the General British White Cattle Blog page in the LINK box to the right, lots of cutting and pasting to recover and consolidate posts and transition it from it's old blogspot location and also overcome alignment issues. I hope it's all in a permanent workable mode, even that atom.xml thingy is working now! The only thing left is the Home Page link on both pages, but I just dont' know if I'm going to worry with that any time soon.

I'd really love to see our BWCAA members sign up to be CONTRIBUTORS to that forum and share their stories and photos with others and hopefully reach a more satsisfying level of communication and sharing amongst us all.

Signing up as a Contributor is pretty painless, really very easy. Just send me your email address and I'll have an invitation to Contribute sent out to you. I may put together an email list of you all and get them sent out - but in the meantime, just ask me!

(This aggravating thing is making me do the word verification again! I hope it doesn't make this comment post Twice. Geez.....

British White Calves in the Summer of 2006

2006-11-19T15:24:00.000-06:00

I really like this shot from this past summer, we were very fortunate here in Deep East Texas to get ample rainfall until about September. In my memory, September is supposed to always be a month for rains in East Texas, but I think it's just significant events I recall in many Septembers that had rain in the background. Maybe I'll get a good shot of these same calves this morning, it's a crisp and clear day.

Follow up to "Why do Fairy Cows Have Red Ears" Post!

2006-11-19T10:22:00.000-06:00

It has occurred to me that what needs to be pointed out in regards to the prior posting, is that in the United Kingdom, there is no confusion about what exactly a British White is. UK breeders of British White cattle know well the heritage and the special nature of their herds. They most likely have no need to be bothered with the distinctions made by the Park Cattle Society. It's doubtful that they have numerous people questioning just what it is they are raising in their pastures.

In the USA, we must educate and inform others about the British White breed, as it's relatively new to this country. Interested new breeders attempt to educate their own selves on the background of this breed, and they find ample sources of confusion to turn them away from choosing British White cattle, ample sources of confusion that may lead them to doubt the veracity of the breed itself. It is the unique nature of the cattle themselves that brings in a new breeder. It's certainly not the cohesive information at large on the history of the breed -- as there's not any to be found.

It would be nice to simply say they are the polled White Park, renamed British White back in the 40's when the horned and polled groups split to pursue their own interests and future. BUT, once you say that and the prospective breeder does a little research, the he or she will encounter the absurd writings of the Park Cattle Society declaring no relation to the polled British White......and then you may or may not get the opportunity to try to explain why they found that official sounding misinformation.

So, it's a different atmosphere that we live in, work in, here in the USA, as breeders of British White cattle.

Labels: ancient breeds, british white, cattle, white park

Why do Fairy Cows Have Red Ears? Follow the link in the Link Box to the Right for Jessica Hemmings' Unbiased Research

2006-11-19T10:18:00.000-06:00

Be sure and take a look at the Hemmings' article! . . . . look for it in the link box to the right. I have a particular interest in one day seeing clarity and consistency and most of all accuracy in the presentation of the history of the British White breed. For much too long, too many people have looked the other way out of perhaps deference, or fear or distaste of confrontation. Upsetting the status quo in Britain that the Park Cattle Society attempts to preserve in regards to ancient horned White Park cattle -- a status quo maintained through rhetoric long disproved as false, seems a real no-no. Most anyone can do a good Google search and find out just how far back in history the polled bovines of the world are found via archeological records. And most anyone can look at a Chillingham White Park photo and realize those ugly horned beasts are the product of years of inbreeding.

Inbreeding begins to intensify recessive genes, whether in animals or man. The red points in British White cattle are a recessive gene, you can breed for it, or you can breed around it. Myself, I keep hoping to have a red pointed calf born on my ranch, I find them fascinating. Note in the old image above the presence of both a red point cow and a black point. Keep that in mind when you read the Hemmings article.

It's my opinion that the British White breed is 'British' only in the sense that it roamed the British Isles well before the character of Britain was changed through invasions of a motley assortment of cultures. It is thanks to the ancient Celtic culture of Britain (Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) that we find our much beloved cows magified and revered in old myths and laws.

As a British White breeder, know that you are caring for the single most immortalized breed of cattle in the world. And should the time ever come when there is a movement to simply call them White Cattle.....OBJECT, and do so mightily. If we are forced to grace them with yet another name to satisfy those Chillingham Park Cattle Society folk and other breeder associations who can't get happy, then let's think of a name that truly fits their heritage......

How about......Celtic White Park, or Celtic Whites, or British Parks, or .....Fairy Whites! I can't say I comprehend why their breed name of old was ever changed. Many breeds have both polled and horned varieties. I wonder at times what it is we simply aren't told about the decision back so long ago in the 40's that resulted in the breed name British White. To presume it's because other carefully selected breeds were brought in to assist in breeding up and thus preserving the polled White Park, is to realize a level of competitive strife existing in the 40's that was succumbed to by the polled White Park breeders of that generation. To presume that the horned White Park wasn't subjected to/assisted by the same machinations to preserve and increase their numbers is pure stupidity, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to learn that both polled and horned White Park cattle were in mixed herds in the early 20th century as well as in the thousands of years prior. Certainly, there was no distinction made of the small herd shipped to the USA prior to the onset of WWII that became the forebears of British White cattle today in the USA.

Further, despite that "wild" claim, one only has to look at the photos of horned White Park cattle in Britain today and see their gentle contentment.....so what gives? Why the BS from the Park Cattle folks that their is no genetic connection between the horned White Park and the British White? We have Jessica Hemmings to thank for laying their cited genetic testing to bed, permanently.

Is it only the Americans who delve into and analyze the rhetoric of the Park Cattle Society? Are we just terribly gauche? Won't let things just lye (or lie)? Or is there some critical bit of non-public information that is kept in the UK fold? I just don't know.

Regardless, we British White breeders in the USA and Australia are proud of our cattle, work hard to promote our cattle, and are sick and tired of seeing them referred to as those 'Whites' in misguided articles. In America we constantly have to correct and attempt to educate interested folks about our cattle. Countless times we have to say "No, they aren't Charolais?sp" crosses!" In my part of the USA, and in most others, Charolais cattle are considered white, and they are a very popular and dominant breed. To my eye they are quite a dirty white color, but that doesn't matter much. We have to think about the general public opinion, attitude, and education level.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this background and confusion, our cattle also provide to us and to the consumer, an excellent beef product. It is not without reason that the 'Sirloin' is said to have been deemed thus whilst a King dined on a loin of British White beef. I forget where I ran across that bit of information, and it could well be trivia, perhaps someone reading this can comment on that.

Labels: beef, cattle, grassfed, seedstock

A Pretty November Morning with Gazing Grassfed British White Beef Cows

2006-11-19T10:13:00.000-06:00

We've had some very nice cool days here in Southeast Texas, a lot earlier than last year, or at least as best I can recall. This morning the sky is clear and the sun is very bright. The trees began changing their leaves a couple of weeks back. The hickory trees change first around here and they seem to be a much stronger orange than ever before - you can see one in the tree line sort of shouting out it's color!

Put British White Beef on your table for Dinner Tonight!

2006-11-19T10:11:00.000-06:00

British White Cattle - Ask for Royally Good '"White Beef'" - Ask for British White Beef

Inviting everyone to take a look at the British White breed of cattle and see what's happening here at this Texas ranch. Beef is what's for dinner.....and for too long it's been the domain of that black breed.....If you're a commercial rancher, look to the British White breed for gentle crossbred calves, proven to result in more tender carcasses. For the seedstock producer, the British White breed gives all you can ask in fertility, milkiness, calving ease, hardiness, and more.

The Magical Milk White Milch Cow - Mother of all Cows

2006-11-19T10:10:00.000-06:00

Here's a quite wonderful old reference to British White cattle (a matter of opinion, but what other breed was milk white then or is now?) to start off this blog:

'The milk-white milch cow gave enough of milk to every one who desired it; and however frequently milked, or by whatever number of persons, she was never found deficient. All persons who drank of her milk were healed of every illness ; from fools they became wise ; and from being wicked, became happy. This cow went round the world; and wherever she appeared, she filled with milk all the vessels that could be found, leaving calves behind her for all the wise and happy. It was from her that all the milch cows in the world were obtained. After traversing through the island of Britain, for the benefit and blessing of country and kindred, she reached the Vale of Towy; where, tempted by her fine appearance and superior condition, the natives sought to kill and eat her; but just as they were proceeding to effect their purpose, she vanished from between their hands, and was never seen again. A house still remains in the locality, called Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith (The Milk-white Milch Cow.)' " http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/wfl/wfl03.htm

GrassFed British White Beef - JWest's Mazarati - Excellent Herd Sire Potential

2006-11-17T20:49:00.000-06:00

Consider this.....with the price of beef skyrocketing at the market these days, and the healthful quality of that beef very questionable.....isn't it time to seek out healthy natural grassfed beef straight from the producer? Buying a whole beef is maybe too much too handle, but you can find a friend to take a side of beef and you the other, about 300 or so pounds of beef you'd need to find space in the freezer for.

If you buy straight from a Grassfed producer you would pay from $1 to $1.50 a pound live weight of the steer, you'd then pay the processor about .40 cents a pound for actual carcass weight to cut and wrap it the way you want them to. Average cost per pound of beef for your family just dropped tremendously, and you're providing yourself and your children with the best of nutrition..........you won't worry so much if their diet is nothing but hamburgers.....it will be hamburgers providing optimal Fatty Acids, CLA's, Vitamin E, Vitamin A......and more.

Put fresh beef in the freezer and you'll never shop for grocery store beef again. Guaranteed. Put Grassfed beef in the freezer and you won't have to worry so much about the fat in that delicious ribeye, it will be heart healthy fat you can enjoy.

Consider the economics of buying a Grassfed steer straight from a producer. Too many people don't realize that it is still done today, and not just in rural America. Many grassfed beef producers will arrange to ship your beef to you in the city. These days, buying just a few cuts or packages from Grassfed Beef Suppliers can cost a bundle over what beef costs at the grocery store or supermarket. You can avoid all that by contacting a beef producer direct and they'll have a beef animal transported to a harvest facility nearby and then you tell the harvest facility how long you want it aged and how you want it processed. If you want 2 inch ribeyes, they will cut you two inch ribeyes. If you don't want a lot of roasts, well they'll just make those cuts into your ground beef instead. The price is the same per pound no matter what you decide. And the cost of processing is on the actual beef carcass poundage processed and packaged for you. If you are on a budget, it's worth saving to pay for the steer and the processing. It really puts money in the bank in the long run. Not to mention the better eating quality of the beef and the superior nutrition of the beef that will be in your freezer.....and not at an overpriced Walmart that injects their meat with.......wierd stuff.

Ask for British White Grassfed Beef, ask for true Grassfed Fed, no corn and no emergency byproducts to get through the winter if you're buying a steer for harvest in early Spring. There are various studies examining the length of time it takes for a steer's muscle and fat to convert back to a Heart Healthy state for optimum nutritional benefit, and it does take a few months and more for that to occur.

A steer with superior grassfed genetics will thrive on grass hay and high quality Alfalfa Hay as a supplement. Always ask what they're eating, and don't presume they haven't received antibiotics or hormone implants or long periods of grain supplement, you need to ask and if possible visit the farm or ranch that you're considering buying from direct.

Also to keep in mind......look for grassfed beef producers who focus their breeding programs on moderate sized animals -- you'll never have an optimum grassfed eating experience from a steer whose sire is over 1600 pounds and whose dam weighs more than 1200 pounds......the big guy just can't reach finish condition on grass until he's pushing 30 months old, and you won't realize the optimal healthy...and TASTY... finish of grassfed beef with a satisfactory level of that healthy grassfed fat.

British White Bulls - Gentle Genetics with Excellent Carcass Traits

2006-11-06T10:39:00.000-06:00

Research proves again and again that feeder calves that are calmer in the feedlot and in the chute will likewise produce a more tender carcass. The British White breed is inherently docile -- the calves exhibit their unique nature at birth and onward. This docility is very heritable and is distinctively present in most first cross calves.