College Students Create Videos to Convey the Importance of Agriculture

Everyone should have a look at these videos on agriculture. The first video was produced by a student at Sam Houston State University, entitled "Agriculture is our Soul", and took second place in a competition ". . . for explaining the importance of agriculture to the general public."   The second video below took first place in this competition, and was produced by a student at the University of Missouri.
  



This first prize winning video is entitled "Naked and Hungry", don't let the beginning few seconds scare you!

Interesting Advice from 1808 on the Care of the Cow that Prematurely Calves or Aborts

How to Manage and Care for the Cow that has Prematurely Calved (or slipped) their Calf - from The Complete Grazier, 1808, by Thomas Hartwell Horne

". . . But where a cow slips, or casts her calf prematurely, she must be tended with great care; and ,whatever may be the cause, whether abusive treatment, violent exercise, bruises or blows, or that unnatural appetite known by the name of longing, every animal that has slipped her calf should be carefully separated from the rest of the herd.  Cleanliness which is an essential requisite in the general management of cattle, ought in this instance to be an object of special attention; and, as cows which are liable to drop their calves usually evince some preparatory symptoms between the cause of the abortion and the actual slipping of the fetus, it will not be altogether useless to bleed them two or three times, as this expedient has sometimes operated as a preventive."

"After, however, the calf is produced, it will be necessary to assist the natural functions of the animal in order to carry off the secandines * provided in the uterus for nourishing the fetus; and which, continuing there in consequence of abortion, would become putrescent, and thus occasion a disagreeable odour that would quickly communicate an infection among other breeding cows."

"For this purpose we would, at all times, recommend the following mixture to be given the cow as soon after calving as possible:  Let about three quarts of water simmer over the fire; and, when warm, strew in as much oatmeal as will be sufficient to make a strong gruel, carefully stirring the whole, till it boils, that no lumps may arise; then add one quart of ale (or two of table beer) and one pound of treacle (molasses), and carefully incorporate the different ingredients by stirring.  This mixture should be given lukewarm: it is peculiarly grateful to cows, which (particularly young ones) will drink it eagerly, after the first hornful, and are thus prevented from taking cold.  And, as it is of importance to regulate the state of the body, this object may be effected by giving a mash of bran wetted with warm water."

"Further, it will be necessary to milk the cows, especially if they be full of flesh and the udder hard, three or four times a day, for two or three days, and the calf should be suffered to suck as frequently, if in the house; or, in the field to run with her and suck at pleasure; care being taken to observe that the mother does not prevent it, for, if the udder or teats be sore, she will naturally be averse to suckling, and danger is incurred of losing both animals: and, in case the kernel of the udder is hard, the hardness may be removed by rubbing it three or four times in the day."

*"Or afterbirth: -- in the North it is termed the cleansing.  This excrement ought to be narrowly watched,  after it is passed, as cows will often eat it with great avidity."

Climate Change in Texas - Our Texas Cows Got the Message . . .

. . . and the East Texas cattle population has formed an alliance to suppress belching and farting in the interests of  protecting the Ozone -- apparently it worked.

The weather in Texas is notorious for being unpredictable within most any season, and in this upper sliver of southeast Texas, tucked right in the northern edge of Tyler County -- this winter has surely been one to remember.  I'd say the cows have done a pretty good job of holding back on those belches, maybe the constant hole digging in the soil by the bulls isn't 'soil degradation', but is actually a repository for herd belches. 

Yesterday evening the snow and sleet started about 5:30 PM, and it was pretty nasty outside.  But within an hour it was just pretty flakes of snow falling. By 11:00 PM the pastures and the treetrops were covered in a white blanket of snow, and the flakes were still thick and softly falling.  This morning the melt had already begun by the time I took a few pictures, but as we will be in the throes of man and cow caused Global Warming within a few short years, decades . . . who knows what the current time line theory is-- I certainly recorded what may be never ever seen again in these Pineywoods.

Last night's snow fall has been our third snow of the winter, and the same can be said for many other parts of Texas as well.  Yet Texas is the cow home of the largest population of cattle in the United States of America, over 13 million head of cattle.  The atmosphere above the blue skies of the State of Texas must be surely choking on methane emissions from the belches of cows and from their manure. 

Is there a Texas sized hole lurking in the ozone above our great State?  I haven't heard about one.  And the air I breathe in my rural part of Texas is clean and fresh.  The same can not be said about the City of Houston.  If there's ever a time when I remember the fast driving fun of my youth, it's when I'm trying to get the heck out of Houston so I can breathe again and leave my constant Houston Headache behind  -- and get back to my rural country air filled with the cow belches just as fast as I can.

We are told that cattle are a greater contributor to Global Warming than the Transportation sector.  A trip to Houston and back to home always shows what a Farce that notion is.  This third snowfall as well shows what a farce that notion is.  Texas farm and ranch land accounts for some 78% of the total land area in the State of Texas, or about 130 Million acres.  Eighty-three percent of that farm and ranch land is in the hands of small land owners having less than 499 acres, and a lot of cows roam that acreage.

Per the Texas Dept. of Agriculture (2007), "Texas is the number one cattle producing state in the country, with an inventory of 13.8 million cattle and calves -- more than twice as many as the next largest producer."  Shouldn't we Texans have hole in the ozone to worry about? Shouldn't we be in a sweat instead of a shiver?  Or have our cows found a way to circumvent the goals of the EPA, the United Nations, and their great and all powerful leader -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Visit my HubPage for an in-depth examination of the EPA and FAO efforts to exert governmental control over the cows in your pastures at a level you could never have imagined in a rational world.  (Image below is provided by your EPA to assist you in understanding just how to test the methane of your cows - looks like a bad, very bad joke.)

Should we be Worrying about a Carbon Tax Assessment on our Cows?

Raising cattle has lots of costs, both monetary and in terms of your time; but it also has lots of rewards that are perhaps hard to convey to someone who hasn't experienced the sort of peacefulness and rightness that comes from having cattle grazing pastures around your home. 

I have largely tended to scoff and ignore reports that cattle are primary contributors to Global Warming. I felt comfortable with my grassfed approach to raising my entire herd, mama cows and all.  How could that be a bad thing?

Suddenly, there has been a lot of finger pointing at grassfed beef as an even worse culprit to the earth than a stalled and grainfed steer.  So I felt like I could not ignore this, laugh at this, anymore.  I found the FAO's 2006 report that damned my gentle grassfed cows, and I read it with great interest, and I recommend everyone to read this report.

While a grassfed animal does produce more methane via their belching, the grain fed animal produces manure that contains more Nitrous Oxide, almost 300 times, or ~93%, more toxic to the ozone than methane.   Not to mention the Carbon Dioxide emissions that result from the cropping of the feed grains, and the nitrous oxide from the fertilizers used to crop the grain.

The FAO's 2006 report that damned the livestock industry actually provides NO estimation of the net carbon effect of converting to an all grain livestock industry. NONE. And certainly no estimation of the impact on water supplies from cropland fertilizer runoff.

And in regard to grass fed cattle operations, the FAO references the 2002 work of Vaclav Smil who says ". . . Nitrogen loss not being a factor in the production of “totally grass-fed” bovines or bovines raised on “crop and food processing residues that are unpalatable to non-ruminants – such as humans"; and Smil goes on to say that grass fed production of livestock would be environmentally preferable in societies that could manage to implement it.

Apparently the FAO would rather spend their time coming up with some vaccine, or chemical additive for the cow to eat, to reduce their belches.  Follow the blog title link, or click here, for my articles on the findings presented in the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow.

Did anyone Tell Al Gore? There is Snow again in the Pineywoods of East Texas

We've got snow again in the Pineywoods of East Texas!  And amazingly some of it actually stuck.  Mother Nature seems to be letting everyone know that she is very much in charge of climate change.

On the other hand, I'm expecting any day to hear some Global Warming gasbag, who just has to have the answer to everything as long as it backs up their own ideas and pocketbook, claim that the efforts already made to combat Global Warming are responsible for all the snow of 2010, and that it actually proves they are in fact correct.  Of course, were they to take that self-aggrandizing stance, it's doubtful the folks in the Northeast would bother to trade in any more of their gas hogging vehicles; instead, there would be a rush to the local auto dealers to buy the biggest and baddest and get that exhaust choking out into the crisp cool air. Maybe it's time to double down on a long position in Ford.

Oops!  I've gone and done it again, mentioned something political on my blog!  I'm trying real hard to just post quotes that reflect how I feel about the politics of the day..........so let me get back to my British White cattle.  Here is a photo of Elvis this morning; I don't think he's happy much with the snow or being in a pasture all by his lonesome, but he does look good for an old middle-aged bull.  Notice the gray spots on his hide showing up through his wet hair.

In England, the breed standards state a preference for the skin having a dark pigmentation, and this is often referred to as blue-skinned.  There is a long tradition in some English herds of choosing herd bulls that are blue-skinned.  It's been my experience that 100% blue-skinned bulls, such as my King Cole, Tyson, Mazarati, BlueBoy and El Presidente, throw very good color on their calves.  And of course the dark pigmentation is considered a trait that adds to the hardiness of individual animals against the arsenal of Mother Nature, primarily the Sun.