Guest Blog

There is something about saddling up a fresh horse on a cool spring morning, trailing cows into the corrals and getting ready to brand slick calves that compares to nothing else. Early morning jitters from lack of sleep finally give way to good morning hellos and laughter among the help.

Today, the day that I am writing this, is the first day of spring. It has been a long time coming, but the unpredictable weather patterns prove it is here. It is quite appropriate that I spend a part of my day treating a scouring calf. It just comes with the territory, but this year it seems so much worse.

We as human beings put up so many guards and make tons of excuses to protect ourselves from looking like idiots. We don’t want to admit we don’t know something for fear of hurting our image. Those guards and excuses I am talking about can all be summed up with one word: pride! Pride is the enemy to potential.

Are you profitable as a cattle producer at current prices? Don’t you lie to me, or worse, yourself. The elevated prices in 2014-2015 were great, but we all knew it couldn’t and wouldn’t last.

I recently saw an ad on Facebook for The Bachelor of a bunch of very well-dressed young ladies feeding dairy calves and shoveling manure out of a cattle barn. It was like a train wreck – painful to watch, but I couldn’t look away!

It wasn’t our first choice to calve our heifers in January, but some things can’t be helped. It’s a risk to calve in January, especially in Idaho. But to calve in January in Idaho during a 30-year storm – well, that is downright stupid.