Guest Blog

The horses are out. It’s a simple phrase. A statement of fact. A declaration of circumstance.

As a veterinarian, I get the pleasure of working with cattlemen from North Dakota down to Nebraska. They come in all types, from the quiet, introspective guy to the story-telling cowboy you can’t hardly get a word in edgewise.

Last Saturday Craig and I competed in a Ragnar race. In this variation of the Ragnar, our team of four completed the equivalent of a marathon before sunset, with each of us running 3.5 miles in two different legs.

Aside from needing the USDA to step in and prohibit these chemist producers from calling their newly designed product “meat,” and absent from some drastic change in people’s taste, the threat to beef producers from this new plant-based fake meat should be mostly negligible.

This month, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to discuss barn cats (barnicus caticus). I say “cats” plural, because it is impossible to have a single barn cat for more than three days. After three days, you will suddenly find your cats have multiplied according to the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 …), or your one barn cat has turned into no barn cats.

Although video sales are gaining a foothold on the cattle trade, most calves still transfer from rancher to feeder through a sale barn. And if there is a sale, it is a requirement that there is a veterinarian on site.