Guest Blog

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.

The wind was blowing, as it usually is through the dusty desert where our cattle seasonally graze. It came in gusts out of the west that day.

The Christmas season marks the end of the year and is a great time to reflect on our year and to look forward to the next. It's a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior and the new covenant the book of Jeremiah promised. It's also a great time to reflect on the blessings of the past year.

Marci Whitehurst
Cowboy lingo: Understanding a cowboy’s grunts and gestures