Cattle.com

Blog Archive April 2014

News Stories and Remembrances

News Stories


Three cattlemen, former SDSU football player die in plane crash - Probably the most detailed news story on the crash


Remembrances

I only met Nick Reimann in Denver half a dozen times over the years.  He’s one of those guys that so many people call a friend because every person he spoke with was, for that moment in time, the most important person he could possibly be speaking with.  It didn’t matter if you were one of the biggest names in the nation looking at buying a bull or some schmuck walking by that just happened to ask him about something on a display.

That’s something everyone knows they should do but very few of us have the ability or fortitude to actually carry through with.

People like Nick, who did it because that’s the kind of man he was raised to be and the kind of man he was, are the kind of guys that make the world a better place one small conversation at a time.

That’s why the remembrances you are seeing online are so large in number and focus so little on the quality of his cattle, which make no mistake, were some of the best you could find.

(I’d like to embed the Facebook statuses but half of them are set to private)


Nick Reimann Passed Away

Nick Reimann passed away over the weekend in a plane crash that claimed multiple lives.

This isn’t the place for eulogies but I’ll say that I’ve run into him about half a dozen times in Denver over the years and he was always one of the most polite and professional people I’d run across each January.  

He was one of the good guys by just about any measurement.



Top Web Sale Lots Week of 4/21/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $26,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  2. $17,501 - Steer sired by No Surprise
  3. $14,000 - Heifer sired by TR MR Fire Water
  4. $13,500 - Steer sired by Werewolf
  5. $12,500 - Bred Cow sired by 351
  6. $11,000 - Heifer sired by Man Among Boys
  7. $10,513 - Bred Cow sired by Size Matters
  8. $9,750 - Heifer sired by Unstoppable
  9. $9,500 - Heifer sired by THM Durango 4037
  10. $9,250 - Steer sired by Monopoly


Top Web Sale Lots Week of 4/14/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $26,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  2. $17,501 - Steer sired by No Surprise
  3. $13,500 - Steer sired by Werewolf
  4. $12,500 - Heifer sired by No Surprise
  5. $10,500 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  6. $10,000 - Bull sired by Torque
  7. $9,750 - Heifer sired by No Surprise
  8. $9,250 - Steer sired by Made Right
  9. $8,800 - Heifer sired by No Surprise
  10. $8,500 - Heifer sired by Walks Alone


Forgive some of us for not understanding Nevada…

Us folks running cows on leased land in a lot of states already have a ton of experience losing them.

We lose leases to wildlife, typically the privately owned kind.  We lose leases without warning.  We lose leases because the land owner changes their mind.  We lose leases because we don’t fertilize during a drought.  We lose leases because owners die.  We lose leases because land gets sold.  We lose leases because of development.  We lose leases because we don’t spray for brush.  We lose leases because we don’t improve fences.  We lose leases because we do improve fences.

We for dang sure lose leases if we don’t pay the rent.

Yeah, you get pissed about it but it’s part of life when you want herd sizes that need more land than you were born into.

So why are you guys out there threating to start a literal war over a guy who doesn’t pay his rent losing a lease two decades after the land owner told him to move out?

There’s no point to this, I’m really asking why I’m supposed to care so deeply about it.

1

For no legitimate reason...




You want a job in the beef industry?

Forget that clichéd young buck dream of becoming a ‘consultant’.  That career path (term used liberally) is for young guys that have a bunch of money behind them so they don’t have to actually earn a living or men that have already established their name.

Forget the cattle marketing/photography thing.  That’s become the new “I’m going to be a marine biologist” dream of young women and you missed the easy pickings by about a decade.  Your business will have to be built based by poaching the clients of well established firms which is hard enough to do when you have an established name.

Get a computer science degree.

You’d be surprised at just how many different associations and companies are in desperate need of somebody with a background in cattle that can program.  I’m talking good jobs, with actual benefits, and actual salaries - none of that 100% commission foolishness or living in a barn.

Get to the point that comics like this not only make sense but make you laugh…


Sure, you’ll have to work and –GASP-- learn a new skill in college.

It’s called doing what other people don’t want to do and it’s as close to a sure fire path to success as there is.


CountyShows.org Weight Class Tool

A tool I made yesterday that takes the weights of animals and breaks them into the mathematically best (as defined by the lowest average standard deviation of weights in each class) possible three class weight breaks…


Features to be added include;
  1. Ability to select amount of classes
  2. Ability to select maximum class size variation
  3. Ability to select maximum class size
Take the Gert class from San Antonio this year as an example.  Here are the weights of each animal;

1000
1110
1141
1145
1147
1147
1153
1165
1169
1180
1184
1184
1186
1187
1190
1190
1192
1195
1197
1197
1198
1199
1201
1204
1204
1204
1215
1220
1254
1255
1269
1275
1277
1279
1283
1285
1285
1285
1287
1294
1307
1309
1309
1309
1330
1331
1335
1339
1339
1339
1345
1361
1368
1369
1369
1369
1375
1387
1392
1399
1399
1480

If you look at it closely you’ll see that there is a bit of a conundrum on where to break between the lightweights and the heavyweights.  If you break it at 1204, the lightweight class will have 26 head vs 18 in the medium and heavy classes.

That can’t be the proper way to cut it can it?

Actually, yes, it is, and San Antonio got that one right.  Copy and paste those numbers into the tool I posted above to see the results.  (you’ll also see that I haven’t set it up to deal with ‘ties’ yet)

The average deviation among the 72 possible ways to break classes using the class size criteria on the weight break tool was clearly in favor of the 26-18-18 class sizes.

That's not to say they got them all right.  They got about 30% of the breaks right according to the weight break tool and there were no less than two lightweight class winners that would have been in the middleweights if the classes were a bit more more uniform weight wise.

This tool can be especially useful for county show politics where you’re in charge of breaking classes and run into a situation where somebody call shenanigans on your breaks.  Using a free tool like this to break your classes relieves you of the responsibility and gives you a logical leg to stand on.

And yes, it’s a free tool.


Top Web Sale Lots Week of 4/7/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $54,000 - Bull sired by GCC Black Watch 849T
  2. $45,000 - Heifer sired by CRR About Time 743
  3. $43,500 - Heifer sired by CRR About Time 743
  4. $42,000 - Bull sired by Goet I-80
  5. $40,000 - Bull sired by Goet I-80
  6. $32,000 - Bull sired by TH 89T 743 Untapped 425X
  7. $26,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  8. $17,501 - Steer sired by No Surprise
  9. $15,500 - Bull sired by GCC Maverick
  10. $15,000 - Bull sired by GCC Lonestar X902


Sundays Best Steer Sale This Sunday


CLICK HERE for the full list.



It's your job to get the ears...

I’m not kidding.

If you are charging for video work on American calves and the calf is borderline on classification, you need to get a shot of the head from the front.

Specifically, you need to get the shape and set of the ears.

I know you guys were all raised in Winterfell but down here those ears matter, a lot.


Clipping Day

I know you guys like to take pretty pictures of five figure steers just masterfully clipped to look like a million bucks in facilities that are custom designed for it.

Not us.

This pretty much defines clipping days for us.  Well, at least the end of clipping day when the idiots finally come through.

One calf down on his side.

Holding pen gate left open by my dad so the calves can get mixed up again.

Me over here sitting and taking a picture because the one in the metal chute with his tongue sticking out isn’t just “not kid friendly” he’s not “35-year-old friendly” right now either.



Top Web Sale Lots Week of 3/31/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $26,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  2. $20,000 - Heifer sired by Buyer's Choice
  3. $17,501 - Steer sired by No Surprise
  4. $17,000 - Steer sired by Two Tone
  5. $17,000 - Steer sired by Severe Weather
  6. $16,500 - Steer sired by Red Cloud
  7. $16,500 - Heifer sired by TR PZC MR TURTON 0794ET
  8. $15,000 - Steer sired by Believe in Me
  9. $15,000 - Steer sired by Lifeline
  10. $15,000 - Steer sired by Milk Man


Sometimes It Does Work

Most of you live in or grew up in the country.  Depending on just how close your definition of country was to a town you know what it’s like to have stray dogs show up at your house.

There are far too many people that tell their kids that they are going to take their puppy or dog out to the country to live on a farm and shockingly don’t realize that is supposed to mean the dog died.  They were evidently fed that lie when they were children and decide that is actually what happens to dogs.  So, they go for a drive and take the dog out to the country to live.

Unfortunately, that means that people who live almost exactly half way between two medium sized towns get tons and tons of dogs that just show up on their doorstep.  I can personally remember no less than ten but those are just the dogs that I can actually remember and count.  There were at least 2-3 times that many that showed up over the years.

Typically it doesn’t end well for the dog.  They don’t have anywhere to go and eventually chase livestock which is a surefire way to get a bullet to the head.

Side Note: If you are going to put a dog down, why is it more humane to take them to a vet instead of doing it on the farm?  Isn’t the stress of going to the vet more than the stress of eating a nice little steak and then the screen going black like Tony Soprano did in the last episode of that series? 

Unless you are this cute…


…and you know how to hop in the gator and ride on the floorboard while the guy takes people around showing them calves.  

And you know how to play nicely.

And you know how to sit down in a truck.

And you’re just that cute.

In that case, sometimes, just sometimes, a dog ends up finding a home on the farm.







Ummmm, Update

If you find a stray dog, especially a young one, that you want to write 338 words about keeping on Thursday because he’s so well behaved…

Get him checked for parvo BEFORE you write all of that.

But we just told our kids that he went to go live on somebody else's farm.








A Small Token That’d Go A Long Way

Considering the quality of cattle walking into the show rings nowadays, it’s not unreasonable to say that it’s something to be proud of just to get pulled at a major show.  I know, I know, nobody is going to put that in their ads and nobody is going to sell semen based on it.

Still, there are an awful lot of kids each year though where their main accomplishment for the year is just having a judge point them in the right direction.

Some people say that at one time they did, but the majors no longer give out placing ribbons for the kids that get pulled but don’t brand.

Why not?

For a couple hundred dollars a year shows like Ft Worth, San Antonio, and Houston can give a small token of accomplishment that will go a long way in making a kid feel good about their year.  I'm not talking about participation ribbons but ribbons for calves that ended up heartbreakingly close to branding.

Sure, there are kids that will throw them away because they’re spoiled brats that have lost touch with reality.  Forget those kids, it’s not your fault they weren’t raised right.

It’s a small, relatively inexpensive, gesture that will make a solid difference for more kids than you think.


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