Blog Archive April 2010
Jeff
Two things on my top five list of constant wants are an excuse to get out of the house and a series of blog posts that make it look like I’m posting content every day but really are just one project divided up over a longer period of time.
When the opportunity to fill both of those by heading up to Wisconsin and shooting a series of videos with Matt Lautner and his crew came up, I jumped at it. I've been bouncing the idea for a series of videos with clubby experts describing what they look for in calves ever since I posted that little Shorthorn calf on here. Out of the eleven people that called on him, they all liked him but not a single one had the same opinion. There's obviously confusion/disagreement over various aspects of judging prospect calves so who better to help with that than the guys who make a living on them.
Yesterday we posted the first video which consisted of Matt and Charlie evaluating young calves. Today is the first of two parts on bull selection. Matt went through about 6-8 of Adam’s cows and gave advice on which bulls to use on them. Next week we’ll post small blurbs about various aspects of judging prospect calves such as soundness. Once we’ve got those posted there will be a few videos including the champion drive from that show and a ten minute video of Charlie Wilson and Adam White building legs.
The first in a series...
This whole being a father thing is really starting to cramp my style. Yesterday afternoon while culling cows my father turned a long horned tiger stripe cow in on me while I was in the loading chute pushing cattle on the trailer. I turned around and yelled at him in a very stern and forceful voice “HEY, that is NOT nice”.
Houston v San Antonio Carcass Averages
Ribeye Area
Houston (Randy Daniel) - 15.28"
San Antonio (Mark McClintock) - 14.68"
Choice or Better
Houston (Randy Daniel) - 53.9%
San Antonio (Mark McClintock) - 53.4%
Video Week
We've got something lined up for next week that you'll want to watch if you have anything at all to do with raising or showing steers.
From the makers of the biggest waste of venture capitalist money since the dot com bubble, Cuil, comes Cpedia. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the shoddiest thing I’ve ever seen on the Internet. Take for example the article on “show cattle”.
Jones Show Cattle Harrod, Ohio Jones Show Cattle is a name known around the country when it comes to solid Maine-Anjou genetics. Page description (if any) Apex Show Cattle produces and sells spring and fall born show steer and heifer prospects, breeding bulls plus bred and open females throughout America More about this page Club calf breeders located in Dannebrog, NE.The Champion Maine Anjou Heifer was the Champion MaineTainer Heifer, Lot 36, consigned by Burke Show Cattle of Genoa, NE and sold to Wulf & Snell of Guide Rock, NE for $7,750, making her the High-Selling Maine Anjou Animal. They raise commercial and show Shorthorn cattle.
That’s not bits and pieces from the page, that’s the actual first two paragraphs of the article.
- Cattle Today Sites 19.11%
- CattleNetwork.com 14.78%
- Cattle.com 13.65% (5)
- Cattlerange.com 12.61%
- Beefmagazine.com 10.48% (3)
- Showsteers.com 8.41%
- Steerplanet.com 4.48% (8)
- Cattlepages.com 3.75% (9)
- Clubcalves.com 2.87% (nr)
- Cattlegrower.com 2.71%
Steerplanet continued its rise and ought to eventually make the 3-6 group a 3-7 group.
I've added Matt Lautner Cattle, Z-N-T Cattle, and Bovine Vet Online to the blogroll on the right hand side of this page. Not that you care, it's not like any of you actually use that kick tail little feature that checks 16 different blogs every hour and posts links to them here.
[Edited Saturday night]
Some of you may think this part of the post had a complaint about going to help my mother in law move this weekend but you're wrong. This paragraph was talking about taking advantage of the great opportunity for bluebonnet pics the entire time...
But dang it, can you imaging having to drive four hours one way to help your mother in law move on a weekend as beautiful as that?
Jason is doing a Ustream chat with Brad Hook tonight over at Steerplanet.com. If you haven’t used it before and it’s done the same way as what I’ve seen, sign up for an account on Ustream.tv account so you can chat under a username rather than an anonymous number.
I’ve you’ve never run across Ustream.tv it’s a heck of a free tool. I started using Ustream last September as a sort of mini customer conference to get feedback and update my users on what’s going on with our sites. With an internet connection, a camera, and a microphone, you’re all set to do live broadcasts. Here is an example of one of the Ustream sessions I did with our customers.
The neatest little thing I’ve seen and something that could easily be used as a tool for cattle sales in mobile broadcasting. With a free app for my droid phone I’m able to broadcast live (in admittedly low quality) from anywhere with 3G coverage. This was broadcast from my phone while playing with my son at the park.
For the past two weeks I have had an online stalker. No, not one of you. Not somebody I said something about on this blog. Not even one of the new wave of trolls from Steerplanet. An advertisement. About jackets. Carhartt jackets.
About two weeks ago I gave some of our last Cattle.com Carhartts to some friends and I need to restock. While now isn’t the best time of year to give them away if you want them to be worn, it is a great time to buy them. So, I took a trip over to carhartt.com to see what was available. Since that time the only ads I’ve seen on any site with Adsense have been ads about a rain proof jacket.
That’s a lot of words to say, I’m currently being ‘remarketed’ by Carhartt. It’s a relatively new feature of Adwords that allows you to show display ads to visitors to your site at a later time when they are on other sites.
Everything You Need to Know about Adwords Remarketing
For most that read this, this will probably just let you know why you keep seeing the same ad over and over. However, if you are interested in taking advantage of it, that blog says more than I ever could.
I posted this the other night but took it down because it was auto-playing and posting auto-play video on your front page is just plain old rude. I found a version that doesn't auto-start so here it is...
Read the full article here...Breeding the Perfect Bull
Not that anybody who reads this still believes hits means anything but to drive the point home further, Google thinks so little of the stat that they made it the focus of their obligatory April Fools Day joke...
SOMEBODY DO THIS.
The USDA held a new conference this morning to announce a radical change to the quality grade system. In order to bring quality grading back in line with current terminal steer show trends, no longer will beef carcasses be evaluated solely ‘on the rail’. Effective immediately, cattle will be evaluated for length of stride and structural correctness before being slaughtered and that information will be used in the quality grade.
“Sure, some of these carcasses may grade prime and have 18 inch rib eyes but if they can’t move properly, just think about their sisters in the fields. What are we teaching cattlemen about beef production when we put so much emphasis on the end product?” said Joh Jack Edwards, prominent beef expert.
The news conference was ended when a reporter asked if anybody has ever eaten the ability of a steak to cover its own tracks.
Past Posts
- 8/2020 [1]
- 10/2019 [18]
- 9/2019 [35]
- 8/2019 [32]
- 7/2019 [33]
- 6/2019 [35]
- 5/2019 [34]
- 4/2019 [34]
- 3/2019 [36]
- 2/2019 [32]
- 1/2019 [35]
- 12/2018 [36]
- 11/2018 [33]
- 10/2018 [35]
- 9/2018 [35]
- 8/2018 [35]
- 7/2018 [36]
- 6/2018 [33]
- 5/2018 [31]
- 4/2018 [10]
- 3/2018 [4]
- 2/2018 [3]
- 1/2018 [4]
- 12/2017 [5]
- 11/2017 [4]
- 10/2017 [5]
- 9/2017 [6]
- 8/2017 [4]
- 7/2017 [9]
- 6/2017 [16]
- 5/2017 [8]
- 4/2017 [7]
- 3/2017 [10]
- 2/2017 [19]
- 1/2017 [23]
- 12/2016 [4]
- 11/2016 [8]
- 10/2016 [7]
- 9/2016 [12]
- 8/2016 [9]
- 7/2016 [9]
- 6/2016 [12]
- 5/2016 [9]
- 4/2016 [13]
- 3/2016 [17]
- 2/2016 [18]
- 1/2016 [18]
- 12/2015 [10]
- 11/2015 [11]
- 10/2015 [12]
- 9/2015 [15]
- 8/2015 [10]
- 7/2015 [15]
- 6/2015 [16]
- 5/2015 [13]
- 4/2015 [22]
- 3/2015 [17]
- 2/2015 [18]
- 1/2015 [23]
- 12/2014 [13]
- 11/2014 [16]
- 10/2014 [23]
- 9/2014 [13]
- 8/2014 [10]
- 7/2014 [16]
- 6/2014 [19]
- 5/2014 [19]
- 4/2014 [15]
- 3/2014 [17]
- 2/2014 [20]
- 1/2014 [27]
- 12/2013 [23]
- 11/2013 [18]
- 10/2013 [21]
- 9/2013 [23]
- 8/2013 [24]
- 7/2013 [17]
- 6/2013 [19]
- 5/2013 [22]
- 4/2013 [24]
- 3/2013 [27]
- 2/2013 [24]
- 1/2013 [73]
- 12/2012 [24]
- 11/2012 [29]
- 10/2012 [21]
- 9/2012 [27]
- 8/2012 [21]
- 7/2012 [17]
- 6/2012 [32]
- 5/2012 [31]
- 4/2012 [42]
- 3/2012 [51]
- 2/2012 [34]
- 1/2012 [115]
- 12/2011 [19]
- 11/2011 [18]
- 10/2011 [27]
- 9/2011 [30]
- 8/2011 [44]
- 7/2011 [21]
- 6/2011 [32]
- 5/2011 [21]
- 4/2011 [30]
- 3/2011 [23]
- 2/2011 [28]
- 1/2011 [48]
- 12/2010 [21]
- 11/2010 [12]
- 10/2010 [16]
- 9/2010 [16]
- 8/2010 [18]
- 7/2010 [10]
- 6/2010 [11]
- 5/2010 [8]
- 4/2010 [15]
- 3/2010 [13]
- 2/2010 [11]
- 1/2010 [64]
- 12/2009 [24]
- 11/2009 [13]
- 10/2009 [10]
- 9/2009 [9]
- 8/2009 [11]
- 7/2009 [11]
- 6/2009 [18]
- 5/2009 [15]
- 4/2009 [16]
- 3/2009 [9]
- 2/2009 [13]
- 1/2009 [40]
- 12/2008 [14]
- 11/2008 [19]
- 10/2008 [25]
- 9/2008 [11]
- 8/2008 [11]