Blog Archive July 2011
Jeff AUSTIN - Effective August 1, 2011 the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) will no longer require brucellosis testing of adult cattle for change of ownership. TAHC will also cease to pay the $2 per head supplement to markets for the testing. Approximately half of the markets have indicated however, that they intend to continue testing all or some of the adult cattle sold through their markets. For markets wishing to test, they will still be able to receive all the supplies currently being provided at no charge, including the brucellosis card test kits. TAHC inspectors will also be able to run the supplemental testing as usual if a card positive animal is disclosed. TAHC officials strongly encourage voluntary testing of Texas cattle to remain vigilant in keeping Texas Brucellosis free.
It is imperative to remember that Brucellosis was found in two cattle herds in Texas earlier this year. Approximately 25 card positive (usually false positive) animals per month are detected throughout Texas markets. The secondary test run by TAHC inspectors at markets will usually clear those consignments for sale unrestricted, and only require the card positive animal to be held up.
"Even though TAHC is undergoing drastic budget reductions, the agency will continue to provide a market inspector wherever cattle are sold to support all of the cattle programs underway," Dr. Dee Ellis, State Veterinarian, said.
A separate issue regarding the identification of cattle is also under discussion. Historically all Texas cattle leaving a market have had a USDA eartag in place because they were brucellosis tested there. The official identification of cattle (usually with a metal eartag) is not completely linked to brucellosis testing however. TAHC and USDA rules require official identification on all cattle tested, but they also require the market to record existing official Id's on any adult cattle presented for sale, all dairy cattle prior to movement, any bulls involved with the Trichomoniasis program (including virgins) and Mexican origin event cattle.
It is anticipated that the TAHC will consider a rule proposal in September that may require permanent official identification of adult cattle sold at Texas markets. It is further anticipated that USDA will release in the near future a rule for comment that will eventually require cattle moving interstate to have permanent official identification.
"I am asking all markets for voluntary compliance to continue eartagging adult cattle (or reading existing tags) sold through their markets for the next few months, while the rule making process is in progress," Dr. Ellis stated. Local TAHC regional offices and inspectors will work with individual markets on possible exceptions for extremely weak or old cattle presented for sale in the meantime.
Founded in 1893, the Texas Animal Health Commission works to protect the health of all Texas livestock, including: cattle, swine, poultry, sheep, goats, equine animals, and exotic livestock.
Disclaimer: This is not meant to sound insensitive. I put in two straight weeks of 10-hr overnight shifts managing a local special needs refuge shelter during Ike so let’s be honest, I’m a better person than you and you are in no place to judge.
WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!! A tropical storm is headed for the King Ranch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! While this isn’t exactly a hurricane, I don’t know of anything that south Texas ranchers want more than a hurricane to hit the King Ranch when they’re in the middle of a drought. I thought this was universal knowledge until speaking with people as close as the D/FW area who had no clue what I was talking about.
Why? A couple reasons.
First, it changes the weather pattern.
When the southern portion of the United States get stuck in the type of high pressure systems we’re in right now, it’s sort of like playing pool and letting your wife break. There might be a shot or two here and there but in general; the table will be a cluttered mess of pool balls that have nowhere to go because it’s all clogged up. You can either hope for a small chance at a shot but your best hope will be to just bite the bullet and shoot directly into the middle of it and hope to break stuff up enough to change the game.
That’s sort of what a hurricane can do to the weather pattern down here. It’s not just the rain we get during the hurricanes that is so yearned for, it’s the resulting mix up of the weather pattern.
Secondly, I’m not a complete a-hole, I don’t want people to die.
The King Ranch, more than anywhere else, can absorb a hurricane. If you aren’t familiar with the terrain, essentially all of the coastal area between Corpus Christi and Brownsville is the King Ranch. There’s no other stretch of the United States coast line that is less populated and capable taking the brunt of a system while keeping the human toll low. The majority of that area is just brush and oil wells.
So it does a bit of damage to the wildlife? Well, some more-money-than-sense Houston lawyer will just have to find another $75,000 buck to shoot.
Lastly, it puts the ‘wet’ side of the hurricane right on south Texas.
The eastern side of a hurricane is the most destructive but also provides the most rain. The western side of a hurricane, the dry side, is actually quite demoralizing if you are hoping for rain. In fact, when Katrina and Ike hit, they both made conditions in central Texas drier than they were before.
Let’s just hope this pre-emptive celebration doesn’t jinx it.
Two folks that have provided us with a ton of help (well, technically speaking, Wade kind of did the real work and I helped this year) on the Denver videos the past few years...
Huh? MLB as in Major Leage Baseball? What do Brahman cattle have to do with the MLB trade deadline?
One man's obsession with the breed, the proximity of Houston to the mecca of the breed, a team that is in rebuiling mode, and a long term contract with a no trade clause...
Ten years ago tonight I was going for a walk down my parent’s ¼ mile caliche driveway while home for the summer on an internship with a DoD contractor. I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to design a website to make myself more employable the next spring when I would start looking for a job but I had no idea what I’d make a site about.
That’s when the best idea ever hit me, I would start a website where people could buy websites and have a directory of show cattle breeders by state and breed. I would call it….wait for it…..wait for it…..Showsteers.com. I rushed back to the house, fired up AOL, opened Netscape, went to Register.com and found out I was about four years too late to that game.
Fortunately I didn’t let that stop me though, I kept thinking. That’s when my experience playing an online horse racing game the previous summer while sitting on my rear training the new girl working as a dispatcher for the bus system paid off. I had thought at that time if they made a game like that for horses, they must make one for cattle, right? Shockingly, nobody had made a virtual show cattle game in 2001. I was honestly surprised that nobody had made a virtual show cattle game in 2001.
So, I registered Simsteer.com exactly ten years ago tonight and the rest is extremely small educational agricultural entertainment niche history.
Via a retweet of BlackHerefords by Select Sires...
Convicted cattle rustler Roddy Dean Pippin has asked a Texas court to string him up in the Hardeman County square (PDF) and let him hang for his crimes instead of continuing to keep him locked up in prison. Pippin is engaged in a dispute with the state over how much longer he should remain in custody."Movant desires to die with his boots and spurs on and without his face covered, for he wishes to see the lights go out at high noon," Pippin, a 27-year-old diabetic cowboy, wrote in an unusual and melodramatic motion he filed June 30 in the Hardeman County District Court.
Sounds a bit like a knucklehead doing stuff knuckleheads do to me.
June and July are each easily the lowest posting level months for the forum activity index over the past three years.
June and July are each the lowest overall traffic months in the cattle site visitor report.
Every year for the past four years, overall traffic to this site in particular is consistently down 25% from average in June and 20% from average in July.
According to the Google Keyword Tool, searches for the word “cattle” hit their yearly low points each year in either June or July.
Yes, May, it’s not my fault. Quantcast didn’t get the data out until last Friday.
For most cattle oriented sites, the summer months are the calving ease months relative to 100 WW EPD months of the fall and spring.
- Cattle Today Sites 28.48%
- Cattle.com 14.14% (5)
- Beefmagazine.com 13.93%
- Cattlerange.com 13.47%
- CattleNetwork.com 11.34% (2)
- Steerplanet.com 7.52% (7)
- Showsteers.com 5.99% (6)
- Cattlepages.com 1.39%
- Clubcalves.com 0.87%
- Progressive Cattle 0.49%
Despite an overall lower amount of data, the only real changes were flip flops of this site and Cattlenetwork.com as well as Steerplanet jumping over Showsteers.com again.
After a small slip in the July 5th report due to a well placed rain, the amount of CONUS in D4 drought hit another record at 11.96% for the July 12th report.
…is like one of those 30-40 entry TJLA point shows that doesn’t have much of a name built for itself or has been bitten by the fact that there are too many shows.
While it’s obvious there’s a prospect show going on, the barn sort of looks empty.
Nobody’s grandmother has shown up to see their kid show.
There aren’t any new people there; everyone at the show is a point chaser.
The thought, this would be a really nice deal if there were actually a few steers here crosses everyone’s mind.
There's an obvious group of jocks that are taking it extremely seriously.
There's no supply trailer (apps).
Everyone there likes showing but if they were honest, they'd rather just go to the bigger prospect shows and not have to worry about it. They're really just there so they don't fall behind.
Along with this new world of social media, comes new unspoken rules and understandings. One of the most significant aspects of all social sites (Twitter, Facebook, Linked in etc) is the Profile Picture. Not to make you stress over it more than you already do, but CHOOSE carefully. That pic tells the internet a lot about you….
http://marcywrites.com/2011/05/facebooktwitter-profile-pics-their-meaning-and-more/
They're missing the "Picture of Your Cattle".
Well, so much for that idea.
We're making sure to add transcriptions of the reasons in addition to the video on Livestockjudging.com just because we're cool like that. It takes a fair amount of time to sit and write down a set of reasons from the video so I decided to try an online transcription service. Hillarity ensued.
The "Taylor Boray" referenced is Caleb Harang and the "Dr. Bowman" is Dr. Chris Boleman. It wasn't their fault, they spoke clearly, whoever transcribed it just thought that there might actually be a national bear show that he was in the top ten at.
Click Here for the video that was supposed to be transcribed, the class video hasn't been uploaded yet because pigs are a pain in the rear.
Commentator:
I’ve got Taylor Boray which today [inaudible]. Taylor was on the [inaudible] team in ’06 –’07. He was on the swim team in ’04-’05, both years he was in the Top 10 at the National Bear Show in Minnesota, one of our favorite judging contests ever. [Inaudible].
Taylor:
Thank you Dr. Bowman, it’s a pleasure to be here this morning. Class number one we’ll talk about first is [inaudible] we’ll start the morning off with. We felt like it was a pretty straight forward class with the exception of a [inaudible] from the [inaudible] between that [inaudible] and that kind of chromed up deal that was number four. We liked the [inaudible] go ahead and win. That’s the most [inaudible]. She’s better off with him because of the way she used [inaudible] I think that’s why she has to win in my opinion or the opinion of the committee. That’s opened up, again really square basic [inaudible] center part of her body.
She’s the best kind of [inaudible]. Honking second, bigger skill, longer body type, [inaudible] behind her, production of a big new performance [inaudible] it’s gonna go in third. The other [inaudible] that’s gonna go in third, number two I hope you like the local shape and expression [inaudible]. They want that to come and go [inaudible] when she’s coming right at you, there’s a way we want you to be able to talk. [Inaudible] bold and productive and center part of her skeleton, but I hope you like her state of expression of that one, but you still need a more productive for the one that goes in forth.
The other blue hog that’s gonna go in forth, is really, really lean, really powerful muscular hog, from that standpoint but as far as the extreme goes, it’s not quite as sound or as comfortable in the skeleton or actually [inaudible] it’s production or reasonability for that hog but you like that one with a lot of shape and expression and length that that one has and so it’s Class One, lightweight [inaudible], it’s gonna go 3-4-2-1, that’s a 2, 5 and 4. Again they go over replacing [inaudible] 3421, that’s a 2, 5, and 4.
I'm taking the rest of the week off of blogging to take the twins on their first big trip to the in-laws. Here's a picture from my parent's back yard yesterday...
I don't follow Kim Kardashian AND I didn't know anything about the Casey Anthony trial but this tweet sets a whole new standard for irony...
WHAT!!!!???!!!! CASEY ANTHONY FOUND NOT GUILTY!!!! I am speechless!!!
http://twitter.com/#!/KimKardashian/status/88311109865578497
(Kim Kardashian is famous because she has a big rear end and her dad was the defense attorney for...oh crap...you can figure it out)
Based form posts between June 2nd and July 5th.
- Cattle-Today 38.3%
- Steerplanet 27.3%
- Ranchers.net 23.0%
- Advantage Cattle Services 7.8%
- 5BarX 2.7%
- Clubcalves 0.5%
- EDJE 0.2%
- Breedersworld 0.1%
- The Final Drive 0.0%
Do you remember back in the days when all you got to see for big shows was the winners?
Cattle in Motion
All of the champions from the Belt Buckle Bonanza
Matt Lautner Cattle
Junior National vidoes with numerous interviews and champion drives.
Grand Champion - Stock Martin
Res. Grand Champion - Kannon Goodson
3rd Overall - Colton Shackelford (Shorthorn)
4th Overall - Kaiti Robinson (Chi)
5th Overall - Koby Long (Chi)
Cattle in Motion is absolutely knocking it out of the park with their Belt Buckle Bonanza coverage.
- They've got a live broadcast showing every class.
- Facebook updates are coming across after every breed champion.
- Champion drives are being edited there and posted within a few hours.
Past Posts
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