It’s what I was told by several persons more familiar with the area, and it wasn’t private land. It wasn’t grazeland either…all sand and rock canyon, flash flood country. I actually found a number of cow skeletons at the bottom of the canyons, I assumed they drowned. The only forage was near the river and there wasn’t all that much of it. They weren’t branded. And when I asked for ID they just ignored me.
I was just wondering if there are alot of wild cows running around out west, like escapees who have banded together over the decades to form wild cow herds.
People around here put horses and cows in the same pasture all the time. Usually fewer horses than cows. But not everybody who has horses owns cows and vice versa. We don’t have horses. So if you ever see horses standing in one pasture and cows in another, it might be that one doesn’t like the other very much, or they belong to completely different people and so do the pastures.
Well, for the people who mean it, it isn’t an election year thing. It is important, because in areas that rely on agriculture, they contribute a lot to the economy. Not just the farm itself, but all the businesses that are dependent on ag and the ag-worker population–feed mills, vets, stockyards, local grocery stores, tractor supply stores, etc. If the farms in the area are doing well, then the entire area is doing well. And like anywhere, if a family has roots in an area, they’re more likely to stay in that area. Losing young people to city areas is a serious problem in rural areas, because the economy suffers, the schools suffer, and the area itself suffers.*
For a lot of people, it’s the only way of life they’ve ever known and anything else just wouldn’t feel right. My dad feels restless when he’s not working, even when he’s on vacation and is supposed to be relaxing. Just like old hunters never die, a farmer never retires.
Unfortunately, for a lot of people who pledge to “save the family farm” what they mean is “give us more subsidies so we can give them to the large-scale operations and ignore the little guy!” Yes, lobbying exists even in the dairy industry. For example, in the late '90s, there was a lot of bad weather stuff going on, and the dairy prices dropped hardcore. So Congress voted to give dairy producers some money to help them out in a tight spot. Except most of the money went to big agribusiness and hardly any to small farmers, which didn’t help them out much at all. As large business principles are applied more and more frequently to the dairy industry, the little guy gets ignored. In the past decade, Wisconsin has lost more farms than some states have ever had.
There’s no reason for large ag business to take over every inch of farmland, at least, no argument I’ve ever heard is convincing enough.
[sub]* I admit I’m a hypocrite, because I have no intention of staying in the area after I’m done in school. There just aren’t that many jobs in academia available, and should I have a family, the schools in the area have gone to hell in a very short period of time. There isn’t much to draw people here.[/sub]
I see my grammar checker took the night off. (they’re not their).
You had additonal information – I was afraid you’d just made a wild guess. Did you ask the locals why no one had rounded up these cattle?
Some of the BLM land leased out in southern Utah definitely includes canyons subject to flash flooding. Forage is pretty sparse in the surrounding country, too.
Cattle do wander off, of course. And I suppose if you got close enough for them to hand you their IDs and got a good look at both sides of the animal, you probably would have seen the brands if they were there.
I dunno. I’ve never seen a cow in water deep enough for her to either swim or float in. I imagine that they’d have to swim, since horses swim, but they wouldn’t sink like a rock, either, since like humans most of their body weight is made up of water.
You can, but I don’t know why you’d want to. Cows have a bony spine ridge, unlike horses. You can see it pretty clearly in this picture. There are bull-riding championships and things like that in rodeo.
They were most likely beef cattle. I don’t know much about beef cattle, having grown up on a dairy farm. The two aren’t interchangeable.
I live in Wisconsin. If a cow got lost here, it wouldn’t spend much time lost, because the population density is pretty high and people notice when a cow is wandering down a highway. Also, there isn’t much space for wild dairy cattle here, since that would require both a missing bull and a missing cow and you tend to notice if either run off. Also, they’d probably die in the winter.
Catching them could prove more difficult than you imagine.
They won’t die, but they get pretty uncomfortable. Lots of pressure built up in the udder. Lactating women feel the same way sometimes, I hear.
Yes, cows will run out of a burning barn, though they might have difficulty finding the door in all the smoke and the general panic. Also, whenever ours are in the barn, they’re tied in their stanchions, so that would make running away difficult. I have seen them break free from their stanchions, however, which is a good thing should the barn ever catch on fire. We rent pasture from a neighbor, and kept calves in their barn, where they had free access to a little yard outside. One morning, the barn caught on fire at a time when the calves would be in it. When we went over to check on the calves, they had all made it out of the barn on their own and were huddled together in the corner of their pen outside. They were fine, but freaked out.
Incidentally, I asked Dad a couple weeks ago what he would do if he were milking and a tornado was coming. Would it be better for the cows to be in the barn or out of the barn? He told me that was a weird question, then went back to milking. When I insisted on an answer, he told me that they were just cows and if he could see a tornado coming, he’d be running for the house and the basement. The cows were insured and we could buy new ones. Can’t buy a new daddy, though.
One of my friends in high school had geese, and they hated the entire family. He and his siblings would have to run to the bus in the morning because the geese lay in wait for them. I believe the geese ended up roasted.
Yes, a very long time. Since 1848, which is the first time paperwork was filed on it officially. So that’s 158 years.
Ha! You say that now, but if you met them, you’d say, “Hey! These are nice guys.” Yeah, my brothers are good guys. But I’m afraid Wulfie-baby is taken. Eric’s available, though, if you can get him away from his computer.
Like zagloba says, the male calves end up as steers, and eventually get butchered. We do sell them at a years as feeder calves. Female calves that don’t go into the herd are sold at two years as bred heifers, because you can get a higher price for them that way.
Fun cow fact: If twins are born and one is male and the other female, the male will be fertile and the female might not be fertile. The infertile calf is called a freemartin. They generally show male characteristics and behavior. Isn’t that cool? I think it’s cool.