FARMERS OUT OF SYNC

            The frigid weather through much of the midwest and into Texas over the last week created all sorts of havoc, including on farms.

             Wall Street Journal Business News had one of the larger stories on the temperature's impact on farms and offered the critical information that farmers across the area were in the midst of calving.

             Here's a direct quotation from the news article: 

 Mike Beam, secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, said the cold snap would leave the big beef state's cattle ranchers and meatpackers with skinner cattle to sell and process, since livestock burn more calories keeping warm.  In Oklahoma, Ms. [Blayne Arthur, Oklahoma's state agriculture commissioner] said early estimates showed around 15 percent of newborn calves would be lost, taking a financial and emotional toll on ranchers.

             Here on our farm, we do things differently.  This is not bragging; it'simply recognizing that if we humans would exercise humility and common sense, we'd often do things differently. 

             First, we build sheds to house as many cows as we can in inclement weather.  We don't have enough space for all of them because we use a lot of leased land and building sheds on leased land is tricky.  But with roof space and deep bedding (a carbonaceous diaper) during these cold days many of them have been snug up on the fermenting bedding pack, staying warm and dry.

             We'd love to eventually have enough shed space (I'm purposely not using the term barn--these are sheds without sides for plenty of ventilation) to house them all; few things are as satisfying as watching cows bedded down on deep bedding in a shed during aggressively bitter weather.

             But the second part is the one that's the kicker:  the dead baby calves.  We quit fighting nature 40 years ago, moving our calving date to when deer are fawning.  In our community right now folks are calving in single digits, snow, and now bottomless mud.  No green grass is in sight for at least a couple of weeks and these poor calves are supposed to stay healthy, nurse muddy teats, and the mamas are supposed to find enough to eat to lactate--it's crazy.

             Nobody in Kansas should be calving now.  I remember many years ago on my first trip to Canada during record-breaking low temperatures in January I was in Red Deer, Alberta and found out that all the ranchers in the room were calving.  It was insane.

             The bigger tragedy is that these ranchers and farmers will blame the weather for their losses.  The folks who read the stuff I read are just fine because they won't be calving for another month.  Here at Polyface, our first calf won't drop until early April.   The grass will be green, weather warm, and mud ebbing away.   And if we do need to assist a birth, we won't freeze to death stripping down to T-shirt to put our arm in and help.

             These ranchers will blame the weather, grouse about their difficult circumstances, ask for special bail outs for their losses--they'll do anything except what needs to be done:  have babies when nature's counterparts are having babies.  Deer don't have babies in January and February.  They know better.  Farmers and ranchers should try to be half as smart as deer. I admit that I struggle in my attitude about this.

             How am I supposed to feel toward these ranchers calving in winter?