The Oregon Cattlemen's Association
http://orcattle.com held its annual convention at the Riverhouse in Bend on December 2-5.
On Thursday, Pfizer sponsored a Cattlemen's College that got off to an infomercial start with one of Pfizer's veterinarians explaining that nearly every animal health problem can be resolved by using Pfizer products and making certain that the protocol is followed through to the end. Dr. Gordon Brumbaugh, DVM, etc. explained that no pharmaceutical company can guarantee or even predict the amount of time necessary for a sick animal to recover. Furthermore, he claimed, no one advertises any time predictions for recovery. Those statements brought giggles from our section of the audience as someone recalled that about every livestock periodical contains advertising that absolutely does predict recovery time, including most or all of Pfizer's ads.
The infomercial portion finally ended and we were treated to some proprietary Pfizer stuff by Dr. Kent Anderson DVM, but without the blatant advertising included. Check out
http://pfizeranimalgenetics.com to learn more about Pfizer's 50k panels and how to get your very own DNA tests done with more than the eight or ten markers that have been available up until now. Pfizer is marketing the 50k panels as a more accurate indicator than EPD's, especially early in an animal's productive life.
Finally, Dr. Darrh Bullock, Univ. of Kentucky, who has no obvious connection to Pfizer, made a case for EPD's and DNA information to be combined in some way to realize the benefits of both. He began by cautioning the audience that EPD's are based on progeny and DNA tests are based on the individual animal's genetics. The formula for determining EPD's is convoluted but as more progeny are added to the database, the accuracy of an animal's EPD's and his (or, rarely her) influence becomes much more accurate. DNA testing, on the other hand, gets you an immediate result for that animal (provided you know where and how to look at the markers) and may give a more accurate picture early in an animal's life. Additionally, up until now, almost all DNA testing has been limited to looking at single or very limited combinations of markers. With the cattle genome now documented and better computer analysis available, the ability to find and assess multiple markers will increase accuracy in predicting traits. The 50k Pfizer panel will almost certainly become 100k or many more within a fairly short time period.
Dr. Bullock seems to be an advocate of using the single number (such as $Beef in the Angus EPD) result of combining various EPD traits. He did caution the audience that it is important to know which traits are included in the composite number so you won't be selecting for something that you aren't interested in. The example he used was that if the EPD for milk were to be a large part of the composite score and your herd cannot support more milk or you don't want more milk, you wouldn't use that single number as a selector. He did think that some future combination of EPD and DNA information may result in a very valuable single number to use in bull selection.
On Friday, the convention turned to business with committee meetings, nominations for new officers, etc. The annual Oregon Beef Council luncheon was held and, once again, the audience was bored to death by a too long program during the event. The highlight of the day was the Wolf Committee, chaired by Rod Childers. Until recently the passion surrounding the wolf issue has caused the Cattlemen to tilt at windmills, fight with each other, threaten closing access to private land for hunters, and generally be shrill and counterproductive. Rod has managed to soften the rhetoric and begin to work on solutions. Dennis Sheehy has written a compensation program draft that uses a baseline of historical loss and provides insurance above that number, without directly tying wolves to the equation. Oregon State Univ., the Oregon Beef Council, several ranches, and several individuals have become involved in documenting wolf activity and cow activity by using GPS aided radio collars. The hope is to document interactions between the two, to learn if cattle are changing their use patterns, and whatever else may be gleaned from the data. The radio collars on the cows transmit location every five minutes. The wolf collars transmit every fifteen minutes. The resulting plots are, in the aggregate, a virtual solid color of cattle movement, which can be looked at one by one to make sense. The wolf plots still show distinct points but every fifteen minutes for 150 days results in many points. An attempt to compile a moving interaction documentary overwhelmed the computer before much was learned.
On Saturday, the day began with a talk by a man from Idaho who manages a ranch with serious wolf problems. He and his wife have spent many hours gathering data from wolf scats, kill sites, wounded calves and heifers, and have participated in the OSU study by having ten cows collared and one wolf collared. He claimed that he lost 60+ calves to wolves last year over his baseline losses, in an area used by about 250 cows and about 100 heifers and second calvers. He showed graphic pictures of animals that were apparently attacked but not killed by wolves. He talked about how his cows have become much more aggressive toward his dogs and to people since the wolf population has returned to his area. He claimed that cows that were workable in the corrals by people on horseback or on the ground are now liable to challenge anyone or anything entering their flight zone. He made some claims that he cannot substantiate but, overall, his talk was well done and his insights compelling.
Temple Grandin, the woman who is famous within the industry for her insights on cattle handling and facilities, and famous to public television viewers for her portrayal as an autistic woman who has become the preeminent authority in her field through a movie released in 2010, was the featured speaker of the convention. She had attended the wolf talk earlier and had taken several pages of notes. When her turn to speak came, she changed her prepared talk to include much interest in what the man from Idaho had said, especially about the changes in cattle behavior. (The Cattlemen's Assn. had sold tickets to the public to attend Grandin's talk and about 200 people, in addition to the convention attendees attended.) She has spent most of the last several years working on low-stress handling of livestock, mainly pigs and cattle. Her work is usually for packing houses but she also works in feedlots and on ranches and she has written handling protocols for McDonald's, Burger King, Wendys, Wal Mart, and others.
She talked at length about how the wolf may cause her to re-think her handling ideas on the ranch. She also talked about her belief that livestock have a place on the land and that the wolf also has a place. She did the livestock industry a service by speaking out without reservation about the humane treatment of cattle in the food chain. The took many questions and, as is apparently typical of autistic people, she showed little interest in softening her remarks to sooth people's feelings. She said "...lawyers should all be locked in the closet."
There was much more to see and do at the convention with a good trade show, lots of people to visit with who you only see once or twice a year, and other meetings in other rooms that will determine the direction and efforts of the Cattlemen for the next year.
JCE
was 80 miles away. The four wheeler we were using has a steel tubing frame to hold a box to haul around irrigation stuff or whatever. I cut a length of 3/4-inch pipe, drilled two 5/16-inch holes 13 inches apart, clamped it down at the off end with two small lengths of 1-inch tubing and a piece of angle iron and two vice grip clamps. We used a short piece of tubing and a single clamp behind the pipe at the spool end. I cut two crude discs with an inch and an eighth hole in the middle and about 4 inches in diameter. A quarter inch bolt through the first hole, with a nut, then the disc, then the roll of wire then another disc, then another quarter inch bolt and nut and we were ready to string wire.
we could have extended the pipe to clear the fender and attached it directly to the four wheeler rack. 
