Happy Lines

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Most of our mature cattle have happy lines...lines that appear in the mid-thoracic region.
We were sitting on the hill watching cattle and I was explaining to my wife what happy lines are. I know she thought I was BS'ing her.
Just wondering how many people have cattle with happy lines ??

 

[tex452]

I'm sorry, I have never heard this before?

 

[TCRanch]

I got nuthin'. Trusty Google did, however, show me an abundance of pictures of happy cattle.

 

[Travlr]

Huh?

 

[chaded]

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

From the internet......
Lines that appear in the mid-thoracic region. These are known as happy lines and are the sign of a healthy animal on a high-forage diet. What these lines are, he said, are deposits of volatile fatty acids, high in acetic and propionic acid, with little butyric acid."

 

[ClinchValley86]

Most of mine do. I'm about to decide to ditch those that do not. Those with them sure seem to stay in good shape easier than those that don't have them.

Have noticed some that have them even though their condition had dropped a bit over spring. Never could see ribs but were less smooth than I like. Still had the lines.

Jan Bonsma had something to say about them, but I can't recall what it was. He viewed them as a positive thing. Something about good function somehow.

 

[Lannie]

My previous girls all had them, very prominent. (So did the steer we didn't get to the butcher on time.) I haven't noticed any on Molly yet, but she's still young, and I imagine they'll show up at some point.

 

[Stickney94]

I was working cows today (setting up for TAI) and was looking for these (I will confess I had to google them as well). I did find some on a few cows. But I'm not sure they correspond to my best cows at least in terms of weaning weights. Looking at my weaning data -- I'd say the answer is there is no correlation. But I'll keep watching.

 

[CowboyRam]

I guess I have some happy cows. I seen some lines on some of my cows yesterday when I was at the ranch to help pull a well. I and a friend started pulling it by hand, with it tied off the the 4 wheeler. After a couple of tugs we were getting tied of that, so I had dad start pulling the 4 wheeler. That worked pretty good. We were not really able to see much wrong with the pump, cleaned it up a bit, changed to schedule 120 pipe and put it back in to hole. I said to my uncle that I would replace it; it worked while having no head pressure, but once it had to push water 280 feet it didn't work. We ended up pulling it back out and getting a new pump.