True Grit Farms":1oivrhvs said:
Nesikep":1oivrhvs said:
Canadians had the genius to fight COOL... they went to court MANY times, and won every time...
So then COOL was eliminated, and they bring in Brazilian beef.. We sure won that one! :banghead:
Supa Dexta +1
You guys definitely did your part to help. But at least y'all have way better beef than Mexico.
The typical pen of #1 Mexicans are better cattle than #1 Okies. Healthier and feed better than them too. Owned more than a few of both over the years. I've got no particular affinity to running Mexicans, we would run all Watusi if they were the most profitable use of our ranches.
We've seen our operation ebb and flow in terms of Mexican cattle. At times from the 1940's through mid 1980's, our yearling segment ran a varying percentage of our 2 season stocker inventory as Mexicans most every season. Our largest Mexican year, we crossed 25,000 Mexican steers to run on our ranches. We ran a much smaller number of Mexican steers through the back half of the 1980's up through the early 2000's, a year or two, not buying any. The reason for this was that light Nevada calves improved and were a better two season grass option for our needs. Over the last decade, that has started to change. More and more of these Nevada/Utah/Oregon/Arizona desert ranches wean bigger and bigger calves that don't work as well for our 2 season program and in more than a few instances, while the cattle are getting prettier, they are losing some of that toughness that those desert ranches bred and our med costs and treat rates for the cowboys riding through them are rising and their overall utilization of our country has declined somewhat. No to mention, the good light native calves that can be bought are a narrowing pool. While I buy a lot of them, and the ones that are around really are superior cattle, I'm not comfortable or certain that I can buy enough of them to meet our 2 season yearling needs every season. This has led to the pendulum swinging back and us buying a greater percentage of our 2 season stocker inventory as Mexicans every season. The heavier stockers, that go to grass for one season then to the feedyard, still is the domain of native cattle for us as we elect not to bang up against the wheat guys who buy 5x6 weight Mexicans.
Canadian cattle I just don't have a whole lot to do with any consistency. After their beef business melted down back in 2004 or 2005 after that whole mad cow thing, we bought a tremendous amount of Canadian feeders when they were hammered down unbelievably cheap based purely on non market factors and panic selling and it was obvious that there was a good profit to be made if one had cash, a marketing avenue and was willing to stick a capable guy up there for 18 months like we did. While we have owned some on feed several times since, that was really our one big Canadian cattle endeavor.
I guess I'm the enemy as it were.
Funny thing, I'm not Tyson or JBS. Just the fourth generation rancher on a family operation trying to grow and preserve it for the fifth generation. No multinational conglomerate here. I won't deny we've been blessed and have expanded to multiple States and are pretty vertically integrated but the current ownership of our company isn't some nefarious board shrouded in mystery but rather my parents, myself and my wife, my sister and her husband and hopefully someday, our respective kids.
I also won't deny that R-Calf over the last 20 odd years its been beating it's drum has raised some legitimate concerns and COOL has some value on multiple levels but accepting the broad brush strokes that makes not being for COOL in it's entirety bad or it's detractors unAmerican no matter what or some such nonsense is just as silly.