November 11th was Veteran’s Day, and since I grew up in the decade and a half after World War II, I knew many men who had served in that war. Bud was a machinist in my Dad’s shop who showed me the flack that he still carried in his arm that he received during a bombing run over Europe in a B17 bomber. Jim who was at work in the same shop when a thunderstorm came up, and the lightning and thunder triggered him to have a flashback of his experiences when storming the beach of a South Pacific island. My Uncle Art who piloted a B26 bomber in Europe didn’t discuss his experiences much, but I learned that he only had 200 hours of flight time before making low level bombing runs on targets in Germany. Wayne a farmer my family knew, was an air force veteran who gave me my first ride in an airplane. And the list could go on. Whenever someone serves in the military either during the time of peace or of war, they must make sacrifices, and deserve our respect.
Each month, the Farm Journal conducts the Ag Economists Monthly Monitor, and the October survey, published in early November, found that economists were somewhat optimistic about where the U.S agricultural economy is headed due to rising U.S. corn export demand and forecasts about how fast the beef cattle herd numbers will grow. About 50 percent of economists predicted that herd rebuilding would not start until the first half of 2026, 30 percent think it will happen during the second half of 2025, and 20 percent believe that cow-calf producers will begin rebuilding herds in the first half of next year. Ranchers I’ve talked to recently favor holding off retaining heifers until at least the fall of 2025, because the value of heifers sold as feeder cattle is high enough that maintaining a smaller herd makes economic sense to them.
Wolf reintroduction continues to be a controversial issue for cattle producers in Western Colorado, and a wolf found on a ranch in Elbert County, northeast of Colorado Springs, is causing concern for some livestock producers across the state for several reasons. A trapper in eastern Colorado who controls coyotes for ranchers, found a wolf that had been caught in a trap, and killed by cows on an Elbert County ranch. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife determined that the wolf was a 2 1/2 year old male in good condition. But that it wasn’t part of the group of wolves released by the Department in Western Colorado this year. DNA analysis revealed that the animal was a gray wolf from the Great Lakes population, which is distinctly different from the population found in the Northern Rockies. How the wolf came to be in eastern Colorado is unknown, but it is concerning to ranchers, because of all of the still unknown impacts that wolf releases in Western Colorado may cause.
Most of us enjoy seeing wildlife in the forest and on farm and ranch lands, but they can be a problem when populations of deer and elk become too large. Deer can eat up to eight pounds of vegetation a day and there are approximately one and a half million deer-vehicle collisions in the United States each year.
General Omar Bradley wrote, “Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared to death.
