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Category: Lee Pitts

We are all part of one big happy global family now. But you know what happens when one member of a family comes down with the creeping crud don’t you? Every member in the family seems to catch it.

Today, there are so many ways that healthy members of the global family can catch a bug: through increased travel and tourism, from a flood of illegal immigrants, the very scary threat of bioterrorism, and increasing imports of food. And we don’t have to look far to see the devastating results that foreign diseases can have on a producer, or an entire industry.… Read the rest

 
BFF

don’t get it. Admittedly, there are a lot of things in life I don’t understand, but one of the more puzzling phenomena is rancher’s support of the NCBA while the organization is doing everything possible to hurt American ranchers, including killing COOL. At the same time those ranchers seem to despise R-CALF who has had the cattlemen’s back every step of the way. People will flock to an NCBA convention in San Diego in droves while R-CALF could hold theirs in a meeting room at the Ramkota Best Western in Rapid City.Read the rest

 

The stars in this story are glow-in-the-dark kitty-cats, muscle-bound salmon, silk-spinning goats, hypo-allergenic-cows and featherless chickens. So why are we taking up your time talking about animals that would seem to belong more on some circus midway freak show more than they do the front page of a cattle newspaper?

Because in a few short years you may be creating your own customized cows using the same technology that created these freaks of non-nature.… Read the rest

 

In the sporting world athletes are no longer solely judged by their physique, won-lost record or by a scout who travels the country in search of the next NBA or NFL super star. Today it’s done by what is called analytics, saber metrics or BIG DATA.

Whatever you call it, it’s all just huge amounts of data fed into a computer that spits out the winners and losers. It’s become not just a way to select your next shortstop, but the backbone of big business as well.… Read the rest

 

Veggie Wars

Twelve months ago this intrepid reporter went undercover to investigate the “seedy” underbelly of the vegetarian movement. At great risk to myself, I might add. I dread to think what the veg-heads might have done to me had my real identity as a carnivorous cowboy been discovered. I visited carrot chat rooms, shopped at “Veggies for Less” and “Tofu Are Us” stores, and gagged down vegetarian lasagna, tofu turkey and eggplant meat loaf at vegetarian restaurants, just to bring you this exclusive story.… Read the rest

 

 

Cattle Drive.

I dont get it: cattlemen couples spend 51 weeks a year slaving away on the ranch and what do they do for their one week of vacation per year?

 They go on a ranch tour, of course! Talk about a busman’s holiday.

Ah, there’s nothing like a tour of other ranches to get away from it all. I don’t know why ranch couples do this. Do they ride the chuck line, seeing the country through the window of a bus and eating one beef barbecue after another at ranches that would appear to be very much like their own, just to see how the other half lives?… Read the rest

 

No-till Housekeeping.

Just because I wrote a column idea in the dust on a piece of furniture because I didn’t have a pencil and paper handy, my wife thought I was making a critical comment about her housekeeping. “If you don’t like the way I clean house,” she said, “you can just start doing it yourself.”

I don’t know why women complain so much about cleaning the house. They get to work in comfortable mud-free conditions in which there are no snakes or flies, in most cases.… Read the rest