HORACE MCQUEEN: Just Too Darn Dry!
Get some plans made if you are running cattle! Dr. Jason Banta, Texas A & M beef specialist, says with lack of rainfall, poor hay production and lower prices for cattle, is bad news. Little or no moisture has created a hay shortage—some farmers report they are baling only one-third to one-half of normal. And hay quality is just not that good. Banta says producers need a game plan—figure out a way to get through the months ahead. If dry weather continues, we have way too many cattle on too few acres plus a hay shortage. Complicating the equation is that cattle prices continue to soften leaving little room for profits on even the well managed farms and ranches. It’s time to start culling plans, getting shut of the excess number of cattle and develop a winter feeding program. It’s not too early to start!
Fake meat is a reality! Many grocery stores are carrying the misbranded, mislabeled and poor imitations of red meats. Several big companies have joined the march to what they think is a new profit producer. A tofu burger or a steak generated from a petri dish in a laboratory just shouldn’t be called “meat”. A strip or rib eye steak from a real quality beef animal, cooked the right way, is the choice of most folks—and will continue to be so!
Finally, I figured out why Mike Pence, Vice President of the U.S., appeals to so many of our voter-taxpayers. Pence is not a product of the East Coast “snob appeal” universities—Harvard, Yale, etc. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Hanover College in Indiana and a law degree from Indiana University. After college he practiced law for several years and then served in the U.S. Congress for six terms. He was elected Indiana governor in 2012. Now he is he 48th vice president of our nation. President Trump made an excellent choice in selecting Mr. Pence as his running mate.
In a commencement speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan recently, Pence told the graduates that “faith has always been the wellspring of hope for millions of Americans. Our Founders recognized religious faith as essential to maintaining our Republic. In the words of our nation’s first Vice President, John Adams: “our Constitution was made ONLY for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Food for thought!
