On the concern of packer and retailer control and manipulation of the fat cattle market, it was suggested to me that instead of sending a dollar to the checkoff, how about collecting that money to build a packinghouse?
I think to achieve that goal you would also have to get into the retail business. With that being what some would say unrealistic, perhaps we should collect a second dollar with one going to the checkoff and the other for a packinghouse that is customer owned. I personally was not for the $2 per head collection for the checkoff but I would gladly donate a second dollar for that purpose.
Does anyone out there have the gumption or guts to start this? It might be the only way your kids and grandkids can survive in this business.
Tuesday after the cow sale I was looking at the futures and to my surprise live cattle were up 100 points and feeders were 200 or more. I have to admit I was surprised.
Last week we had all kinds of weathermen predicting a huge storm causing some to not want to participate in buying and others being conservative.
I called one buyer a few days ago and asked him his opinion of the market for now and the next few months.
He said most of the cattlemen he is talking to are simply tired. And he mostly meant tired of not making any money. I’ll admit I talked to several last week with some saying, “Why are we doing this?”
Others are saying, “I am simply tired of fighting the market.”
And almost all of that is the carryover of the control and manipulation of the fat cattle market.
At the sale in the men’s bathroom apparently they forgot after they cleaned the bathroom to put the urine catcher back on the floor and it was stuck higher than the urinal back behind it. So I said to the secretary, “I guess at that one urinal in the men’s bathroom the guys have pretty good aim but at the other urinal that is for those real wild pee-ers.” She gave me a very puzzled look and then I explained.
I liked to pull jokes and one joke that I have heard if you are in one of the stalls in the bathroom right next to another stall and you know someone is next door—roll up some toilet paper and drop it over on their side and simply say whoops. I dropped that. Would you hand it back to me?
Editor’s note: Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
