I heard a story of an incident of where a couple was driving down the road. I don’t know any of the details but I do know they were meeting oncoming traffic and the trailer of the oncoming traffic came off and met them head on pinning the wife in the vehicle.
The reason I write this is I have heard several ranchers tell me that they do not latch or lock the hitch on the trailer as if there is no need. They said it won’t come off. To me that is ridiculous and extremely lazy.
I told a friend of mine who told me he didn’t latch his and I said, “Well, when one of your kids gets killed by meeting an unlatched trailer then maybe you will change your mind.”
Sometimes people latch it but have a smaller ball on which makes it easy to come off. Another thing that happens is if the center gate comes open and cattle go to the back of the trailer it can pop the trailer off the ball.
A lot of calves and feeders sold early this fall because of the drought. And even now something is happening because of lack of moisture but also with the price of light calves and yearlings they are moving earlier than they would have. It appears that a lot of the cattle moving now would have sold in March or later. I myself sold some starter steers that I planned on keeping. Some were black and some colored weighing 467 pounds and weaned at 120 days that brought $1,113 per head. I was going to have to feed them every bite they would eat and hope for moisture to get something green by spring. So I decided to let someone else own them.
We say there is a lot of different years but I do feel it is true this year that we are going to be short of cattle providing our government doesn’t import a lot of beef.
I’m sure most of you are aware of this but this is diarrhea awareness week. It runs until Friday.
It seems like my boys grew up so quickly. Like they say time flies when you are having fun. One day you look at your car’s gas gauge and it shows empty and then you realize they are teenagers.
Some farm families can trace their ancestors back for hundreds of years but can’t tell where their kids were last night.
For years they wouldn’t allow women to go into combat. That’s a mistake. Why let all those years of marriage go to waste?
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the view of High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
