Let the good times roll. Cattle futures on Friday advanced big in both feeder and fat cattle.
I asked around what made the market suddenly rally that much. The best answer I got was we traded some fat cattle $5 to $6 per hundredweight higher than in the previous weeks. So I can see on a 1,600-pound steer that is an additional $80 to $96 per head.
I am thankful for that half of an inch of rain we received a week ago, but that is not going to last very long. My negative weather forecasters, or should I say old cowboys at breakfast, are already early in the week telling me on Friday it is going to be very windy. Who needs to watch the Weather Channel when we have these old cowboys that probably do just as good at forecasting weather and love spreading bad news.
I learned a little on insuring your cattle over the weekend. Information has to be turned in within 24 hours of when the market closed on Friday. I figured that was going to bite me in the rear but instead it went up a little more. A friend use to tell me the good Lord takes care of widows and fools. Thank goodness for that. And no I’m not a widow.
My preacher’s son-in-law is getting his first experience with a prolapse heifer. Then he had to bottle feed the calf. Now the calf has scours. What could happen next? I’ll tell you what can. I had a heifer break her leg in a hay feeder and her friend in there wasn’t smart enough to get out. Oh well two down. If cattle were cheaper, I wouldn’t have lost that much.
A bus load of wives all got together for a weekend and rode a bus to Fort Worth. But sadly, all the women were killed in a wreck. Every husband cried for a week, but one husband was still crying after four weeks, I asked that husband why he was still hysterically crying. He said, “My wife missed the bus.”
I went to church this past Sunday, and the preacher asked if anyone had a praise report. A friend of mine’s wife got up and said her husband had a crushed scrotum from a bicycle wreck this past week. You could hear several men moan in the congregation. But she said, “Lucky for Ralph, my husband, the doctor actually was able to wire his scrotum up.” She said, “Me and the kids were all praying as the doctor performed this delicate surgery.”
After she walked back to her seat the preacher asked if anyone else had something to say. A man headed to the front of the church and said, “My name is Ralph and that was sternum not scrotum.”
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.
