Time to jump back on my soapbox

 Philosophy #4: You can't fix stupid.

I'm pretty certain ya'll didn't wake up this morning, brush your teeth, make a pot of coffee, and think, "Ya know, I sure wish Caitlin would give us a piece of her mind today."

But I'm gonna do it anyway, so sit tight, because I'm ready to roll here.

A friend of mine recently brought to my attention an Instagram post by a page called "animalrevenge".

Sketchy already, right?

I was immediately infuriated, yet he encouraged me to go to the page and scope out the full scope for their radicalism. Which, obviously, only infuriated me more. Why? First, let me fill you in really quick about some events over the past couple weeks that will put it all into perspective.

My family and I are based in south-eastern New Mexico, and the weekend following Christmas we were hit by a blizzard that was affectionately (haha) nicknamed Goliath. The 35-40 mph winds that accompanied the onslaught of snow made it difficult to quantify the exact amount of snow received (due to heavy drifting), but I've heard it was somewhere in the range of 16 inches, and I won't argue that point.

Ya'll, we got a lot of snow.

Much of the panhandle of Texas (an area very near and dear to my heart) was also hit by the storm, and everybody was affected. The livestock included. The ranch my daddy runs is roughly 128,000 acres and I think we're stocked right now roughly in the neighborhood of 900-1000 head of cattle. Cattle that, in the heart of winter, require to be fed due to the lack of adequate forage. As you can imagine, in south eastern New Mexico we are not sufficiently prepared for a blizzard that created drifts up to 3 feet deep. We can't just walk out to the pens to break ice and feed our cattle and call it good. In many cases we have to drive for several miles just get to a particular pasture, but we couldn't even get our pickups a quarter mile down the road. Daddy spent days (I mean literally, several entire days) in the back hoe clearing roads so that he could get to calves and cattle and water troughs. Of course we didn't get to all the cattle, but getting to our calves (weaned in October) is imperative as they don't know how to lick through the ice to get to water, and they have a much higher energy requirement, making their detriment due to a lack of feed much more severe.

Despite clearing roads with the tractor, I can't even tell you how many times we got stuck and had to pull each other out of drifts.

And the worst part is that it absolutely refused to melt. The temperature never would get high enough and the sun enjoyed a coy little game of hide and seek behind the clouds for over a week. Oh, and the FOG! We were fogged in for several days, it was so thick that there was no point in even trying to get out and feed cattle because you couldn't even see them.

So as you can see, the storm has been very difficult on all of us desert rats down here and on all of our desert rat cattle (although they truly do much better in extreme weather conditions than most people think).

But as you can also see, we spent a lot of time and effort doing what was necessary to get to our livestock and make sure they were taken care of. We put hay out for all of our horses and the cattle we could get to, broke ice where we could, fed the calves we could get to, despite the difficulties. All of our cattle are in good health that we have seen and there is no reason to believe that the rest of them aren't in the same condition, so we were very blessed. However, others were not so fortunate.

And then some imbecile has the audacity to share this crock of bull hockey:  

Yes this just happened in New Mexico and Texas because the Ag industry did not provide shelter to them!  Snowstorm likely killed more than 30,000 dairy cows January 1, 2016  An estimated 15,000 mature dairy cows died in Texas and another 20,000 in New Mexico, said Texas Association of Dairymen Executive Director Darren Turley. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime (storm),” Turley said. There will be less milk coming from the region for a while. “It was unbelievable,” said Andle van der Ploeg, owner of Mid-Frisian Dairy near Clovis. He says snow drifts on his farm are 14 feet high in spots. Snowdrift1“You can walk right over the top of a trailer house,” says Andle. “I had heifers walk right over the fence and out of the pen.” “The snow was just one part of the storm,” says the Albuquerque Journal. “It was the wind that led to drifts as high as 14 feet (4.26 m), where many animals died. Wind will push animals into a fenced corner where they can suffocate in snowdrifts.” Robert Hagevoort, a dairy Extension agent with New Mexico State University,  estimates about 5% death loss on milking cows and double that on young stock. “Consider our average herd size is 2,300 cows, and we’ve got 150 dairies in our area,” he explains. “At 5% loss, that’s more than 20,000 cows.” Total losses won’t be known until farmers finish digging cows out of snow drifts, Hagevoort says. “Cows have literally been buried alive for two days” he says. “Some of them are alive when they are found, and some of them aren’t.” The Texas producers are working with state environmental officials to find ways to dispose of the carcasses. The storm’s primary impact area ran about 100 miles, from Lubbock, Texas, to Clovis, New Mexico. Imagine the potential deaths if that storm had encompassed a larger area. http://www.abqjournal.com/699253/news/cows-lost-to-snowstorm-likely-to-top-30000.html http://www.agweb.com/article/new-mexico-dairy-farms-survive-blizzard-but-20000-cows-likely-wont-naa-anna-lisa-laca/ #nm #tx #texas #longhorns #meat #meatsucks #vegan #govegan

A photo posted by Animal Revenge ✔️🐼 (@animalrevenge) on Jan 9, 2016 at 8:35am PST

Are you mad? I hope you are.

Because, ya'll, I am livid.

First of all - everything said in the caption is entirely true, so at-least they didn't cite some radically biased interview. I guess props to them for that. The drifts were obviously far worse the further East the storm went and we were very fortunate to not be hit with the worst of the storm.

But listen up, I won't sugarcoat this at all: a lot of cattle perished during Goliath. I've heard anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000 deaths; it is incredibly unfortunate, disheartening, and just down right sad. And on top of that, there is a lot of country (especially in the Lubbock area) that fences in wheat fields with hot wire and stocks cattle in there to graze it over winter. The snow drifting up over that hot wire obviously rendered it useless and there were thousands of cattle roaming through the panhandle, and even right down the highway in Lubbock. I know a lot of guys that have been horseback constantly to recover these cattle and get them back into a safe environment, and I know a lot of them have been recovered, but there's still a lot of them missing.

Devastating, right? Sorry, it's about to get worse.

I don't know how many of you reading this knew about the blizzard that hit South Dakota in October of 2013 but here is a link to an article briefly summarizing the events:

South Dakota ranchers reel after 'catastrophic' storm leaves up to 100,000 cattle dead

 You thought Goliath was bad? This was one of the most devastating things I'd ever heard in all my life. Can you even imagine that?

Here's the bottom line: Mother Nature does whatever she damn well wants to. I mean, duh, she's a woman, right? It's our prerogative.

And since when has anyone been able to avoid the consequences of her temper tantrums? I'm not just talking about animal casualties here. The same week that Texas and New Mexico were dealing with the repercussions of  Goliath, the Dallas area was victim to multiple tornadoes, and other areas of Texas were afflicted with mass flooding.

My biggest problem with this type of ignorance is: what could we have done?!

The answer is nothing. The only precaution they take up North is that they have windbreaks in the pastures to allow cattle relief from the drifts and the howling wind, but as in the case of the South Dakota blizzard, the initial rain before the blizzard was the detrimental factor and no amount of windbreaks could save them.

But tell me something.
Does Arizona heavily prepare for mass flooding?
Do the majority of Wyoming homes come equipped with tornado cellars?

Wanna know why not? Because those types of devastation don't happen often enough for them to feel the need.

So you know what, animalrevenge, you're right, we didn't feel the need to provide shelter for hundreds of thousands of animals from an act of mother nature that has almost never ventured as far south as Lubbock, Texas. You cannot imagine a shelter big enough to house that many animals.

Need I once again bring up the fact that cattle are worth too much for producers to simply not care about their health and survival? Do you have any idea how much time and money is invested in improving and maintaining their well being?

30,000 cattle died because of a catastrophic act of nature. This is no fault of any producer or care taker. This is one of the many, many hazards of agriculture. It is an unpredictable industry susceptible to acts of nature such as these, and we can do many things to help alleviate these vulnerabilities, but we will never be able to make ourselves immune to them. My point is (and pardon my french): shit happens, ya'll.

Dear, animalrevenge:

Have you ever even met a beef producer?
You obviously weren't there at 2 am in the middle of frigid January when he was checking heifers.
You obviously weren't there when he spent hours, days, and weeks riding through his calves, doctoring each ill one.
You obviously weren't there when he bottle fed a week old dogied calf back to full health.
You obviously don't know these people.
You obviously want to point fingers at things you don't understand.
Your accusations are not a threat. They are an annoyance.

I've read through your posts and fully scoped out your boycotting of meat and dairy products.
What you don't understand is that without this animal agriculture that, according to you, cares so little for their animals, you wouldn't have so many things.

The soap to wash your hands.
The concrete beneath your feet.
The tires on your car that get you to work.
The condom that should have been used when you were conceived to prevent you from spewing such nonsense on the Internet.

I think I've wasted everybody's time enough now with my ranting and raving. Like I said in my very first post: I'm fully aware that my blabbering and lecturing the Internet doesn't change anything. I'd just like to believe it would.

Don't burst my bubble.

Love each other, ya'll. (Even whoever is behind animalrevenge. Just don't like them.) -C.