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CapitalPress.com
February 26, 2016
Grandin cautions about cattle leg conformation issues
Industry improving
on welfare,
expert says
Online
http://www.grandin.com/
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
SPOKANE — The cattle
industry needs to start looking
at leg conformation issues, an
animal welfare and handling
expert says.
Temple Grandin, profes-
sor of animal science at Col-
orado State University, spoke
about animal behavior and
other livestock issues Feb. 20
as part of a lecture series at
Whitworth University.
Grandin cautioned against
breeding for some traits con-
sidered desirable that can cre-
ate problems in other areas.
For example, conformation
issues can mean some bulls
have dificulty walking, Gran-
din said. Grandin and grad-
uate student Marcy Franks
wrote an article for Beef mag-
azine advising ranchers to in-
spect the legs and feet of ani-
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Colorado State University animal science professor Temple Grandin looks to an audience member for
a question Feb. 20 during her presentation at Whitworth University in Spokane.
mals they are considering for
breeding. Franks and Grandin
surveyed photos on bull se-
men websites to determine
the percentage that showed
the animal’s legs and feet.
“This is one the industry
needs to head off at the pass,”
Grandin said. “I’m scared that
there is leg conformation issues
linked to some desirable car-
cass traits. All I can say about
using genomic power tools: Be
careful. Power tools are great,
but that circular saw can hack
off my hand a lot quicker than
a handsaw would.”
Grandin said cattle han-
dling has “greatly” improved
since the 1980s, but the in-
dustry is doing a poor job of
informing the public about the
advances.
One of Grandin’s students,
Ruth Woiwode, conducted a
survey of 28 large feedyards
several years ago in Colorado,
Kansas and Nebraska, scor-
ing such handling variables
as animals falling down or
bellering, getting caught in
the squeeze chutes or electric
prod use.
“The prod score was
around 5.5 percent,” Grandin
said. “In the bad old days,
the electric prod score would
have been 500 percent. Ev-
ery single animal, multiple
times.”
More
ranchers
and
meat-packing plants are inter-
ested in low-stress and quiet
handling of cattle, Grandin
said.
“When I see an animal
welfare problem now at a
large slaughter plant, it’s
something that’s going to
have to be ixed at the farm,”
she said. “A certain segment
of the dairy industry is doing
a fabulous job, (but) there’s
other segments that still let a
cow get half-dead and emaci-
ated before they bring it in.”
The problem lies with a
minority of producers, Gran-
din said.
“But it’s not a tiny minori-
ty like a half of a percent,” she
said.
Grandin trains people to
conduct slaughter plant au-
House puts payments for cougar
depredations in budget proposal
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — A House
spending proposal would com-
pensate livestock owners who
lose cattle, sheep or horses to
cougars. The payments are
allowed under state law but
only if lawmakers earmark the
money.
The Washington Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife al-
ready provides payments for
livestock killed by wolves. A
similar compensation plan for
cougar depredations has been
unfunded.
“The cougar issue has been
a head-scratcher for a number
of years,” Washington Cattle-
men’s Association Executive
Vice President Jack Field said.
“This is huge.”
The Democratic-led House
included $50,000 for cougar
depredations in a budget pro-
posal they released Tuesday.
The Republican-led Senate has
yet to present its proposal. The
spending plan lawmakers pass
this year will adjust the two-
year budget they approved last
year.
The House also proposes
to increase funding to prevent
wolf attacks on livestock.
“The Legislature is trying
to provide assistance to folks
impacted adversely” by pred-
ators, Field said. “We’ve had
good meetings on both sides,
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
House Appropriations Commit-
tee Chairman Hans Dunshee,
D-Snohomish, speaks at a
press conference Feb. 22
in Olympia about the House
DemocratsP spending plan.
the House and the Senate.”
Cougar attacks on livestock
are reported far more frequent-
ly to WDFW than wolf depre-
dations.
Most recently, cougars
killed two sheep in Garield
County and three goats in
Klickitat County on Feb. 12,
according to WDFW.
State
law
authorizes
WDFW to pay up to $10,000
per claim, but only if law-
makers supply the money.
The 2013-15 budget included
funding, but the 2015-17 bud-
get passed last year does not.
WDFW wolf policy lead
Donny Martorello said the de-
partment supports compensat-
ing livestock owners for cou-
gar depredations. He said it’s
been frustrating for ranchers to
have compensation hinge on
whether WDFW determines
their livestock were killed by a
cougar or wolf.
House Agriculture Com-
mittee Chairman Brian Blake,
D-Aberdeen, said payments
have been caught up in the
overall controversy about con-
trolling cougar populations.
“It’s been a battle,” he said.
Paula Swedeen, who rep-
resents Conservation North-
west on WDFW’s wolf advi-
sory group, said it was fair to
compensate ranchers for live-
stock lost to cougars.
“We deinitely support
compensation for cougar dep-
redations,” she said. “Cougar
depredations cause issues for
producers. If we’re going to
compensate for wolves, we
should compensate for cou-
gars.”
The House budget proposal
also includes:
• $300,000 for preventing
wolf depredations. WDFW
has an ongoing program to
split costs with ranchers on
protective measures such as
range riders, lights, alarms and
ribbons.
• $8.8 million to replace
fences and replant pastures
damaged by wildires. From
this, $300,000 would go to
control weeds and re-vegetate
ire-damaged land in hard-hit
Okanogan County.
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9-4/#17
Water
markets offer
eficiency,
analysts say
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Photo submitted
Richard Haney, A USDA Agricultural Research Service soil scientist
in Temple, Texas, stands by a microwave plasma, which measures
minerals at the molecular level. Haney has devised innovative
soil testing methods, which have helped growers assess their soil
organic matter and plant-available soil nutrients.
Soil breakthrough
helping growers
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
A Texas USDA scientist’s
innovative approach to testing
agricultural soils suggests U.S.
producers have been applying
too much fertilizer, especially
nitrogen, to their crops.
Richard Haney, a soil sci-
entist with the USDA Agricul-
tural Research Service’s Grass-
land Soil and Water Research
Laboratory in Temple, Texas,
explained the test also gives
producers insight into the effec-
tiveness of their efforts to im-
prove soil health.
Haney’s methods have slow-
ly been winning over converts
among farmers and ranchers
in recent years, and have been
touted nationwide lately by
USDA’s Natural Resources
Conservation Service. Parma,
Idaho-based Western Laborato-
ry has a contract with the Idaho
agricultural company J.R. Sim-
plot to improve the tool for use
in high-cost production systems,
hoping to develop it to measure
other essential minerals beyond
nitrogen and phosphate.
Haney has devised the irst
method to measure the amount
of organic nitrogen and phos-
phate in soil that will be avail-
able for a plant to utilize. Haney
explained that prior tests have
missed plant-available organic
phosphate and nitrogen, leading
producers to overestimate the
amount of supplemental fertiliz-
er necessary to raise a crop.
“It turns out all of these
years we’ve been measuring
one form of nitrogen, which is
inorganic, and we’ve been miss-
ing about half of what’s there,”
said Haney, who has now test-
ed more than 22,0000 U.S. soil
samples.
Haney explained a common
test for inorganic soil carbon
involves combusting a small
soil sample and measuring the
nitrous oxide formed by the
process. His own method entails
placing soil in water, separating
the organic compounds from
soil in a centrifuge and combust-
ing only living material, thereby
measuring only the organic ni-
trogen available to soil-borne
microbes for feeding plants.
Though his soil test isn’t cal-
ibrated to yield, Haney said he’s
never heard from any farmer
who cut back on fertilizer based
on his test results and experi-
enced a nutrient deiciency.
“I can’t tell you the num-
ber of farmers I get who are
mad,” Haney said. “They’ve
been over-fertilizing for their
whole careers, and they feel like
they’ve been duped.”
Working as a master’s stu-
dent with another USDA re-
searcher, Alan Franzluebbers,
in the mid-1990s, Haney was a
part of the discovery that soil life
could be measured by moisten-
ing soil and recording the lush
of carbon dioxide respiration
emitted by the organisms.
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9-2/#18
dits using the North American
Meat Institute’s guidelines.
She’s also helped to develop
clear guidelines.
“If you write something
like ‘Handle cattle properly,’
what does that mean?” she
said. “You’ve got to have
something that’s clear, like
trafic rules.”
Grandin recommended ag-
riculture communicate better
with younger generations of the
public. Audiences tend to listen
to values over science, she said,
pointing to studies that indicate
the public will listen more to a
mother than a government sci-
entist. Farmers or ranchers are
more credible than food com-
pany public relations represen-
tatives, she said.
She recommends farm-
ers ensure the values they’re
promoting are being upheld
throughout the supply chain,
with a third-party independent
auditor.
“Whatever you claim
you’re doing out there on
a farm or a slaughterhouse,
make sure you’re actually do-
ing,” she said.
Agricultural producers are
competing for water around
the world, vying for the limit-
ed resource that is also needed
for a growing population, eco-
nomic growth and ecosystem
health.
“All of those competing
needs must be met, against
a backdrop of increasing cli-
mate variability. Proper allo-
cation of existing resources is
critical,” Rabobank analysts
said in their new report, “Ag-
ricultural Water — Free Flow-
ing Markets Sustain Growth.”
The challenge is in deter-
mining what the proper allo-
cation should be, along with
incentivizing investments so
eficiency technologies and
supply-side infrastructure are
not short-changed, they stat-
ed.
“Free markets have been
shown to be a capable mech-
anism for eficiently allocat-
ing resources to their highest
value use, including the allo-
cation of capital investment,”
they stated.
Water markets are abso-
lutely essential and inevitable
in meeting future needs, said
Vernon Crowder, Rabobank
analyst and co-author of the
report.
According to the United
Nations, the global popula-
tion is expected to increase
25 percent by 2050, bringing
a 60 percent increase in food
demand and a 55 percent in-
crease in water demand. In
a “business-as-usual” sce-
nario, the world is expected
to have a 40 percent water
deficit.
But that’s not going to hap-
pen; the global community is
not going to starve people. It’s
going to use the water better
on higher dollar crops where
it’s most effective. Markets
help that happen, Crowder
said.
“Water markets don’t
make new water, but they help
us use it smarter and better,”
he said.
Markets have been used
successfully in Australia and
California to help agriculture
weather drought, he said.
Agriculture is in a para-
doxical situation because it
is both the vehicle to feed a
growing population while
being the largest user of de-
veloped water, the analysts
stated.
It is important for agri-
cultural leaders to be directly
involved in the establishment
of water markets to protect
the long-term economic sus-
tainability of the industry. Ob-
viously, water districts should
be involved but so should in-
luential ag water users and
trade organizations, Crowder
said.
“When it rains or snow
falls, the resource belongs to
everybody, theoretically,” he
said.