The benefits of raising cattle. What a phrase that stirs up much controversy from both ends of raising cattle care like cattle! You have the extreme right saying that nothing can compare to raising cattle, and the other extreme arguing that there is absolutely no benefit to raising cattle. My position is somewhere in the middle, but I tend to lean more to the right than to the left. But this article is not about arguing whether there are any benefits to raising cattle, but rather what are the benefits of raising these creatures.
There are moral, environmental, emotional, physical, economic, and other benefits to raising livestock. Each has its own level of importance to each grower, some more than others. I didn’t mention finances as a benefit because it seems for many growers more money is being put into raising daddy’s gummy bugs than is coming out! There really isn’t much financial benefit to raising cattle, even if you strive to be a low-cost producer. It takes more money to care, feed, and welfare these animals than you can make from them, regardless of whether you are selling your meat directly or selling your cattle to the local farm.
However, for many, raising livestock can earn you a tax exemption. I’m not exactly sure how or how the whole process works, but I do know that if you raise cattle or some form of cattle for profit, it can act as a tax break. Livestock are also a huge economic boon to many countries, contributing billions of dollars annually from the sale, export, and import of live animals, carcasses, and packaged beef. Too bad it’s not reflected in the people who raise them…
Regardless, the hard work involved pays off in the end. It is said that raising cattle is 90% hard work and 10% satisfaction, and I think it is that 10% satisfaction that many producers strive for: seeing the new calves hit the ground and grow into strong and healthy animals. and watch them grow. sold to market when good and ready to go. This is where the moral benefits come into play. Raising cattle requires a ton of hard work and you have to be diligent, almost an apprentice or jenny of all trades, and not the type who likes to stick to normal daily routines. The reason I say this is that your farming duties change with each season: calve in the spring, turn the bulls out in the summer, make hay in the summer, process the calves in the fall, prepare for fall-winter feeding- spring etc Fences need to be checked regularly, cattle need to be checked regularly, keep up to date on vaccination times, monitor pregnancy, put bulls in and out, calves weaned, and the list goes on. Some growers have to maintain and repair more machinery than others, and this too is a task in itself and can take a lot of time and effort.
There will undoubtedly be times when you simply wonder why you took up raising cattle in the first place. It can be emotionally draining if you’ve gotten yourself into something you didn’t expect to be so difficult. But it can be an emotional reward when you see all the blood, sweat and tears you put into your operation translate into a hefty paycheck for the cattle you worked hard to raise, or watch your cows give birth. and raise some nice calves. It can even be rewarding when you can buy some new and improved handling facilities or a new tractor. I don’t think anything makes a farmer happier or more excited than a new tractor!
With hard work can also come physical benefits. Who needs to go to a gym when you have all the physical work required on a ranch or farm that raises cattle? Not only do you not have time to go to a gym, let alone work out on your own home exercise equipment, if you have any, but farming is much more physically demanding than most realize. Although you still spend a lot of time sitting on the tractor, you still need to be strong to spread straw, cut and pull bale ropes (not an easy job, mark my words!), dig manure out of a barn, pull a calf from a cow that is having a hard time getting it out, lifting and moving salt blocks to replace those that have already been eaten, moving small square bales of hay/straw by hand, fixing/building fences, and the list goes on. I heard a story where a rancher asked one of his friends from town to help him a bit with a fence on his farm. His friend from his city was the type that jogs every day and goes to the gym every day and stays in good shape. The rancher himself didn’t seem like a big fitness freak compared to his friend, but his level of strength and stamina when he did some fence building far outclassed his friend from the city by far. By the time they finished one section of the fence, the producer’s friend was exhausted, and the producer was getting ready to move on!
You get a little tougher and stronger when you’ve lived on a farm for a long time. You quickly learn that there is no time to get angry because you got cow shit on your hands or pants, nor to complain about something as trivial as a broken nail when handling or working with cattle. Cows don’t care, so neither should you. A city person won’t understand what kind of skin you should have until he puts himself in your shoes and does it himself. Jokes that are likely to offend them may be something to laugh about with your fellow ranchers or neighbors. No, you can’t be thin-skinned or too tender to be in the cattle business.
It also takes a bit of intelligence and a fair amount of scientific knowledge to be successful in the cattle business, especially if you want to make it profitable for the environment. The only way this can be done is if you become a steward of your land and graze your cattle so that you are taking care of the land. Responsible livestock grazing through controlled intensive grazing will help improve soil quality, increase organic matter content, restore and maintain wildlife habitat areas such as wetlands, swamps and marshes, and increase biomass content by both above and below ground. Livestock manure goes back into the soil where it belongs and doesn’t sit on the drylot in a fermentation pile. Soil microorganisms and grass plants themselves take advantage of the manure that livestock throws on the ground and use it for their own benefit, as always occurs in Nature. Even though grass-fed cattle emit more methane than grain-fed cattle in feedlots, this is still offset by a host of benefits of raising grass-fed cattle. There are a lot of naysayers, mostly animal rights advocates and the like, who say that grass-fed beef or raising cattle on grass is the worst thing to do for the environment, because of the “massive emissions of methane” and the “large amount of land needed to raise grass-fed cattle”; but what I am seeing here are simply excuses for these people to never change their vegan diets. Much of the talk about grass-fed beef being bad for the environment is unfounded. If feeding cattle grass is so bad for the environment, then why does grass grow so much healthier and lusher when cattle are fed in rotation? Why do I see more wildlife with grazing cattle than with farms that only grow crops? Those are just a few of the questions I challenge those kinds of people to answer!
There are undoubtedly many more benefits than I had time to list, so I’ll let you discover it on your own.
