PTD post: November 2013

Our November issue traditionally highlights women in dairy. Which dairywomen do you look up to? What qualities do you admire?  

I look up to all dairy women.  A lot of them work right alongside their husbands, and they also have to take care of the home and kids and sometimes even have a job in town, too.  Then there are some dairy women who do all that AND travel to the shows for their family to exhibit the best of their herds.  Some of them hold important positions on committees or are state officers in dairy organizations.  I admire women who can do it all.  I admire women who can work until they are worn out and then work some more anyway, get up the next morning on time, and do it all again day after day.  God bless dairy women!

Surprisingly deadly

Most people use plastic shopping sacks "Walmart sacks".  Most people like helium party balloons.  Many people think it's fun to let them loose to fly away. Lots of school children have set them loose to get someone to write to them from a far away place.  Many people forget to take balloons off corner posts to show people the way to a party.  These are all bad ideas.

I see balloons and sacks caught on barbed wire fences or just snagged on tall weeds out in a field.  I run and grab them and put them in the trash as soon as I see them.  They can kill cattle.

Cattle are nibblers.  A necropsy can show digestive tracts clogged with balloons or plastic shopping sacks.  That can be a miserable way for an animal to die.