Hello All:

As I type this, Ashley and Brett and the Greenhalgh kid crew are videoing sale heifers. We preg. checked last week and, once again, God has provided in a way that’s hard for me to believe. I will comment on the preg. check results below. We aim to bring the bulls home next week to evaluate, tag, tattoo and video.

State of the Union: The descent into the abyss it typically NOT a jump from an airplane but a step…down. Satan temps, gravity pulls and our own evil desires lead us…downward. Satan fell from heaven, because he pridefully thought he knew better than God. He then tempted Eve to pridefully “know” as God. We think we know, we think we’re wise, we think of ourselves (FAR) more highly than we ought (Romans 12:3).

Pride, formerly known as a deadly sin and railed against in churches, schools, the workplace, sports and every other cultural arena…now is promoted as “good”. “PRIDE” in every abhorrent sexual identification is “celebrated” as good, as right, as inalienable…and as something everyone must agree with or be cancelled. However, the current culture war regarding sex is not the only prideful battlefront: self-esteem, gender, elitism, victimhood, race…the list goes on.

So, I find myself with the following dilemma: Pride is bad but…I AM PROUD OF OUR COWS! Am I sinning? I don’t believe so. In 2 Corinthians 7:4 God says through Paul to the Corinthians: “I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.” God and his ministers of the Gospel can RIGHTLY be proud of their disciples. We can rightly be proud of our spouses who live according to God’s Word and serve our families with perseverance. We can rightly be proud of our kids when they are walking in wisdom and in the instruction in the Lord. And we can rightly be proud of our cows!

Now, why am I proud of our cows? The process Ichthys Cattle Enterprise has gone through to get to where we are today has been one of myriad trials. I first learned of what I consider to be an unconventional way of running a cattle operation in 1998 from my good friend Roger Roe. He told me about Pharo Cattle Company and when I read their philosophies they made a lot of sense…but it was vastly different from what I “knew” about what it takes to raise cattle.

Our new direction began the next year when I started dividing our pastures, quit treating ailments, quit feeding hay, quit calving in March and soon after started using PCC bulls. Our abrupt change in management philosophy brought about thin cows, bald cows and a LOT of open cows. If it had not been for a teaching paycheck and income from crop production, our cattle enterprise would have ended

I DREADED preg check day for YEARS! There was a season of life when we would routinely have less than 50% of our replacement heifers bred and sometimes less than 70% of our cows bred. (I have other thoughts on breeding percentages but won’t share them now.) However, I stood by the premise that if one cow could do it, they all should be able to. I couldn’t very well feed some cows and not others. I decided 25 years ago not to prop up our cows. I let the ones who couldn’t make it fall out.

So, what do you get after 25 years when you don’t prop up your cattle? You get a low-input grazing enterprise where the cattle do the work and don’t give you problems. After a 50-day breeding season, you get a 90% breeding percentage on your cows (of which 38% are 10 years old or more and all of their calves are on them throughout the entire winter) and a 78% breeding percentage on your heifers after NEVER supplementing any of them. They do that on grazing forage and crop residues, water, salt and mineral in an environment that is brutally hot or cold depending on the season.

I am grateful to God…and proud of our cows.