03/14/08 Embarassing admission

Sometimes when you stop and take a look at yourself you're not too pleased with what you find. I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be back in one minute to make a confession. Recently, I got together with one of our neighbors and we had a good talk discussing all the war stories of this year's calving season. We compared notes of all the accounts of good luck and bad luck concerning cows having calves unassisted, bottle feeding twins, and grafting calves on adoptive cows. Oh yeah, and trying to graft calves on those uncooperative cows that get a "for sale" note beside their number. We finally got around to laughing about comical incidents ear-tagging calves with ID numbers. Then it happened, he made the statement that forced me to realize what we had become. He asked me to help fix his calf catcher. There I said it! We use a smooth hook on a extendable pole to catch young calves  how embarrassing since only a few years ago we would have been talking about our best calf rope and how the hondo lays perfect, it's just the right length and softness to rope those quick young calves. We've used a catcher a number of years, but it is still somewhat humbling to openly admit it. While it didn't erased all the stigma of using one instead of a rope, I did feel a little better when I saw a calf catcher on the feed truck of one of the best ropers in our county. Maybe it's just an easier, lazier way to capture young calves  yeah, that sounds better. I'm Jeff Keane.