Busting Rustlers in Idaho

 “A goose neck trailer driving down the road at 2:00 AM with a bunch of cows in it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” Unless of course it’s a cowboy with a bad case of insomnia, but…probably not. I’m David Sparks and I’ll be right back with an explanation. We’ve been covering cattle rustling stories over the last several months here on the NW Ag Information Network and the web site aginfo.net and it seems to correlate with tough times given that there have been over 2,000 cows that have come up missing in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho since 2007. Neighboring states have reported smaller losses. Of course there are all kinds of reasons for cows disappearing. Lightning, poisonous weeds, wolves but ranchers take into account such factors as to how many they should lose to natural causes. If the numbers are beyond that, there has to be a reason. The reason is cattle rustling but Interestingly, even though times continue to be tough, the problem has been somewhat reduced according to State Brand Inspector Larry Hayworth: I think the numbers are going to be better this year cause we’ve been putting a lot of attention to this thing for months. We’re doing more check stations, more road stops, all kinds of other stuff.”

Larry says the public can be very helpful by just keeping their eyes open.