Frequent Flyer Cattle
I’m Susan Allen, Frequent Flyer cattle when Open Range returns. Now if I could be a cow anywhere I’d probably opt for some Northern California ranch or the Austrialian outback, maybe the Scottish highlands or even India where I might be celebrated and not end up in a hamburger patty, anywhere but where some poor North Dakota cattle are being shipped . Cattle are bred for a variety of climates, the Brahman crosses I saw traveling through Costa Rica who have to handle hot humid temperatures don’t look anything like an American Angus. It gets cold, darn cold in North Dakota and cattle able to survive in that frigid climate are bred for those elements the reason each week 200 head of cows are loaded on to a Boeing 747 freighter for the long trip to Astana ( UH-STAW-nuh) the capital of Kazakhstan to build a beef industry in the Central Asian country. At the request of the former Soviet republics government to date over 2600 cattle have made the tedious crossing. In a similar situation Russian cattlemen exported an entire Montana cow outfit ,horses and all to the Russian steppes. This interesting and at times tragic adventure has been chronicled in the July and August edition of Western Horseman by Ryan T. Bell and is sure to make for a great book or movie.The logistics of transporting cattle globally are daunting but conditions in countries without viable cattle markets can be appalling. In Russia both the Montana horses and cattle not only had to handle extreme temperatures from 30 below but also the loam of the Black Earth Region of Russia that turns to lakes of deep mud in the spring making even routine calving and moving cattle dangerous.
