Bill,

I am not sure what you find so irritating about the phrase "absentee cattleman" but I suspect that it is because the concept is very different than what you practice.

One of the interesting things about the cattle business is that there are so many different ways to raise cattle - successfully.

I am always amazed to see in the spring on my travels out west to see semi load after semi load of cattle where the trucks pull off the highway back up to a ramp at a gate somewhere and unload onto what must be government rangeland.

There are lines of cattle often a mile long walking away from the trucks along a ridge into the distance. These cattle are on the range until fall on their own, left by some "absentee cattlemen" as they have been for maybe 100 years.

I'm not sure it will make much difference to you but I will give it a try: maybe accept the possibility there are diferent ways of raising cattle successfully? And maybe just because someone uses a system that does not use a loader, tmr and "chores" every day does not make that system worse or better than your system.

I see a tremendous amount of peer pressure in my travels. There is always pressure not to do anything "different" from the norm in any given area.

In the end if any system is successful and solves certain problems it will gradually be more accepted and become a part of the toolbox of possible solutions. Not every system is successful from the start and provides a lot of fodder for the coffee shop crowd, and now maybe the internet crowd.  But often new systems can evolve which are very successful.

As I said at the start, what I am saying may not make any difference to someone who has been "raising corn soybeans and cattle in the heart of America since 1882" but I thought I would give it a try.  You can do it your way and I will do it my way. I don't see why that has to irritate you so much, but imho life is too short to let stuff like this bother us. Again just a try.

By the way, maybe this WILL help Andent with his calving issues. That is for him to decide. 

Regards,

Jim at Dawn