Ranchers say weights have declined since wolf reintroduction ( Middle class under attack )

Associated Press ^ | May 5, 2006 | Jim Knight

[george76]

Cattle ranchers in the Paradise Valley say shipping weights have declined since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

They say their cattle stay close to gates instead of grazing entire pastures.

Wary animals tend to eat less than relaxed animals.

[Leatherneck_MT]

You can feed cattle Grain, but they need grass as well.

[Poincare]

Management Intensive Grazing and livestock guard dog teams will keep the cattle fat and the pastures healthy. A lot of graziers are inefficient at best and stuck in their ways.

[FreedomPoster]

Only one thing to say to that: Good.

[Poincare]

You can feed cattle Grain, but they need grass as well.

When you feed cattle grain they need medication and vets. Good grass works wonders.

[Wizy]

I am no going to start going through texts to site specifics, but common sense predator prey relationships tell us some basic information:
When you remove a top predator from a system it;
a) allows secondary predators to overpopulate (in this case those would primarily be coyotes), which have caused far more everyday problems such as; interbreeding with domestic dogs, killing domestic dogs, attacks on livestock. Coyotes well opportunistic like wolves; are also scavengers, which means garbage cans are basically fair game, which literally can bring them to your doorstep.
b) Larger prey that the secondary predators don't see as on the menu also over populate and inbreed (various deer overpopulation in many states, chronic wasting disease...which by many is thought to be at least partially caused by a shallow gene pool).

[Wombat101]

Digestive reasons, I assume?

[Savage Beast]

If the "Environmentalists" are for it, oppose it. If they are against it, support it.

[george76]

That may the future.

If the politically correct get their way, several things will happen.

First, family farms and ranches will fail and go broke.

Second, their grazing allotments that are on public lands will be "vacated." That means closed.

Third, these former family ranching areas will be designated "wilderness." That means no access.

Fourth, Ted Turner and his friends will buy these now bankrupt lands cheap for private resorts where the "beautiful people" from Hollywood can find "santctuary."

Fifth, your meat will be no longer free range. Your food will be bred, born, fed, raised...in a feed lot. Go look at a chicken feed lot and ask about the drugs, etc.

That will be the future of cattle, sheep, etc. production. Huge Corporate productions. No family farmers.

[Leatherneck_MT]

That was my point, just didn't go into the details :)

[Leatherneck_MT]

Health reasons yes. But cattle are designed to live on grass not grain.

[Wizy]

That State would be WI, and the basic aspect of self reintroduction, would be...they walked over the state line. Twenty or so years ago, they were thought to be extinct statewide. Now estimates place the population at over 2000, some say as high as 5000 or more. They were not reintroduced here by human interaction, yet we went from virtually none to potentially thousands in a couple of decades. What would you call that...oh and if you want specifics on that, you can find them at the WI DNR website.

[Lurker]

Wolf concerns increasingly are "locking up" public lands."

This was probably the objective in the first place.

S.S.S.

L

[george76]

I agree with all of this...

You can feed cattle Grain, but they need grass as well.

When you feed cattle grain they need medication and vets. Good grass works wonders.

---

The next issue is money.

Grain, medication and vets are very expensive.

Unless these are gentlemen ranchers with a trust fund, they have to make a profit so that they can pay the bank loans on the livestock, the grain, their home, their equipment...

One big solution has been summer grazing on public land allotments.

This gives the valley lands a rest and allows production for a fall harvest.

When the clever Sierra Club lawyers are able to out-bid a family farmer on public land allotments to "save the environment," they are really putting many family farmers into foreclosure.

[Wombat101]

I don't give any creedence to anything said by the "Politically Correct". As for "free range" anything; I've tried it (and other than Buffalo or Beefalo, which are MIGHTY tender!) but cannot tell much of a difference between "free range" and "born, bred and killed in the barn" beef, and I'm a steak afficianado.

[nightdriver]

"That being said there should never be the proverbial "open season" on any endangered resource."

Well, back when I tried to make a living farming, my calves and cattle were also an "endangered resourse," at least they were to my family and neighbors.

I don't recall wolves and coyotes as being all that necessary, but who was I to say? I was just someone who had to live with the danger they presented to my survival, I wasn't some bearded hippy-type that was trying to impose predators on someone else under the guise of "ecologic diversity," or some such nonsense.

[nightdriver]

God made wolves and coyotes so that they could become dead wolves and coyotes.

[george76]

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "put wolves in Yellowstone Park" and created a recovery area 300 miles around the park, then "tied all the dollars to Yellowstone and openly admitted they knew wolves would leave."

[skeptoid]

"...They were not reintroduced here by human interaction...."

"....went from virtually none to potentially thousands in a couple of decades. What would you call that...."

I would NOT call 'IT' endangered.

[skeptoid]

"...They were not reintroduced here by human interaction...."

"....went from virtually none to potentially thousands in a couple of decades. What would you call that...."

I would NOT call 'IT' endangered.

[skeptoid]

"...They were not reintroduced here by human interaction...."

"....went from virtually none to potentially thousands in a couple of decades. What would you call that...."

I would NOT call 'IT' endangered.