Green Pastures
April 18th, 2007 by Jim VHere in southern Minnesota, the pastures are starting to green up. It seems that in the next few days the countryside will come alive with farm machinery moving on the roads and in the fields. A neighbor stopped by tonight and we decided that it would be another week or ten days before we can get cows onto pasture. In the meantime I need to go walk fence lines and make sure that the fence is ready for the grazing season. I am looking forward to getting cows grazing and having their milk get nice and yellow. Things have dried up in the last week so that much of the mud has gone away. I am hoping that the remainder of the mud dries up within the next three days. We have a Jersey heifer due to calve in three days and I would prefer to not see a calf go careening into the few spots where the mud is still about 6-8 inches deep. We may have to put the heifer into the barn to prevent a new calf from ending up in the mud. We have been working on getting this heifer semi-prepared for being milked and having someone mess with her teats. Through the winter we have had her coming into the barn with the rest of the cows at milking time, getting her into the routine of coming into the barn and getting locked into a stanchion. Lately I have been putting my hand on her udder and teats and have even washed her teats the last couple of nights. I would prefer her not trying to kick us into the next county the first time we try to milk her. Based on the amount she has been kicking so far, my children won’t be milking her for a while - it will be my job.
In the last few days I have stumbled across some interesting livestock related news items on the internet. In Argentina someone has genetically modified Jersey cows so that they produce insulin in their milk.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2007-04-17T213557Z_01_N17446103_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIOTECH-ARGENTINA-DIABETES.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
In Nevada they are making sheep-human chimeras, where they inject human cells into sheep embryos.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source
The idea is to make organs that can be transplanted into humans. This article notes that this sort of procedure has the potential to introduce new viruses into the human race. I think that scientists are overestimating the complexity of living organisms and the incredible design that went into their creation. God said that the things He created were good. Now sin has marred this creation and we are arrogant enough to think that we can “engineer†around the results of sin by the mixing of genetic material and cells from different organisms. I’d rather see us work with the design provided by God, rather than thinking we can come up with something better. I would rather see researchers put more effort into understanding human nutrition and dealing with diseases on a nutritional level rather than spending time making genetically modified organisms and chimeras.
The last item I stumbled across is a study that looked at the effects of cell phone radiation on bees.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070315215055data_trunc_sys.shtml
The article states that “Placing handsets near hives, Kuhn observed that GSM cell phone radiation in the frequency range 900 MHz - 1800 MHz caused the bees to avoid the hive.†Seems that we may be “overrunning our headlightsâ€, getting unexpected side effects from our extensive us of technology.
Jim V
April 19th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Jim,
Things are drying up here pretty quick although the grass isn’t doing anyhing yet. Can’t wait till it does so I can quit feeding. Been feeding since July and it’s getting old.
Was at a feed store today, first time ever there, and got to talking. By the way I was there because I was picking up some OP corn seed there. Was able to get it trucked up by them folks. The talk at the feed store was about the same as we talk here. Let me tell you, that’s a good sign. Talk about anti GMO over that way, yee haw!
Got to talking MN 13 field corn and one guy said there was a corn test plot in that area last year and they decided to run MN 13 OP corn against the big name hybrids. Guess what, MN 13 came in second. Only one big name seed company hybrid beat it, and not by much. Now that get’s around locally! Of coarse you won’t hear that from the GMO seed companies. You can just about imagine me in a conversation like that.
But from my point of view I haven’t found one thing that GMOs have benifited anyone except the owners of the GMOs. Not one thing. BT corn kills the bacteria in cow rumens, darn near stalls out hogs on feed. Cattle refuse to graze the corn stalks when given a choice. There’s going to be some huge paybacks in years to come with all of this. Huge! It ain’t looking good as far as future health and food production with the big boys trying to run the show for nothing but their own profits.
I think something like global warming is teeny in comparison to the reprocutions of what’s going to happen with all the genetic monster building! But world wide plagues got to start somewhere so it might as well be there.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Tom,
It is good to hear that OP corn is making inroads in your area. I’ll have to start talking to the farmers around me about OP corn, especially now that I know about the trial done in your area. I suppose, though, it will take some change of mindset for some of them to farm without roundup ready corn. Why is it that my area, which has fertile soil, big fields and a longer growing season (longer than yours at least) has gotten so much more entrenched with Big Ag than your area? You’d think that my area would support many smaller family farms. Instead everything just keeps consolidating and getting bigger and bigger.
I agree that GMOs have the potential to start some plagues. I wonder, though, if they won’t be silent plagues where we all just start dying from things like cancer.
Jim V