I just heard from my milk hauler this morning that a local farmer had a two day old heifer calf stolen from his barn last night. The barn was enclosed and shut, so the calf did not wander away on its own. Week old heifer Holsteins are very high priced now, going for $5-6 a pound live weight, so someone made themselves a fast $400-500 stealing this one. Just a heads up. I've never heard of this kind of thing, but then I've never seen the prices this high, either.

Also, when I took a load of bull calves to auction a week ago I asked the workers there where all of these heifers are going, and he said without exception they are going to Ohio, Indiana that area of the country to fuel large dairies that are going up there that have calves contract raised for them. He also said he doesn't see the price dropping anytime soon.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), October 04, 2001

Answers

I think if I lived there and had cattle, I'd start tattooing every calf at birth.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), October 04, 2001.

Wow. Those prices are high. Dairy calves usually don't go that high aorund here. Bottle calves in general have been going for about $200 if you can find them.

Rather than tattooing, I prefer to brand the cattle as it is more obvious. Wish there was a national brand registery though. We have thought about branding our cattle for this reason.

-- beckie (sunshine_horses@yahoo.com), October 04, 2001.

I AM FROM CENTRAL INDIANA AND GO TO THE SALEBARN EVERY MONDAY. HOW MANY DO YOU WANT AT $400 - $500. THEY DON'T SELL ANYPLACE CLOSE TO THAT HERE. MORE LIKE $75 FOR A BULL CALF AND $150 FOR A REGISTERED HEFFER CALF. I CAN GET AIRSHIRES ALSO.

-- Mel Kelly (melkelly@webtv.net), October 04, 2001.

Northern NY here again indeed calfs are going for 5 plus a pound .It's a sellers market .Even one that looks half dead will bring $2.00 plus a pound. I luck out because the buyers will let me get one or two cheap.

-- Patty {NY State} (fodfarms@slic.com), October 04, 2001.

Hey Mel,

I'm about an hour south of the KY-IN border. Do those calves look good and healthy? Do they let the calves nurse the cows 4 days before they sell them? We can't find any decent calves down here, and allot of them they don't take care of and send them to the auction at a day or 2 old and they are sickly and hungry. It would be worth a trip for us to get some good ones. Aryshires would be nice too, as we have a Gurnsey cow we raise the calves on, and we kept a Gurnsey bull calf to use later. What town is the auction in?

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@msn.com), October 05, 2001.

Its so sad that some think they can just waltz into someones life and take whatever they want simply because they feel they can. Theft has always troubled me in this way..the person behind it more so than the act itself. Why does this person feel they have the right or what have you to TAKE from someone else? Sometimes its quietly in the night..sometimes its with violence. Either way its degrading and hurtful to another person who now cannot feel that they and theirs are safe from predation. Sad. A neighbor here had his 4 wheeler stolen right out of his shed one evening and this is a guy taht everyone likes, has had hardship in the last year (lost his wife in an accident) and yet someone (probably someone who knew him since this is a small and "everyone knows everyone else somehow" area) felt that they could just go and take something that was not theirs. It just makes me sad.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), October 05, 2001.

Alison, I totally agree with you. My theory is that they are people who have never had to work for anything in their life either because their parents gave them everything, they never got anything, or they stole anything they got since they were little. If kids learn to earn what they get at a young age, they learn to appreciate the value of things. I have to confess that when I was a kid, we stole a bunch of tomatoes from a neighbors garden and had tomato fights with them. (I did know better intellectually, but not truly). Guess what? We got caught and my parents made me work in the garden for as long as the owners wanted to pay back for the damage I had done and they paid them for the lost produce. I sure learned how much work gardening was and never bothered a garden again. My family did not have a garden of our own so I had not learned what was involved so this was a lesson I retained for the rest of my life. (Luckily it didn't deter me from gardening!!! LOL)

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), October 05, 2001.