Joe Carpenter discusses the way the stock pond on the Downey Ranch, near Wabaunsee, is built to reduce damage to the watershed. Around 150 people attended the annual event, sponsored in part by the K-State Extension Service.

Joe Carpenter demonstrates gentle cattle handling during the Ranch and Range tour.

Ranch and Range Tour features Downey Ranch;
Speaker encourages participants to defend their way of life

By Paula Glover
ALMA – It is time for ranchers and food producers to stand up for themselves, Ben Wileman told around 150 people assembled for the 16th annual Wabaunsee County Ranch and Range tour, held Oct. 3 at the Downey Ranch, south of Wabaunsee and at the fairgrounds in Alma.
Wileman, with the Beef Cattle Institute in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University, said ranchers should form one organization dedicated to the well-being of animals that would serve as a self-regulatory agency and combat those who oppose ranching and farming over concern about the treatment of animals.
Karaline Mayer, the extension agent for Wabaunsee County, said she heard a presentation similar to Wileman’s and realized it would be perfect for the Ranch and Range Tour.
Wileman was the final speaker in a day that began with a tour of the Downey Ranch, just south of Wabunsee. The other afternoon speaker was Larry Hollis on calf health management.
Wileman explained that farmers and ranchers used to sell their products in a variety of places, from local markets to small grocery chains, but now there are fewer outlets. The top 10 retailers supply 75 percent of the food. The result of this has been that those private environmental groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the National Humane Society can effectively apply pressure on only a few retailers to achieve their goals.
“Our industry is under attack,” Wileman said. “We need to address this now, on our own terms.”
Farmers and ranchers “do a poor job of influencing others,” he said. He encouraged the participants to be pro-active in educating people on what producers are doing right in terms of animal welfare. He used the example of taking the time to chat with hunters the rancher might allow onto the property.
He said, in the days of viral videos and cell phone cameras, producers should “operate as if you are being filmed.”
“We need to start doing better and take ourselves to the fight, rather than waiting for the fight to come to us,” he said.
He argued for the formation of a U.S. Food Animal Well-Being Commission that would self-regulate to ensure that food animals are raised according to national standards, with training verification provided by veterinarians.
“We need to head off ballot initiatives, solve our own problems, develop working groups, challenge activist language, and condemn abuse,” he said.
Ranch Tour
Barb Downey and her husband, Joe Carpenter, led the tour which used hay wagons pulled by farm pickups to transport the participants around the 6,500 acre ranch that spans two counties. There are 550 head on the cow-calf operation, mostly spring calving. The tour included a stop to see range management, one for low-stress cattle handling, and one to see a controlled access pond.
The tour began with a stop at a pasture where one side of the road had been sprayed for weed control, and the other had not. Justin Kearns, with Dow AgroSciences in Parkville, Missouri, explained that the yield of grass was so much better on the sprayed field that it was profitable, figuring in the cost of the chemicals.
Carpenter noted that another important part of the ranch’s rangeland management was to move the cattle from pasture to pasture around every five weeks. This is better for the range, and helps to prevent scourers, he said.
The tour continued to the bunkhouse, where there are also cattle pens for a demonstration of low-stress cattle handling. Downey jokingly said that at first, the notion of low-stress cattle handling sounded like “voo-doo.”
“But it is easier on the livestock and you have the knowledge you are doing the right thing by your livestock,” she said. The goal on the ranch is that the cattle “never have a bad day.” They work with the cattle from the time they are calves, accustoming them to the presence of humans, and teaching them to respond to the low stress handling.
There are several principles to this type of handling, Downey said - including that cattle are uncomfortable when you are near them and they want to go back where they came from. The cattle are moved slowly and quietly, with no hotshots. The method also uses open sided chutes.
Now that the cattle are accustomed to the change in handling, one person can now do what it used to take five to do.
“We want to produce beef for a higher-quality market,” Downey said. “We want people eating beef that tastes good and is produced in a quality manner.”
Because water quality is an issue, the tour included a stop at a controlled access pond, where the cattle are allowed to the pond only in a small area. This reduces erosion and sedimentation in the pond.
“We want to give the cattle quality water so they will drink more and be healthier,” Carpenter said. He noted the access was built four years ago, and it hasn’t needed much work.
In the afternoon, Hollis, a beef specialist at Kansas State University, discussed low stress weaning of calves. He said low-stress weaning helps deal with problems such as pneumonia in the calves, which is aggravated by physical stress like dusty pens, psychological stress from being separated from the cow, and other factors like weather, dietary and water changes.
He said common methods of weaning – weaning on the truck, dry pen weaning, and pasture weaning – are too stressful for the calves.
He recommended a method called “fence line weaning” where the calves are left in a pasture and the mothers are moved to a pen just on the other side of the fence. “This is much better than any abrupt methods,” he said.
Peggy Schultz ranches west of Alma with her husband.
“We enjoy the Ranch and Range Tour,” she said. “We always pick up something. We do everything, so we were particularly interested in the low-stress cattle handling.”
Mayer said that over the course of the tour’s 16 years, more than 3,400 people had participated. The tour was recently moved to a Saturday to allow people who have out-ranch jobs to attend, she said, and it was combined with the ranch rodeo to allow for a festive cap to the day.
“We always choose a good operation to tour; one of the more progressive operations,” she said. “It is an honor for the ranch to be on the tour.
“We need to know what we are doing right as producers,” she said.

Appeared in the Grass and Grain.