12-5-2022 ICE UPDATE

Hello All:

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” While all scripture is true, no scripture has proven itself more true, from an experiential standpoint, in my life. I’ve aimed to apply this verse to life…BUT… Has my trust been perfect? Nowhere near. Have I leaned on my own understanding? Regularly! Have I been faithful to acknowledge God in all my ways? Hardly. However, He takes the meager and failed attempts to do such things and makes my paths straight anyway. Some versions translate “acknowledge” as “submit to.”  We seem to be a society, including churchgoers, bent on submitting only to ourselves. “Making” paths straight can be translated as “directing” paths. God is sovereign, He does His will for His glory. I don’t always like the path; I pray for the faith and grace to walk it. Some of you have prayed for me too…THANK YOU!

ICE Economics = ICEonomics: A penny saved is MORE than a penny earned. For every penny you earn you pay some sort of tax on it, either when you get it (payroll, FICA, income, capital gains, etc.) or when you spend it (sales, property, fees, etc.). Taxes in America, as the saying holds, are as inevitable as death. However, if you don’t spend a penny, you’ve not only saved it, but you’ve kept yourself from having to earn another (which will be taxed) to replace it or spent whatever taxes were due when you spent it.

From what I can observe of the traditional cow-calf enterprise there is a lot of money spent on feed (especially feed!), machinery, equipment, and time (yours’ or someone else’s) that could be saved with a change of paradigm. I would suggest you find genetics that don’t require so much feed to be fertile, machinery to be fed or time to manage. Aim to graze your cattle (let them do the work, find their own feed, be their own machinery) as much as possible, year-round would be the goal. When God created the bovine, He created a miraculous machine that can harvest its own feed and turn grazing forage into the best tasting food on the planet…BEEF!

GREAT NEWS: Since this update is already getting lengthy (so I’m told) I’ve got a teaser topic for the next update. In a future edition I want to speculate on why the following occurred: We recently preg. checked the cows (Nov. 23^rd). I’ve suggested if you are getting much over 90% conception rates on your cow herd that you might be over feeding. Conception rates that high typically require copious amounts of feed to maintain a body condition that allows a cow to return to estrus in time for rebreeding, especially on-time rebreeding. ICE cattle had 175 out of 180 cows rebreed on time, 97+%, during a drought, with no supplemental feeding (cornstalks and grazing forage only) after their May-June calves had been at their side through the previous winter (and the 2 before)…this isn’t possible…at least I would have said it’s not possible. Stay tuned…

Merry Christmas and great GRACE to you all!

Lanny