Maine Farmcast

In this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Dr. Colt Knight is joined by Dr. Dean Fish. After editing the Low-Stress Handling and Stockmanship video, they sat down in the new podcast studio on campus to discuss the topic in more detail.

R. Dean Fish, Ph.D. is the Ranch Manager for the Santa Fe Ranch and a member of the NCBA Stockmanship and Stewardship Team. As the Ranch Manager for the Santa Fe Ranch Foundation, he works to develop problem solving research for his fellow beef producers. The foundation also works to get kids out of doors through agricultural literacy, hiking, camping and learning about the environment. Fish also raises commercial Angus cattle and club calves. Prior to managing the ranch, he was an extension livestock specialist for the University of Arizona. He has served on the Arizona Beef Council and is the past president of the Southern Arizona Cattlemen’s Protective Association. Fish has served in a leadership role for many livestock and service organizations. In addition, he has worked with Todd McCartney, Dr. Ron Gill and Curt Pate planning and delivering Stockmanship and Stewardship at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Cattle Industry Conference and Trade Show. Fish is passionate about spreading the stockmanship and stewardship message, as he has seen the benefits in his own and other operations where the principles are implemented.

This podcast was made possible by the generous support of:

Creators & Guests

Host

Colt Knight

Colt grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia where they also operated a small family farm and show horse stable. During academic breaks and between schools, he worked in strip mines across the country. Colt earned his B.S. in Animal Science at the University of Kentucky, M.S. in Animal Science at Angelo State University, and his Ph.D. in Animal Science at the University of Arizona in 2006, 2012, and 2016, respectively. In the fall of 2016, he worked on a postdoc with Dr. Derek Bailey at New Mexico State University. Since 2017, Colt W. Knight works as an Assistant Professor of Extension for the University of Maine where he serves as the State Livestock Specialist. He teaches Introduction to Animal Science (AVS 145) and runs the Maine Grazing Behavior Lab. The core focus of the Grazing Behavior lab revolves around designing and manufacturing livestock tracking collars, engaging in applied grazing behavior research, and assisting other researchers with technology to interpret animal behavior. Dr. Knight’s research is broadly focused on selecting animals uniquely adapted to landscapes and promoting sustainable agriculture. Colt is the current chair for the Society of Range Management Livestock Foraging Behavior Committee, as well as, the North East Region Chair for the National Association of County Agricultural Agent’s Teaching and Educational Technology Committee. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Processes. Colt is actively engaged in outreach and has delivered over 150 seminars on livestock production since starting his career at the University of Maine.

Host

Glenda Pereira

As the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Dairy Specialist, Dr. Pereira conducts applied research and develops educational programs for dairy and livestock producers across the state of Maine and New England. While the Holstein breed is near and dear to her heart, Dr. Pereira admires the Normande breed and her favorite dairy products are sour cream and ice cream.

Host

Rachel White

Rachel is a Sustainable Agriculture and Livestock Educator based out of Hancock county. Her objectives include education, research, and programming about agriculture in Washington and Hancock counties and with small ruminants and poultry across the state. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Maine researching risk of parasite transmission from wildlife to small ruminants and risk reduction methods, including pastured poultry. Her social science work looks at farmer and veterinarian knowledge, attitude, and practice for small ruminant health management and the challenges they encounter with this topic. Rachel is also involved with the University’s One Health and the Environment NRT program. She is plans to include a One Health framework into her programming to address human-animal-environmental health challenges in Maine’s agricultural community. On her farm, Rachel has Finn sheep, laying chickens, seasonal broilers, pigeons, horses, and various fruits.

What is Maine Farmcast?

The Maine Farmcast features weekly conversations with experts from across the country sharing insights and advice for both new and seasoned farmers running operations of any size. Hosted by three livestock specialists from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the show brings you world-class expertise paired with practical advice about how to apply cutting-edge research to improve the efficiency and sustainability of your farming operation.

Colt Knight: 00:40

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I'm your host, Dr. Colton Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And today, I am joined by Dr. Dean Fish of Arizona, and he has agreed to sit down and talk to us about stockmanship today. Dean, it's great to have you back on the podcast.

Dean Fish: 01:01

Thanks for having me. Tickled to be here.

Colt Knight: 01:05

So we spent yesterday out at Collyer Brook Farm in Gray, Maine, working some cattle around and demonstrating the principles of stockmanship and low stress handling. And I thought it would be great if we discuss that a little bit more in-depth here. Dean, what is your background with low stress handling and stockmanship?

Dean Fish: 01:24

Well, so I start you know, I've kinda probably had little pieces of it my entire life. I grew up on a little cow calf ranch in Southern Arizona down on the Mexican border, and and my dad was a pretty progressive, cattleman. And so we used AI. And so one of my first jobs was checking heats. And so studying animal behavior and understanding when those cows came into estrus and then also sorting a pair off of a herd or 2 pairs or whatever was in heat and bringing them up to the pens so that we could AI them.

Dean Fish: 01:54

And so I learned really, really quickly that, if I didn't wanna get scolded or reprimanded more firmly, that cow needed to come up there pretty pretty soft, pretty gently, pretty, you know, under low stress. You know, because again, less stress is a higher chance of success for, for pregnancy. And so, that was really kind of some early training with stock and shipment. I really didn't know what I was doing, you know, but just kind of tried to work them slow and and figured out how to do it deliberately. And and so I had great mentorship early.

Dean Fish: 02:28

Went off to college, did, you know, a bunch of different stuff, worked for Extension for about 15 years as a livestock specialist in Arizona, and worked and helped a lot of different producers and ranches in the Southwest, And then had an opportunity to get involved with NCBA, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, with their Stockmanship and Stewardship Program. And, really started studying stockmanship and cattle handling and cattle movement and keeping those cattle comfortable in a low stress manner. And a couple of my mentors, or 3 of them really, Todd McCartney, who was my partner in setting these gigs up for the cattle industry conference, tremendous stockman, tremendous communicator, really helped me kinda get started on that road. And then Curt Pate and Ron Gill are the clinicians for the Stockmanship and Stewardship Program. And so getting to hang around with those guys and pick their brain and watch them do different demos and different scenarios really kinda put me on the path toward trying to learn and trying to get better about about doing, low stress cattle handling, stockmanship, and thinking about, you know, being more than just a cowboy or cowgirl and being more than just, you know, somebody that just chases cattle around.

Dean Fish: 03:45

So thinking about it, thinking about why they do it, we've had the opportunity to work with Dr. Temple Grandin a little bit at Colorado State University. And, you know, I think that she's done some amazing things as an advocate for the cow and for animals and and so kind of pick putting some of her stuff. So anyway, so combined a lot of different, resources, read a lot of Bud Williams stuff, you know, and watch there's several other people that are doing this. And I think it's really evolved where it's more of an accepted practice. And I think our consumers, the end users of our product, wanna know how those animals are raised and that we're giving them, you know, their best life that that we can, at least a comfortable life.

Dean Fish: 04:27

And so that's kinda got us to this point. And so yesterday, yesterday, as you said, we got to go to Collyer Brook Farm. And, we had some really, really nice cows, provided us by Tim there and then we had Kevin there as well. And and we got to show some real basic stuff that, you know, we started out from the basic Colt. You know, we started out, you know, talking about the flight zone.

Dean Fish: 04:50

You know, now that sounds kinda silly, like why would you you know, everybody knows about flight zone, but not everybody does. And then we were able to demonstrate some stuff. Those cows were a little bit, stickier, a little they were pretty gentle. You know, they've been worked really, really well and handled really well. So they didn't have a lot of flight zones.

Dean Fish: 05:07

So that was kind of a challenge to kind of get get the push on those bubbles or push on that force field around them. And so we worked on the flight zone. We worked on point of balance and then had the opportunity to kind of sort some of those cows and calves and using that point of balance. And, you know, I did the cows kind of by myself and that was a little bit of a challenge. And then, I had Kevin and Tim jump in and we sorted the cows from the calves.

Dean Fish: 05:30

And so it was kind of fun to talk about communication, talk about, you know, how is it different when you work by yourself versus with with the team environment. So I know I sped over a whole lot of stuff. So slow me up, Colton, ask me what you wanna ask me

Colt Knight: 05:43

or Well, you know, you you mentioned mentors and where you learned about low stress handling. I can remember and I was born in 84, but I can remember working cows when I was younger. No one talked about low stress handling and and things. And everyone was yelling. Everyone was mad at each other.

Colt Knight: 06:04

We all had sticks. We were all hitting the cows. We were all slapping the cows. They were getting, hit with hot shots even, you know, not just sorting sticks and tobacco stakes. And then when I was an undergraduate, my beef professor, Dr. Fred Thrift at the University of Kentucky, he didn't say the words low stress handling, but he followed those principles, you know.

Colt Knight: 06:29

And he he taught us how to handle cattle without yelling, without getting mad, with, you know, minimum movements and things. And then when I was a graduate student at the University of Arizona, that was the first time I met doctor Fish, and he actually did a low stress handling and stockmanship demonstration in our livestock pavilion right there at the teaching farm in Tucson, Arizona. And that's when I first started picking up on the low stress techniques and more of the science behind that. And ever since then, working cattle has been so much easier. You can probably remember when people say the ultimate test of of a married couple was work cows together. And if you can stay married after getting mad at sorting cows, you you were okay. But, you know, nowadays, we don't we don't have to worry about that. Right?

Dean Fish: 07:21

It's Well, it's it's it's a culture that's changing slowly, you know. And I think just as you mentioned, you know, when I first heard low stress cattle handling, I thought I was gonna have to go out there and hug my cows and, you know, give them treats and, you know, and, and, and that's not, that's not what it's about at all. It's about keeping that cow comfortable and then you being effective. Because not only is that gonna make your day more effective, make working with your family, you know, maybe your spouse, your kids out there, make that more enjoyable. But there's an economic side to this as well, Colt.

Dean Fish: 07:52

You know that you've, worked with a lot of your great producers here in this great state of Maine and talking about beef quality assurance is one of the programs that that you've promoted and help people get certified in. A big part of beef quality assurance is the economic side of that, making sure that those cattle respond to, the treatments that we're giving them, to the feed that we're giving them, to the care that we're providing them. Everything as you know in today's world is more expensive. Everything that, you know, we go to like the cattle industry conference or you go to to to any of those trade shows. Everybody wants you to spend money on cows, right?

Dean Fish: 08:26

You know, or this medicine or this vaccine or these sorting sticks or these, you know, you know, tank warmers or whatever it is. There's a lot of ways to spend money on on cattle, but we need to make sure that we're getting a return, you know. And I'll argue that this stockmanship and being effective in stockmanship and keeping cattle stress levels down, keeping them comfortable, is one thing that really doesn't cost you any money out of your pocket, but is gonna return and increase production and increase comfort and just increase satisfaction in our livelihood. So, you know, not only is it just kind of the right thing to do, but it's also gonna provide us more income and and try to keep these family farms. And and you know the statistic probably better than I do, but I think in the United States, still 97% of beef cattle still originate from a family owned farm or ranch.

Dean Fish: 09:20

Now they get consolidated as they go further up the chain, but you know, they still are originating from family farms and ranches. And so we need to kind of keep that going, I think. I think that's an important part of the fabric of this great country and and, you know, one of the reasons why we get to do this.

Colt Knight: 09:36

Yeah. So when you were talking earlier, and we're kinda gonna get into the nitty gritty a little bit, but, you know, that flight zone of the animal, that that is the the point at which you approach that animal, and it has to make a decision on whether it wants to run away or fight. So that's why it's called the fight or flight response. And, you know, cattle most of the time are gonna choose to run away. And and as we approach that animal because every animal is different.

Colt Knight: 10:03

Right? We've seen some animals here in Maine that their flight zone is 6 inches, and I've seen some cattle out in Arizona and New Mexico that it was a half a mile. Right?

Dean Fish: 10:12

Right.

Colt Knight: 10:12

And so we have to watch that animal. And the more you do it, the better you get. And you can kinda recognize when they their their eye picks you up. And it's fun when I do these demos. Sometimes I will find that animal's flight zone, and I'll just kinda bend my knee towards the animal.

Colt Knight: 10:30

And you can watch her start to take a step. And then you straighten back out, and then the animal straightens back out. You kinda back and forth and make them dance a little bit. But once we establish that flight zone, what kind of pressures can we use to get them to go forward, turn, back away, come towards us?

Dean Fish: 10:51

Yeah. You did a nice job of describing that flight zone probably a lot better than I did, but, you know, it's kind of like a force field around or like a bubble around that cow. Right? And some of those, like you said, are, you know, like some of my son's old show heifers there. It's 2 inches, right?

Dean Fish: 11:05

You know, or if you have a feed bucket, watch out, right? You know, and then we have some of those desert cows that see people once or twice a year that, you know, that is a half mile. So recognizing and being able to read that, read where that bubble is, is kind of that first step. Then once you read that and figure that out, we generally use a driving pressure. What, you know, the 3 types of pressure that we like to talk about in cattle handling and stockmanship.

Dean Fish: 11:30

1st is a driving pressure and that's where we basically push on that bubble or push on that balloon. And if you can imagine a balloon or a bubble, when you push on one end of it, what happens? It expands on the other end. And so, you're pushing that force to that power and and in a direction that you want that to go. And so, we call that a driving pressure.

Dean Fish: 11:49

And so, we'll apply that driving pressure whether we're trying to get them into a pen, whether we're trying to get them up into a lead up, whether we're trying to load them into a trailer. You know, we've got to apply enough pressure to get them to do what they want, do what we want. And when they do what we want them to do, we need to take that pressure off so they have that reward. And so that's not always like an immediate automatic just fall back, they start going through the gate, fall back, because sometimes they will turn around. So sometimes you need to keep a little bit of pressure on there.

Dean Fish: 12:19

But give that cow that reward for doing exactly what you want with that driving pressure and then they release that pressure. You know, I like to think of loading in a trailer. That is one of my favorite things to do is to try to figure out how to get that cow to want to go up in that trailer and stay in that trailer. I'm sure a lot of our listeners today have probably, you loaded something in a trailer and had to hurry up and slam that gate shut before she turned around and hit and hit the end of it. And that's because she's not comfortable there.

Dean Fish: 12:47

There. You've put a lot of pressure on her to get up in there and that, trailer is providing a certain amount of pressure back. And so, you know, I think of, say, that trailer is providing 50 just as a number, it doesn't mean anything, but £50 pressure. I need to figure out how to get £55 pressure behind her to get her up there, to step up there. And so that's that's kind of the that's that driving pressure.

Dean Fish: 13:09

Common one that we use quite a bit, you know. The other one is kind of is what we call maintaining pressure. And that maintaining pressure is a pressure where we're kinda on the edge of that flight zone. We we want them to be paying attention to us, Want them to be thinking about the next thing we're gonna ask them to do, but they're not doing it yet. So you were talking about, you know, using your knee to kinda get in and out of that flight zone.

Dean Fish: 13:29

You were right kind of in that maintaining pressure, area. And then the third one we talk about is a drawing pressure. And that drawing pressure is where those cows have an attraction. So like yesterday, when we were sorting those cows out of that little pen into the big pen, they wanted to be with their buddies out in the big pen. So it was pretty easy for me to draw all those cows out of that pen and, get them to do what I want.

Dean Fish: 13:52

And sometimes that's feed, sometimes that's their calves, sometimes that's those are other things. And I think, you know, especially as, you know, Colt, you're quite a horseman yourself. You did quite a bit of experience. You had quite a bit of experience earlier in your life with horses and, you know, working in a round pen, how do you draw that horse too? It's the same same type of thing with a cow and we do that with a cow, and a lot, you know, it's just kind of fun to practice it.

Dean Fish: 14:16

But it it all does go back to that pressure and how we apply that pressure. And we talk about feel timing and balance. So you got to feel when that pressure is right, when do you apply it, when do you take it off. So there's, there's an important aspect of feel. The timing, that timing is critical.

Dean Fish: 14:33

You know, if you're late, like there were a couple times if you're, if you're listeners go on to the the great videos that we made yesterday, there's a couple times I was late. A couple times I was early. And so that timing is very, very important. And then the balance, just figuring out, okay, how much do I apply? How much do I take off?

Dean Fish: 14:50

And when do I do that? So kind of field timing balance, keeping all of that stuff kind of together, will really make you an effective stock. But it's, and it's fun to just play with it, you know? You know, there's, there's mistakes that you're going to make. I mean, you'll see in the video, there was a couple of things that, that I did.

Dean Fish: 15:05

I sure could have done better, you know, but it wasn't the end of the world. We regrouped. We did them again and and got through it.

Colt Knight: 15:12

I really like to think about how we use the animal's natural instincts and and everything to move cattle around without without much, problems. But we're also using the animal's physiology. Right? Because, you know, it is a prey animal, so its eyeballs are located on the side of its head. So it has a different field of vision than a predator animal, you know, when the eyeballs located in front like us.

Colt Knight: 15:39

You know? So maybe you could explain how we use those blind spots and and the cattle's vision to get them to move around a little better.

Dean Fish: 15:49

Yeah. So that cow has about a 300 degree range of vision around her, and she's got a blind spot right right behind her, and then a little kind of small blind spot right in front of her. And so you gotta be kind of careful around those because if they can't see you and you startle 1, that's when you trigger a flight or fight instinct. And a lot of times that's a nice swift kick to your shin or something else. So you gotta be careful with those blind spots.

Dean Fish: 16:13

But the cool thing about that vision, that panoramic vision that she has is, is that she can pick you up from a lot of different angles. And because she has them on both sides of her head, you can use where you apply that pressure to get her to turn a certain way. So like we were demonstrating, if I wanted to, have a cow move straight, I can't pick her up on just one eye. I've got to kind of bounce back and forth. And I work behind her in a zigzag pattern, and I pick up one eye, then the other, pick up one eye, then the other, and drive her in a fairly straight line doing that.

Dean Fish: 16:45

If I keep on one eye, she's gonna want to see me and she'll use use that to turn around. And so that's the principle we talk about, like these curved alleys, these curved, you know, sweeps and so forth. That's the principle that they use there is to naturally draw cattle because they want to see you and they want to kind of go around you. And so using that physiology for that. So it's kind of kind of cool stuff for the eye.

Dean Fish: 17:08

The other thing, that eye is so I really like cows cold, as you know, and study this stuff. But, you know, cows have a different type of vision than us. So we have 3 color cone receptors in our, in our, in our eyes. Cows have 2. So they call that dichromatic vision.

Dean Fish: 17:26

And so that, because of her lack of that one color cone receptor, stuff like shadows appear to be much, they have much more contrast. And so things like, you know, things that we don't think about like going into an alley or going into a trailer where there's a shadow or where the color changes, we don't see that as a real big deal. But to that cow, it's it's a lot sharper contrast because of her type of vision. So not only the placement of her eyes, but the type of vision that she has influences how she reacts to environment. And then also, her depth perception isn't as good because of the location of rise.

Dean Fish: 18:02

So I was talking about loading trailers. One of the mistakes that I used to make loading trailers is I really wanted to push them up in there really quickly and get them up there before they turned around and thought about it. But a lot of times, if you watch a cow naturally approach her back with trailer, what does she do? She puts her head down. Why is she doing that?

Dean Fish: 18:19

She's trying to establish her depth perception to figure out where she needs a step. And so if we give her just that half second or that second to do that, put her head down, check it out. And as soon as she lifts her head, we can apply a little pressure and push her up in that trailer. Works. Again, just paying attention to these little things.

Dean Fish: 18:37

Works like magic just about every time, to let her do that.

Colt Knight: 18:42

Yeah. And talking about those little things, I always recommend folks actually walk through their pens, walk through their alleys, look for those changes, those subtleties, things that we're looking for. Shadows. You know? Does the side of your alleyway have slats and the sun's beaten down through there and putting stripes on the ground?

Colt Knight: 19:02

Do we have, like, the trailer parked in a certain way where it's just there's a big block shadow? And the cows don't know if that's a hole in the ground that's going to swallow them or it's a shadow. And and so if we can eliminate those things, pushing animals into, like, dark buildings, You know? They they're not seeing that that's a building. They just see that it's a giant black spot that that might attack them or swallow them.

Colt Knight: 19:29

So it's good to walk through. Look for the can that might be stuck on the inside of the chute or maybe someone has has hung their their hooded sweatshirt up on the the fence post. All these things are are triggers that are distracting the cattle and and might scare them. We can walk through, get all that set. Plus, it's a good time to set all your gates.

Colt Knight: 19:50

Right?

Dean Fish: 19:51

Yeah. For sure. And and I'm glad you brought that up. That that was that's a perfect segue because, you know, even something as simple as leaving your truck running while you're loading the cattle.

Dean Fish: 20:00

I mean, that noise up there sometimes can, you know, because they're a lot more perceptive than we are on some of that stuff and because they are prey animals. Looking for stuff that, you know, like a nail sticking out of a lead up or a pen that has kinda scratched them. You know, you see a bunch of cows that have the same scratches in that same area. Hey, there's something going on there. So that's a really, really valuable exercise is to walk through that just as if you were a cow and look for those things.

Dean Fish: 20:25

So like changes in type of flooring, going from dirt to concrete to gravel to steel to whatever. Those things, cows can feel that through their feet for sure, you know. And so, sometimes they will bawlk. You know, if you if you see where cows are having trouble bawking in a certain part of your system, however you're working them, go through there. Check it out.

Dean Fish: 20:47

See what it is. Maybe it is that shadow. Maybe it is and and you can fix some of that stuff. You know, we talk a lot about in, at least in the West, about solid sides versus open sides, you know, and it'll lead up or, you know, I really like an open side where I can apply pressure and remove pressure from cows, but, you know, a solid side will remove distractions. So if I have one side of my pens that's facing a busy highway or or there's just a lot of people over there or something, solid side may be a good way to remove that distraction.

Colt Knight: 21:17

And And communicating with your helpers. So not everyone has the same level of stockmanship or livestock experience. Maybe sometimes you have to you tell people, hey. You don't stand here because the cow can see you.

Dean Fish: 21:32

Right.

Colt Knight: 21:32

You know, you stand behind the poster. You you stand over here. And explaining to them why they'll they'll be easier to they'll learn, and in the future, they're they're much more valuable helpers, I think.

Dean Fish: 21:44

Yeah. For sure. And that's one of the hardest things, you know, especially out in the west, you know. We're you know, we don't tell me how to handle my cattle. You know, I know how to handle my cattle and that's a tough thing to communicate and to get over that with anybody, right?

Dean Fish: 21:57

And so figuring out ways to communicate those things is is pretty important. And I'll be the first to admit that I was, in my own little cattle operation. I was probably not the best advocate for my cows sometimes because I just wanted to get along and not be the bad guy. But at one point, I had to flip that switch because those are my cows. I want them handled a certain way.

Dean Fish: 22:20

It was causing me too much stress to see them kind of being chased around or hit with hotshots or whatever it was that I didn't like happening. And so I finally had to be an advocate for those cows and say, hey, if you wanna help me out here, which I appreciate, we're gonna do it this way and this is these are my expectations. And so sometimes you just gotta just do it, you know. And it's it's uncomfortable, you know, especially, you know, we're a lot of times we're dealing with multi generational family operations. So you're, you know, it's hard to tell dad or grandpa or grandma, you know, hey, this is how we're doing it.

Dean Fish: 22:56

You know, because, you know, what do you know, you went to University of Maine. Now you're smart. You know, everything, right? No, you know, but, but but there are, sometimes you just have to do that and get, get in there and do it. And sometimes the best way is just showing them, you know, you know, hey, these gals are always having trouble getting into these pens.

Dean Fish: 23:14

Well, let's do a circle around a different way. Right. You know, and just show them a different way and and hopefully it works.

Colt Knight: 23:21

There's a story I like to tell, and I I'm wondering if you even remember this. The first low stress stockmanship demo I went to, then you were you were the host. You were out in the pavilion showing everyone. And then we did the exact same thing the next year, and I forgot what the name of the event was. But there was a younger man that came up to us.

Colt Knight: 23:43

He was a rancher in Central Arizona, And, you know, they basically gathered their cattle up once a year. They did not use low stress principles. They they had them all excited and everything. And so the cattle buyers were not buying his calves from year to year. He had to find a new customer every year.

Colt Knight: 24:05

Well, he came to your demonstration, learned about low stress handling, incorporated those techniques, and he started handling his cattle more gently. And he noticed that the cattle buyers were wanting to buy his calves from again, you know, it was a repeat customer. So, I mean, there's a monetary and and business value to this as well. And I always thought that that was really significant that that young man came up and and told us that following year, he's like, man, this is this has worked brilliantly. Our lives are easier.

Colt Knight: 24:39

Our cattle work better, And I have repeat customers now because we're not selling them wild crazy calves.

Dean Fish: 24:46

You know, I think it and and talking about, you know, the family deal, I mean, I think it think the reason why we lose a lot of young people off farms and ranches is because they get yelled at. It's an unpleasant experience. We put too much pressure on them. Right? Never take it off.

Colt Knight: 24:59

Oh, yeah.

Dean Fish: 25:00

You know, and so, you know, I know in the west, you know, one of the worst, you know, we brand our cattle out there by law. We have brand laws that we have to, any range cattle have to be branded, you know, so we'll vaccinate brand and process calves. That's a lot of times the most stressful day on that ranch, that are waning and shipping day because, you know, there's always a patriarch that's yelling at everybody, right? Get Alligator or you're too late or this or that. And so I think taking a step back and thinking about, you know, how do, how can we do that and keep that stress level down, I think is important.

Dean Fish: 25:32

And maybe, you know, maybe the economics are probably the bigger part of it, but maybe we keep 1 or 2 more of those good young people on these farms and ranches and keep producing good, safe, wholesome beef.

Colt Knight: 25:44

I can remember working with some of those older generation cowboys in this in the Western United States. And just by the fact that you're younger, you're never you're either working them too fast. And then if you slow down, and they'll yell at you tell you you're working too slow. That's just part of the old culture, you know. I grew up actually in a coal mining family, and I went to work for my dad in a coal mine when I was younger.

Colt Knight: 26:10

And that was just how folks communicated. They just told you you didn't know what you're doing, yelled at you. They just expected you to catch up. But as I was going to school and I managed to teach in farms and and helped out at teaching farms and things, I I started to realize, you know, you can't blame the people for not knowing something if you didn't teach them.

Dean Fish: 26:32

Right.

Colt Knight: 26:32

You know, we if you want them to know something, you have to teach them. If you want them to practice something, you have to sit out there and make a practice. Right?

Dean Fish: 26:40

Yeah. And and as you know, you can tell them, you can show them, or you can involve them. Yep. And if you can do all 3 of those, they're gonna learn better and and do a better job for you.

Colt Knight: 26:51

Yep. Well, Dean, it was great sitting here talking to you about stockmanship, and, we hope to see you in Maine soon.

Dean Fish: 27:00

Thanks for having me. Wonderful people, wonderful livestock.

Colt Knight: 27:04

I've got to know, what was your favorite thing about visiting Maine?

Dean Fish: 27:07

My favorite thing about visiting Maine was, you know, of course, all the scenery, everything was so beautiful. You know, of course, the fellowship with you and your wife, Colt. I mean, I truly, truly enjoy that. But probably seeing those red cows up on that hill and that green grass in the background, that beautiful farm that we were at, and just just meeting some good folks out there. Boy, it's hard to pinpoint one thing.

Dean Fish: 27:31

That was probably my most memorable part of it. But, I think we're having some Maine lobster tonight. So I think that might that might that might be the topper.

Colt Knight: 27:41

Alright, Dean. It was great. We'll catch everyone next time on the Maine Farmcast.

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