Shopping Season

Shopping season has arrived.

I’m not much of a shopper.

I still wear clothes I had in college.

If Madison Avenue counted on me to stay in business, eastern tribes would buy back New York City for a dime.

My house is not beautiful, but it is comfortable.

I don’t need to update it to a new trendy color just so I will need to update it next year to the next trendy color.

Throw pillows make absolutely no sense to me.

Throw pillows are the epitome of wasteful inefficiency – buy new pillows in trendy colors, put them on the bed, take them off the bed to sleep, put them on the bed before you leave the room for the day, buy new throw pillows for the next season.

What are you supposed to do with old, outdated throw pillows?

Actually, I do have one throw pillow.

I use it on the seat of my 1974 tractor. The original seat fell apart so I bought a throw pillow at the secondhand store.

But I’ll go shopping this season for new genetics.

Like most cattle producers, I need calves that arrive easily, have lots of energy to stand up and nurse, grow fast and produce tender meat.

I need the heifers that I keep in the herd to produce enough milk to feed those calves so they grow fast and I need those heifers to pass along these same genetics to their calves.

I need the entire herd to be mellow, not flighty.

The tricky part is that some of these traits complement and some compete with one another.

The pendulum swings between fast growth characteristics and maternal traits.

I can get a calf to grow bigger if he is born bigger, but big calves sometimes get stuck on their way out to hit the ground.

If I choose genetics that are likely to deliver a small calf, the calf might be too weak to stand and nurse, especially during a cold windy calving season.

He won’t grow without food.

A cow might produce plenty of milk when her calf is born, but if she dries up before the calf is weaned and ready to digest grass, I lose potential growth.

And, while I can guess the outcome of combining a bull and a cow, predictability is not guaranteed.

Proof of that is evident in my brother and me.

Same parents, different people.

Even worse, cattle genetics can become as trendy as throw pillows so a buyer has to be savvy.

If a couple of seedstock bulls produce nice calves for a year or two then suddenly genetics across the entire breed include those bull genetics.

Maybe those genetics thrust the entire breed up to a new level of balanced production that leads to higher profits.

Or maybe those genetics swing the pendulum of genetic balance too far in one direction so the entire breed increases the risk of too much of a good thing.

In the past, breed genetics have even moved so far toward the outer edge of the pendulum that recessive genes, and then birth defects, became common.

Birth defects from recessive genes don’t increase efficient production or profits.

But I can’t limit my shopping spree to evaluating genetics.

The bull has to be capable of getting the job done.

He needs good feet and legs, desire and plenty of semen.

High-priced steaks come from his rib area so I want him to have a long body.

A masculine head, big shoulders and large testicles indicate fertility.

Madison Avenue evaluates women with similar pointed, clinical, profit-oriented criteria.

I suspect House Beautiful looks at throw pillows the same way I look at bulls – the same benchmarks, different target demographic.