Yes! It is Spring Time all over!

I love Spring time! We just got home from off the road trucking. Every where we went this week was beautiful!
We started from home here in Missouri , then out to West, Kansas, to pick up a tanker load of raw milk off the huge dairy farm and we took it to Le Mars , Iowa. All over Kansas,Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota the grass was greening up, the leaves on the bushes and trees are coming out ,the spring flowers beginning to bloom and babies everywhere, baby horses , I just love them! and baby calves. I love seeing the fields full of new born  horses  and calves with their mothers. The best breed of cow I believe if I was to be a cow  would be the beef cows. They at least get to roam the country sides and bare their young and keep them at least till they are weaned, but you can't say that if it is a big dairy operation. But if they are lucky enough to be owned by small time ranchers then they are left with their younguns at least 6 months. Now Dairy cows and calves I feel so bad for , they are stripped from their mommas almost as soon as they drop.Dairy cows unlucky enough to be own by the big dairies have a hard and cruel life,they have a very short life span compared to small dairies that let their cows graze and it is sad to say that  these large dairy operations are where most of your milk and ice cream and dairy products come from. Don't let those adds on TV about the California cows fool you.Cows live for the most part on dry lots/pens and enclosed barns. Some are lucky to be able to get out of the hot sun and heavy rains and hail and snow. But many out in the S.W. are not that lucky , they may have some shade but many can not get out of the sun and   get hammered by hail . There are a few and I mean a few that are free ranged which I call Happy Cows , mainly up north and east, but even they are going to the big production dairies where the cows very very seldom get to graze on green grass. Out west the babies are taken from their mommas at about 1 to 3 days and tied up with about the length of 6 ft. rope or chain and housed in an individual small plastic shed and must drink from a bucket and not a bottle, most are out in the blazing sun and heat and those plastic sheds get real hot they can't even get to frolic and play with each other like cows and calves out in the fields get to. Cows on these dairies which can house up to 12,000 ,live out on dirt and cow poo. The stench is real bad, whereas those that are free ranged you never notice the smell in fact I bet there isn't any. No if I were to be a cow I would rather be a beef cow they for the most part always are left out on big pastures and breed with live bulls and have a cow social life but not their dairy sisters. And most diffinitely not steers after they are weaned they are housed on these huge feed lots  some over 80 acres full of them,where the dust and smell will get you . Out in West Tex and Kansas during the summer , the dust is so bad that you can barely see to drive and I have to cover my nose even with the window on our truck all up. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea about life as a dairy calf. Not to bum you out on this absolutely marvelous day, but to let you know that life is not good for many people and for our animal relations as well.
We need to be more humane with our animal kin, we need to treat them with respect and if we are responsible for the life of any animal , be it your pet dog that you may have tied up on a short chain way out in your back yard  or in a small pen as far as it can be from the house,which I say shame on you, why on earth do you even have a dog ? just to keep it tied up away from the family , again shame on you! Driving all over like I do , you would not believe how many poor dogs are in that condition. And the pitiful conditions of these live-stocks feeders I see all over, we need to respect life, and I believe that what you reap you will sow, how you treat the least of these in God's world, you best know that it will be repaid back to ya.
So let us be responsible pet owners and livestock owners, God cares for the critter kingdom just as much as He cares for each of us. Please let us be responsible and live kindly with each other and protectors of the weak,and those who don't have a voice in this world be they critters or people, we are all God's creation.
shalom