SHORTGRASS
COUNTRY|By Monte Noelke
The last load of 20 percent range cubes delivered in February, of some 26,000 pounds of milo and cottonseed meal, contained a ground up and cubed one-pound styrofoam packing washer from the feed mill's machinery. Contamination in such minute amounts, you would think, would be much harder to find than a specific pin in your Aunt Tilly's sewing basket. Also, in a business cursed by as many huge misfortunes and blighted by so many enormous catastrophes as ranching, you would further think one pound of shattered styrofoam would pass unnoticed in 13 tons of feed. However, after so much experience in negative situations, the herder's eye is among the world's keenest for detecting disasters.

The company started selling the ranch feed in 1971. Until I caught on to the milling of livestock feed, I thought the industry must attract fastidious housekeepers. The ground around the buildings looked swept and neat as a military outpost. For such large operations, using bales of paper bags and big spools of cotton thread, not to mention large rolls of plastic bindings for protein blocks and stacks of cardboard boxes for minerals, the absence of trash was astounding.

It just didn’t seem likely the work shifts folded their lunch sacks to take home, or the office help wasn't dumping ashtrays and discarding carbon paper out a side door. End of my naivete happened one winter morning on a feed ground checking a new load of bulk feed for waste, when an alien object caught my eye and turned out to be part of a pair of shoelaces. Alone, refreshed by the cold winter air and stimulated by the odor of cottonseed meal wafting off the hot breaths of the black cattle, I saw quite clearly why no litter occurs around feed mills: "The litter, Monet, is cubed and sent to your ranch as 'ert' and 'inert' ingredients."

Standing out in the pasture where calves are conceived, born and weaned, I realized these old black cows of mine were just like the city folks hooked on junk food sold at Quick-Stops and 7-Elevens. All the bellowing and slobbering at the mouth was from a craving for a sugar fix from sweet roll wrappers and candy bar crumbs thrown in the hoppers at the feed mill. Their appetites were changing just like the oilfield workers in Mertzon who eat Twinkies and drink Dr. Peppers for breakfast.

Twenty-four hours after the sytrofoam was reported in the bulk feeder, the feed mill started to work emptying the overhead bin and sending new feed to the ranch. In the meanwhile, I spent extra time looking over the pastures where the styrofoam feed had been fed. The cows poured off the hills, hoping for an extra handout. Calves bucked and played along the way; two black bulls tried several fighting maneuvers to continue the muley oxen's obsession with crippling themselves or each other.

Noses looked wet, and the sheen of the hair ranged from winter dreariness to the dead patches of lice damage. Streams of dust caked underneath the eyes from inflamed tear ducts was normal for February. Weren't any signs of sickness other than a few cases of feed scours and the everlasting post-drouth fevers so rampant in shortgrass cattle. February and March in our country is a good time to study the bone structure and frame of the herd. As thin as the old cows were, just having something bobbing around in their stomachs was probably helping them. Most likely, the stryofoam flakes were floating in the cows’ digestive juices, like those glass bulbs you turn upside down to make face snowflakes fall on a tiny house.

By the time March hit in all its blustery fury, I'd forgotten the styrofoam until today. This morning I fished a big, blue, flour-coated rubber band out of a box of breakfast cereal. Without adding the milk or the fruit to the bowl, I called the feed company's 800 number to ask whether they milled rice cereal for General Foods. The line went dead for a minute, then the salesman said, "No, but if we are asked, we sure will."

Be interesting to see if my primary outlet for cattle, the rail at an Angelo packing house for cripples and rejects, finds signs of stryofoam. If they do, we'll know for sure how far they are going beyond the carcass to pack into product ...