Herd agrees to a four-hour labor action
WICHITA FALLS, Texas — A North Texas rancher informed his equipment dealer Monday that his cows had unanimously agreed to postpone breakfast until Thursday, when a technician might be available to look at the tractor. The agreement came after what the rancher described as “a brief but spirited meeting” at the feed gate. No cattle signed the minutes. Several ate the corner of the clipboard, which the rancher took as approval by acclamation. The tractor starts, the loader lifts and the engine sounds fine. Under load, however, a fault sends the tractor into a reduced-power mode better suited to moving a birthday cake across a church basement than carrying a round bale. The dealer asked whether the rancher could leave the machine parked until somebody got there. “I can leave anything parked,” he said. “The problem is what gathers around it.”Tractor Reduced-Power Mode on a Cattle Ranch: The Herd Proposes an Amendment
By nine, the herd had withdrawn from negotiations and begun following the rancher’s pickup. A first-calf heifer stood at the gate and bawled with the force of a customer who had been assured her call was important. A copy of the minutes, which the rancher read aloud at the feed store, lists the meeting as called to order at 5:40 a.m. Item one was breakfast. Item two was breakfast, continued. Item three was the clipboard. The record shows the motion to postpone carried “by bawling” and that the clipboard was “tabled, then eaten.” The rancher’s wife phoned three neighbors. One had a loader tied up unloading hay, one was doctoring a calf and one offered an older tractor with a bale spear, provided somebody could get it started without mentioning retirement in front of it. They got it going with a battery charger and a certain amount of language. Her text messages, which she shared with a reporter at the feed store, are brief. To the first neighbor: “Need a loader or anything that starts. Cows are on strike.” Reply: “Loader’s busy. Calf has a cough.” To the second: “Anything with a seat?” Reply: “Have an old one with a spear. Do not say the word retirement near it.” The borrowed tractor took nearly twice as long to feed. The rancher paid for the diesel and promised to help his neighbor mend a stretch of fence. The cows expressed their gratitude by dragging half a bale through the mud. “Everybody likes to say farmers and ranchers help each other,” his wife said. “We do. We’d also like the equipment we paid for to help occasionally.”
Ag Equipment Repair Delays and Diagnostic Access: A Service Window Meets a Feeding Window
The service manager explained that the technician was working through a list that included a dairy, two harvest crews and another ranch. The rancher understood. A good mechanic can only fix so many things in a day, especially when the first hour of every job is spent getting to it. A spokesman for the dealership said service calls are sequenced by distance, severity and “the order in which customers tell us their cows are upset.” He added that cattle are not a factor in the dealership’s scheduling model, though he acknowledged that the model had not previously been tested against a heifer at the gate. What the rancher wanted was access to enough diagnostic information to decide whether to call that mechanic, hire an independent shop or check a connection himself. The FTC and USDA inquiry into agricultural equipment markets gives producers a place to raise those concerns, and DTN’s coverage of the request for information notes that confidential comments are accepted too. The rancher’s wife kept a tally on the back of an envelope: one battery charger, two neighbors, forty-one minutes of language and a debt of fence work. She said the dealer was welcome to add a line item for the diagnostic whenever it got around to making one. The service manager, asked about the tally, said he would pass it along to the appropriate department. The rancher asked whether the department was the cows. On Thursday, the technician arrived carrying a laptop and a travel mug. The cows, now fully recovered from their four-hour labor action, crowded the fence to see if he had brought anything edible. One licked his truck door. The rancher told him that meant he’d been approved to work independently.Five Humorous Observations
- The tractor runs fine until you ask it to do tractor things. That’s not reduced-power mode. That’s my brother-in-law.
- They say the cows “agreed” to skip breakfast. Anybody who’s met a cow knows that’s not an agreement. That’s a hostage situation with better eye contact.
- A cow ate the clipboard. Finally, a meeting where somebody did something with the paperwork.
- The dealer says leave it parked. I can leave anything parked. My wife’s minivan has been parked since the kids moved out.
- A technician shows up with a laptop and a travel mug and a cow licks his truck. That’s the most honest performance review I’ve ever heard of.