The people on the show know very little about farming (I know, I've listened to them for a long time) and they started to talk about how cattle prods are inserted into cattle in order to encourage them to move.
Quickly, I fired off an email to them. It read:
Cattle prods are NOT INSERTED. They give a tiny shock.
From a dairy farmer,
Carla Wardin
I turned off the radio. and got busy doing other things. A few minutes later my friend Suzie called and said, "This might seem like an odd question, but did you just call into a radio show? They said something about Carla the dairy farmer, and I thought - what are the chances?"
Kris got home later and said he heard it too. I listened to it on the Bob & Tom site and Tom said, "I want to clarify a couple things - cattle prods. A guy robbed a convenience store apparently with a cattle prod. It does not have to be inserted ... Carla is a dairy farmer and she just wanted to clarify."
Success! The public obviously cares about farm practices and the idea that cattle prods are for insertion ... my goodness. We don't need that kind of bad press. Farmers take care of their cattle! A cattle prod gives a tiny electric shock (like the level of an electric fence), and it's certainly not something used in common practice. It's used as a very last resort when a cow doesn't want to get up after having a calf. Sometimes the shock will make her stand, and standing equals recovery. If she won't get up, she won't recover. But certainly not inserted, ever.
Got that, radio nation? Get the farming stuff correct, or I will be forced to WRITE YOU EMAILS IN ALL CAPS.
1 comment:
This girl means business! I hope I never receive an all caps email from you! :)
Post a Comment