This past month, there was a big news article on how cattle rustling is on the rise all across the U.S. Most speculate it has to do with the economy and thieves looking to make a quick buck – at our expense.
The article said that in Texas alone, cattle rustling reports just about tripled in a one-year span from 2007 to 2008, and has continued to rise, despite efforts of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers’ rangers working along with law enforcement.
All sorts of agricultural theft is reported to be on the rise as well. In our area, we’ve had a lot of hay theft lately. Fortunately, cattle can be a little easier to track down – with the help of your cattle records.
How can cattle records help protect your herd in cases of cattle rustling?
By individually identifying cattle in your herd and keeping track of your herd inventory at all times, you might have a better chance of recovering stolen cattle. When thefts are reported quickly with easy means of identifying cattle, there is a much higher success rate for recovery.
If you keep up with how many cattle are located on your ranch, or in each pasture, you can quickly notice when you might have cattle missing, which means you can contact authorities sooner. And, if you have those cattle identified and know which ones were supposed to be in each location, you increase your chances of sale barns and authorities properly identifying your stolen cattle when they turn up at auction or in someone’s trailer.
If you’re using a cattle management software program to keep your records, you’ll most likely have access to printing reports from your records, so you can quickly generate a list of missing cattle and their identification information to distribute to authorities and nearby cattle auction facilities.
They say most stolen cattle are immediately hauled to an auction barn, sometimes in the next state, so the quicker you can get a report out on your missing cattle, and the more detailed that report is, the more cattle rustlers we’ll hopefully deter.
Has cattle rustling been on the rise in your area? Do you think your cattle records could help you recover stolen cattle?
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