Breeding season is underway! Decisions, decisions, decisions! It is time to make babies! Lots of things go into breeding cattle around here. We don’t use a lot of natural service bull breeding on our farm. We attempt to design our babies by artificial insemination (AI). We take a lot of time choosing genetics, from a variety of bulls, and match them up to our cows to determine which characteristics we are trying to bring out, diminish, or get rid of in our calves.
Breeding by artificial insemination gives us a greater variety of bulls to choose from rather than keeping one bull for breeding. The hopes are also that this translates into better profits. If you make good decisions, and the breeding matches have the expected outcomes, that should bring us better calves.
Great cattle do not normally just happen. Great cattle are made.
Whether through AI breeding or natural service with one bull, there has to be intention in the choice of the breeding matches made between bull and cow. Great cattle come by finding good genetics in both the cow and the bull and pairing the two to create what we hope to be a great calves.
The efforts don’t stop with the breeding though. The calves are then raised and fed and given everything that they need to hopefully turn into the best cow or bull possible. Everything plays a part. The genetics are just the start. Everything needs a good foundation. Once the calf is born, the cow has to be fed and taken care of to allow her to produce more than enough milk to grow that calf to its full potential and maintain her own condition. Feed has to be made available to the calves as well, so they can begin to eat and reach their maximum growth.
Once the calves are weaned from their mothers, the care and attention to growing the calf through nutrition are even more important. This continues the process of building on the foundation that started long before the calf was ever even born. The choice in genetics and the process of raising cattle continues from before birth to long into their years of maturity.
Just like cattle, we believe that great children don’t just happen on their own.
Great children are made.
One thing that we have always said is that we aren’t raising children, we are raising adults.
When we choose how to breed our cattle, we are thinking of what the future calf will will need down the road to be what we want them to be. Do they need more power in their structure? Do they need more milk, a better udder? Do they have horns that we would want to go away? We are planning the calf with the future in mind.
We must do that with our children! We have to raise our kids to be the adults that we want them to be. The Bible says to, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” More often than not, this scripture is quoted in relation to matters of salvation and spirituality. I firmly believe that if we raise our children to attend church and read God’s word and live a christian life, that most of the time that child will continue to follow those practices and principles, even in today’s culture. But this scripture has just as much meaning on training up the child in matters of finances, responsibility and work ethic.
We are hearing a lot of the older generation complaining about the younger generation. The millennials and the generations after them, are not quite getting a fair shake. They are being told that they are what is wrong with the world today and that their generation is lazy and that they have no work ethic.
Friends, if that is true about these young adults, it is time that we wake up and realize who’s at fault for that. At some point we began to raise children and not raise adults. We have raised these children without the future in mind. Somewhere along the way, we felt like it was easier to not put them through the hard work that we all put in as children. I have heard parents my own age say it, ” I don’t want my kids to have it as hard as we had it. I don’t want my kids to have to go through the hard work and all of the hardships that I had as a kid.”
What we have done is create the opposite of what we wanted. If you want a child that will save their money as an adult and knows how to take care of their finances, you must teach them to save as a child and give them money to learn with. If you want an adult with work ethic that can hold a job and go far in life, you must raise a child that has responsibilities and is given the opportunity to learn responsibility and hard work, even as a child.
These characteristics don’t just happen on their own. Great children, and thereby great adults, are made and somewhere along the way, we have missed the mark. We have to be intentional in training up the child. When we instill values, morals, responsibility and hard work into our children, we are raising the adults of tomorrow that will be strong enough to handle the hard times of life with stability and faith and not break with every storm that comes along.
Just like breeding and raising cattle doesn’t end with the calf on the ground, neither does the raising of our children. We have to put in the hard work and years of effort to feed and groom and properly care for them. Training up the child is not something that stops even with adulthood. I am still learning from my parents, every day. Learning how to handle the problems that come in life and along the way, they never stopped raising me. Just like we continue to nurture that cow, through all of the stages of her life.
I am looking at my own children, though nearly grown and adulting on their own, as the incomplete projects that they are. Our raising of them may look differently now, but the process doesn’t end. Our children need us now more than ever. They need our experiences, our wisdom and our guidance to survive this cold, harsh world, even if they think they don’t.
I’m reminded of this childhood song and I will leave you with it friends as we pray for one another to “Raise Adults” in this present age. Raise adults! Raise them that they will be strong and won’t bend or break in these times that we are living in. Don’t give up or stop raising them, even on the hardest days. “Do not grow weary in doing good, for we will reap if we do not give up!” Galatians 6:9. See the job through. Whether our children are grown or newborns, we must raise them to be the adults that we all want and need them to be. I’m thankful that He’s still working on me!
“He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the Earth, and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient He must be. He’s still working on me.”
Joel Hemphill based on Phillipians 1:6
