The Dogs of Itchy Dog Farm

An easy post this time -- everyone likes to talk about their dogs.  It is conceivable that not everyone likes to read about other people's dogs.  But if you want to write about your own dog, add a comment to this blog and I'll publish it.

So, here are the dogs of Itchy Dog Farm, in the order in which they acquired us.

Ace (aka Aces, Acer, Acer Eraser, Aceroni, Mr. A.)

Ace was my son's birthday present.  He picked out this puppy from a large litter of identical (to me) pups at the Humane Society, but I insisted we drive to every rescue in Gainesville to make sure he was "sure".  At the end of a long day, we returned to the Humane Society and only little Ace remained from the litter.  It was fate.  It was also fated that when my son moved out, Ace was going to stay with me.  Almost 10 years old now, he is the elder statesdog of Itchy Dog Farm.

Ace is the In-The-Way dog.  Regardless of where you are and where you are going, Ace will be positioned in between.  He likes to be tight up against you, whether standing, on the couch or in the bed.  He is the Concerned dog, with many Responsibilities that weigh heavily upon him.  One of these is to ensure that there is only one squeaky toy in the house at any given time, and that said toy is in his sole possession.  Extraneous toys will be buried along the periphery of the property.  Periodically he makes his rounds, digging up each piece for inspection and replanting it in a different location.

Ace is a beautiful dog.  He looks like a Ridgeback without a ridge, although there are certainly more breeds in his DNA than there are chemicals in Froot Loops.  He remains sleek and slender, and if he has one uninhibited joy, it is loping along side of the car down the driveway, or galloping after squirrels.  I've always wanted get him a box of squirrels for his birthday, but can't find a supplier.

Darwin (aka Darwinkle, Little D., D.)

Of the eight dogs and cats at Itchy Dog Farm, Darwin is the only one I actually selected to be mine.  This warrants a digression.  When I got Sophie, my first Basset Hound, I decided I would never henceforward be Bassetless.  When she died, I applied to Suncoast Basset Rescue for another.  I completed the lengthy application, provided references, passed the telephone interview and the home visit, and was told to wait for them to match me with an adoptable dog.  Weeks of waiting dragged into months.   Every time I contacted my contact I was told I'd be matched soon, but they were short of volunteers, had a big Basset Waddle coming up, yada yada yada.  In the meantime, a rescue group I volunteer with obtained a decent used Basset.  I adopted Darwin about a month before Suncoast got back to me with a tentative match.  People in animal welfare circles often joke it is easier to adopt a child than to adopt a dog from a breed rescue.  This may actually be true.   I've adopted two children but I have yet to adopt from a breed rescue.

Darwin is a busy dog.  There are things he has to do, and he does them.  These include sorting through the recycling bin, rescuing potential edibles from the compost, finding animals in various stages of decomposition and rolling on them, and retrieving anything foolishly left on the breakfast table.  He is used to getting his way and has problems with inanimate objects.  If a ball rolls under the sofa, he will bark at the sofa until it moves.  If Timmy were to fall into a well, he would bark at the well until he and Timmy both starved to death.

Darwin loves riding in the car, and often leaps into the trucks of visiting meter-readers and farriers, hoping they will carry him away.  I let him ride with me on errands when I can, and in the summer, when you can't leave a dog in a hot car, I will take him joy-riding down the county roads for just fun.

Annie (aka Annie-Fanny-Frangipani)

My sister's first husband Mike was a great guy and always part of the family, even as she remarried twice and so did he.  He and his third wife Judi were living in Tennessee with a dog of their own when a raggedy stray started sniffing around.  She'd eat what they left out but wouldn't let them come near her.  After a number of days she dropped a single puppy at their doorstep and disappeared.  They took the puppy in and apparently passed the test, because she returned a day later with three more puppies and herself.  On taking her to the vet, they found she'd been shot in the head.   They named her Annie.

A few years later first Mike and then Judi died, and the family needed to rehome the animals.  I was offered Annie as the "best" dog.  An underground railway of transporters got her from Columbia TN to Chattanooga to Gainesville to me.

Annie is the worst of all possible dogs.  Part heeler and part terrier, she exhibits the most obnoxious qualities of each.  She tries to herd everything and literally nips your heels as you walk, and she yips and yaps and digs holes in the lawn.   Incredibly obese, she looks like an ottoman, but we can't put her on a diet since she'll eat the hens' eggs and the pony's feed and anything else it takes to supply enough calories for a sumo wrestler. She has a thousand vocalizations, from throbbing cries reminiscent of humpback whales to Scooby Doo-like mumblings as if her mouth is full of marbles.  Her only redeeming feature is occasional cuteness, as she jumps on your lap, puts her snoot under your arm, and oinks.

Rufus (aka Roofie, Rufus D. Dufus)

Rufus belonged to someone who kept him as an outside dog.  When he first came into our veterinary care program, he was fearful, emaciated, heartworm positive, and anemic from feeding mosquitoes and fleas.  The vets patched him up and I became a foster and failed foster in quick succession.

Although he may be a few treats short of a box, he was quick enough to learn bad habits from the other dogs, like how to jump up on furniture and how to rob from the trash.  Also, he does not like visitors to IDF and will startle them with scared high-pitched yips most unexpected from such a Rottweiler-looking dog. He is a nudist who cannot keep his collar on, perhaps because his neck is so much wider than his head.  (Ace is also sartorially impaired -- he can't put his ears on straight.)

Mostly, however, Rufus is just a good-natured dolt, sweet and low-maintenance, fond of order and routine.   He actually believes I am the Alpha dog and he won't go through the front door unless I go first.  And he has a happy tail.  The stirring of the household in the morning, the anticipation of dinner, the mere sight of Craig, makes his tail go thumpa-thumpa-thump-thump like the Maxwell House percolator or a jungle drum announcing good things to come.

So these are the dogs of Itchy Dog Farm.  I'd like to hear about your dogs if you'd like to tell me.

Rats

Cats should be kept indoors.  All felines are obligate hunters and cats will hunt even when they are not hungry.  With apologies to Geico, hunting is what they do.  An article in Nature Communications estimates that in the U.S. free-roaming domestic cats kill a minimum of 1.3 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals a year, with a possible maximum more than three times that high. Overall the scourge of wildlife, the domestic cat is the largest single anthropogenic threat to birds and mammals, killing more than cars, poisons, wind turbines and any other human-created dangers.   In Florida, domestic cats are known to prey on at least a dozen endangered species, including the rice rat, Key Largo cotton mouse, green sea turtle, roseate tern and Florida scrub-jay.

Vernon. Photo by Craig Walters.

That said, we have four indoor-outdoor cats here at Itchy Dog Farm.  With our doors wide open most of the year, dogs, cats and chickens wander in and out at will.  We're lucky the pony is gated in the pasture.  Happily only one of our cats can hunt his way out of a paper bag, and even more happily, he has no interest in feathered things.  Vernon is an orange tabby, a rectangular cat, long and lean and big-headed. No fluffy furball,  he spends most of his day perched on the highest platform of the cat tree looking down on his kingdom.  At night he is the slayer of rodents.  We know, because he brings them home and leaves their parts in the bathtub.

Pocket gopher.  Photo by Wayne Lynch.

Most commonly Vernon delivers rat parts.  Rats are attracted to the chicken palace by spilled feed and scratch and are probably easy targets.  I admit I am not fond of rats and the more I find in the bathtub the happier I am.  Occasionally he brings us a mole or a pocket gopher.  Pocket gophers are ugly little critters with huge orange teeth out of a sci fi movie and long claws on their paws for digging. They spend most of their lives underground, making tunnels that mess up your yard and are a hazard in the pasture.  As they dig, they push soil out of the tunnel to create mounds of loose dirt, the tell-tale sign of resident pocket gophers.  You see them all over Alachua County.

Despite my lack of love for vermin, I like giant rodents as much as anyone.  I really wanted there to be a giant rat of Sumatra and was disappointed to learn the largest Indonesian rat, the mountain giant Sunda rat, only averages a pound.  Chinese bamboo rats are more like it.  They grow 20 inches long and when fattened for market can weigh up to 9 pounds.  (Fun fact: rat meat costs twice as much as beef in China.)  The Gambian pouched rat, wide-spread in sub-Saharan Africa, averages only about 3 pounds but can grow as large as the bamboo rat. Two interesting things about Gambian pouched rats: they can be trained to detect land mines, and they can be found in Florida (of course).

If something is weird and invasive, chances are good that sooner or later it will end up breeding in Florida.  Gambian pouched rats were brought to the Florida Keys by a captive breeder. Eight escaped and established a colony on Grassy Key.  Authorities haven't been able to exterminate them and it is feared they will reach the mainland and wreak havoc with native ecosystems.

Capybara.

My own county is home to a colony of about 60 wild capybara, believed to have originated when the rodents escaped from a research facility near Gainesville.  A pair of juveniles also escaped from the Jacksonville Zoo in 2001 and so far as we know are still on the lam.  Capybara are right out of Monty Python -- they look like 100 pound guinea pigs.  They are semi-aquatic, breed only in water, and are native to South America, where they are raised for food.  Their extinct ancestor, Neochoerus, roamed Florida in the Pleistocene.  Very similar to today's capys, they grew up to 250 pounds.

The largest rodent ever was Josephoartigasia monesi who lived from 4 to 2 million years ago.  These guys were to capybara what capys are to guinea pigs.  They weighed a ton, were as big as buffalo, and had enormous incisors they used like elephant tusks.  Josephoartigasia was a successful wetland herbivore who probably succumbed to climate change. If they existed today they would no doubt be breeding in Florida.

Tales of Valor

My friend Pat Fitzpatrick died this week.  Pat was a devout Catholic and the most pro-life person I ever knew.  He did not manifest this by picketing Planned Parenthood, but by fighting against the death penalty, organizing exploited Immokalee farm workers, and extending a helping hand to anyone who needed one, friend and stranger alike.  Over the last dozen or so years he became increasingly involved with the homeless.  He co-founded the Home Van, a kind of mobile soup kitchen that went out to the tent cities with bottled water and peanut butter sandwiches.  He fought an arbitrary daily limit on the number of meals that the downtown homeless shelter was allowed to provide, making his slogan FEED EVERY ONE the rallying cry of a coalition of activists.   Economically challenged himself, he was generous to a fault.  As one friend said, if you asked him for a dime he would give you a quarter, unless he didn't have a quarter and then he'd let you crash at his apartment.

Pat was outrageous, profane, and laugh-out-loud funny.  He was fearless, self-deprecating, and totally committed to simple humanity.  Not surprisingly, he and my sister were BFF and sat together at every Gator baseball home game for years.  Some UF film students made a documentary about his battle to end the meal limit.  Civil Indigent is a great piece of work, side-splitting and infuriating at the same time.  You can watch it online and if you pay close attention you might identify a younger me in a drive-by cameo.

Pat was widely known and widely loved.  Hundreds here will mourn his passing and celebrate his life.  He wasn't a saint, but he was a hero.  Thinking about him the last few days has reminded me of other people I know who have also been heroic, maybe not in every aspect of their lives like Pat, but in significant acts of courage or giving.

I volunteer with several groups concerned with animal welfare.  My main commitment is to St. Francis Pet Care which provides free primary veterinary care to pets of homeless and low income people.  We run a licensed clinic open every Tuesday morning, where we also distribute free pet food and flea and heartworm preventives. It is first-come, first-served, and if you want your pet to be seen by a volunteer veterinarian you can easily wait outside for two or three hours.  Many of our clients come regularly and we know them pretty well.

Some people believe that if you can't afford to take care of an animal, you shouldn't have one.  To me that's a little like saying if you can't afford food you shouldn't eat, but I won't argue.  The fact is that many people who can't afford pets do have them, and to some of these people their dog or cat is all they have.  Maybe their dog is their protector and keeps them warm at night.  Maybe the cat is the only living thing they can relate to.  Maybe they're jerks, scamming the social welfare system and collecting strays.  We treat them all.

One Tuesday about a month ago, a male client came in with his ailing pit mix.  Since he has no transportation and the bus system won't take pets too large to carry in a crate, he put the dog in a shopping cart and pushed him all the way to Clinic.  It was hot, maybe in the mid-90s, and both client and patient arrived thirsty and over-heated.  We gave them water and shade, and after a vet saw the dog another volunteer gave them a ride home.  When she returned she reported that they lived with a group of tent campers a good five miles away.  Only a lunatic would walk five unshaded miles in Florida in July -- a lunatic or some kind of quiet hero.

A homeless client has the ugliest dog I've ever seen, a sweet Rottie mix with an underbite that would make a crocodile jealous.  This woman has had the dog since it was a puppy and has taken fabulous care of it for five or six years.  This spring she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer and had to undergo major surgery and radiation.  We arranged to board the dog for a month while the client was in hospital and rehab, then got to witness a joyful reunion.  But when our client began her regimen of chemo, she weekly walked miles from her tent to the treatment center and back.  In Florida, in summer.  This woman never, ever once complained or asked for help.  While all this was going on, the dog developed an abscess in her throat, and St Francis Pet Care paid to have it examined by a private veterinarian.  Our client jumped through hoops to arrange transportation to and from the vet for her dog, but never mentioned that she herself was walking to chemo and back to her tent the same day.

We have clients we have helped to get into subsidized housing, pets we've re-homed, and pets we've fostered while the owners were incarcerated or in rehab.  One of our clients is a lovely, lively, elderly, disabled lady who lives in a house she inherited from her parents but cannot maintain.  A couple of weeks ago some vets and other clinic volunteers went to her home and pulled up an old, stained, disgustingly awful living room carpet to reveal a decent terrazzo floor underneath.  The room is lighter, brighter, more sanitary and easier to clean, and the client could not be happier.

Most of our clients have bad teeth, but one of them has the worst mouth I've ever seen.  She is homeless and has the intellect of a child, but was unable to navigate the system to get on Disability.  The State of Florida insisted she testify to her status in person in court in Jacksonville, without advising how an intellectually challenged homeless woman in Gainesville lacking public or private transportation would be able to accomplish this.  A clinic volunteer filled out the paperwork, drove the client to Jax and back, arranged a dental appointment, and drove her to the dentist who pulled every tooth in her upper jaw.  The woman came to Clinic last Tuesday displaying her stitches and grinning like the Cheshire cat.  In time she will get a set of uppers and be able to eat solid food.

Who are the heroes here, the clients or the volunteers?  It's a stupid question -- obviously both.  The clients make the best of the hands they've been dealt and put the welfare of the pets they love above their own.  Our volunteers balance the pain and frustration of all the sad cases they can not help by giving more of themselves to the cases where they can make a difference.

Pat Fitzpatrick, rest in peace.

Sturgeon General

July is not a good month for gardening in North Central Florida.  Tomatoes and cucumbers stop producing in the heat.  Okra and eggplant will do all right if you water every day, but everything else wilts, yellows and curls.  At Farmers Market, booths sell bread, pastured beef, free range eggs, honey, jams and jewelry -- everything except vegetables.  It's too early to start planting the fall garden, which is fine because you don't want to be outside anyway.

Meteorologists can go on vacation because there is only one forecast:  heat index above 100 degrees, impossible humidity, and scattered thunderstorms in late afternoon and evening. In town, the afternoon downpour is anything but a relief, as the rain turns to steam as soon as it hits pavement, creating a city-wide sauna. Here at Itchy Dog Farm we welcome every drop, but too often the storm is just south or west of us, and all we get are dry thunder and lightning.  It is a harrowing time for the dogs, who all have some degree of storm anxiety.  Ace is the most severely affected, requiring a Thundershirt, a pheromone collar, a dose of Rescue Remedy and 4 grams of Clonazepam to survive each evening.

The north central part of the state is the only area of Florida an hour from either coast, and we have no sea breeze.  July is not a good month for yard work.  It is not a good time to paddle, fish, birdwatch or hike. What North Floridians do in July is take to the rivers in boats.  Put a motor on anything that floats and you can generate your own breeze on the stillest of days.  Dad grabs a six-pack, mom gathers grandma and the kids, and everyone heads for the boat launch.  The beautiful and normally peaceful Suwannee and Santa Fe rivers roar with motion.

The downside of this is death by sturgeon.  Approximately 9000 Gulf sturgeon return from marine waters to spawn in the Suwannee River each year between spring and fall.  And they leap.  In July and August these giant (up to 8 foot long and 200 pound) fish can jump up to 6 feet in the air before crashing back into the water. Nobody really knows why.  Some scientists think they use their jumping sounds as a form of communication with other sturgeons.  Others believe jumping equalizes pressure in the swim bladder. Other hypotheses are that jumping helps shed parasites, elude predators, or plays a role in courtship.  All we know is that in mid-summer, especially at dawn and dusk, Suwannee River sturgeon fly out of the water like Polaris missiles.  If you are in a boat speeding toward a jumping sturgeon, you are in serious trouble.

Earlier this month a 5 year old girl was killed on the Suwannee when a sturgeon collided with her family's boat, also injuring her mother and 9 year old brother.  This week two adults were hospitalized from crashing into sturgeon.  Four other adults have been reported injured this month.  Collisions with flying sturgeon can be avoided, or at least the damage can be minimized, by traveling slowly in danger areas, but for some reason Florida motor boaters believe that speeding down the river is their constitutional right.  Damn the Gulf sturgeons, full speed ahead.

It is not the sturgeon's fault:  he is only doing what sturgeons do and have presumably done for millennia.  Sturgeon are among the most ancient of fishes, dating from the late Triassic about 200 million years ago, and they have undergone remarkably little morphological change since.  They are boneless apart from rows of hard bony plates called "scutes" that line their backs. They are bottom feeders with protusible mouths that let them vacuum up mollusks, worms, crustaceans and brachiopods from the sediment.  Sturgeon flesh is edible, but sturgeon roe is prized.  The term "caviar" specifically refers to the roe of a different species of wild sturgeon from the Caspian and Black Seas, but roe from Gulf sturgeon is popular enough to have caused a marked decline in the wild population due to overfishing.  Unfished, a sturgeon can easily live for 25 years, unless, of course, it collides with a North Floridian in a motorboat.

Craig and I have kayaks and a canoe, but nothing with a motor.  We stay out of the rivers in July.  In fact, we mostly stay in the house in July.  It is a very good month for reading.

Listen to the Mockingbird

Alachua County is a great place for birdwatchers. We're blessed with a varied habitat that includes piney flatwoods, hardwood forests, sandhills, freshwater marshes, farm land and 3 large lakes. At Paynes Prairie, a large savannah just south of Gainesville, 270 species of birds have been recorded. During the fall migration season at least 150 species come to visit and about 100 of them stay for the winter. A smaller migration in the spring brings us more transients and neo-tropicals that stay for the summer to breed. By June the transients have all gone on their ways, while the residents settle down to raise their families.

At Itchy Dog Farm right now we have a lot of birds, but not so many species. We have pileated woodpeckers in our pine trees, hummingbirds and cardinals in the yard, and a red-shouldered hawk keeping an eye on the pasture. Most common by far is the Northern Mockingbird, a year-round resident. In fact, they're so common, we almost don't notice them, despite their beautiful songs. We mostly notice them when we're birding and think we've sighted something interesting and it turns out to be only a mocker, oh well.

But we really shouldn't take them for granted. Mockers have beautiful voices and will sing for hours on end. They are so good at mimicking other birds' songs they can easily confuse a novice birder like me. Their scientific name, Mimus polyglottos, means "many tongued mimic." The male can sing as many as 200 different songs and will continue to learn new ones throughout his life. It stands to reason that the parent in the classic lullaby hopes a mockingbird will sing the baby to sleep:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Pappa's going to buy you a mockingbird 

Mockingbirds don't just imitate the songs of other bird species, but can pretty much mimic whatever they hear, including the sounds of humans, frogs, dogs, cell phones and even chain saws. A video on YouTube records a mockingbird mimicking a car alarm. In Hopi and Pueblo Indian creation myths, it is Mockingbird who first gave speech to humans.

Unfortunately, if you are a bird it does not behoove you to be too special. Passenger pigeons were plentiful and plump, and we ate them to extinction. Florida herons and egrets were slaughtered by the millions for the plume trade before obtaining federal protection in the early 20th century. Mocker populations were decimated near urban centers because of the Victorian passion for caging songbirds. Of course, those were the days before records and radio, when if you wanted a little music in your life you either had to teach your daughters to play the piano or hang a birdcage in your parlor. And the trend had an upside -- ornithologists believe mockingbird populations in the northwestern U.S., Hawaii and Canada originated from the release of caged birds.

Another distinction of mockers is that they are fearless. Mockingbirds are intensely territorial, and will chase away birds, dogs, cats, and any other living things they perceive as a threat.. It isn't unusual for us to see mockers chasing away crows twice their size, or harassing our resident hawk. Also like crows, they can recognize and remember individual people, and they do hold a grudge. A study at the University of Florida showed the birds could recognize and remember specific humans after only a minute of exposure. It would take way longer than that for me to recognize a particular mockingbird.

Despite the fact that they are found in all U.S. states including Hawaii and Alaska, Northern Mockingbirds are southern birds. They are the state bird of Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, and until 1948, of South Carolina. The proclamation establishing the state bird of Texas declares the mocker "...is a singer of distinctive type, a fighter for the protection of his home, falling if need be, in its defense, like any true Texan". In To Kill a Mockingbird, the quintessential southern novel, the mockingbird is the symbol of innocence. The children are advised they can shoot as many tin cans and as blue jays as they can hit, but never hurt mockingbirds because they only sing and give pleasure to people. The Civil War ballad Listen to the Mockingbird evokes all the pathos of Walter Whitman's poems in far fewer words, as the dead woman's lover mourns the loss of his sweetheart:

Listen to the Mockingbird, listen to the Mockingbird
Oh the Mockingbird is singing oe'er her grave

Eminem's 2005 hit Mockingbird manages to evoke both the innocence of the lullaby and the sad experience of grieving for lost innocence in a single song, not bad for a Missouri boy.

Well, enough of all this. Mockers can't help the emotional baggage we pile upon them any more than they could have prevented 19th century urbanites from kidnapping their fledglings to sing in gilded cages. But they rule the roost at Itchy Dog Farm, and I'm glad they do.

* Photograph by Craig Walters, Avian Photographer Extraordinaire

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To Beef or Not To Beef

When I married a carnivore, we made a compromise.  We won't have meat when I'm  home, but he can consume all he wants when home alone or eating out.  I only ask that he please stick to beef rather than poultry or pork.  This surprises people.  Beef is the current protein non grata, both for health and environmental reasons.  But my personal concern is animal welfare.  Factory farmed chickens, turkeys and pigs will spend their entire lives in misery.  The beef cow at least spends the first nine or so months of his life grazing on grass under the open sky before being shipped off to the feedlot and the slaughterhouse.  And grass fed, organically raised beef cattle can have a pretty good life right up to the last day.

Cows on Williston Road

On the route from Itchy Dog Farm to town I pass miles of open pastureland before hitting the highway interchange, strip mall and traffic hell.  Right now the pastures are dotted with mama cows and their calves.  Earlier this spring the babies were nursing but now you see them grazing yards from their mothers and paying them no mind.  It's a beautiful sight, and I've often wondered if those pastures would be housing developments if they had no value for grazing.  Half of the agricultural land in Florida is used for beef production, but we're a "cow-calf" state -- our primary product is calves which are shipped to other states for finishing.

Earth Day last month was tough on beef.  I saw any number of posters riffing on Tim Benton's famous quote: “The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat.” Experts say beef production requires excessive amounts of water, emits large amounts of greenhouse gas, and uses land that could feed 10 million people if planted in staples.

But like most people I want to believe what I want to believe. I'm not grilling burgers on Memorial Day, I just want to enjoy the sight of these huge animals munching peacefully by the road.  There must be facts out there to support me.  I open a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations open in one tab (1) and a National Geographic article (2) in another.  And away we go.

Land degradation.  More than a quarter of the planet's ice-free land is used for grazing livestock, and a third of agricultural land is used for feed.  Grazing degrades the environment and decreases biodiversity.  This is bad.  But in the United States we're not razing rain forests to raise cattle. Most land used for beef cattle in the U.S. is unsuitable for farming, and converting grazing land to agriculture creates a different set of ills from erosion to fertilizer runoff.   Not to mention, sustainable farming of grass fed (pastured) beef actually improves the grassland.

Water depletion.  This one I know already.  In the county next to ours, a cattle ranch owned by Canadian billionaires wants to draw 1.2 million gallons a day from an already threatened aquifer, jeopardizing nearby Silver Springs and Salt Springs.  The planned 9,500 head of cattle will also produce 158 million pounds of manure and 11 million gallons of urine a year, polluting both ground and surface water.  Ugh.  But this is a factory farm, or as is known in the biz, a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation).  Pastured systems have significantly less impact on water resources.

Pollution.  Apart from animal waste, the largest source of pollution is the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow feed for CAFO cattle.  But in the U.S., beef cattle consume only about 10% of available grain, way less than the 36% used for ethanol production.  And if the grain wasn't being used for feed, it would surely be used for something else, so even if all beef cows were raptured tomorrow it's unlikely fertilizer use would go down.  And again, pastured beef is not fed grain by definition.

Climate change.  Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although it does not live in the atmosphere as long.  Cows belch methane, and apparently quite a lot of it.  The FAO estimated that beef production is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Here CAFOs have the edge, because pastured cows emit more methane than grain-fed.  But well managed pastureland sequesters carbon, and the overall effect of pastured beef on the atmosphere may be positive.

Health.  Remember "Sleeper"?  In Woody Allen's classic 1973 film the protagonist wakes up 200 years in the future to find that steak and hot fudge are health foods.  Nutritional advice is constantly changing, but overall it seems like a little bit of anything on occasion is good for you while a lot of it all the time is bad.  While the Paleos and Ornishers duke it out, we could spend a moment worrying about antibiotic and hormone use in food animals.  Antibiotics given to CAFO cattle to keep them from getting sick on feed that ruminants are not designed to digest is probably contributing to increasing drug-resistant infections in humans.  Unfortunately, abstaining from CAFO beef yourself won't protect you; once superbugs develop, they're out there looking for you.

By now, I've almost forgotten the question. It's clear the equation is different locally and globally.  It's different if I'm comparing the effects of the beef industry to the poultry and pork industries or to crop-based ways of producing the same number of calories.  It's different for pastured and CAFO beef.  I almost wish I could ask a cow: are you happy being out there in the sunshine, even knowing what's likely to come?  But the cow doesn't know, and come to think of it, neither do we.

(1) Livestock's Long Shadow. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

(2) Carnivore's Dilemma. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/meat/

Abby

My sister Abby was the center of the known universe for eight good years before I came along and ruined everything.  She could not hide her black-hot hatred.  My parents kept my crib in their bedroom for a year because they thought she might try to smother me in the night.  Family lore has it that she broke my arm twice in failed attempts to do me in.  As I grew older and harder to damage, she alternately ignored my existence and tormented me without mercy.  Despite everything, I worshiped her like a god.  She was the smartest person I knew. She painted her room orange and wore nothing but black for two years.  She stood up to our father.

We shared what we considered an abusive childhood, although much later when I became a foster parent I realized it didn't come close.  Our father was a tin-pot dictator; an angry, bitter man who was only happy when denigrating someone else.  Our mother was a saint when she was sober.  Abby and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the house, but she was older and had more means at her disposal.  She tried to move in with friends, sleeping in bedroom closets so parents wouldn't know.  She tried to run away, once making it all the way to New York City.  When I was eight years old she figured it out.  My 16 year-old sister, her 18-year-old husband and their infant son moved into a one-bedroom apartment of their own.

Overnight the sister who couldn't stand me became my protector and constant companion.  She'd escaped from the house and was determined to spring me as well.  She let me stay overnight whenever I was allowed to, first in that tiny apartment and and ultimately in a mortgaged split-level ranch in a spanking new 1960s subdivision.   We called ourselves the BLEESTER SEESTERS and sang Wobbly anthems, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and Old Testament gospel at the top of our lungs.  We memorized Woody Allen and Jonathan Winter comedy albums.  We took car trips to parks and beaches with the baby in a laundry basket in the back of the Rambler station wagon.  We were mesmerized by the Buckley-Gore debates and could recreate every one, each of us playing either part.

Having an older sibling was invaluable -- she introduced me to Bob Dylan and pop art, explained Civil Rights and Freedom Summer, shared her cigarettes and joints and horrible 16 mm pornography.  When I went away to college, I did my best to return the favors.  For the first time my world was larger than hers, and I tried hard to bring it all back home.  I found anarchist professors, Marxist authors, student activists and libertarian economists and laid them on her doorstep like a cat leaving mouse parts on the pillow.

I never loved anyone as much or felt as special.  We called ourselves a gestalt -- not sisters or best friends but different parts of a single being.  But time moves on, decades pass, things change. In retrospect I can see we were once so close because we came from a small family in a tiny town and had a common enemy.  In time we both escaped, divorcing the past, acquiring husbands and lovers and children and friends and interests and experiences we couldn't share.  Over the next 40 years there were times when we felt as close as teenagers, times that were strained, and times when we were hardly in touch at all.

If Abby had found time to write her memoirs, I think they would have started after she moved to Gainesville and found her own real self.  She discovered her own voice and her own passions.  She raised five remarkable sons and daughters and married the love of her life.  She did not just rage against injustice and inequality, she fought it tooth and nail.  She lived more fully than anyone I've ever known, loved her family and friends as fiercely as anyone ever did, and never for a single moment looked back.  I needed to take this moment to look back, and now I'll try to move on.

Abby Goldsmith, 7/21/1945 - 4/27/2015.