Panhandle Perspectives: What's All That Noise?

Recently I attended a high school football game just a few blocks from that community's local cattle auction. As I watched the players warming up, I hardly noticed the bawling noises made by the calves who had been delivered earlier that day in preparation for the big sale the next day.

A group of parents soon asked me, "What's all that noise? What's going on? Why are those calves bawling? What's wrong with them?" Like many people who work in agriculture, I forgot that even though we might live in western Nebraska, as rural as it gets, not everyone is from an agriculture background and underst...