Enduring pain and pessimism, cattle farmers are passing through a second summer of discontent, while clinging to renewed hope of an open U.S. border to live Canadian cattle.

The U.S. government is now considering opening its border to allow replacement heifers to travel across U.S. soil on transit to Mexico.

Mexico is the world’s second largest importer of U.S. beef and has suspended live U.S. cattle from entering Mexico.

Trujillo said that Mexico is "in a hurry because it has been a year without replacements from Canada and the dairy cattle gene pool in Mexico has come mainly from Canada for many years."

If that fails, the U.S. Department of Agriculture could still call for an open border to live Canadian cattle before Christmas.

"If nothing goes wrong politically —and R-Calf doesn’t get another injunction — the border should be open by the fall," said John Newman. "Do we know that? No."

Meantime, Greely farmer Gordon Quaile has about 100 of the 130 dairy replacement heifers he would like to be rid of since he’s losing $1,000 to $1,500 to per animal, he said. "If the border doesn’t open there will be no cattle here this winter."

He paid $1,000 to $1,400 for each animal in hopes of selling them for up to $2,500 "without any trouble," he said, adding the price today for Spring first calf heifers is $400 to $700.

One of the worst hit by the closed U.S. border is Ron Ralph, near Kemptville, who has been known to hold 1,000 to 1,500 dairy replacements at one time. If he were to have 1,000 animals now he would be looking at losses of $1 million. Thirty countries, including the United States, closed their borders to Canadian beef on May 20, 2003, when a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in an Alberta cow. One BSE cow was discovered on a Washington state farm last December.

Anything can happen between now and fall, including more cases of BSE and political intervention. A possible new case of BSE is being investigated in the United States. And Montana cattlemen R-CALF have already capitalized on a closed border by force of a court injunction to prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture from fast-tracking the latest process to open the border. R-CALF represents 9,000 cattle growers in the United States.

Further to that, the radical American cattlemen have sought the help of some of the strangest of groups, including the propaganda-driven People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"It would appear that they (R-CALF) are going down the wrong route," Newman said. "They enlisted PETA and an American consumer group."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture stand since April has been to review the more than 1,000 public comments submitted on the proposal to re-open the U.S. border to live Canadian cattle before a decision is made.