Dairies, don’t let your babies grow up in enclosures.

That's the song Willie Nelson was singing this week, as he offered his country-western music stardom as aid to an animal-rights group that has condemned the practices of a central San Joaquin Valley dairy calf ranch.

The Cotati-based Animal Legal Defense Fund brought Nelson aboard this week as part of its years-long, and so far unsuccessful challenge against the Tipton-based Mendes Calf Ranch. In June 2006, the Cotati-based animal rights group sued the ranch, saying the calves it raises and sells to dairies are kept in enclosures too small to move around in without pain and suffering.

See the video from the group at its Web site. To read more click the link below.

A Tulare County Superior Court judge disagreed, dismissing the lawsuit, and California’s 5th District Court of Appeal ruled against the group’s appeal in February. The ranch maintains it treats its calves humanely, and university and state dairy experts say the calves there are treated in accordance with industry standards.

Now the Animal Legal Defense Fund is appealing the case to the California Supreme Court — but they’re not waiting for the outcome to make their case to the public. The group's Web site has video purporting to show inhumane conditions at the ranch, and it has gathered the signatures of about 22,000 people in support of its a campaign to pressure the ranch's customers, including St. Paul, Minn.-based Land O’Lakes Inc. and Dublin, Calif.-based Challenge Dairy Products Inc.

Enter Willie Nelson. The biodiesel-burning, hemp-boosting singer-songwriter put his name to a letter sent this week to Chris Policinski, Land O'Lakes president, asking him to “insist that your suppliers end this cruel confinement practice immediately.”

“As a cowboy, I must stand up for cows,” the 75-year-old Nelson wrote. But the artist, who co-launched the first Farm-Aid concert in 1985 to raise awareness about the loss of family farms in America, also made a humanistic argument against Mendes’ alleged inhumane practices.

“It’s a tragedy to see the small-town farmer, who cared deeply for his backyard animals, is rapidly being edged out by huge facilities that look more like factories than farms -- and treat animals no better than machines,” Nelson wrote.