Dan and Ty Byrd, Byrd Cattle Co., Red Bluff, Calif., say that the best grazing land in the United States comes with its own set of challenges. From the state’s political climate to other land uses threatening to shrink their customer base, they know providing good genetics is only half of the strategy to getting repeat customers. They’re active in marketing customer calves, too.

The father-son duo shares their experience in growing from a show cattle project to selling commercial bulls in an operation that now also includes female and embryo sales. Tune in to hear about everything from where they were on 9/11 to how the work gets done on their multigenerational ranch.

HOSTS: Mark McCully and Miranda Reiman 

GUESTS: The father-son combo of Dan and Ty Byrd raise 350 registered Angus bulls in north-central California near the town of Red Bluff. Their customers are primarily commercial cow-calf producers in the Western states.  

Dan and his wife, Chris, started the cattle operation decades ago. Their children Ty and Brooke were active in the National Junior Angus Association, showing across the country. Ty came back to the family ranch following a short stint in private industry out of college, and they changed up the business model to focus on selling bulls. Today, he and his wife are raising two children on the ranch. They host an annual bull sale in the spring and a female sale in the fall, and have added embryo sales in recent years.  

Don't miss news in the Angus breed. Subscribe to the AJ Daily e-newsletter and our monthly magazine, the Angus Journal.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:03):

Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Reiman with my co-host, Mark McCully. And good morning, Mark.

Mark McCully (00:00:10):

Good morning. Yeah, you say good morning because it's usually evening a lot of times when we're recording.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:15):

So I was going to say we're maybe off our game just a little bit because we were catching some folks out on the West coast, and so we recorded this in the morning to get to them before they headed out for chores for the day. Yeah.

Mark McCully (00:00:29):

Well, different time of the day for us, but it was a great conversation that we had with Dan and Ty Byrd, Byrd Cattle Company out in Red Bluff, California. And I think one of the things that was fun, we got into hearing, I'm an Illinois person, you're a Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska. We've all lived in kind of this Midwest area. When you get out and thinking about California is one of those states, for me that is such a diverse state. Agriculture is huge, but the type of agriculture is quite diverse. And then of course, we all understand some of the political challenges within that state, and so love the fact that we got to talk to some of our members that are out and thriving and growing in spite of at times some of the challenges that they're dealing with, but really got an insight into the Byrds and how they're looking at how Ty's is the next generation coming back, and even how they're thinking about bringing another generation back to their operation.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:35):

And I would definitely say that even though there is diversity in climate and talking about the customers that they're selling to and some of that, I also heard a lot of commonalities in things that breeders this is going to be applicable to breeders across the United States.

Mark McCully (00:01:51):

Absolutely. I think, again, just breeding philosophy on the kind of cattle and how they're, we talked about what their customers need versus what their customers want, just kind of how they're using all the tools and a little bit about marketing, and then we've got some good stories that I think will be a lot of fun for our listeners to hear too.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:10):

Yeah. Anybody who has thought that they know right where they were when 9/11 happens, you're going to want to listen to this one.

Mark McCully (00:02:16):

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty amazing.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:18):

We will give you fair warning that this episode had a few technical glitches there in the beginning. I think we got it solved as we went on. So please don't turn it off if you think it's your AM radio giving you a little bit of static. It will get better as the episode goes along.

(00:02:36):

So today on the podcast, we have Dan and Ty Byrd from Byrd Cattle Company at Red Bluff, California, another father son combo. And why don't you guys just start off by telling us a little bit about your family and your history in the Angus breed?

Dan Byrd (00:02:50):

Well, I can start off with that. I was born and raised in the northwest in eastern Washington on a grain and livestock area operation. Went to school. At that time we didn't have kindergarten, so I was in a one room school, grades one through eight, graduated from high school in a class of seven. And as a side note, one of the seven of us ended up being one of the hostages in Iran that Ronald Reagan brought home the first day that he was in office as president. Went to Cal Poly to rodeo and be on the livestock judging team. Worked summers for Moon Acres Angus at Connell Washington. That was Chet and Ruth Moon and Mark, I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Ermiters, those little guys, they were cute to look at, but we drug them all around the northwest and into Canada and were very successful. And again, that was in summer vacations while I was at Cal Poly. Met my wife down there. We got married in 1970, so this year, the day before our bull sale, we will have been married 54 years.

Miranda Reiman (00:04:18):

Congratulations.

Dan Byrd (00:04:20):

Got our son, Ty daughter Brooke that works for the California Medical Association that was at the Journal for a couple years out of college. Again, I went to Poly to Rodeo and be on the livestock judging team about the second week of school in my third year there, a guy named Tom Burke called the Animal Science Department, and he was managing a sale in northern California. He needed some help. So four of us guys ran up to Healdsburg, to Fred MacMurray. He was a big time actor, TV movies. He was dispersing his Angus herd, and that was my first real introduction to Tom and Angus leadership. We worked with Tom quite a little bit at various sales after that, and I'm not very good at dates, but I will never forget that that sale of Fred MacMurray's was on my first wedding anniversary. And the other guys and I were on our way back to Cal Poly. And it dawned on me, I hadn't gotten my wife anything for our anniversary. So we wheeled into a store. We were living on one of the schools ranches in a single wide mobile home, and we didn't have much. And we whipped into this store and I bought a clothes hamper and a set of scales for my wife,

Miranda Reiman (00:05:59):

And she still kept you?

Dan Byrd (00:06:01):

She didn't like that near as much as I thought it was helpful to us. But at any rate, we'll celebrate 54 years this fall, and it's been a great marriage. And two great kids and four awesome grandkids. My wife and I were hired to manage this ranch. It was Burton Island Meadow. It was the Corvallis, Oregon. We were buying a lot of cattle from Fairview Ranch in Big Timber, Montana at the time, and showed around the northwest and into Canada again. And my wife was teaching elementary school, and she came home one day and said, one of the dads of one of my students says, the farm credit system is hiring. Would you be interested in going to work for him? And I didn't even know what the farm credit system was at the time. So I visited with him one evening and ended up flying to Spokane and interviewing for a job with Farm Credit.

(00:07:05):

Landed the job and had a 25 year excellent experience in the ag lending. And he kept telling me, you guys need to start your own cow herd. So I flew to one Vermilion's mature cow herd dispersal sales in Billings, and that would've been 49 years ago. And we bought five bred cows, and that was the start of our cow herd. And things happen in a funny way. Ty was showing at the California State Fair when he was just a little guy and he had the champion Angus heifer there. Scott Shockey from Kansas State was the judge. When he was all done, he handed Ty a business card and he said, here, call this guy. He might be able to use part of your heifer. We went home, never thought about it. About a week later, the phone rang at night. It was a guy named Jack Ward.

(00:08:02):

Well, of course Mark, he's your counterpart at the Hereford Association now. They ended up buying part of this heifer that Ty had shown and showed her around very successfully in the west. We can't grow hair on sale bulls in the wintertime. It's too warm here. So Jack and Maryann ended up taking our Denver sale bulls for several years, and we also used to sell at the California Angus Day Sale in December each year. And there was a young couple that bought our consignments almost every year, and they called one day and said, we'd like to put one in the Angus Day sale. Would you help us pick one out? So the next time I was in the area, I did, and we're going through these cattle, this little heifer calf gets, and I said, whoa, we don't need to go any further. And they put this heifer calf in the sale, and it was our daughter Brooke's 11th birthday, and we bought that heifer for 2300 bucks for Brooke, and we brought her home.

(00:09:12):

Three days later, she come into heat the only low birth semen we had in the tank was Paramount Ambush, and we mated her to ambush. And that resulting calf was a bull called BCC Bush Whacker 41-93. And that bull ended up being one of the high registration sires in the breed year after year after year. And I don't tell a lot of people about this. We ended up selling him in the Denver sale. He topped that sale to a group out of the East coast and Genex ended up leasing, and I still have copies of our one third semen interest checks that exceeded 30,000 a quarter back in the late nineties and early two thousands. So he's the one that got us recognized nationally, and it's been uphill from there.

Mark McCully (00:10:09):

That's a great story on Bush Whacker. And I'll be honest, when I think of your program, that's probably the bull that comes to mind and the picture that comes to mind, I would suppose a lot of Angus breeders the same. I actually pulled registrations on Bush Whacker today just to see how big of an influence he has had. You guys want to venture any guesses of how many progeny Bush Whacker 41-93 has in the registry today?

Dan Byrd (00:10:37):

I'd guess 13,000.

Ty Byrd (00:10:40):

I'd have absolutely no clue.

Mark McCully (00:10:43):

Dan, you'd be a little light 17,000 registered progeny in the database. Yeah. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:10:49):

All started as a birthday present.

Dan Byrd (00:10:52):

All started as a birthday present.

Miranda Reiman (00:10:54):

I love that.

Mark McCully (00:10:54):

And out of a state sale. That's pretty cool.

Dan Byrd (00:10:58):

Yep. Another interesting sideline about Bush Whacker and his mother, we ended up selling part of her to Whitestone and to ErReR Hill Farms in Pennsylvania. And on 9/11, that airplane that went down in Pennsylvania flew right over that cow and crashed about 10 miles further over a hill there. But 9/11 was also two days before our first bull sale.

Miranda Reiman (00:11:30):

Oh, wow.

Dan Byrd (00:11:32):

Tom Burke was managing it. I was at a meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the morning of 9/11. There were six of us from the west that were there. We had a rented car, and we went to the airport. One guy had a later flight, he dropped five of us off. We got on the plane, we're pushing back, and the pilot come on and said, there's an emergency. We're going back and you have 10 minutes to exit the airport.

Mark McCully (00:12:01):

Wow.

Dan Byrd (00:12:02):

And again, this is two days before our sale, so we got ahold of the guy who still had the car and asked him to circle back around and pick us up. We didn't know how serious it was. We thought we'll get a train. No way. We thought we'll get a Greyhound bus ride. There was no way there. That left us with the only option of six of us in that car, and heading from Milwaukee to Sacramento, California. And we crossed the country at 90 and 100 miles an hour, very little traffic on the roads. We were always worried about enough fuel to keep us going, and we never let the fuel tank get below half. And I got home at two o'clock in the morning on the day of our sale.

Miranda Reiman (00:12:52):

Holy smoke.

Dan Byrd (00:12:53):

Tom Burke had been in Ontario, Canada. He had driven across Canada and then down through Vancouver and got to our sale site that morning. And of course there were hardly any people there. And it still ended up being one of the best bull sales and female sales we've ever had. We sold full brothers to Bush Whacker full sisters to him. It was an amazing day, and it just all came together and unreal.

Miranda Reiman (00:13:25):

Did you ever consider canceling it in that two day period?

Dan Byrd (00:13:31):

I don't think we did. Did we? Ty,

Ty Byrd (00:13:33):

I don't think we had enough money to think about canceling it

Dan Byrd (00:13:35):

Probably right.

Ty Byrd (00:13:37):

That was our very first sale. We had no idea what we were doing. And you guys probably know Tom well enough to know that in Tom's world, everything's always fine no matter what. It will always be great.

Mark McCully (00:13:49):

It'll be a happy day. Yeah,

Ty Byrd (00:13:51):

Exactly. Exactly. That was well before cell phones. So we didn't even really have much communication with Tom. It was all through a secretary, and she'd just say, yep, Tom will be there. Well, one side note that dad left out of Tom getting here, being in Canada, he couldn't cross the border. Tom rented a boat or paid someone in a boat to go out and across the border and get into the U.S. So in typical Tom style, it'll all be a happy day and it'll all work out, and it worked out remarkably.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:26):

That kind of speaks volumes of dedication of a sale manager right there.

Mark McCully (00:14:31):

No kidding. You think about things today, whether it was during COVID or just even snowstorms, and we think now we appreciate the online options and some of the other technology we have to kind of help us along. But you didn't have that safety net as much at that point in time.

Dan Byrd (00:14:52):

No, we didn't.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:52):

Wow.

Dan Byrd (00:14:53):

Nope. It was unbelievable. We sold cattle all across America and Tom and Denny's homework, and it was just an unbelievable day. It's still one of the three best sales we had, and that was 24 years ago.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:07):

Wow, that's incredible. So talk about, Ty, you were already back obviously at that time, but talk about when you decided to raise Angus cattle, your life's career too. Where'd you come in?

Ty Byrd (00:15:23):

So my story's probably not as exciting as my dad's, and he also put a lot of time and thought into this. And the first difference you'll notice about us or one of the first differences is I have a tendency to wing it. So I just kind of go as I go and take things as they come. But I was very fortunate to grow up and get to show cattle all across the country. Angus cattle, make a lot of lifelong connections. People I still talk to today, people that we might sell cattle to and buy cattle from people that might just still simply show cattle, but I'll run into 'em. For instance, back at the National Junior Angus Show in July, I hadn't been to one of those in, I don't know, 20 plus years, maybe longer than that, my son, Jayden, that was in the auctioneering contest.

(00:16:15):

Jayden didn't know hardly anybody. He knew a handful of the California kids because one unique thing, and I don't want to get too sidetracked, but my kids work cattle almost every day of their life or many, many, many days of their life. So when they get to show and play on the weekends, they show sheep, goats and hogs because they don't want to show Angus cattle. So they go do something different. So my kids know everybody else in all these other worlds, but don't know a lot of kids in the Angus deal. So we go back there, Jayden knows a handful of kids, and it was like a reunion for me. I had the greatest two days. It was just wonderful. So I was fortunate to get to grow up, get to make those friends, get to show cattle all across the country. Ended up going to college at Cal Poly, was on the livestock judging team there.

(00:17:07):

Got to be on a pretty nationally competitive team. Did quite well myself in Louisville at the national contest, a couple other contests. I was awfully awfully close to the top there. Came back, worked for an internet company for about six months out of college at the kind of tech boom as things were starting in the two thousands. And it was crazy good, but there was no plan. And it was for somebody that likes to kind of take things as they come and almost fly by the seat of his pants. It was wild. It was out of control. It was millions of dollars being thrown around from venture capitalists and the company I was working for, I could see the writing on the wall. It wasn't going to work, but the money was still pouring in. And so I got out of there before it crashed and burned horribly and decided, let's make a run at this thing and let's sell some Angus bulls, because we had sold some bulls here and there at consignment sales and things as I was growing up.

(00:18:17):

But the goal at that point in time was kind of show cattle and showing cattle all across the country to get our name out. So we essentially re-racked things and decided we're going to make bulls with the target goal of producing bulls for commercial customers and essentially shifted gears for what our program was. And in so doing then tying into dad's story about Bush Whacker, that really helped us elevate the female portion of things. Our plan wasn't necessarily to sell females, but when you have a bull that takes off like that, it's pretty easy to sell his sisters and market his sisters. And so that jumped us right into the female marketing part of things. And so for the last 24 years, it's been full speed ahead, onward and upward. Obviously some differences here and there. When the Angus birth defect thing first kind of happened, what was that, 2008, 2009, we'd been having female sales right along with the bull sale the whole time.

(00:19:25):

We had the catalog in preparation and nobody really knew what to do because having not been like the dairy industry that was exposed to it, none of us, and when I say none of us, I mean our counterparts across the country didn't know from a liability standpoint where we would all be. So we kind of scrapped the female sale and we were able to sell females privately for such good money that for a long time we never brought the female sale back until the cattle cycle kind of took a nose dive. We started retaining a lot more females, simply got so big that we needed to bring the female sale back. So two and a half years ago was our first female sale in about 10 years.

Mark McCully (00:20:12):

So Ty, could we say that Byrd cattle company today is a bit of a junior project gone crazy?

Ty Byrd (00:20:21):

Absolutely. It's kind of a junior project on steroids essentially. Yeah.

Mark McCully (00:20:27):

That's awesome. So you mentioned Ty, your son is, is it Jayden? Do I have that? So he's the budding auctioneer. Correct. Came out and won the National Junior Angus Show auctioneer competition. So where did he get that bug?

Ty Byrd (00:20:47):

He's been around plenty of sales just from our standpoint, from what we do, I Tivo sales, just essentially my own market research and watch a lot of those sales at nights in the winter. And he would sit there and do that when he was probably two or three. Somebody gave him a sale barn set. A lot of kids that's family is in the cattle business, play with cattle on the floor and build corral systems. I did it. Just have a blast. Well, instead of building corral systems, Jayden would always build this sale barn. And I told him one day, I said, okay, I'll be the sale manager. You sell it. And he says, okay. And just kind of dove in and started from there and really has taken it. And he is a hundred percent self-taught, never been to school, watches videos, watches stuff on TiVo and just goes and no fear. I mean, he does quite a few benefit auctions and things around here. He did one for state assemblyman last Thursday night, 750 people there at that dinner. He just absolutely loves it. Absolutely loves it. Just turned 15

Miranda Reiman (00:22:09):

And even sold an animal in your guys' sale. Is that right?

Ty Byrd (00:22:13):

Yeah.

Mark McCully (00:22:13):

Did Machado give him commission?

Ty Byrd (00:22:17):

Well, you know how auctioneers are.

Miranda Reiman (00:22:20):

That's a no.

Ty Byrd (00:22:22):

We could probably guilt Machado into it, the rest of us maybe not, but he could probably guilt him into it. But he had always said, because he would always play and always sell, and in the shower he'd be selling, I mean from the time he was three, four years old every night. And he would always ask, can I sell a bull in the sale? And I said, sure, you can sell the last bull in the sale. No problem. He'd always be working in the back. And I said, you just let me know because I'd be on the block with Machado and I'd say, you just let me know when you're ready. You just tapped me on the back and jump up there. So it never happened. It never happened. It never happened. About two years ago, we get down to the end of the sale and it's really, really good. And we get down to the last two bulls and Machado says, Hey, let's just let these last two bulls in, we'll let somebody choice 'em. And so I said, okay. So we let these two bulls in and Jayden taps me on the back and says, okay, I'm ready.

(00:23:26):

I said, hold up a second, Rick. Jayden's going to sell these last two bulls. Typical auctioneer happiness, proudness ego, I guess for lack of a better term. Those guys are all pretty proud and rightfully so. Rick says, oh, okay, okay, that'll be great. And you can just tell Rick's thinking, oh boy, this is going to be great. And there's some video of Jayden starting out and Rick's eyes looking at him just looking and looking out and looking back, it's pretty neat.

Mark McCully (00:24:02):

That's cool.

Dan Byrd (00:24:02):

To add to that, there were probably 20 people with cameras at ringside, and when he finished the yelling and screaming, if you had been listening in St. Joe, you could have heard it. It was unbelievable. And this last year, he sold all the commercial females at the end and he'll be working his way in there. He's very, very good and a special young person.

Mark McCully (00:24:31):

That's cool. That's cool. So Dan and Ty, as you guys think about young people and handing over reins, talk about how you bring the tie back into the operation, how you could think about bringing Jayden in your part of the world. And maybe we need to talk about that a little bit here we will in a bit. I mean, how do you guys think about succession planning and making sure there's a next generation? How do you transfer some of that and think about it from just a responsibility and roles and learning?

Dan Byrd (00:25:07):

I would say from our standpoint, it's been pretty darned easy. We have no outside help. It's Ty and I and what are we running, 350 cows, plus or minus? Probably put in 200 embryos a year or more. And it's just the two of us plus the embryologist that comes by occasionally. And I am to a point in my life where I am now, the irrigator and the heat detector and Ty Byrd does the rest of it. And I don't know how he does it. He works all day long from daylight till dark, and then he's on that computer all night making matings and those things. But I think in our situation, it's been very easy and non-confrontational. There's a hole for Jayden and the other kids if they're interested and just kind of a no brainer.

Miranda Reiman (00:26:06):

So is that the goal to graduate up to the irrigator? I didn't realize that was the ...

Dan Byrd (00:26:11):

No, I'm the irrigator and the heat detector. Ty does the rest of it.

Ty Byrd (00:26:17):

I think. Yes. What he means is that is the goal

Miranda Reiman (00:26:20):

Goal. Yeah, that's eventually Ty, you'll say I'm just the irrigator,

Ty Byrd (00:26:24):

Maybe so. But I highly doubt Jayden's coming back here because I think he's got larger aspirations. He's thoughtful enough to know that you might as well not get paid to raise cattle here. You might as well go get 1% of everybody's that you can sell

(00:26:41):

Counts from spot to spot. Jade and I were sitting down getting a hamburger, oh, it's probably been three months ago, and he's just turned 15 here a couple weeks ago. So as most kids do, he is thinking about how he's going to travel and what he's going to do and that kind of thing. And he looks up and he goes, dad, do you know what a jet costs, a six seat jet? And I said, Jayden, I have never thought about it, but I'm glad you're thinking big like that. Most kids are thinking, here's what I'm going to drive, here's what I'm going to do here. His aspirations are a little higher. Sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he's going to come back to Byrd cattle company. He might come back and help occasionally, but I think he'll be in Kentucky one day, Montana the next, and all over the place selling sales.

(00:27:33):

So I highly doubt he's coming back, but I could be wrong. We'd love to have him if he wants to. But that's a good question. And that is tough. And it's especially tough in California because from a ranching standpoint out here, it is harder and harder and harder all the time to find land because of lots of different kinds of development, not just housing development and that kind of thing, but farming development as well as technology gets better and better and better. They can farm in places now that you would never have imagined possible before. And the value of that ground is farm ground is substantially higher than it is as ground to run cows on. So that makes it challenging. It makes it challenging from an expansion standpoint. It makes it a little bit challenging too from a customer base standpoint because it's something that hits all of us.

(00:28:29):

And then when you dive into the availability of help aspect of things too, when dad says he and I do it all, we do have some day help when we put in embryos because those are big days working a lot of cattle. And so we've got one guy that'll come and help us. We've got to bring him from about three hours away. But he's phenomenal help. And you guys had mentioned a little bit about COVID earlier. I think you had Mark, there was a bright spot in COVID in our world because the kids were out of school.

Miranda Reiman (00:29:04):

You had lots of help.

Ty Byrd (00:29:05):

We had a lot of help. So in that year that the big kids especially were a tremendous amount of help, and we paid them just like anybody else that worked here. And they made quite a bit of money the year of COVID and Jayden turned 12 and he goes into the bank to open a bank account and he slaps down $5,000. And the lady looks at him and she looks at me and she said, most kids open a bank account with $25. And he looked up at her and he said, well, I'm not most kids.

Mark McCully (00:29:43):

That's awesome.

Ty Byrd (00:29:45):

Well yeah, it's interesting. The succession thing is, it's a challenge like it is anywhere, but I think we have some unique challenges with it here in California. But like Dad said, if any of them want to come back, they're more than welcome to come back and there will be a spot for 'em.

Mark McCully (00:30:02):

Yeah, that's great.

Dan Byrd (00:30:03):

And Ty talking about some of the obstacles that we face here. Our politics in California are terrible, terrible, terrible. And so many people are moving out and going to Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, friends of ours. And I think it's safe to say, and we haven't talked about it, but I think it's safe to say that if we didn't have the climate that we have here, we'd be gone in a heartbeat. But we're in an area of winter grazing ground. We get early fall rains by Christmas. These foothills on both sides of the valley floor are some of the very best grazing ground in America. We get cattle here in our county from as far away as Billings, Montana, that are dumped out at any time after Thanksgiving and picked up in late May, and they've got big, fat, healthy calves at their side. No scours. This winter, we had two or three nights of getting into the thirties and the natives think they're going to die, but this is one of the great areas in the world to raise cattle, and that's a major plus to us.

Miranda Reiman (00:31:25):

Sure. It makes it hard to leave something like that.

Dan Byrd (00:31:29):

It does.

Miranda Reiman (00:31:30):

Have you guys thought about that in your marketing plans and things as maybe commercial cattlemen become fewer and farther between in your part of the world, how you continue to reach customers? I mean, I guess maybe that's a question. How have your customers changed over the last couple of decades?

Ty Byrd (00:31:48):

I think that's a good question and that's certainly a concern that we battle. We're fortunate that in our part of California we're kind of the northern most bull sale in the fall or one of the couple northern most bull sales here in the fall in the state of California. And so we have a unique ability to draw up into Oregon, sometimes into Washington, sometimes into southern Idaho. So we're not so much just limited to California, like the market share for a lot of our other Angus breeders here in California seems to be, there will be years where almost half of our bulls will go up into Oregon. There will be years where it's just a small amount of bulls. It depends on not just the political climate or that kind of thing in California, but a lot of it depends on the weather. When we have wet years, the cattle business is pretty doggone good in California because there's a lot of feed. When we have historic drought years, like we've certainly had plenty of then it's tough in California and it's really tough to find cows to kick bulls out on in California. So we're fortunate being up here as far north as we are that we can kind of go up into the northwest from a bull based standpoint too. And that does help a lot.

Dan Byrd (00:33:10):

And one other thing that sets us apart from our fellow seedstock producers, we help our customers market cattle and we help them get on the programs. Just yesterday I talked to Doug at IMI Global about a couple of new partners that want to come on. We help our customers through that process. We help them through their marketing. If they have got the programs, we're adding 20 and 30 cents to these cattle through Western video market sales. And that's unbelievable. I mean, you talk 30 cents on an eight weight, that adds up in a hurry. So that really sets us apart. And I think most of our, I don't know if Ty agree, most of our customers I think are on a more professional level than the average bull buyer. And man, we put those people on a pedestal and we treat 'em like kings and it really works out for us.

Mark McCully (00:34:13):

What are you guys hearing from, as you're talking and as you talk about that really progressive minded commercial cattleman that you're serving with your bulls, maybe what's changed as you guys have looked at that over the last whatever period of time, last decade, and maybe what do you see changing down the road? Is it about providing more marketing services for their calves? Are they looking for things? Do you see anything changing different on the genetics that they're expecting you to give them?

Dan Byrd (00:34:43):

I'll let Ty answer most of that, but I would say in one word it's marbling. We have customers that sell to Prime Pursuits, to River Bend. I'm on a first name basis with so many of those feeders in Nebraska, Iowa, Terry Beller there in Iowa that I think was the feedyard producer of the year, one year Jeff Cox in North Platte, Nebraska or Brule Nebraska, Northwest Feeders. They both feed a lot, lot of our genetics and love the cattle. And we worked very closely with them. I can, well, last fall I had a customer that called and they've used our bulls exclusively for over 20 years. And Jennifer said, Dan, we just got to close out on our calves. Can you walk me through some of this? And they were all fed as naturals in an Oregon feedyard, and they gained over four pounds a day, both steers and heifers as naturals.

(00:35:46):

That's unbelievable. They hung at about 64% for naturals. Unbelievable. I said, how about quality grade? And she said they were harvested over three different days. Let me run that real quick and I'll call you back. And she called back, she said they were 72.8% primes. I said, Melissa, fax that to me. That can't be. She was exactly right. They were 72.8% primes. We have another customer, Tom Shane at Shane Enterprises that tops virtually every video sale he's in has not bought a bull from anybody but us. I think in 14 years runs about 2000 cows. Tom has fed cattle with Terry Beller that graded over 60% Prime, and today that Prime is driving the market.

Miranda Reiman (00:36:40):

So that emphasis on quality is not decreasing as quality has increased nationwide. You see that continuing to be a focus.

Dan Byrd (00:36:50):

Absolutely. When what 9% of the cattle grade Prime and we got customers of size 72, those feeders are beating our door down. Want to know when those kind of customers are selling.

Mark McCully (00:37:04):

So the question that we then get asked of, what do you have to give up to get that? And I'm curious as you guys think about it from a breeding philosophy standpoint or your commercial customer standpoint, are you giving up anything to get at that?

Ty Byrd (00:37:19):

I think that's one of the things that makes us unique is backing up off that for just a second Mark, it almost seems like there's a couple different camps in the Angus business. There's people that full fledge believe in the data and believe in the numbers. And there's people that would very much like to just throw all that out the window and look at the cattle. And to us where those cattle become very, very, very valuable is if you can combine the two. And I think that's what's really helped us blow this thing up and sell females like we have and helped us branch out into selling embryos and being very, very successful doing that three and four times a year now, is that we try to combine the data with the phenotype. And I think we're fortunate that we've both got a background where, yes, we spent some time on livestock judging teams and that kind of thing, but running cattle in a real world environment, you learn real quick what'll work and what won't work from a form and function standpoint and a structure standpoint.

(00:38:23):

And we like to make 'em sound, functional, big footed, good footed, good real world cattle first and foremost, and then throw the numbers on 'em and then add in feed efficiency and all the bells and whistles. And I think if you're very selective and you find the right type of cattle, I don't think you have to give a thing up to get cattle a little grade Prime like that. Are they going to cost more from a bull buying standpoint? Are they going to cost more from a female buying standpoint? Absolutely they are. But sometimes value costs money.

Miranda Reiman (00:38:59):

Let's talk a little bit, you bring up that feed efficiency. You guys have been committed to that for a while now. Talk about where that comes from first off, and then is that something that you see cattlemen paying more attention to in the future?

Ty Byrd (00:39:17):

We first started that, I think it's been 17 years ago now, 18 years ago now, feed efficiency testing bulls. And we found it intriguing that for the same levels of output, so essentially the same levels of growth, the same levels of WDA bulls would vary wildly on their intake. And it doesn't take very long of having customers run cattle in northeast California in the desert or Nevada in the desert or even here when feed gets short to realize that if something's going to eat less feed and gain the same amount of weight or more than their contemporaries, that's a pretty functionally efficient way to roll. And so we really built on that. And when you stack just selecting for any trait, when you stack generations of selection for feed efficiency on top of itself, you start to really see a difference when you get that ball rolling and get down the line.

(00:40:23):

And so we'll have groups of our fall bulls especially that get in good weather, that the average bull in there might convert at a high three to one or a low four to one from a feed conversion standpoint. So you stack generation after generation after generation and you really, really see a difference. And now that's a thing that the feedyards notice because our customer calves eat considerably less feed than their other pens of calves that they're feeding for other people there and still have the same levels of growth, still have the same carcass quality, still have the same yield. Our people paying more attention to it, the very savvy people are. But it's not one of those things that people go to the coffee shop with their friends in the morning and sit there and go, my calves converted better than yours. They still sit there and say, my calves weaned off heavier than yours. So it's still not the exciting thing. Is it gaining more traction? Absolutely it is. Is it gaining traction as fast as I would think it should, maybe not, but it's still something we concentrate on and I think it's something very, very, very important.

Mark McCully (00:41:43):

So you guys today talk about how you're measuring, you're measuring feed efficiency. Correct. When you're perform and the way you develop those bulls.

Ty Byrd (00:41:52):

So those bulls, for a long, long time we were feeding those bulls up at Snyder Livestock in Nevada, and Lucy had a growth safe system there. And so we would run every bull on a Grow Safe system. She's kind of slowed that down. And so we've moved those bulls last year and this year into California. We're working on trying to figure out another feed efficiency scenario to get them rolling on right now. But they're few and far between here in California that we can use during the winter because the couple that are here are on some ground that's got some erosion issues and those kind of things and they can't run bulls on 'em through the winter.

Mark McCully (00:42:31):

Gotcha. Okay.

Ty Byrd (00:42:32):

We're working on trying to get back to that because I do think it's vitally important for sure.

Miranda Reiman (00:42:38):

Yeah, it's a testament to how hard it is to gather that data too.

Ty Byrd (00:42:43):

It is. It hard. It is. It is hard. It is expensive, but it is earth shattering the progression you can make and not just from a feedyard standpoint, but when you think about the fact that you can run more cattle on the same amount of ground and they're still going to gain the same amount of weight, it's very, very vital information. But you're right, it is hard to get. It is costly to get and that's why there's not more of it out there. When Lucy Snyder originally started that program back almost 20 years ago, there were probably, I bet there were 20 people in addition to ourselves that had bulls on that and the last probably five or six or seven years of bulls being there in Nevada, we were the only person other than her individual bull test group that sold in her bull sale that had bulls on that Grow Safe test.

Mark McCully (00:43:45):

So you mentioned the females, and I think that's always to me a really curious thing to try to understand. I mean, we can measure feed to gain or RFI or whatever our measure of residual average daily gain efficiency on those bulls where we're measuring their intake as you were selecting for efficiency over the years. Talk about how could you see it in the females? Obviously we don't measure their intake every day, but could you see just in terms of, you mentioned whether it's stocking rates or fleshing ability or does it start to, is there a certain phenotype that starts to kind of emerge a maybe more moderate frame, deeper ribbed? Any of those things that you kind of just maybe noticed as you were putting more selection pressure on feed efficiency?

Ty Byrd (00:44:32):

Well, feed efficiency is an interesting trait and it's really interesting when you try to correlate it to phenotype because if you think of true efficiency market, it's essentially very little waste. And so the cattle that will test very, very well historically from a feed efficiency standpoint or maybe the cattle that don't gain a lot, but what they do eat, they convert efficiently. So what we've always tried to do is break the data set down into about thirds when we get that data back and we try to find the cattle that are in the top third of their group for average daily gain, the top third of their group for RFI and the top third of their group for feed conversion. And there will be very few cattle that can be in the top third of the group for those three different measurements and those are the ones that are going to add a ton of value.

(00:45:32):

You look at some of these tests that only test RFI, if you dig further into those, usually the really, really great RFI testing cattle didn't gain worth a darn and truthfully, those don't add much value to the industry either. So you've got to balance that out. And for the most part, the cattle that are super, super feed efficient will tend to be a little bit harder looking, maybe not the deep bodied soggy, super easy fleshing type of cattle. What we have tried to do through years of testing is when we find those real outliers from a phenotype standpoint that are also feed efficient, that also have all the other bells and whistles that are low birth high growth, plenty of marbling, a lot of ribeye, those are the ones we replicate as fast as we can. And that has basically been what our whole program now is built on is a small handful of cattle that have all the bells and whistles including feed efficiency. And we have just replicated those literally as fast as we can. And that's the basis of all of our embryo sales now essentially it's the basis of everything we do today.

Mark McCully (00:46:53):

So talk about what female gets into the donor program at Byrd Cattle Company. What's your philosophy on replicating those females? You kind of talk about all those traits, but does she have to hit a certain age or are you trying to really turn generation interval or kind of maybe a little of your philosophy on your ET program? Obviously marketability comes into those things.

Ty Byrd (00:47:15):

Marketability is right at the top of the list because since we've started these embryo sales, and I can give you a little background on that, just like anybody that's in the cattle business, it probably doesn't even matter what breeds you're in. You buy semen and semen builds up in your tank, you make embryos and you probably don't get all those embryos put in. And then those embryos get old genetically and become somewhat irrelevant to the marketplace. And you go, wow, I wish we would've done something different. So a couple years ago we decided we're going to have an embryo sale and we're going to sell all the embryos we made that we can't get put in that we don't have enough uteruses to put in. And that first embryo sale did north of a hundred thousand dollars and we kind of looked at each other afterwards and thought, boy, those were just the embryos that we couldn't get put in.

(00:48:07):

What if we actually made some embryos specifically with the purpose of selling? So that's now we've shifted that and we make a lot of embryos with the purpose of marketing those embryos and they're still the same embryos and same matings we're putting in ourselves, but it does us a couple things. It allows us to get these genetics spread out literally across the country from every corner of the country and tons of points in between because it's so much cheaper and easier to send a shipper tank with embryos than it is live cattle. And it's so much easier to get embryos born in your environment, to acclimate to your environment. So it's getting these genetics branched out for us in a lot of different places, but it's also getting those customers that buy our embryos to come back and buy females and bulls in the sale because they see how well they're performing in their own environment.

(00:49:04):

So it's helped us a lot from a marketability standpoint, but the first thing to get into the donor pen here is you've got to be good on paper. You've got to be phenomenal from a data standpoint because that's what makes these embryos the easiest to sell. That's the first thing our customers look at. And I realize not every market is the same and not every program is the same, but in our world, that's the first thing when we're selling embryos that these folks are looking at. So they've got to hit kind of a certain threshold, they've got to be stellar phenotypically. It helps if they come from a unique cow family that we've sold some brothers that might be in an AI stud or sold some sisters for quite a bit of money because the marketing thing, a lot of that's database, but a lot of that's being able to tell a story too.

(00:49:55):

And you think back to a lot of what dad was saying about getting into this business and then our customer service ultimately, we're all just in the people business. Cattle are just the vehicle that we deal with here, so you've got to market what people want to buy. And we learned that along the way. We had our own ideas about what cattle we thought were best and maybe they weren't the easiest to sell and what people wanted to buy at that time. And so you kind of pivot a little bit and you go, let's make 'em what they want to buy and still make their sisters running around in the field cattle that will work in our environment and in our setting and in our situation. So we're fortunate to have a lot of livestock evaluating background, both of us. And I think that's one thing when we talk about young people coming back to this business, whether it's our specific business or anywhere across the country, I think you've got to be able to evaluate cattle, you've got to be able to evaluate livestock because all the data in the world isn't going to help you if the cattle can't move, if the cattle aren't structurally correct, if they're not made right.

(00:51:11):

So you've got to have an eye for livestock. There's plenty of investor money in this business and obviously as this cycle is in an upswing, there'll be more and more the next couple years. But those guys are sharp enough in most cases to hire somebody to manage their deals that have a very, very good understanding of phenotype and structure and livestock background. So they've got to be really, really good phenotypically, they've got to be outstanding on paper and then we've got to be able to tell a story about 'em too.

Mark McCully (00:51:41):

Well, that makes good sense. And I think kind of that if you will at times, that friction that you feel between marketability and what they want versus maybe even at times, maybe what they need. And I guess, do you ever run into that with your commercial bull clients where what they want versus maybe what you might think they need are different? And how do you approach that if you run into it?

Ty Byrd (00:52:07):

I bet we all run into it. And I guess when I say that anybody that markets bulls, it's interesting because a lot of our clientele here are doctors, lawyers, bankers, California large farming operations. California is dominated by people that have other large business interests and are great at reading spreadsheets and maybe not all really, really good at evaluating livestock. And so data plays a large part in selling bulls and selling livestock. Here in California, everybody wants the lowest birth and the highest growth they can possibly get. And in probably 99% of the situations that's really not necessary. But it's hard to tell these people that are very successful in their other walks of life that have made them this money to come and be in the cattle business that that's not what they need because they're pretty proud and they're pretty certain. So the ones that ask for help will steer in a certain direction, but there's plenty of people that do what they do and you just nod and say, absolutely, okay and on, we all go.

(00:53:21):

But we are fortunate to have a certain segment that asks for help and we'll steer those. If you're breeding cows, you really don't need a low birth bull, but most people want to buy a low birth bull because they see that on the spreadsheet, they see that on the data, and that must be better. So some of these guys that'll come to us and say, here's what we're going to do. Here's our situation. What bulls do we need? We'll give 'em a list or we'll give 'em sire groups and maybe they'll get some bulls bought, not right off the top end, but that are still very, very good bulls, but maybe not crazy unique from a data standpoint, but serve the purpose that they need to do and then they'll go out and top the market and everything's great. So it's an interesting dynamic though,

(00:54:11):

And I think we see that more in California than a lot of other spots because of the business people we have that also own cattle. I mean, our marketing is, you used to go to the Midwest and talk to people selling bulls back there and their customer base was people that had some grain and some hogs and some cattle. Well, we don't have that out here. It's dramatically different. I mean, it is the doctor in town, it's the lawyer, it's the large farming corporation that farms 30,000 acres but has X amount of cows to eat grass in spots where they can't farm. And it's just a dramatically different marketing environment out here.

Mark McCully (00:54:55):

Sure. You guys also, even though this is the Angus Conversation, we can talk about other breeds. You've had success in the Charolais breed as well. I'm curious how different your philosophy is when you're breeding Charolais, cattle marketing, Charolais cattle. Just curious your approach there.

Ty Byrd (00:55:14):

Well, we dispersed those in 2004, Mark, so that's...

Mark McCully (00:55:17):

I am totally out of the loop now. I thought

Miranda Reiman (00:55:21):

A very different marketing philosophy

Ty Byrd (00:55:24):

That's been while that we've been out of that, but it'll make you happy to know the primary drivers behind dispersing those was just opportunity cost. I mean, every Charolais embryo we'd put in, we could have been putting an Angus embryo in and they're worth more money. And that's the bottom line. And the Charolais cattle were neat, we loved them. We got to work with Brent Field in that deal and had some of the very, very best cows, the dams of some of the high semen sales bulls out there. Brent's a great guy. Angus breeder today still has some stellar Charolais cattle, but we were causing ourselves an opportunity loss by not putting Angus embryos in. So when we dispersed that set of Charolais in 2004, I think at that time, if I'm correct, I think it was maybe the high averaging Charolais dispersal up to that point in time.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:18):

That really feels like a planted question. Now, Mark.

Mark McCully (00:56:21):

I know that's what it does, and all it really does is prove is McCully didn't do enough homework. So I apologize that I've not kept up well enough on your, I keep up on your Angus program, but did still think you had a few white ones running around there?

Ty Byrd (00:56:36):

No, the only white thing we've got now is a recip cow floating around here. So that's the extent of it

Miranda Reiman (00:56:41):

You've traded that for the goats,

Ty Byrd (00:56:44):

The goats, the sheep, the hogs. Yeah,

Mark McCully (00:56:47):

Yes.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:03):

 Very good, well, we did promise to keep you only for an hour and whereas it's morning there in California, you've probably got a list of chores to get to, I understand that Dan doesn't have his chores done yet for the day

(00:57:03):

So with that in mind, is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you guys want to add? Otherwise I'll move on to the random question of the week which we wrap up on.

Dan Byrd (00:57:12):

I'd just simply say in closing, God has been good to us. We have a wonderful family, two great kids, four great grandkids, unbelievable life couldn't be much better.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:26):

That's a neat note to end on. My random question's going to be, of all of those National Junior Angus Shows that you've been to across the United States and you're kind of growing up years or Dan, you as hauling these kids around to all of those, do you have a favorite memory from one of those trips?

Ty Byrd (00:57:44):

I don't think dad ever got to go to one.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:46):

He didn't?

Ty Byrd (00:57:48):

 No, I don't think he ever got to go to one. We'd usually, California would usually have a semi or three or four trailers, and by the time I was 16, I was kind of turned loose with the trailer. And so I'd drive before I was 16, I think my mom went with me and we usually flew back, probably one of the ones like we drove to Des Moines, Iowa, and those were always fun. I always enjoyed Des Moines in the Iowa State fairgrounds there, but we'd get stop over three or four times and it would be people that maybe we still do business with today that we'd stay at their place and layover. But we had the year, it was in Perry, Georgia, I was in college and working at Select Sires, I think it was my freshman year in college. So I was in Ohio that summer and flew down to Georgia and fit a bunch of cattle for people. And I mean, that was a great time there too. So I don't really have one specific experience in one spot. It was better than the rest. They were all fun. And that was the great thing about being in Grand Island last summer mean I think we were literally there for eight hours, seven hours, six hours, and I could have stayed there all week. I mean, I loved it.

Miranda Reiman (00:58:57):

Well, good. Well, we'd love to have you back. It's in Madison.

Mark McCully (00:59:00):

I was going to say Madison, Wisconsin. Is Jayden going to come back and compete in the auctioneering as his schedule allow? Maybe he's got too many sales booked.

Ty Byrd (00:59:09):

Well, I don't think he is because we were talking about it a couple of weeks ago and he said, well Dad, I won. What else is there to do?

(00:59:16):

And I said, that's a good enough point. You got nowhere to go from there.

Mark McCully (00:59:21):

There's bragging rights for being a repeat champion, a three-peat champion. I mean, we're into March Madness now, so keep the streak alive. We'd love to have him back in Madison. So you tell him, I think he needs to see he, if he can defend his title this year.

Ty Byrd (00:59:38):

Well, I told him that it's certainly a possibility, and knowing him, he'll probably try to book a sale so he can go make money rather than spend money

Miranda Reiman (00:59:46):

I like the way he thinks.

Dan Byrd (00:59:48):

I have kind of an interesting story about showing and sales. We consigned a heifer calf, a full sister to Bush Whacker to the foundation female sale, years and years ago in Denver. And she topped that sale and went to A+ in Texas and A+ had a young guy named Parker Friedrich that was working with them. And the morning after the sale, this heifer was good to work with, but she wasn't broke to lead. Parker goes in her pen and gets her in the corner and puts a halter on her and they open the gate and she explodes and she literally tore Parker's shirt off and almost undressed the guy in the yards. And now Parker is helping us in marketing and we'll never let him live that down.

Miranda Reiman (01:00:40):

Now we've got it recorded.

Mark McCully (01:00:42):

I tell you what I know. Dan, this has been awesome. We've got all this, I wouldn't say it was dirt on Tom Burke. It was actually kind of a glowing,

Miranda Reiman (01:00:53):

 a tribute episode

Mark McCully (01:00:53):

commitment to tribute to his commitment, but then this story on Parker. So we're going to have to have you come back on just to tell some more stories so we can get it all recorded out there in the public space.

Dan Byrd (01:01:05):

Oh, wow.

Ty Byrd (01:01:06):

Well, and one thing we ought to mention, dad and I do so much on our own here, but we're also not afraid to bring in people to help because it takes a team when you get to marketing purebred cattle, and we've got the bull thing down, doing that for almost 25 years now and got a great customer base built, but where we just went back to having a female sale a couple of years ago, you've got to have good people to help you with that. And we're so fortunate that Parker's come in and helps us spread these females all across the country. And his team of Matt White and his son Sterling, do such a great job. And in the last year we brought in Zach Moffitt from North Carolina. That's helped, and not only does it help selling females, but we saw a lot of embryos here and we get a lot of those embryos spread out all across the country.

(01:01:53):

So much easier to send a shipper tank than it is live cattle and much more reasonable from a cost aspect. We're so fortunate here that we've got great people that help us out on the marketing end, and that even extends down to Erica Batchelder. That helps us with social media. We do a lot of retargeting, advertising, marketing stuff through the Angus Association, so it really takes kind of an all hands on deck approach because one thing about being out here on the west coast is we can't be everywhere, and if you can't be seeing people and talking to people all the time, the marketing aspect gets challenging. So you need a good team to help you with that.

Mark McCully (01:02:33):

Yeah, well said. There's so many professionals in this business, and to your point, the marketing, especially on the female side, but I'd say the bull side as well, it's not what it used to be, right? You've got to use lots of technologies that are out there and available to you. It's getting the word out. There's more to it today than ever of just putting up your shingle and having a sale. And you guys have done an incredible job of building your brand over the years, and you've done it with obviously good marketing, but a very steadfast dedication to your brand and your cattle, and kudos to you. It's been fun to be able to dig into that a little bit more today. And again, we've got probably lots more things I thought we could get to talk to today, but we'll just have to have you come back on another episode if that's okay.

Ty Byrd (01:03:23):

We'll do it. We'll have to do it because the good thing about this is he and I don't ever get to sit and talk and some of these stories I didn't know either, so it's been a good learning experience for me too.

Mark McCully (01:03:34):

That's awesome.

Miranda Reiman (01:03:35):

Well, thank you guys so much for your time and we appreciate it.

Dan Byrd (01:03:38):

Hey, thank you guys for having us.

Ty Byrd (01:03:41):

Thanks so much, guys.

Miranda Reiman (01:03:43):

One of my favorite parts of doing this podcast is hearing from breeders from across the United States, both on air and those who text and call afterwards. I'm loving the discussions, and if you're enjoying them too, I've got a favor to ask. Help other Angus breeders find this show by rating this podcast or leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform or share it with a friend. We appreciate all the support and look forward to sharing more Angus stories that matter to you. This has been the Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.