Speaker 1 (00:00:02):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Ryman with my co-host, mark McCulley, CEO of the American Angus Association. And while I have been busy with kiddo activities and homecoming week and all the things that say that it is fall here, mark, you've been spending a lot of time with Angus breeders in the last couple weeks.

Speaker 2 (00:00:22):
It's been a busy couple weeks with some travel. Of course. We finished up board meetings and then went straight to the Certified Angus Beef Annual Conference. For some though that that is our annual event that we bring our food service and retail partners together along with packers, processors, distributors, chefs, and we also have some producers that join us. And so it is a great couple days. We are actually up in the kind of upstate New York, a great couple days of celebrating the brand. And honestly, I had a couple producers talk about it is just kind of refreshing where we get into a room, we get to an event, we don't talk about anything that's even that we're on different sides of no policy discussions. I heard it said we're all pulling in the harness together. It's all about creating more demand, creating more opportunity, and celebrating great beef. And that's what we did for a couple days.

Speaker 1 (00:01:21):
Angus Journal editor, Julie Mays went for her very first time of coming to convention, so it was fresh ice for her. And she also remarked on the really good food mark. So of course that is a highlight.

Speaker 2 (00:01:33):
It's the Certified Angus Beef Showcase event. So a great product has to be showcased well, and there was a lot of really great food. Anytime you get that many chefs excited about displaying premium beef, we ended up with some, they did try to put some shredded beef on my bread pudding one night, candied, shredded beef. And I said, you know what? No, I think we're good at leaving my bread pudding without any beef. But other than that, I think we put beef in everything.

Speaker 1 (00:02:02):
I'm going to say I would've tried it. I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:02:05):
Well, I kind of like my bread pudding. It's kind of my favorite.

Speaker 1 (00:02:08):
Yeah, very good. Well, you were there for, you were probably only home in your own bed for a night or two and then you headed out to South Dakota.

Speaker 2 (00:02:15):
Literally just a couple hours and then we took off headed up to South Dakota. I got to join the good folks up there for the South Dakota Angus Tour and I think that was a lot of fun. I always enjoyed tours and it's always great to see different programs, always. Sometimes a little bit of having those two events, the CAB conference in the South Dakota tour back to back was just always a reminder of, to me, this is a difficult business. We talk about the end product, spent a couple of days celebrating the end product and the demand drivers of our end product and then head out to South Dakota where we talk about, let's now talk about the realities of cows and getting cows to fit environment and cows that stick around and make money for commercial ranchers that are selling calves maybe through the auction markets. And so it was great. Had a lot of excellent discussions with breeders and always enjoyed that time. Got to look at some great Angus cattle and some great Angus people.

Speaker 1 (00:03:20):
And I think you mentioned that some of those conversations that you had there as you were out looking at cattle in the pastures of South Dakota were similar conversations to those we just had today as we headed to the east a little ways.

Speaker 2 (00:03:33):
Yeah, we headed to Tennessee to visit with Joe and Lake Elliot. I think many in the breed would know the Elliot family and what they're up to. I think as you said it was, I think they're an operation that focuses on functional females while also and they mentioned even kind of some of the growing market. That was a little bit of a surprise to me. They talk about some of the growing market of some direct to consumer. Obviously they sit around some pretty big population centers and so they got to pay attention to end product merit as well. And so balancing that, but really talking about their philosophies around breeding Angus cattle that work for their customers in that part of the world.

Speaker 1 (00:04:17):
Anybody that knows the Elliots probably knows that Joe is kind of famous for one-liners. So you'll hear quite a few throughout this podcast and I think you're going to really enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (00:04:29):
Keep your pen and paper close. There's going to be several you're going to want to jot down

Speaker 1 (00:04:36):
Today on the podcast. We're headed to Tennessee where we're going to visit with Joe and Lake Elliot, with Robert Elliot and Sons Angus at Adams, Tennessee. Typical Angus story, I guess where dad started the operation and then came back to sons and now we've got the third generation back involved. So looking forward to visiting with you guys, long heritage and the breed and experience on the board of directors and just lots of perspective for us.

Speaker 2 (00:05:03):
And we love having father and son teams because, and we don't expect you guys to agree on everything we talk about Lake. So jump in here of course and correct.

Speaker 3 (00:05:12):
That's another day that ends in Y.

Speaker 1 (00:05:16):
That's right. So why don't we just start off by telling a little bit of your story. Joe, I mentioned that you've got a long history in the breed. You were on the board as president in the 2003, 2004 timeframe, so there was a lot going on at that time. Maybe just give us a little bit, first of your guys' lay of the land of your operation and then we'll jump into maybe some of that history.

Speaker 4 (00:05:39):
As far as our history, my father started 1935 when he got out of high school. He bought four bread heifers in 1958. He started keeping records, performance records on the University of Tennessee. I was eight years old and he put me in charge of it. And so I've entered a lot of stuff behind. And then in the seventies we went on a HIR. When I got out of college, I came back in 1971 and my brother came back four years later and we partnered on this and we added it to the farm land wise, which would be hard to do now because any land here will bring eight to 10,000 an acre and it's hard to run cattle on that type land. And a lot of it bring 15,000 light came back. What year did you come back? 2005. 2005. He wanted when he got out of college to come back, but I might even work somewhere else first I thought he needed experience somewhere else and he worked for a place in northern Kentucky, right south of Cincinnati.

(00:06:51):
And then he came home and we've expanded some where he will breed about 230 cows this year. We have an annual sale, do things a little differently. We sell all our 5-year-old cows every year, production cows. Nobody wants an 8-year-old. And if we're doing a very good job, our two year olds going to be better than our eight year olds. But we have made a lot of mistakes and sometimes that's not true. But anyway, that's generally the lay of land. We quit growing row crops 15 years ago. We do grow some, especially tobacco, dark fired tobacco which goes into export and to non-smoking tobacco. And we grow about 2 million tobacco plants to sell. We have six green ounces.

Speaker 1 (00:07:49):
Is that why you gave up the row crop production? That was just

Speaker 3 (00:07:53):
Basically the reason we did that. When commodity prices got low, we would retain some of the, it was mainly just corn. We'd use it to blend in feed and we kind needed more hay ground. And when commodity prices got low, we had neighbors, we just fire corn from there. Save the time of setting up the combine, setting up the planner just did not do that much. So we just basically turned some of those odd non fenced areas into hay ground and then bought the corn while the commodity prices were low. We thought it was better investment utilization of the ground.

Speaker 2 (00:08:29):
Sure. This is the Angus conversation, but I do think our listeners would be really curious to learn just a little more about tobacco production. It is a bit labor intensive, a bit of a year round crop. Is that not correct?

Speaker 4 (00:08:44):
Oh yes. It's labor intensive and I grew up doing it and when I got where I could afford people to hire people, that's what I did. We used migrant labor for program H two a program. There's a lot of people in the agriculture use that program. We seed put the first seed in the greenhouses and sometime late February, mostly early March, we transplant the plants in May and June. We harvested in August and September. Some might be harvested early October, and then we have to build fires under that. It's just grown in this area. Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Kentucky, north central Tennessee. Can you build fires out of hardwood, sawmill, slabs and car with sawdust and it smolders and smokes and then you have to get it out of the barn and prepare it for market. So we did some labor, a lot of the labor, but we have migrants that do that. Have some really good employees.

Speaker 3 (00:09:47):
Yes, the migrant labor sourced from Mexico, we go through an employment agent, we go through government, department of labor, everything's legit. They all have social security numbers and most of 'em come from a town called Niagara Creek, Mexico, which is about three hours from Mexico City. We get a lot of brothers, cousins, brother-in-laws. It's kind of an interconnected deal to where they've got family here. So there is a sense of their own community. We don't have as much homesickness and things of that sort

Speaker 2 (00:10:28):
For sure. Interesting. Well, I was there one time I think when you were called firing, is that what Yes.

(00:10:35):
Yeah. And I think Lake, you took me over to the Barnes and you're getting ready to do it. I'm trying to remember exactly where you were in the process, but it's fascinating all of the steps along the way and thanks for educating us all just a little bit on what all that process looks like. Maybe Joe, talk about your, and Miranda mentioned your service on the board and your leadership and the role of chairman. Maybe talk a little bit about that time of what was going on when you were sitting in that around the board table and maybe what some of the bigger decisions that you guys were thinking about and looking forward to.

Speaker 4 (00:11:13):
A few years before gone from EBVs to estimated breeding values to EPDs and we were in the infancy of EPDs and most of the work was done outside of third 2 0 1 Frederick Avenue. And my last year on the board when I was president, we brought all those calculations so forth, but we were going through some struggles. Anytime you change something somebody's going to get mad.

Speaker 1 (00:11:44):
No, I don't think that ever. I'm glad it's not that way anymore though. That's right. No,

Speaker 4 (00:11:51):
I remember, oh, one thing, big thing we did, Miranda, we built, when I was on the board, we built all that big addition to put the journal in and we had so much room, which I think y'all have all filled up now.

Speaker 1 (00:12:04):
We have

Speaker 4 (00:12:05):
Before then the journal office was in the basement and Sher Oxley has worked there for years, very efficient. Her office was in a vault, the basement

Speaker 1 (00:12:20):
And Kelly's filled that vault up I think.

Speaker 2 (00:12:23):
Yes,

Speaker 1 (00:12:23):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:12:25):
Full of DNA samples.

Speaker 1 (00:12:26):
Everybody who works with a window in their office today. Thanks you for that decision.

Speaker 4 (00:12:33):
One thing we were trying, we didn't have many EPDs then and you have to collect data to make it get EPDs. And one thing I really wanted, because I feel that the most important thing in production culture is reproduction where you're raising corn or cotton or cattle. And I kept fussing about we needed a reproduction EPD, we didn't have anything on fertility. And somebody on staff kept telling me you'd never get one because it wasn't highly, it's just not out of heritable. And finally I just told that person, I said, I think it's heritable because if your parents didn't have children, you won't either.

(00:13:20):
I said, it might not be highly heritable, fertility might not be highly heritable, but infertility is absolute. And they started working on it and not just cause made their to fuss it, but I remember telling that person that and it sort of got going and we have problems. We need to find solutions. We did have one genetic defect come forward when I was on the board. Right when I was going off. We did not have genomic tests and we got it handled and after I got off the board, they got some genomic tests and we had more genetic conditions. We have to be proper and not call 'em defects or conditions. I understand that, mark. I feel there'll be more come up at some time, you'll have a mutation somewhere and they come up. But when I was on the board, the early development of EPDs, we started the beef bulletin when I was on the board and then bringing all the tabulations for the SAR evaluation in the house was a big deal.

Speaker 1 (00:14:30):
A lot of things that set us on the course that we're on today.

Speaker 2 (00:14:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:14:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:14:35):
Lake. Maybe talk a little about your on-ramp to the Angus breed. Were you keeping records at eight years old like your dad was?

Speaker 3 (00:14:45):
No, I wasn't. I'm the oldest of two sons of my mom and my dad's four years older than him. I've got cousins that are four and nine years younger, made my uncle's son. So we all were involved in a local steer show, kind of a unique deal. They weigh 'em on roughly 150 days before they show 'em on foot and then they have a carcass evaluation, they hang them all up. So in doing that, that was kind of the steer deal. We would raise a few steers here and there. We'd buy some steers. Only steers that we would buy would be from bull customers. And so on the terminal side of the show ring, we were learning about performance feeding carcass on foot and just kind of doing it organically through preparation and all that. And then as far as the heifer side of things side, all the heifers we showed, with the exception of one project that dad bought as a quote, Christmas present one year that didn't work out.

(00:15:57):
And I think he's laughing and I'm not going to say any names or where that animal came from, but everything else was kind of either owned or it was in the farm's name and it wasn't owned and we would transfer it to fill a hole for the roster. Yeah, that's kind of what we did. We would have, as we did our production sale, I think in 94 we had our first female sale and that's when we started to get some people in to clip the sale cows and stuff. And I'd already learned some, but that's where I started to learn a little bit about the sale cattle preparation and show preparation, getting around a lot of people that were a little bit more knowledgeable. And then as we went through those projects, went to college, university of Tennessee and then did a lot of freelancing there.

(00:16:53):
I did some internships and learned a lot about, not as much about show cattle, but I learned a lot from people that were in large quantity, whether it was from the repro side or the sale prep side or anything like that. Kind of learned from some people that would help me to do my job better now. And also never forget that if you're in the trenches with people, they'll be in the trenches with you. So as much as old and gray hair as I've got right now, I still help people. I help people that help me and it kind of helps with that dependability side on getting things done because I think we can all sit here and agree that labor is one of the largest concerns that we have in agriculture, animal agriculture, whatever, is having that labor source that is dependable and loyal to you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:17:55):
For sure. So you coming back helped fill some of that for your dad?

Speaker 4 (00:17:59):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:18:00):
Tell us the other involvement of other family members. Is it just you two or do you have some of those cousins?

Speaker 4 (00:18:06):
Oh, my brother William is involved. Okay.

Speaker 5 (00:18:10):
Yes,

Speaker 4 (00:18:10):
He's involved totally looks at the greenhouses, but he's involved camping and he's got a set of cows at his house that's five miles away. And then when we breeding and processing and so forth, I mean we we're all involved. Lake left that one thing. He was quite active in the Tennessee Junior Angles Association and I many national shows to go to.

Speaker 3 (00:18:36):
Yeah, that was another thing I didn't know we'd get to later. But yeah, I went, I think my first one, I won't say how old I was, but it was in 1991. It was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I think until I aged out I missed one. And then after I aged out, I was at a lot of them freelancing and stuff until I graduated and went on to jobs. I've been to several junior nationals. But when you were asking about involvement on the farm, I think all three of us are involved in all enterprises. I just think that some of us have different leadership roles and final say, and it is still a democracy on everything, but I think it's when say when we're scheduling breeding stuff and all that, I lay all that out. Dad does a lot of the bookkeeping on the finances and all the paperwork we have to do with our labor situation. And then my uncle, I guess if you tobacco the greenhouse deal and then overall maintenance and stuff like that, he's kind of the go-to there.

Speaker 2 (00:19:49):
Sure. So not a defined org chart but kind of defined somewhat understood roles.

Speaker 3 (00:19:55):
Yes, correct, correct. They're just run it in circles just every once in a while we've got to run through a certain gate off to the side.

Speaker 2 (00:20:03):
Very good. And before we jump off, you were also A BLI alum, is that correct?

Speaker 3 (00:20:09):
BLI was fortunate. I was on the second class of that second class in 2009 and I also was fortunate enough in 2017 to be the Angus Foundation's delegate to the YCC. Very

Speaker 1 (00:20:24):
Good. So see some importance in that cross industry collaboration and meeting people from across the United States.

Speaker 3 (00:20:32):
Oh, I think that the networking and the people involved in this businesses might be more important than the cattle. I've listened to the podcast before and I want to give you both of you guys a thumbs up for what you do. How many times from one episode to the next can you have Gary Damron and then go to Mark Gardner and he cut both two very important people within our breed, but two operations that are extraordinarily different. And I think that's a lot of the beauty of our breed is when both of those guys in those episodes kind of alluded to Gary, especially when he talked about the last 40 years especially how important that Angus family been to him. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:21:21):
That comes out I think in every episode the Angus family for sure. Love that. But of course we do want to talk about the cattle with you guys. And one thing that I must commend you guys, you gave me kind of a blueprint. I didn't have to do a lot of work on my outline for this because you have a published set of rules of management and I think every single one of them could almost be the tagline for an entire podcast, but I wanted to dive into a few of those. You've got some one-liners on there like realize that trend is not destiny or did not get a membership to the bull of the month club. Maybe explain how you developed some of these rules of management and explain a few of those for me. Maybe those two in particular.

Speaker 4 (00:22:04):
Okay. My father would never breed the little cattle that were in the fifties and sixties in particular. He said they won't work. They won't work. And then my grandfather was somewhat involved and he said as a pendulum swings, if you stay in the middle, it'll pass you twice as awful.

(00:22:30):
You've got to measure what you produce. And we have found that we never would read the great big ones either. We never would do that because they won't work in our customer's environment. So most of our bulls are sold all within 200 miles of here. Last year we sold cows from North Dakota to Florida because they know we're not selling cows, we're selling all our five year olds. That's one rule that's just you've got to have it and it goes back. It ties in with realize that trend is not dely. We have fads and everything where it's somebody in Paris developing a new shoe for a woman to wear or somebody coming up and say, we all ought to chase this number on cattle because it's what we need. It's just a trend. Get back to the real world and look at what worked for the commercial man for us to fight. Well, if Angus cattle did not work for the commercial man, we wouldn't have extra breeders. It's all tied together because the end product has got to be received well by consumers. If it doesn't work for our customers, we're not going to have customers and we want 'em that will work on this SCU grass that grows this part of the country. Does that explain that one?

Speaker 1 (00:23:53):
Yeah, it does. I think another one that you've had on there was something about matching your genetics to your customers. So I want to know or what matching your genetics to the resources of your customers. How do you do that? How do you know what their resources are and then what tools do you use to accomplish that?

Speaker 3 (00:24:12):
Well just go out, whether it's pre-sale, fielding calls, once the catalogs and the videos get out or as you follow up and you make a sale and you just go out and you see the goal marketing goal of what people have, what their resources are, do they have access to silage, things of that sort. You just kind of see how things work for them and then as you build those relationships, you've kind of got a better idea moving forward towards a potential repeat customer. You can kind of eliminate some of the things that they don't want or they don't need. I think that I'm not trying to be a used car salesman. I'd rather ask you what you don't want and then just kind of push that off to the side and then kind of limit that tool of what we really need to talk to.

(00:25:13):
I know, I mean there's only so much time that people have and there's no sense in me going through a hundred percent of the bulls or a hundred percent of the female offering if I know these are bloodlines. You don't want this cies, whatever your things you want, there's no sense to just kick the tires on everything. So that's one of the things I look at. I look at the way people market their cattle, the way they manage 'em, how they retain or retain or obtain replacements and things of that sort. So just kind of getting those relationships and just kind of tidying up everything to make everything more efficient.

Speaker 4 (00:26:00):
Our customer's outlook and understanding of things having really changed in the last 40, 50 years, used to be 25, 30 years ago, we had customers whose marketing plan was, damn the refrigerator went out, let's go sell a cab, we got to get a new refrigerator. Now we have people coming to our sale saying, where's your book with all the EPDs because we have complete pedigrees laying out, put it all in our book. I had a customer two years ago said, I've got eight Ws picked out which ones will not have big mature weights. He bought three of them. Of those eight I picked out five. And they're interested in things that make more economic sense now. He did not want big mature weights in the heifers that he kept. We've got one customer that is strange, their main cow herd is char half Charla and half Angus, our Angus, and they breed their main cow herd to our bulls. They have cattle that just perform really well in the feedlot on Caron. Lake. Lake really works for them closely on picking out the bulls they need every year and they need usually three bulls. So feel like

Speaker 3 (00:27:27):
Yeah, when that particular operation, when the market got high this spring, they sold a bunch of cows but they retained more of their females and they're revamping. I mean I don't blame people for taking that. I mean you take eight, 10-year-old cows that are bringing a pile and you can just retain some more of those heifers and just do it in house. You know what you've got. So

Speaker 4 (00:27:54):
One thing you mentioned, you brought up in a little email you sent me and you brought up the thing. No bad gene in no bad gene out. I've had several mentors over my lifetime, one of the greatest one with a guy named Dave Ingre. You never heard of him, but his pictures on the wall, that association, he was president of American Ag Association back in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (00:28:19):
Mark looks like he knows, I don't know. Well

Speaker 2 (00:28:22):
I know Doug, Dave, I don't know the year he served though. I'd have to go walk down the hallway. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:28:27):
He was our farm boy. I first got hooked up with him because he was on the international livestock judging team with my livestock judging coach at Tennessee, but they were at Iowa State and their coach was a former regional manager of the American Anger Association named Vernon Berg. And they told me that breeding cattle is like playing blackjack. If there are no face cards left in the deck, you're not going to get one. And so if you don't have any bad genes in your cow or your bull, you're not going to have any in the offspring. And it's a pretty good analogy of just narrow what's in the gene pool and you won't get anything bad.

Speaker 1 (00:29:19):
So how do you apply that in real life and still be able to maintain genetic diversity and all? Because I do think that some people would like to do that all the time, but occasionally you've got to make a few concessions to be able to get something else that you want.

Speaker 4 (00:29:34):
You do you do each year? Well, we pick four boils. We're going to breed no more than four usually

Speaker 3 (00:29:40):
Every once in a while we'll do a fifth bull that we will AI to just because we've heard good things. But it's younger bull and what we'll do there on that fifth bull is put him in cows that sell next year that way if he falls out of bed only on them for about three months. But there's been some success stories off that Fifth bull scenario, we try to do about four just because with our customers. Say you've got a herd that's got 75 cows and they're on one bull this year, two bull the next year, and then they rotate 'em around. If you can offer 'em three quarter seal bulls or better and then turn them out on a group of cows. Most of these cattle around here are marketed in lots. We've got a really good market at right across the state line that Mark Barnett runs.

(00:30:41):
He's the outgoing president of LMA, does a real good job of putting those things together and the more consistency they can get in that calve crop that they can put together and make trailer loads the more of a premium they get. So that's why a lot of what we do is create three quarter brothers or better and that's why we're a lot limited on those SI groups. Now sometimes we'll use bulls that in the last five to six years, the fixing the foot deal, now that we've got tools through the association with the claw and angle scores and the reporting on that, we're seeing a lot of, how do you put it? Improvement. Well, not just improvement within our her, but I think those numbers as people have reported, I think you can kind of trust them a little bit more. Not saying you couldn't trust them before, but I think is, there's phenotypes

Speaker 2 (00:31:38):
Coming. New MPD takes some time,

Speaker 3 (00:31:40):
But we'll use some bulls where we might've used a bull in the past and then the feet just haven't done that. We can go in and use a bull to maybe fix feed or whatever, things like that because at the end of the day we talk about fertility as being number one. But I think terms of longevity, things, longevity, foot utter disposition, things of that sort, they've got to work for us and then they've got to work for our customers to have a repeat customer. So as far as bull selection, we look at longevity traits.

Speaker 4 (00:32:19):
Alright, back to we'll pick out these four bulls we're going to use. Can we concentrate on what used to be called convenience traits? I'd like to call 'em foundation traits, feet, the legs, long disposition. I can't run as fast as I used to about soldier, but we pull up every female that we make it take us a couple of days and we do have some very lively discussions doing this. We've got the choice of bulls we're going to freedom to and we pull up every female's laed EPDs on the website and we breed to her weakest point. Now we have some problems. We've got cows that's got more than one weak point. And Miranda, you're right, sometimes we have to give up something to get what we want and we're already starting looking at bulls for this year and as you know, fertility is one thing. We look at foot scores as Lake brought out. We do not want big mature weights. We want growth and carcass quality. We want relatively Calvin ease. We have found that our customers do not like because we used to do it a big minus birth weight count, but they've been educated to where they're looking more at ceds. They don't like dinks being born and especially the ones that calf in January and February. No, we don't get the zero a lot, but tell you what, there's nothing worth on a cow than raining in 35 degrees.

Speaker 3 (00:34:03):
And as we make these things, I mean he talks about pulling up the numbers. I mean I also kind of make, there's definitely mental notes on the phenotype of those catalyst we go through. There's something I really like, something you got to protect phenotypically, whether it's a structural deal, we look at that too.

Speaker 4 (00:34:27):
Yes. But we do have some live discussions doing that.

Speaker 2 (00:34:30):
I bet. Joe, you mentioned convenience traits versus foundation traits. You and I have talked about that a few times. I've read what you've written about it. I've even plagiarized I

Speaker 1 (00:34:42):
Think stole it from you because I hear say that all the time, just so you know,

Speaker 2 (00:34:45):
You've got my vocabulary changed. I've tried to not use convenience traits and I agree with you, it's far more than convenience.

Speaker 4 (00:34:53):
It's the foundation of what keeps you in business

(00:34:57):
A structure, a fertility. And to tell you, a guy I went to college with came up with convenience strikes, Dave Kirkpatrick I think who came up with that and that's fine. But we had progressed and I think they're really foundation traits. People can select for all the indexes they want and that's fine. The association is certainly not in business to tell people how to breed cattle. The American Angles Association, and they do a very good job of this. They give breeders and commercial tools to breed cattle like they want. If someone's not interested in retaining any females, then they need a terminal bull. They're not quite as interested in foundation traits as other people. And there's certainly some Angus bulls out there that would fit right into that. If you're in West cus running on desert or New Mexico, you don't want a lot of mail. You've got the tools to do that. And we've had some people when I was at the association so forth that really worked on stuff like that. We had a lady on the board when I was there inside of a international fame, Minnie Lou Bradley. She was one of the board member me and she said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've got the moderation. Moderation and we've got to give tools for everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:36:32):
Talk about your commercial bull buyer today. I mean, where are their priorities? You kind of spoke a little bit about where they've maybe changed a little from a birth weight to a cese not needing extremes there. They're trying to moderate size. Are they paying attention to hair shed? I mean obviously you're running a lot of fescue country down in your part of the world.

Speaker 4 (00:36:54):
About six or eight years ago we used a bull that was not good on hair. I had customers come to me and say, why have these bull in this bull and this bull got so much hair. I said, this genetic kid said they really like a bull, but I can't use him. I can't use him. They are paying, they have been paying attention to her. She they want hair, she, they're looking a lot more at feet moderate size. It surprised me how quick they're turning to that. Of course our extensive service, Kentucky's extensive service, Oklahoma State, extensive service evolved on a good job educating people about you get 'em too big, it costs you too much.

Speaker 3 (00:37:39):
Sure. And the last three to four years, one of the changes that we've seen in long-term customers is they want more birth weight because they see it converting to their bottom line and the prices these cattle are bringing wean cattle, they want to see those pounds. They might pull one calve out of 50 cows to get that extra 50 pounds on the other 49. It kind of pays out with our proximity to Nashville, one thing that we're seeing is people that don't look at it like that, they might have 30 cows, they want big CED, super low birth weight, not have to touch anything. They want a lot of marbling and what they're doing is they're getting in this cut by cut meat deal and they're selling at a really high price and one extreme marbling and they don't really have the herdsman skills. They have land and they have cows and they have butcher's appointments and they have a trailer with a freezer in it and they go to farmer's markets. So that's a lot of what we look at with our proximity to Nashville.

Speaker 1 (00:38:48):
And those folks would've been previously selling a couple head at a sale barn every now and again.

Speaker 3 (00:38:54):
Yes. That's one thing that Covid really kind of pushed that deal when there was this scare of we're never going to see meat again and these people had locally grown meat and things of that sort. So that kind of pushed that initiative forward pretty quickly. Sure,

Speaker 1 (00:39:12):
Yeah, that makes sense. Some of the other rules of management that you had on there dealt a lot with what I would call highly focused on good data. Things like use proven genetics or treat all animals in the contemporary group alike. If you don't, your ratios and records are meaningless. So why is that so important to you? Talk about the data part of it or the data into the system to get good data out.

Speaker 4 (00:39:37):
Yeah, you've got to put good data in and I know people that they had this calf they thought was solid extra goods, they'd feed him a little extra. He all would've been like a temporary group by itself or they'd put their kids show helper in the same contemporary group for yearly weights as the others. You can't do that. You can't do that. And the proven genetics that you make less mistakes using proven genetics. We like to use bulls. It's got a lot of dialogue and it is like light gave me. A lot of times we're usable and we'll breed four year olds to them because know they're going to sell the next year and they'll have this but this unproven bull or we figure he'll out more data on them than the next year and we'll get to see these calve for three to four months before they sell. Besides they're down proven genetics. There's less mistakes, there's less mistakes and that's a big deal. And I've got another role in there. Only use genetics from an outfit that has to make a cows pay bill. There's been a lot of times I've looked at people running for the Angus board of directors or the Tennessee Cattlemen Association or other cattle organization. I asked the question if all their cows died, would it change their standard or living? Now there are good people that it wouldn't change their standard living. It's made good board members and I voted for them, but generally speaking, if they do not depend on cattle to make a living, they don't have as much skin in the game.

Speaker 1 (00:41:19):
Both Mark and I are like, we can't comment on the elections. We'll just go on

Speaker 2 (00:41:24):
To the next point. We love all our members. That's great. I hear what you're saying. No, I think that's a really interesting, and I think it gets back to one just, and it maybe speaks to a little bit of some of your first rules around not following fads or not maybe following what's fashionable. I think those folks that again, that are in this day in, day out, I mean they can't afford to get out and follow fads, right? They've got to stick to, I think your rules actually all, I think they all line up probably very nicely. Do you guys find it easier or harder today? I mean we've got more tools in the toolbox, but in some regards some would say, well, it just makes it harder to find what, because there's more things that I can find fault with. The flip side is you now have more resources available to find what you need. So I guess finding is sire selection easier today or harder today?

Speaker 4 (00:42:24):
We've got more tools. The big thing about the tools with the two we've got today, we don't make as many mistakes. We've got data on more traits that are important. Our SI selection, we've got a little more picky and so it's really not easier for us, but we make fewer mistakes. I am not as skittish about using an unproven bull today as I would've been 10 years ago because I believe the data more. And we do research a lot. I do a lot of, if he's unproven, you won't believe how much research we do into, if I do not know that herd of cattle, I'll call 10 people. What about this guy? Can you believe what he says? And the cow families and so forth. I think with doubt they will make less mistakes.

Speaker 1 (00:43:27):
I heard in that that you're more picky, so that means that lake is more picky. He came back. Is that,

Speaker 3 (00:43:34):
Well, I mean you've got more things you can look at poke holes in and you can go through a data source and then you can look at things and you can get down to this pool. But at the end of the day, we're still going to vet people that are involved with those potential sis, whether it's an owner, somebody that we talk to. See, I talked to somebody at Seman company X and I can be like, well where are these calves close to me and I can talk to somebody. And we always bet these bulls from a scientific standpoint and then progeny reports. So it's not just a data sort and then just combing through spreadsheets and things that came off the printer. There's going to be some validation from people that have laid eyes on the phenotypes of that individual bull and their project.

Speaker 1 (00:44:28):
Is that how you kind of keep a balance of both phenotype and numbers? You do the sort first with the numbers and then phenotype or how do you make sure that you're kind of placing, I know you'd like to marry both of those, but how do you make sure you're placing the correct amount of emphasis on both of those?

Speaker 3 (00:44:43):
I think we identify candidates through a sort and then when we look at pull those bulls up and look at their number profile, look at their pedigree to see if there's anything that we love in the pedigree or something that we don't like. And then from there then we kind of get out on the war path and look at the phenotype of those cattle attributes of them or their project.

Speaker 4 (00:45:08):
Miranda, do you know what a pork chop baby is?

Speaker 1 (00:45:11):
Pork chop baby? I don't.

Speaker 4 (00:45:14):
That's a baby that's so ugly that the parents had to hang a pork chop around its neck to get the dog.

Speaker 1 (00:45:25):
I have not heard that one before.

Speaker 2 (00:45:27):
I think we have the title of our podcast though.

Speaker 4 (00:45:33):
You can't sell an ugly animal. We can't sell an ugly animal. They've got be somewhat attractive and with numbers to sale to our customers. And so we can't sell pork chop babies no matter what their numbers are.

Speaker 1 (00:45:54):
That could be the hook. Maybe that's the title of this podcast right there. Pork chop, maybe. That's good.

Speaker 2 (00:46:04):
What do you see changing most with your customers right now? I mean you talked about Nashville, you talk about one of the fastest growing populations and you talk about urban sprawl through a lot of the country that you guys are a part of. Do you see the cows in fewer hands? What as you guys look around you, your bull market, how are things changing or likely to change?

Speaker 4 (00:46:31):
We have smarter buyers.

(00:46:33):
The people whose marketing plan was the refrigerator went out, I saw cab, there's not many of them left. They're in it to make a business. We see some people, I know a couple of the last couple years that's called in the cattle business where 15 years ago they was pushing on all fences, renting the farm out. But they're smarter about doing it. We've got much more educated buyers, they're more educated. Well they know what their costs are. 15 years ago, a lot of 'em didn't know what their costs were. As my late great friend Roy Wallace said, A lot of people are in the cattle business is a byproduct of their grandfather's land ownership and they want cows so they want to clip it off. I see myself, lake buyers and I see that the size of our cow herds in this part of the country are fixed to be in fewer hands, but they're going to be bigger herds.

Speaker 3 (00:47:39):
Yeah, I would say that people that are going to thrive and or survive are looking at about value added marketing. Whether it's like the cut by cut meat deal that we mentioned or these verified source and vaccinated sales, elite red heer sales. I think in terms of that, that's going to be value added equals meeting your bottom line in a lot of scenarios. So that's kind of the way I look at it. I think everybody can say from the outside looking in, boy people are getting these wean calves are getting at four months old sometimes right now, 13, $1,500. Well what was the three Fs? Fuel feed, fertilizer, what were their inputs? I mean there's just more dollars being passed one way to the other. I dunno if it's as much profit, people are going to have to look at the overall efficiency of their operation in terms of the overall longevity of their operation.

Speaker 1 (00:48:45):
So what are you guys doing as a result to meet those? You've got changing customers. What have you guys done to stay ahead of 'em?

Speaker 4 (00:48:56):
Nothing. We're just trying to, the same path we've been on, we're just trying to take the tools that are presented to us and make our cattle better. And an association has done a great job focusing the tools on things that are important or it be the marketplace or the foundation traits. Of course, I think the foundation traits are the most important, which you've got. We just have to keep trying to make things better. We could run, well, we could run 25 more cows than we run, but hell, we cu too much every year. We cu because they're not good. They don't meet what we think will be needed in three years. So why keep,

Speaker 3 (00:49:45):
Yeah, we will of course crop a bulls. You're going to have your Kohls ultimately and those Kohls get marketed freezer beef. And then the ones that are past that age when we're getting close to sale, ultimately go to stock stockyard on our heifer deal. We cull somebody just knot head heifers and then some of the bottom end that are acceptable. We won't put them in the gene pool here. We will put embryos in them because one of the things that we do, and one of the reasons that certain people come back to us is our overall closed herd mentality. From a biosecurity standpoint, we source our own resets. In the past we had a really good bio secure, say cooperator herd guy retired. We decided just to kind do it all. So we keep those cattle around, but we just don't have 'em as part of our genetic platform. They're just basically, we call renta cows as far as they're just kind of here on rented time. But that's one thing that we try to do. And from a biosecurity standpoint, it's something we've kind got to do with

Speaker 2 (00:51:04):
Your marketing plan of selling five-year old females. How do you balance that? I know that's something as I talk to breeders, they also understand that obviously the importance of longevity and these cows got to last. So how do you balance that with selling those cows in the prime of their life from a production standpoint to keep your genetic turnover and your generation interval, but also keeping an eye on longevity and cows that are going to stick around or bulls that will produce daughters that are going to stick around for a long time in your commercial customers herds?

Speaker 4 (00:51:40):
That's a trick. That's a trick question too. It wasn't meant to be a trick question. No, I get asked that all the time. I've got one good bull customer that said, I get your bulls and I wonder are they going to last? Because you sell all your cows when they're 5-year-old. He understands selling at five years old. But we also have customers that come back, have a customer up in Kentucky who was in here last year. He showed me a picture of a 16-year-old cow ball here

(00:52:12):
Still having cash. He said, our cattle are so sound they last. We've got the tools mark now to do that with your fertility predictors and your structured predictors and we'll get more accurate on them, but they're very accurate now we find he practice pretty accurate. One more thing, we do this a little strange to some people. We'd rather flush a cow after she's raised two cow and we don't flush heifers. We have made them all 25 years ago, we made some bad mistake flushing, some heifers they just didn't do. Now maybe we got the projection, maybe we get the other thing out. And as you know, we've turned in, I don't know, 2000, maybe 3000 other schools, but we just don't flush heifers. We want to see how they would work in our environment. But we're finding, we make few mistakes now with the tools at this association has to

Speaker 3 (00:53:21):
One, whenever put a straw of semen in a cow two years I'm getting ready to, I'm on the cusp of marketing a bull or in three years I'm breeding that 2-year-old daughter back. So kind of goes hand in hand with way we select things. Certainly we want to have good stout bulls, but we want enough maternal influence in those bulls that we sell to go on and produce those elite bread heifers that people in a value added scenario can go on and be profitable and stay a repeat customer. So I think that's kind of one of our philosophies that we've got where there's a definite maternal influence because whether we have a bull or a heifer, because we know that that maternal influence is what's going to bring those people back to buy bulls and females also.

Speaker 2 (00:54:17):
Well, you talk about the tools and obviously we all know those tools can are only available because breeders like you guys have been super committed to turn in a lot of really good data and high quality data and in proper contemporary groups and all those things that I think we've probably, because of those things, they're able to put tools in your hands that might characterize your cows and your herd maybe better than folks that don't do that. And again, arm you guys to breed the kind of cattle you need to get on down the road and meet your customer's needs. So kudos to you guys for doing that. Maybe switching gears a little, because I talk about what's this business going to look like and 15, 20 years and maybe along those lines, what gives you had a lot of opportunities to go do other things other than come back and run registered cows. So where's the optimism come on your part to come back and talk about that transition back to the family operation I, I know we have a lot of listeners that are in maybe a similar situation or thinking about trying to make a transition or maybe some dads and moms thinking about transition to their kids. So talk about some of the things that went really well and where your optimism comes from.

Speaker 3 (00:55:32):
I mean, I think that ultimately the initial optimism comes from the breed of cattle I'm affiliated with. I mean, you go to the supermarket, you go to a restaurant, Angus, Angus, Angus, and then you look at where our breed sits in the overall American cow herd and their influence there. You look at the relationships. I just think the affiliation and the dedication to and from the Angus breed is kind of what sparks a lot of that enthusiasm and optimism as far as moving forward relationships that have been built and potential relationships that hopefully that within our program, throwing all that bad stuff out and keeping good word. It might not be world setting sales or anything like this, but we know the old saying how fast bad word travels and how fast good word travels and hopefully it's a lot of good word coming out of here.

(00:56:37):
So that creates a lot of optimism for the future. And as far as growing, I don't know, as far as the number of bulls that we sell, I think we could sell a few more, but I don't think I'd want to sell a hundred for the amount of cows that are around here. It could get just a little tough. Now I think the female side of what we've been doing, of course we don't do any reverse sort or anything like that. We let the good Lord sort that out because we do need the bulls and the females. But I think that the female side is doing really well and I think that's the future. I think I look at it as what a lot of people call around here with all these people moving from out west. It's kind of the Yellowstone effect and the romance of having cattle and if we can produce something that people fall in love with. That's great.

Speaker 2 (00:57:34):
Joe, any advice you've got for dads out there listening that have sons and daughters wanting to come back into the program?

Speaker 4 (00:57:44):
Well, you can't be a dictator and expect them to come back. You've got to, it's sort of a two way street. You helped get 'em educated. Hell listen to some of that education you paid for and whether they were educated formally or educated in the workforce, you raise them, they got educated, all work together. It's wisdom. All wisdom sometimes is good, but youth and it's enthusiasm. Sometimes it's just as great if not better. And you've got to realize that.

Speaker 2 (00:58:24):
That's great advice. I see Miranda right now. Yeah, that

Speaker 1 (00:58:27):
Might be the both quote, those good nugget. Those are good nuggets. Do you remember the specific conversation when you decided, hey, I'm coming back, or was it always just kind of a thought?

Speaker 3 (00:58:37):
It was, it kind of, I don't know if it was a specific conversation, but I had not just a full-time job, but internships and things like that. And dad was, you've been off the board? Not even a year, I guess after he'd been chairman and my uncle was, at the time, he was in a tobacco initiative leadership field. He was having to be gone a lot. And I wasn't exactly, I was looking for something to do. I didn't know if I wanted another job. And then with some of the things potentially coming down the pi, it was just kind of, he basically said, Hey, if you want to come back, you're going to have to tote the weight, take some risk and all that. And so I just kind of bet on myself, I guess is one way of putting in it. And I haven't left in almost 20 years. So evidently, so far so good.

Speaker 4 (00:59:43):
Well, we have given him some help, but he's given us tremend self and a lot more wisdom and more, he's helped us look at things a different way. That's part of that education experience because he was educated 30 years later than I was. But he had some experiences I didn't have. And so you learn from experience was that the guy said, how do you get wisdom? You get wisdom from experience. How do you get experience? You get experience by making bad decisions.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Unfortunately that's quite true. But I appreciate that you guys have, again, I think set a great example of how it can work and appreciate you sharing those kind of that insight and kind of that path.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
I was just going to say, you've definitely given us new ways to look at things. I'll never look at another ugly baby the same way again. For sure. We're a pork chop.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
You guys are thick in the thick of cabin season right now too, so we probably better let you get back to checking some, maybe checking the cabin bit.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
It's been raining ever since we've been on this and we're just so thankful to get the rain. But see, we're not in the thicker ca season yet. Miranda. We have a bunch of stupid cows. They can't read the book. None of 'em are supposed to ca before the fifth. We're supposed to be Kevin you, but you take about, give us a week and we'll be in a pickup.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
We're just keeping you on your toes I guess all. So today's random question of the week, I want to know what is your favorite thing, your favorite task or your favorite thing to do together that you do as a pair?

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
And you can have different answers.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
I mean, for me it's probably Calvin out cows, just seeing the fruits of your laborers and as you cal and then you tag a calve and you see one that's two weeks old, look at that progress and just see what the future holds. And of course I like fall weather. I mean right now, I mean if it was dry today it'd be 73 degrees. It'd be perfect. Just ride around tag calves all day long. So I kind of like Calvin Cows about as well as anything

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
I do too. That's my favorite thing we do together. And you can see the fruits of your labor. You see new life spring forth and I have him to pick them up and lay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
So emphasis on the together part honcho?

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
Yeah, that's on the together part. Put that all together part.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Yeah. It's him driving a side by side, me jumping off, getting it, getting it to the ground. I get the scales off. He gets the scales off. And then when I get everything else processed between the nasal, the tattoo, the iodine, tag, the tattoo, then I pick it up, weigh it, and then fill our books out, do our underscores and turn our phenotypes in. And then we go along So yeah, we get all that data that we can turn in as phenotypes right then. And so yeah, I'd say that's probably my favorite thing to do is Calvin out cows. And there's lot of things you pick up on Calvin Cows, just especially from disposition on cows, which lines are going to kind of protect cals and things of that sort. So it's always neat. We've got a group right now. Like I said, we won't say any names and I'm pleasantly surprised how they've acted it out from the way they were at a yearly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Well, I love that we said you could have different answers, but if we would've done one of those game shows where we made you write 'em both on a whiteboard, you would've come up with the same answer at the same time.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah. And I don't like calving around December. I mean, I just assume have 'em all first day high and by Halloween I'm done. But after about Halloween, it's what I call the hurry up and wait deal because you're kind of, you might go three or four days without a cab, you might have one day where you've got five and you can go another four or five days without anything. It's what it's good with the bad.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Well, I think the other thing I like about that example that you shared is that it's obvious that you two enjoy working together or you wouldn't have said that, right? It's one of the hardest working the times when you're the busiest in your calendar and you guys enjoy doing that together. So we thank you for sharing some of that, how you guys work together, and definitely sharing some of your breeding philosophies and definitely some of your one-liners. So thank you for jumping on the podcast today and thank you for your leadership in the breed.

Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
Absolutely. You're welcome. And we thank you for the opportunity for doing this. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
You bet. It's been a lot of fun, guys. I admire you. Always enjoy our conversations. You both always get me thinking and appreciate all that you do and fun to watch the success of your program. So thanks for coming and sharing with us today.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
You're welcome. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Hope it keeps raining.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Well, it's going to stop sometime.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Thanks for listening today. That wraps up another good discussion as we're halfway through season five, to never miss an episode, be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast platform. And while you're there, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave us a rating or a review that helps other Angus breeders to find our show. This has been The Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.