"Keep Doing What You’re Doing”
A message from the feeding industry to Angus breeders.
October 16, 2024
Angus cattle today are “high-performance” athletes, and they need to be treated as such.
That’s according to Pete Anderson, cattle nutritionist and director of research for Midwest PMS, who joined Tom Fanning, general manager of the Pratt Feeders Group, on The Angus Conversation. The pair talked cattle feeding, change over the decades and how Angus breeders can design the genetics that work best in the yard.
“Cattle really want consistency, and that is super important,” says Fanning, who has worked in feedyards in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas his entire career. “We strive at every location to be on time, high quality and deliver exactly what we think the cattle need.”
Anderson directs Midwest PMS’s research program and provides technical expertise to their team of nutritionists, analyzing data on hundreds of thousands of head of cattle each year.
Tom Fanning
Pete Anderson
“We're asking these cattle to be high performance athletes and many of them are really capable of doing that. That puts the onus on us to do the same thing,” Anderson says.
For cattle to be profitable in the feedyard they must make it to the end of the feeding phase, gain weight, use resources well and create a high-quality carcass.
“And, of course, the relative proportion of those things to each other depends on feed price and price of cattle. So, they move around,” Anderson says, noting they use dynamic models to help turn data into decision-making tools. “But if you send us cattle to stay alive and get big, can be efficient and earn carcass premiums, we can do the rest.”
What do Angus breeders need to do to keep that supply chain full of the right kind? More of the same, Fanning says.
“I always say thank God for the Angus cow because she has created wealth and brought hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families out of poverty into success,” Fanning explains. “And so I'm going to say keep doing what you’re doing, keep focusing on the future and where we think the industry’s going, and keep working on those tools that you’ve been doing to provide those high-quality bulls.”
Focusing on the future and creating the tools that help produce high-quality bulls for the beef industry – that's the message from the cattle feeding segment back to Angus breeders in this episode. A feeder’s top priorities are cattle that stay healthy, get big, marble well and use resources efficiently, and if cattlemen send those kind of raw materials, this episode’s guests pledge to make the most of them. If today's cattle are “high-performance athletes,” hear directly from those who are the final step in making them winners.
HOSTS: Miranda Reiman and Mark McCully
GUESTS:
Tom Fanning, general manager for Pratt Feeders Group, oversees the four yards that make up the feeding company: Buffalo (Okla.) Feeders, Ashland (Kan.) Feeders, Ford (Kan.) Feeders and Pratt (Kan.) Feeders.
Tom earned an agricultural economics degree from Oklahoma State University in 1987 and served as an Infantry Captain in the U.S. Army from 1982 to 1992. He completed his master’s in management at Troy State University in 1992. From 1992 to 2001, Tom was employed by Cargill, where he managed cattle feeding operations across the Texas Panhandle. Then he spent 22 years as manager of Buffalo Feeders, before assuming his current role.
Throughout his career, Tom has held various leadership positions in cattlemen’s organizations at local, state and national levels, including serving as chairman of the Oklahoma Beef Council. Under his leadership, Buffalo Feeders garnered numerous accolades, including the 2009 Certified Angus Beef Feedyard of the Year, the 2019 Beef Quality Assurance Feedyard of the Year and the 2023 Texas Cattle Feeders Association Feedyard Excellence in BQA.
Pete Anderson is director of research for Midwest PMS, and directs research all their research activities, provides technical support to nutritionists and clients, and oversees the company’s performance records analysis program. He also has quality assurance, feed safety and regulatory responsibilities for the firm’s production facilities.
In addition, Anderson leads the company’s initiative in business and operations consulting. He provides strategic planning, succession planning and management and leadership education to clients, and coordinates operations consulting efforts for the company. He applies scientific principles to solve business problems, based on 25 years of experience as a senior business executive.
Pete received his bachelor’s in animal science from Kansas State University in 1983 and a master’s and doctorate from Michigan State University in 1987 and 1989, respectively.
Pete has never made a hole in one, but he has climbed several fourteeners and has his own barbecue website (petesmeats.com). Pete and his wife, Denise, reside in Loveland, Colo., and have three adult children.
SPONSOR NOTE: This episode is sponsored by Ingram Angus LLC.
The entire Ingram team invites you to their annual production sale, Friday, Nov. 8, on the farm at Pulaski, Tenn., to see how they've harnessed the power of the Angus cow to make the herd bull your operation needs.
Visit IngramAngus.com for more information on some of the breed’s most proven cow families, and they’ll see you Nov. 8.
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