And the winners are… 

February 10, 2011

… drumroll, please!

The winners of five new steak knife sets and one new charcoal grill are…

… I can’t tell you! Dang!

Sorry for the suspense, folks. But our lucky NCBA grill give-a-way winners have been notified by e-mail and we will know their identities soon. I figured they wouldn’t enjoy having their addresses plastered online, so if you subscribed to this blog between Feb. 1-6, THANK YOU, and watch your e-mail for a prize notification!

In the meantime, I wanted to re-cap a few of my favorite highlights from last week’s Cattlemen’s College at the National Cattle Industry Convention. My favorite session was bright and early Wednesday, called “Managing for Quality: A supply chain approach.”

I loved this session because it brought together so many great minds and cattle industry veterans. As a young person in this industry, I don’t think there is any greater tool for success than taking the time to listen to guys like Jerry Bohn of Pratt Feeders or Dr. Stokka talk about their experiences and knowledge. Here are some of my favorite quotes from those two and more:

• “Quality sells in this industry. We talk a lot about pounds, but we also sell by dollar figures. A quality carcass puts more dollars in those pounds.” — Dr. Larry Corah, Certified Angus Beef
• “Prime beef is not an artifact. It is a specific target that restaurants care about. If you cared about it, you could make $150 more/head.” — Dr. Corah.
• “To maximize quality and dollars returned, we have to focus on genetics. I focus on EPDs with high $Beef value. If you use bulls in the top 25% of their breed for those characteristics, you will start seeing huge progress.” — Aaron Arnett, Select Sires
• “You CAN make more than just commodity beef.” — Arnett
• “Any bad day in the life of this calf will result in decreased performance. Whatever disease issues you have in your herd could be related to this time and place [birth].” — Dr. Gerold Stokka, Pfizer Animal Health
• “The most intriguing area of research today is fetal programming. We know that what a cow eats and feels [while pregnant] will affect the calf.” — Dr. Stokka

• “11 years ago, we decided to sell our first calves off-ranch on a USPB grid. I found out a lot about my cattle with that first group of calves. I learned they weren’t near as good as I thought they were. … So we had to start focusing on EPDs and went to a straight Angus base.” — Ken Grecian, Kansas cattlemen
• “We have worked through the years to provide quality beef to our consumers. That means we are selective in our procurement.” — Jerry Bohn, Pratt Feeders.
• “We must narrow the genetic pool to reduce variation in our cow herd. We’re always looking to buy better cattle. … After all, we’re in the business to provide a quality eating experience to consumers 100% of the time. We’re not there yet.” — Bohn.

I hope if you were at NCBA, you learned as much from these and other speakers as I did. www.4cattlemen.com did a great job summarizing more of these sessions and meetings from convention if you’d like to catch more.

You may also like