Happy cattle, happy consumers
October 6, 2011
“If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
Surely you’ve heard that phrase and you get what it inherently means. If the household caretaker isn’t in a good mood, it trickles down to the rest of the family.
As I was listening to management consultant Don Tyler talk at our Feeding Quality Forum in August, it got me thinking how applicable that same philosophy is to animal caretakers. When they’re not happy, the herds aren’t happy. When feedlot employees aren’t happy, how much pride are they really taking in the job they’re doing?
And a growing body of research proves cattle that never have a bad day do better on the rail.
When you look at the personnel mix, most ranches and feedlots blend several different generations into one, so that creates some challenges.
Tyler shared some insights for helping the newest generation in our workforce, The Millennials, find their niche:
- “They have a sense of purpose and expect their job to have meaning. We can help them by helping them understand the industry. How many people do we feed a day? You would be amazed if you did the math.”
- “They have high expectations for some of their social needs getting met at work. They want to have good relationships and have friends at work. That’s a bit of a change.”
- “They like to collaborate with the boss. They like to know what’s going on and why do we need to do it this way?”
- “It takes grooming those people along the way to where they know that this is the expectation and this is what it takes to do this job effectively.”
Basically the overriding theme was that many hurdles can be overcome with more communication. That’s not something that comes naturally to every get-your-hands-dirty manager,but it’ll be worth it in the end.
Especially if you keep those calves happy (i.e. gaining and grading)–think of how many smiles that end result will produce!
May your bottom line be filled with black ink,
~Miranda
PS–About 10 years ago, Steve talked about how workload figures into this whole “keep ”em happy” equation, too, in “Quality Time.”
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