Garden City feed yard joins CAB team

by Jackie Eager

A big feedlot can stand out for personalized custom cattle feeding, if it has the right people. Consider Garden City (Kan.) Feed Yard, LLC, where employees stay on for 20 years or more because the programs they manage work so well.

“The stability of our staff is a great thing,” says manager Mark Boos. “You know if anyone stays for that long, they are people who care about their jobs and the quality of care given to the animals. They just take a lot of pride in what they do.”

Both customers and their cattle take comfort in that.

The feedlot, operated by AzTx Cattle Company since 1994, covers an expanse of sandy soil that is well suited to drainage and dry pen conditions. That’s important for any yard, and certainly for this one with 88,000-head capacity.

Despite that size, or perhaps because of it, Boos and his staff don’t operate as if one generic program should fit all customers. They get to know each customer and customize to fit their needs and build working relationships.  

“If I can understand their ration, I can better start their animal onto our ration,” Boos says. “If I understand their health program, I can adapt our health program to fit, so we complement each other.”

Locally grown feeds support area crop farmers and help keep ration prices relatively low for feeding customers, he adds.  Attention to detail at Garden City Feed Yard means making sure the proper amount of the right feed is delivered on time for each pen, and producing the highest quality beef for each customer.

Late this summer, after a year of changing economic conditions, Boos decided to build on the stability his feedyard could offer by signing on with the world’s leading beef brand, as a Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) partner. The CAB Feedlot Licensing Program includes 64 partners in 15 states.

Over the years, Boos saw that CAB had developed market opportunities to sell the better quality cattle for a premium price.

“We need to focus on meeting consumer needs,” he says. “The day the animal is born, it’s all for the consumer, but Certified Angus Beef is the only marketing group that approaches it that way.”

“I think we are on the right path with the CAB program,” he says. “Combining that brand’s 31-year history with our own long-term base brings even more stability to our relationships with Angus producers.”