Old ranch, new ways for CAB award winner

When Mother Nature gets mean, new technology and high-quality goals gain the upper hand

by Steve Suther

Joe Mayer has always looked for better ways. That’s second nature to anyone whose family has made a living on harsh land for generations. All who thrive on the 35,000 acres that comprise Mayer Ranch near Guymon, Okla., must continually adapt.

For his example that proves high-quality ideals and cattle can flourish here, Mayer earned the 2013 Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) Commercial Commitment to Excellence Award, presented at the CAB annual conference in Palm Desert, Calif., Sept. 18-20.

Once part of The Comancheria, Mexico and Texas, the Cimarron Strip may have looked like its 19th century nickname, No Man’s Land, when Mayer’s great grandfather rode across it in 1873. Bound from Savannah, Mo., to manage a branch of the XIT Ranch near Texline, Texas, he would cross the strip many times in the years ahead, trailing cattle to Dodge City, Kan.

When settlement was opened as part of Oklahoma Territory in the 1890s, the family had already been ranching there seven years.

Mayer grew up on a part of the ranch at nearby Hardesty, Okla., moving to the Guymon ranch to ramrod a new part of the spread while earning a degree at Panhandle State University where he met and married MaryAnne.

All the cattle were straightbred Herefords then, but calving ease was a common concern. That led to the first use of Angus bulls on heifers a few years later, though the black baldies were discounted at auctions.

Early adapters of artificial insemination (AI), the family tried most of the continental breeds before coming back to exclusively Angus 20 years ago.

“We follow the market,” Mayer says, “and that’s why we went with Angus.”

In 1993, he started buying bulls that would sire uniform performance and quality, from Gardiner Angus Ranch, Ashland, Kan.

“They were paying attention to marbling before anybody else even knew it was going to be important,” Mayer says.

Before that, he produced for the prevailing commodity market and went about the daily business of ranching while he and MaryAnne raised Katie, now an attorney in Colorado, and Paul and Margie, who are part of the ranch business today.

“We fed a lot of cattle, and all kinds, but that was back before grids and none of that mattered,” Mayer says. Now that it mattered, carcass data through the Gardiners and U.S. Premium Beef helped him identify and cull the tail-enders.

He sends calves to CAB partner yard Triangle H, near Garden City, Kan.

“Joe has the right ideas on how to work with leading genetics to send us some of the best calves we’ve fed,” owner-manager Sam Hands says. “And we’re working together to help take that to a new level.”

The straightbred Angus herd of 1,400 cows conformed to plans, as once leading-edge outlier genetics became the norm.

Mayer tries to keep expected progeny differences (EPDs) balanced, but he pushes the top end of the $B index that combines EPDs for growth and carcass traits with economic data. Bulls for heifers must be in the top 1% for calving ease.

But drought created new challenges by 2010 when culling had to go much deeper than expected.

“We sold the oldest and then the next oldest,” Mayer says, noting finally, all mature cows had to be sold. “It tore my heart out.”

And it still wasn’t enough when 2011 opened up even drier.

“It got down to where it was hurting us to even keep bred heifers, but we had spent too much money and time, worked too hard to build our genetics to just lose that,” Mayer says. “We started looking for some place to go, and maybe we should have left here.”

Anyone would have had doubts when grass that survived the Dust Bowl began dying.

“We started driving until we found something green,” he says. But the inside insight came from Mayer’s AI specialist, Doug Tenhouse, originally from Illinois. He knew of a 1,640-acre ranch for sale in the Green Hills near Unionville, Mo.

“We closed on a deal and shipped cows two days later,” Mayer says. Those 2011 first-calf heifers are now the oldest cows in a herd of 1,090, and 624 of them in Missouri. That’s only half the herd it could be.

“If we could ever get a rain here—and it would take two or three years—but we could run a couple thousand,” he says. “It has got to start doing a whole lot of raining first.”

Meanwhile, calves from this ultra-culled herd now make 70% CAB and 15% Prime. Mayer plans to push that to 25% Prime in the near term.

He’ll cull any cow that can’t produce a CAB calf, and let technology ensure the repopulated herd can gain and grade at the very top.

Planning for precipitation to return to its 18- to 20-inch annual average, last fall Mayer bought 500 heifers from five ranch dispersions. When the drought didn’t break, he turned to realism and a new tool, the GeneMax™ (GMX) genomics test from CAB.

Gate-cut sampling from each set identified the top two strings, from which all heifers were tested. Only those scoring above 80 on the 99-point GMX scale were kept in each case.

“We thought at that level, they should be able to produce a CAB or Prime,” Mayer says. The test cost $17, but prorated over a six-calf productive life, “it seemed reasonable.”

Expectations are high every day. By the time calves finish in the feedlot, “our steers and feeder heifers need to weigh at least 3 pounds for each day they live,” he explains.

When 2,000 cows are in on that plan, producing only CAB and Prime calves, Mayer may allow himself a moment of satisfaction to enjoy the better days. He’ll probably order a steak, medium rare…

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