A heritage of quality

The first thing we talked about was how dry the winter had been. It was mid-April and the Kansas prairie didn’t look a day after January. Andy Larson’s cows were out on pasture near Green, Kan., but still being supplemented as, ironically, there was very little green grass in sight.

While it was too early to tell if the drought would last the whole year (it didn’t), the knowledge that it could brought memories of the five generations before him. They persevered and brought Larson Family Farms through the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, 1980 financial crisis and many other difficult times. Today, Andy manages the 500 commercial Angus cows and thousands of acres of pasture and crops with his father Raymond.

“We’re just your normal Kansas operation, built by generations of hardworking family members,” the younger Larson says.

The family started with a Hereford herd and over the years have bred up to an Angus herd that consistently reaches high-quality marks. Last year 60% of the 181 finished calves sent to market qualified for the Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) brand.

Andy says they accomplished that through a combination of breeding, nutrition and utilizing carcass data.

“There are a lot of things we do to try to make sure once that calf hits the feedyard, he’s prepared to excel,” he says. “It starts with nutrition, includes health, and some of it comes back to genetics.”

Taught by those generations before him, Andy wants to keep stepping things up. One example? Performance and finishing cattle earlier without sacrificing quality.

“We want to be known as somebody who has a product that can be stood behind,” Andy says. “Everything we do here, we do with the goal of producing beef with the intention of maximizing the quality of that animal, and then doing it as efficiently as possible.”

His family farm history runs deep.

As the industry changes, he wants to keep up, “but not forget that we’re here for producing a quality product, and that we’re here to do things the right way.”

He knows the operation was not built overnight and that the drive to produce the best was inherited.

“We’re stewards of the cattle. We’re just the caretakers,” he says. “It’s all for somebody on down the line.”

~Jill

PS–To learn more about Andy Larson and his operation, watch for an upcoming story in the Angus Beef Bulletin.

Jill Seiler recently completed her 2018 spring producer communications internship. Her dairy farm upbringing, combined with Kansas State University ag communications education, gave her experience to draw on when interviewing ranchers and researchers the past few months.

Time and data will tell

My red Ford Focus looked out of place at the Richmond, Kentucky auction barn. Surrounded by pickups and trailers, my Ohio tags were a long way from home and looked it. But when I walked through the doors of the salebarn restaurant, I was greeted like family.

It was clear I wasn’t a regular, but Billy and Scott Turpin waved me over to their table. They insisted we order lunch before we talking cattle over a checkered tablecloth in the hometown haunt.

The father and son can only be described as good ‘ol Kentucky boys. Passionate about their farm and family, they are commercial cattlemen with deep tobacco farming roots. On the drive from Richmond to what they call their ‘main farm’ they pointed out where they had gone to school, told stories of their grandfathers and memories of what the farm had been before today.

The Angus cowherd, once secondary to the cash crop and their vocational ag teaching careers, have now become Billy and Scott’s sole focus. Pulling into the drive, I saw a familiar sight for the state of Kentucky — a traditional big black tobacco barn. Today it serves as their headquarters. Inside hang pictures of their successful land judging teams, Billy judging at the North American as well as relics from the time when they regularly harvested tobacco. Though you can see what it once was, they’ve added updates to better serve its new purpose. Next to where the tobacco plants once hung to dry is a warming room that serves as a haven on days when a newborn calf needs to be sheltered from Mother Nature.

Like most in the cattle business, they sell by the pound, but have always focused on ways to provide added value. Their goal is to be a supplier of a premium product, with their sights set on the Certified Angus Beef® brand.

There is a place for commodity cattle,” Billy says. “But there’s a place for upper-end cattle too.”

Scott explains, “We’d rather be on the premium end than the commodity end.”

However, feeding cattle and getting carcass data has never been in the cards from a cash-flow perspective. The father and son have worked on choices that pay off at the ranch level, including an emphasis on selecting for Angus bulls with optimum Angus Dollar Value indexes including $B and $W, investing in developing quality forages and health programs.

But so far, they’ve only been able to hope that it’s working for the consumer, too.

“If you’re going to invest in good, high-quality genetics, you should be able to get some of that value,” says Scott. “I know there’s a lot of value in these cattle that we never see.”

Cattle buyers sent signals that always seemed positive, but this year they retained ownership on a few, wanting the data to tell them the truth. Partnering with other local Angus producers, they sent a partial load to Pratt Feeders in Kansas and soon hope to discover the results.

“We want to be able to capture the true value of the genetics we’ve invested in,” Billy says. “And to do that, we need to hang them on the rail and see what they’re worth.”

On the Turpin farm, time tells a story. It’s one where the family hasn’t been afraid to make changes to do what makes sense for profitability. Time will tell what decisions are working and which aren’t, but they know the numbers will indicate what needs to happen next.

Until Next Time,

Nicole

P.S. For more of the Turpin family story, check out future editions of the Angus Journal and Angus Beef Bulletin.

The road ahead

I’ve always loved a good road trip. The opportunity the open road provides, experiencing new places, different adventures and seeing how diverse different parts of our country are is incredible.

The backroads of rural Kentucky provided welcome new scenery and opened my eyes to a place where the bourbon is exceptional, tobacco farming roots run deep and one that might surprise you, the cattle are quality.

Cattle from the Southeastern states have a mixed reputation for delivering carcass merit. Pockets of excellence lift that overall image.

Those center around ranchers like James Coffey, who help drive value by working to breed the type you hope to end up on your plate.

The rancher is kind, focused and dedicated to making each year better than the one before. He’s a fifth-generation Angus breeder, but his approach to the business is different than those who have come before him. It was his involvement that drove an emphasis on data-based decision making. He introduced artificial insemination (AI), embryo transfer, ultrasound, performance testing and Angus Herd Improvement Records (AHIR®) when he returned home to the ranch 20 years ago.

He’s a man who loves data, a natural fit for his first career as a CPA. Now, he manages a sporting goods company that supplies major retailers around the world and of course, the cowherd at Branch View Angus, Hustonville, Ky.

For him, there can never be too much data. A vision and affinity for numbers in business led him to begin feeding steers out of his own bulls to understand how they performed for those even further down the production chain. The average for his first nine loads was 86% Choice or better, with 31% earning CAB, including 3% Prime.

But that was 10 years ago.

“The real opportunity is to own the cattle all the way through,” Coffey says. “That’s the only way you can capture every nickel that’s in that animal.”

It’s a lot of nickels, not just for him, but for the commercial cattlemen that use his bulls.

“This is all about maximizing the sale value of our customers’ calves,” he says.

This year, he sent four loads of his own and customers’ spring 2017 calf crop to Pratt Feeders in Kansas. The calves will be marketed on the grid this spring and summer and Coffey is eager to see the numbers.

“It will be a data set large enough to be able to show people what the cattle can do,” he says. “I know if I can show backgrounders and feedlots how the cattle perform, then we can get bids for our customers and maximize their price.”

It’s a chance to discover just what opportunities the future might hold, changes he might need to make in his genetic selections and what direction to go next.

I drove away from Branch View Angus through twisty roads toward Hustonville, knowing it wasn’t just me with an exciting road ahead.

Until next time,

Nicole

Look for more on Coffey’s calves as we follow them to Pratt Feeders in an upcoming post and check out upcoming issues of the Angus Journal for more of Coffey’s story.

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Ovine to bovine

I was a sheep kid growing up.

My home life was cattle, we made a living off of them entirely, but I loved showing sheep the most.

I could go on and on about the animal but the industry itself I had no interest in – cattle ranching runs through my blood.

Home is Cokeville, Wy., but Fred grew up moving every six months with his family’s flock. “When the sheep came back, I’d come back.”

I met Fred Roberts this summer outside a diner in western Wyoming. He ordered his coffee and I asked him questions about Angus cattle. Fred’s a sheep guy, too.

“Four years ago we had 8,000 ewes,” he says. “I miss the sheep a lot.”

I can see it in his half smile, his reminiscent eyes. The cattle make sense but the sheep made him happy.

The Sublette mountain range and Raymond canyon surround Fred’s cattle as they graze in the summer.

Labor and predation issues and the next generation who preferred to stay in one place yearlong led Fred to sell. That left all his attention to the bovines.

“I started checking and liked different attributes of the Angus cow better,” he says. Decades ago, he suggested his dad move away from Herefords.

Gesturing to a group of two- and three-year-olds gathered off the mountain for a drink, he tells me, “It’s for the obvious reasons.”

The land is so expansive here, the cattle actually stay in more than one group.

He says that’s how he “got going with the blacks.” He’s stayed because they work.

Marketability, calving ease, good health, that’s what Fred found to be true of his choice.

“Then there’s the opportunities given what the Angus breed has done with Certified Angus Beef^®,” he says.

That profit potential isn’t automatic, he’ll make clear. Feeding calves through harvest lets him know if he’s making the best decisions year after year.

“You spend a lot of money on genetics. That’s the only way you’re going to realize if you’re improving or not.”

Weaning a calf early gives your cow a chance to rebound and ideally breed back, Fred says. That aligns with his decision to send calves to feed.

A decade’s worth of data shows he’s done it. For the consumer and for himself.

From 2015 to 2017, his cattle that earned CAB or Prime premiums grew by more than 10 points, to 40%. A recent group of 297 steers and heifers went 91% Choice and better.

“He looks for genetics to increase the maternal side of the cow, but he’s also trying to improve the end product,” Gary Darnall says. The owner-manager of Darnall Feedyard, near Harrisburg, Neb., has seen Fred’s commitment for 12 years. “It’s a business decision with Fred, number one. Whatever it is, he’s always striving.”

The rancher studies his cattle often. This pair is an example of hard work that’s led to success.

I compliment his herd as we push a few escape artists to the other side of the fence.

“Let me put it this way,” he says: “I’ve tried.”

He’s done that and so much more with his cattle on the mountain.

Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,

Laura

PS – to learn more about what genetic traits are top of mind and why Fred says he’ll stay with Angus, check out upcoming issues of the Angus Journal and Angus Beef Bulletin.

Answers out the window

I expected a typical interview. If I’m being honest, maybe even a rushed one.

I’d called Jordan Willis on the fly just a week earlier, asked him if I could snag an early morning on his Wyoming ranch.

“North of Randolph you’ll come to a junction,” he started. “From there I’m just a couple miles on the right.”

I turned my music down and drove the dirt road, thinking of questions I’d like to ask the young cattleman, and feeling pretty far from home.

Jordan, alongside his brothers, James and Jed, grow their own feed for the herd for 150 days of the year.

Jordan met me near the front drive. His brood was still waking up so we decided to chat life and cattle outside with the sunrise.

“In our valley, the younger generation aren’t all taking over,” he explains. What could support a family in the ’60s and ’70s isn’t sustainable today, and neighbors and friends have sold out; some work day jobs.

For Jordan, that wasn’t an option – driven simply by the fact that he wouldn’t allow it.

Instead he’d expand. The leases, cattle and farming.

To improve the herd, the Willisses run GeneMax® Advantage™ tests to on 500 females each year. About 250 will be kept as replacements.

“It’s always different,” he admits, “and there’re always challenges, but just about when you get discouraged, and don’t think anything’s going to go right, something positive comes out of it.”

Like the time he looked out his kitchen window.

“It was all in native grass,” he says. Originally from Laketown, Utah, it was Jordan’s grandfather who bought the place across the border in the early 1950s. Back then it sustained the cattle but Jordan needed more from the land. His passion was in place and his family was growing.

“We couldn’t find any pasture we liked that was reasonably priced, so we said, ‘Why don’t we just graze them here?’”

So the family plowed and planted.

The larger herd still summers on state and federal land to the north but replacement heifers spend their time in that backyard, as do bulls in the fall.

Alfalfa up to my knees, pivots keeping it a vibrant green, that “here” is 50 feet from Jordan’s front door. Nineteen pivots cover nearly 2,000 acres of flood-irrigated soil and 1,800 Angus surround it.

“We graze around 250 head in the summer and it still grows enough for fall feed,” Jordan says.

By now his kids are up with the sun, we share a breakfast before taking a walk in that field and I feel like we’ve all been friends for years.

Quite the view out of a kitchen window if I do say so myself.

“We probably put too much emphasis on data,” he says, acknowledging they don’t retain ownership through the feedyard right now.

We laugh and agree there’s no such thing.

“We’ve outbid registered guys our whole lives to get the bulls we want,” he says. In a sale, he’ll look for growth, uniformity and a frame score of 6 or higher.

A family of five and growing. There’s a new Willis due in 2018!

“We’re kind of where we want to be,” he says. “Now we’ve gotta fine tune and move our herd forward.”

I’d say he has the generation to get it done.

Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,

Laura

PS – To learn more about the Willises and the technology they use to grow a successful herd, check out this month’s Angus Beef Bulletin or February’s Angus Journal.

Behind the scenes: the ranch from the movie scenes

It was the first time I’d waited for a cattleman in a gift shop and visitor center. Ryan Schultz, at Kualoa Ranch, was just getting back from his first chores of the day as tour buses started to roll in. Those travelers came to see where dozens and dozens of movies and TV shows—from Jurassic Park to Lost—were filmed on the 4,000 acres of Hawaiian countryside. Others had booked the ATV tour, horseback riding or a trip out to the private island.

2017_03_mr_Kualoa Ranch-144 — The restaurant, visitor’s center and gift shop was bustling with people from the moment I arrived until I left several hours later.

I was probably the only one interested in how Angus cattle fit into the mix. But the remaining Godzilla rocks scattered in the pasture didn’t fool me. The herd that started in the 1870s, shortly after the sugar mill folded because the soil isn’t conducive to cane, is still an important enterprise. “Cattle do the natural landscaping. You could never hire a full-time landscaper to do what they do,” Ryan says, motioning toward the foreground that sets off the dramatic Ko’olau Mountains. He may have to move cattle to a different pasture from time to time, but mostly the animals just coexist with the commotion that they’ve come to regard as normal.

2017_03_mr_Kualoa Ranch-122 — Ryan Schultz, a third generation Hawaiian cattleman, showed me around the ranch. Just over his left shoulder is evidence of a movie in progress. They’re usually sworn to secrecy while something is being filmed.

While I was there, the row of cars lined up near a catering tent gave it away: they were filming that day. What I assume might be a bit of a pain, Ryan shrugs off. The people are accommodating enough and it’s just part of the everyday “routine.” I guess ranching around Show Biz isn’t much of a challenge, compared to the logistics of sending calves to the mainland or trying to remain profitable when you start at something like a 40-cent/pound discount due to shipping costs. Angus genetics help. “We’ve just found they do really well for the program,” Ryan says, noting docility, birthweight and carcass quality top his selection criteria. “To produce a consistent product, genetics are the key.” At weaning, the heavier end are sorted into their own grass-fattening program, where eight head per month are finished at the ranch and processed at the only beef facility left on the island.

2017_03_mr_Kualoa Ranch-134 — Trail rides and ATV tours come right alongside the herd several times a day, but they pay the extra visitors no mind.

Ryan and his crew of two measure the calves against the chute, and if they’re under 49 inches, they’ll be preconditioned for at least two weeks before boarding a boat for California. The cattlemen set up a four-compartment, 40-foot container with alfalfa pellets, and ship the animals and one lonely stocktender off on a weeklong journey. The breed helps them when they get there, too. “Because Angus are so popular on the mainland, we get more for them,” he says. Even though they have rich grazing (1 to 2 pair per acre) year round (just think, no putting up winter feed!) they have tightened breeding down to two seasons. It helps them get like-sized cattle to market. Once upon a time, there was a registered Angus herd on the ranch. The team wants to get back to that. They do rely heavily on AI, but there aren’t many bull suppliers left in the state. Ryan is no longer full-time with the ranch but works on a consulting basis. He wants to keep the herd moving forward. He’s as quick to help out as he is to flash a smile. When Ryan walked into the gift shop that morning, I knew it’d be a great day. He’d already saddled an extra horse so I could tag along (and basically try to stay out of the way) as we pulled bulls from a nearby pasture.

2017_03_mr_Kualoa Ranch-1 — They still use horses for much of the cow work, because they make it easier to navigate the diverse terrain.

From my vantage point, being around the cattle, the land, the work….it suited him. Later I discovered why: Ryan grew up on The Big Island, where his grandfather traded a background in training polo horses for ranch management. “I was always looking for an excuse to stay home from school and help out,” Ryan says. “You learned pretty young that it was a lifestyle and there were sacrifices you had to make.” Personal histories combine with the legacy of the ranch and the Judd (now Morgan) family, who have owned the land since purchasing it from King Kamehameha III. Even their “33” brand tells a story. “When you drove around the island from Honolulu, we were the 33^rd ranch,” Ryan says. “Now we’re one of three main ones left.”

2017-03-13 09.39.32 — See that smile? It’s one that says, “I’ll work any day of vacation, if it’s a day like this.”

My husband was is in Hawaii on business, and I could have spent my days reading a book on the beach. But I feel pretty lucky. Instead, I got a “behind the scenes” scoop on the ranch that is so often in the scenes.

May your bottom line be filled with black ink,

Miranda

Words two live by

“That was probably it,” my gut tells me as I drive past a charming farm house lining a dirt road on the outskirts of Spearman, Texas. I dial the first 8-0-6 number in my recent call list, not sure which brother will be on the other end of the line. It was Chance, who was traveling up from Pampa, Texas, with wife Erica and kids Maddox, Bristol, and Cayler. Sure enough, his twin Collin had already told him they had seen me drive by.

Moments later I am greeted with a gracious hello and hot cup of coffee from Collin and Lacee Bowers. Their sons Casen and Crüe peer up at me below the brims of their cowboy hats and murmur a shy hello. Chance and Collin’s older brother Chandler, his wife Jenna, and daughters Anleigh and Hadleigh arrive soon after.

We venture 20 minutes down the road to the family’s X Cross X ranch – on their mom’s side – where Collin oversees heifer development and farms wheat. The three brothers run a complementing ranching and farming operation of commercial Angus cattle, wheat, corn, cotton and milo. Chandler and Chance manage operations in Pampa, with Chandler heading the farming and Chance the cow-calf aspect.

IMG_1992-1 — Grandparents Joel and Joyce Lackey still live on the Hansford County ranch that has been in the family for four generations.

After photos and a tour of the ranch, we head back to Collin’s house for the ‘official’ with him and Chance. I ask them to describe a week in the life.

“It depends,” is the immediate answer, followed by a chorus of laughter. “Every question can be answered as, ‘it depends.’” No two weeks are the same, as the unpredictable Texas Panhandle climate sees extreme temperatures on both ends of the spectrum. Plans are never permanent, yet planning is still a necessity.

“You can’t live day to day in this operation,” Chance and Collin agree. “You have to be looking ahead of what you’re doing. Not just a week ahead, but months, even years, ahead.”

“Everything is seasonal,” explains Collin. Getting ready to cut corn, plant wheat, wean calves. “It’s always preparation, always a ‘be ready to do this.’”

IMG_2127-1 — Chance, Chandler and Collin run more than 1,200 head of commercial Angus cattle, which includes 200 or more replacement heifers.

Long-term planning is essential to building a strong replacement heifer herd. It starts with a great bull, paying particular attention to low birth weight and calving ease EPDs (expected progeny differences). However, selecting the right females is where the money is.

“We keep the heifers that stick with AI or breed with a cleanup bull the first 30 days,” says Chance. “That way you keep fertility in your herd. That’s huge for marketing our calves. We can get a set of calves that are within 10 days of each other. When we go to sell them, they’re all going to weigh the same.”

IMG_2244-1 — The brothers’ home-raised cattle grade around 90% to 95% Choice and better than 40% Certified Angus Beef brand.

Farming is vital to sustaining the operation. When either the cattle or crop market falls, the other is usually able to balance the books. Wheat also enhances the cattle operation; one of this year’s goals is to feed steers and cull heifers all the way through to the feedlot.

“We try to get everything on wheat,” says Collin. “It’s a great way to get them up to that feeder weight.”

“The cost of gain on wheat depends on the year,” says Chance. “The bigger we can get [steers] into the [feedlot], it’s going to be a happy medium.”

Yet there is a component of business planning that does not pertain to cattle and crops.

“The hardest part is the generational deal,” says Collin. “The first one builds it, the second enjoys it, and the third one loses it, is how that usually goes.”

But, “We’re fourth and fifth generation…and we’re not only keeping it together, we have expanded it,” says Chance. “Everything’s everyone’s in our family. It’s a family partnership.”

IMG_2041-1 — To the Bowers crew the family’s X Cross X is more than just a brand. It represents their commitment to the family operation.

The brothers have already started to instill in their kids the lessons passed down through all generations of the Bowers and Lackey families.

“You’ve got to educate your kids so they know what they’ve got. And how to handle keeping it going,” says Chance. “We’re where we are today because our dad drilled that responsibility into our heads.”

“And work ethic,” reminds Collin.

Time, and a proven family track record of preparing the next generation for responsibility. As we bid our farewells and I head out the driveway, I can’t help but feel proud of the Bowers family. Their enduring spirit has sustained through the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and countless droughts. It is truly an impressive story, and one I am grateful to share.

May your day be bright and your smile brighter,

Diane

A hardware salesman and a hand surgeon walk into a bar…

Replace that last part with pasture and you’re in my boots a few months back.

But for Phillip Smith and Dr. David Taylor, there’s no need for a punch line. Talking with the cousins from Ozark, Ark., it’s just a typical Tuesday afternoon.

“Some of our skills overlap and some of them don’t,” Dr. Taylor says. His comment is matter of fact, as if there’s nothing unique about the producer pairing. But I prod a bit more.

“We work together,” he adds, and I watch it in action.

Cattle have always been in the cards for these cousins. Their grandfather, John Jacob Taylor, settled in the Cecil community after the Civil War and brought cows soon after.

It is obvious, the shorthand the cousins share. A year apart in school, they grew up friends, stayed in touch as David sold his herd and left for medical school and Phillip took charge of his father’s store downtown.

Decades later, an opportunity to purchase land that connected the two families meant a chance for the men to run cattle together, Phillip on site, David traveling to and from Dallas as he approaches retirement.

Of leaving and coming back to the ranch, David (right) says, “I guess, to bring to life The Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip it has been.”

“I’m here about every two weeks, or say four out of every 14 days,” David says.

I can tell. What could seem like an ideal situation for a silent partner is anything but. David knows his cattle well. As we walk he studies them intently and I wonder how he makes time to heal hands.

The commercial pairs grazing both sides of the road reflect a commitment to pride and precision.

“I just believe there’s likely no one else in America that puts the detail into selection that he [Taylor] does,” Tom Williams says. The Chappell (Neb.) Feedlot manager feeds four or five groups of STP cattle through the spring and fall. A recent closeout shows 79% achieved CAB^® and Prime.

Tom credits the cousins’ use of technology and genetics as reason for improvement. David says it came down to this simple fact: there are economic opportunities and additional profit to be made for those willing to produce high-quality cattle.

So they started doing it.

Discouraged by the cost of replacement heifers that met their strict standards, they began selecting for and breeding their own.

In the seven years they’ve fed at Chappell, STP cattle have improved in marbling, cutability and performance, now setting the curve for what Tom feeds.

“And we feed the good ones,” he says.

“Is there anything you would suggest we improve,” David asks visitors observing the herd. No matter the information he holds from hours of research, he knows there’s always more to learn, something he and Phillip can do better.

“We want to grow something Phillip and I wouldn’t hesitate to eat ourselves,” David says.

It’s a simple statement but one that carries much weight when you know what it takes to get there.

Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,

Laura

Angus way out there

“You better just let us come to you,” Anjie McConnell told me over the phone.

Honestly, I was surprised I even had cell reception on my way to their Wyoming ranch, so I pulled alongside the road and waited.

Her husband Mike’s cowboy hat gave them away.

“Little Siberia.” That’s what the truck drivers call the desolate route that runs along the family’s land 45 miles outside of their home base in Lander. The Oregon Trail runs through it.

Cattle production–no matter the spot–comes with a handbook of hardships, but west-central Wyoming is its own beast.

A rodeo family and cattle people to boot, Anjie’s parents, Gary and Diane Frank, had to make a choice.

“There weren’t enough days in the week to make either successful,” Diane says, “so we had to decide: we’re either going to be rodeo stock contractors or we’re going to be cattle people, but we can’t be both.”

With a push from Gary’s father, Bill, who laid down money for additional ground, the family brought cows up here to summer grass that first year and decided they were done with the bucking horses after that.

That was 1969 and plenty has changed since then.

“We wean off the mountain here,” Anjie says, to avoid potential dust storms at home. They keep the heifers back for replacements, while their steer mates go straight to Miller Cattle & Feedyards, a 20-year tradition.

For starters, the Frank children grew up, got married and made lives of their own. The cattle went from “a rainbow herd” to Angus, and Gary passed away.

“He wasn’t old enough,” Angie says. Her husband died six months short of their 50^th wedding anniversary.

Gary and Diane’s second child and oldest daughter, Anjie, had always been her father’s helper. After graduating college and marrying Mike, the local agriculture teacher, the couple committed to joining Frank Ranches Inc. – Anjie, full time.

“Sometimes I wish I had Mike’s job, when the weather’s crappy,” Anjie says with a smirk.

“She wants mine and I want hers someday,” Mike quips.

It’s a wonderful thing to see generations working together. From L to R: Mike, Anjie and Kiley McConnell and Diane Frank.

Together and through the years they’ve brought ideas and research, pushed her parents to try new things and experienced successes along the way – which can be hard to come by way out here.

“There was one snowstorm where we got 54 inches,” Mike tells me. It was time to AI and Gary and him were worried whether they’d show. It ended up being the easiest heat detection they’ve ever had because the ones that weren’t covered in snow were in heat.

“I remember standing out there in cowboy hats, just drooped down to our chins, laughing and having fun breeding cows.”

Bumping along the property in the back of their old Jeep, three generations have just as much fun, share just as many laughs as they ever have.

In addition to performance and avoiding elevation impacts, the Franks want cattle that satisfy the consumer. They look at the dollar beef ($B) and marbling EPD (expected progeny difference), as well as other traits.

“We don’t go on vacation much, but our family’s together,” Anjie says.

“Every day’s a vacation here,” Mike adds.

I’d tend to agree.

Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,

Laura

PS – To learn what brought New Jersey native Diane to Wyoming in the first place and why the family’s invested in raising quality Angus cattle, look for their upcoming story in the Angus Journal.

Good stories, part II

“She’s a farm girl,” I overheard him tell his wife, Susan, on the phone. “You can tell by her boots. We’ll get along just fine.”

Sitting shotgun in his truck, Rick Gurley was right. He’d tipped his hat when we exchanged pleasantries, barely made it across the cattle guard to his place near Huntsville when I knew.

On owned and leased land, Rick’s now retired from the United States Postal Service and manages his cow herd full time.

Perhaps it’s due to his self-deprecating honesty, evident from comments like: “If you could have done it wrong, I did it,” the Arkansas cowman says of moving cattle soon after AI breeding that first year and working them just before, “but I didn’t know.”

His candidness is refreshing. At 54, he’s more concerned with sharing, hopeful that a reader will learn, than he is with saving face.

“I was 50 and everybody just assumes you know,” he says. “You’ve got to ask questions and not give up on the calves because it may not be their fault.”

Rick favored telling me about the cattle over taking pictures with them. So we embraced the rain and I snuck in a few shots.

Maybe it was because as much as he wanted me to see his Angus cows with calves by their sides, strong and growing, he wanted me to meet his folks.

“They’re the salt of the earth people right there,” he says. In their kitchen they tell about years past, ancestors who drove early Angus cattle across state lines. We hug and say goodbye.

Or rather it was due to a melody – Look At You Girl by Chris Ledoux.

“Suze,” Rick says through the phone to his wife, “call me back real quick so Laura can hear your ringtone.” And you mean everything to me – the chorus buzzes as his cell phone rings and he smiles.

“It’s just one of those storybook deals,” he says of their love story. “I married way up. My mother just out-prayed hers.”

Married for 30 years, Rick and Susan have two grown children, Nicole [pictured] and Heath. Both play an active role in the family operation.

For Susan, life as a mailman/cattleman’s wife meant plenty of change from her military upbringing.

“She was used to a schedule and there’s not much of one in the cow business, aside from AI,” Rick says. “My days were long.”

Susan embraced it, never timid she nurtured calves in the bathtub and raised kids to love cattle the same.

“The biggest thing is life has a way of changing,” Susan says. Now she’s shotgun and I’m riding in the back next to their daughter, Nicole, checking calves.

Their oldest, Nicole, lives within a few hour’s drive. Her dad’s right hand while he was limited after back surgery, she knows the cows as well as anybody.

“I was working more and the kids filled that role. Now that the kids are here less, I’m here more. So it’s gone full circle, but it’s an awesome way to raise kids. So many life lessons.”

Stories I take with me as I head south and hope to be able to share with you.

Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,

Laura

PS – To learn how Rick got started with Angus cattle, check out Friday’s post. Be sure to catch the August Angus Journal for the rest of the Gurley story.

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