When it rains, it pours…
Gary and I were in Chickasha, Oklahoma to put on our second annual “Backgrounding for Quality” seminar with our friends from Pfizer Animal Health last week. The weather was not pretty… it’s safe to say that I’d classify the precipitation as pouring more than once during that day. But after we spent so much time talking about the drought (over and over and over again…) in the southern US this past year, I could hardly complain about the moisture we encountered.
Now, I may have said an unkind word or two about the timing of that moisture last week, but what can you do but shrug and go on with the show when you’ve planned an outdoor field day that forecasts “100% chance of rain?”
So when the wind, rain and cold settled in at Chickasha, we settled in the White Brother’s Cattle Company’s shop with some heaters instead of our original outdoor plan. There was plenty of hot coffee, a brave and hardy crowd and a line up of top-notch speakers.
One of those speakers was Dale Moore, the owner and manager of Cattleman’s Choice Feedyard. Dale’s topic of discussion was “What a feeder wants,” and he knows that question from both sides of the equation. Dale and wife Mary also run a commercial cow-calf operation in Oklahoma. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of his talk.
“What do you think feeders really want? I could give you the same song and dance about feedyards wanting high quality, weaned cattle that won’t give them any problem and will make them a whole lot of money. That’d be my whole talk.
“But I wanted to come up with something new to say to you, about what feedyards are looking for and what feedyards can do for you. When I thought about that, I kept coming back to the same thing: In all honesty, feedyards want customers. At least my yard does. I take pride in being able to feed high quality cattle and make guys lots of premiums, to improve their cowherds. We want to give our feedyard and customers lots of recognition and give them coffee shop talk. That’s what all feedyards under the CAB banner are looking for.
“We don’t get a lot of our upper Choice, CAB-type cattle at the sale barns because a lot of those cattle have to be put together with other cattle or you just don’t win the bid. So we rely on our customers for those good ones. We need customers, and we want to help them be profitable in the long term and improve their cow herd.
“So to do that, the consumer is where we all need to go back to, in my option. Consumers are demanding higher quality cattle; a better eating experience. Consumers are willing to pay for what they get, and in return they want a tremendous eating experience. That goes all the way down the line from consumers to retailer to packers to feedlots and ultimately to you guys as cow-calf and stocker operators.
“So that’s what a feeder wants: something that through all these chains, is going to provide the end result of a good eating experience, because that’s what’s paying for all of it. We get that good eating experience from high quality customers.”
“You measure profit by performance, quality, dollars… but the bottom line is about satisfied consumers.”
When it rains, it pours. And when our industry focuses on meeting the demands of our final customers like Dale focuses on his feedyard customers, it pours success back down the entire system.
To get more clips and quotes from the event, check out our Twitter and Facebook feeds from last week. Enjoy!
-Laura
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