Angus Herd Talk
Discussions with Registered Angus Breeders across America about their operations, breeding philosophies and herd sires used in the past and present.
Angus Herd Talk
Gleonda Angus Farms
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In this episode I talk with Traves Merrick from Gleondra Angus Farms. We discuss their 66 year old program, use of feed efficiency and the upcoming production sale.
On this episode of Angus Her Talk, I'm talking with Travis Merrick from Gleonda Angus Farms in Miller, Missouri. Welcome to the show, Travis. Alright, before we get this thing going, we gotta first figure out two things. Did I say the name Gleonda correctly? Is that how it's right? Alright, so I nailed that. Now we gotta figure out the second part is your first name. It's spelled Traves, not Travis. How'd you end up with that?
SPEAKER_01How'd you end up with that spelling? Question that my entire life, but I guess mom's always said that it's unique and she wanted me to be unique. So there you go.
SPEAKER_02Am I the only person that called you Traves for two solvents? My senior year of high school.
SPEAKER_01I think that's what everybody called me on purpose.
SPEAKER_02Miller, Missouri. Where's that located at?
SPEAKER_01We are halfway between Springfield and Joplin. We're actually closer to Lockwood. I graduated high school at Lockwood, kind of claimed Lockwood. So we're in the heart of Southwest Missouri's cattle and crop country. Um 14, 15 miles north of I-44. So pretty, pretty easy for people to come in and check out the farm and give us a visit. Is there a lot of cropping going on around that area? Uh when I got home last night, you could taste and smell the dirt in the air from the amount of corn on the ground right now. It was very hazy because of the dust, and yeah, there's a ton of crops going in with the rain coming on this week.
SPEAKER_02Is southwest Missouri the normal corn, beans, like where we're at.
SPEAKER_01We're on the edge of the Ozark Plateau. So you go a few miles south and east of us, there's not as much crumps, and then you go a mile and a half north of us, it turns into the flat cropland. But what do they grow besides corn and neighborhoods? There'll be some millet, lots of lots of silage around here, so you'll have lots of sorghum. But mostly you're gonna have the beans, corn, and wheat rotation. Do you guys grow anything? We do our own hay. With the current market, I buy my silage off someone else. They can I can buy it cheaper than what I can raise it. But when the corn goes back up, we'll we'll do our own corn silage.
SPEAKER_02What kind of hay do you guys grow down there at Southwest Mr.
SPEAKER_01Great old fescue hay?
SPEAKER_02Just fescue only?
SPEAKER_01No, it's got no alfalfa. The fescue's kind of taken over, but my personal terrain here, we don't have the best soil for alfalfa. We're just not quite far enough for that.
SPEAKER_02Got it. Do you guys bring any alfalfa in?
SPEAKER_01I brought some in as an emergency last that last summer during that drought.
SPEAKER_02You guys kind of have some really weird weather patterns there, don't you?
SPEAKER_01It's gotten a lot worse over the last few last 10 years. It's been it's either one extreme or the other. There's really no scent pattern. Too much rain.
SPEAKER_02No rain. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So take us back to Little Travis Merrick. Did you grow up there in Miller? Actually, the first 12 years of my life, we grew up in Springfield, just on the edge of the city limits, but I spent probably every other weekend down here on the farm. Showed some cattle, didn't really take it too seriously. Moved back to Miller in sixth grade, got spent a little more time on the farm. Still didn't take it that seriously. It was probably oh 2010. I took a job at the I went to Law Enforcement Academy, worked at the sheriff's office for a few years, and worked at sort of working at the farm on my days off because I was off in the middle of the week. Nobody couldn't really do anything else. And that's when it really clicked that hey, this is kind of what I was meant to do. And I was, I was already, I'd already learned a lot. I knew how to do most everything. And I'd been around my grandpa going to bull sales through that whole time, trying to figure out why he did what he did. It just uh the biggest holdback, I think, was his ability to kind of just let me have a little bit of the reins. Him allowing me to help make some decisions and ask me what I thought we should do in the future. That really sparked it for me to go ahead and just come back full time and essentially take over. He was getting up there in age at the time, and somebody needed to, or else it was just gonna hold up.
SPEAKER_02Did you and grandpa have a little bit of tug of war over the years?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, for the most part. The times that I couldn't really figure out what I wanted to do, there was a lot of pull wanting me to just wanting me just to come work on the farm didn't really allow me to get out in the world and see just how good I had it here. And uh man, it didn't take long. Once once that happened, it didn't take long to be like, man, I I've been messing up for a long time. I need to be there. Were your breeding philosophies a little bit different than grandpa? Not really, because essentially, I mean, he was the one I was around and hit his program, everything that he built over the years from about 1960 on. I mean, he hit he was well known across the country in the Angus business. He worked in several outfits, running running some show barns and stuff from Mississippi all the way up to St. Joe area. So his reach was pretty broad. I didn't really think that I needed to have much different ideas because what he's done has worked for so long. I was I wasn't gonna be that person that came back and just changed everything because that's what everybody else is doing, and I'm sticking to that today. I I want to be different, I want to raise cattle differently than everyone else, so that everyone in my neighborhood has a place to go for an outcrumbus and something different.
SPEAKER_02Talk about your grandpa. Sounds like he had a history in the Angus breed. I don't know of him. Tell us who your grandfather is. Start first of all, Leon Cleman.
SPEAKER_01He uh bought his first Angus late 1950s, around 1960. We he he just told me to, whenever I'm talking about talking to people and putting it on paper to say 1960, we rounded it off to that. That's kind of when it really took off for him. But he uh that early 60s time, he was really into data collection, and he brought one of the first Y plantation bulls across the Mississippi, brought it over here. At the time, he was one of the most famous Y bulls. It was uh favor of Y. I was obviously not around to see the bull or really see his offspring. I can go back in a lot of pedigrees and find him. The data collection never really stopped. He continued pushing for to actually collect the data and prove that this is what his cattle were doing way before we had any technology at all. So early 1970s, we had an extension agent here named Eldon Cole, which was very famous in southwest Missouri. He's got buildings named after him and everything. They started the Missouri steer feed out, which is now a statewide program, but it started right here on the Cleman family property. They would feed some steers out of our own and then got other people involved, and it actually started where they would collect steers from different parts of the state, send them up to Iowa. Not certain exactly where the program is right now because we we kill enough of our own, we don't have to do that to get our data. But going on up through the 80s and stuff, he when times got hard, they they had to work, he had to take a job, so he dabbled in little things. I think I remember hearing stories of a longhorn bull on the heifers just so they didn't have to worry about Kevin if he was working overnights in town. But all in all, everything I've gathered from him and from everyone else, he stuck to the he stuck to his plan. He never changed his ways. He wanted cattle that grow, that perform. Size was never a problem. They were well known for having probably some of the biggest cattle in southwest Missouri, but they also performed. When the when the days of the smart feed or the crow safe bunks came about, he he took advantage of that pretty early, bought, bought feed efficient tested bulls, and then through Green Springs was able to get some tested for a while. How long has Gleon's been doing feed testing? I don't know that exact answer. I know we were buying bulls around 2000. But the the the efficiency testing probably it goes back longer than the bunks were available. He was doing it with the with the university extension and those programs, but it wasn't quite the fancy technology we have now.
SPEAKER_02Do you guys feed efficiency the whole herd or just the bulls?
SPEAKER_01I currently don't have enough space to do all of the bulls. I've got enough room for 42 to 45 head. We we've actually added bunks since we started this three years ago. So I'll go through there and I'll pick out the bulls that I feel will be good enough to make our sale. And those are the bulls that get tested. I tested a group of females a few years ago after breeding on just like a roughage, a forage-based diet, just to kind of see how they would do. I also needed some didn't have the pasture space because of a drought and to utilize the silage and the TMR, but it was not much grain in there, and I did that just to kind of see how they would do. I'd like to test more females, but I'd I'm gonna have to invest a lot more money into the smart feed to do that. I hear you.
SPEAKER_02What is your call criteria? If you can only run 40 something through your true test, what is that call criteria?
SPEAKER_01The first thing I do is I go through and eyeball them. I mean, if if they can't walk, they don't they don't have any eye appeal, I can't do anything with them, then I look at who their mother is. And that might be one of my my favorite criteria. I look back and see who the dams are. I'll look at the sire, see, you know, what I think that mating might do down the road. None of my matings are just super super thought through. I kind of just go through and I say, this cow probably looks good with this bull and go on. I I have a lottery pick. I feel like we do better by not think not overthinking things. But uh the last things I do, I I don't d I don't even pull blood. I don't register them until they're already made the made the efficiency pin. Those the numbers and the DNA means nothing. If they if they can't be functional, if they don't have a cow that's functional, then there's really no point in keeping them. I'm not I'm not here to chase numbers. We never have been, and I've actually found myself kind of getting further away from from that dynamic.
SPEAKER_02So any of the bulls that don't make that first cole criteria, do you still raise them out even though they don't go on the truth test and see how they can they get castrated pretty quick.
SPEAKER_01I don't know they do. I usually don't know who's doing that till they're nine months old, so I really don't want to wait a whole lot longer to get them castrated. But we do have meat shop here. We're one we're one of the first people to get on the certified Angus Beef Ranch of Table Program. So a lot of our cams will will get fed out and uh and go into that.
SPEAKER_02That's quite the calling process. I think you're running a herd of 300 head is that correct?
SPEAKER_01We're down a little bit because of the the drought conditions the last couple years, and I took advantage of the the cow prices to cull a few that needed to go.
SPEAKER_02What do you think you're running?
SPEAKER_01We're over 250 for sure. I've kept more heifers the last couple years as well. I'm trying to build that up, so those numbers are slowly creeping up.
SPEAKER_02Let's just say 100 head uh of bulls every year. And then you're calling that clear down to 40.
SPEAKER_0140 to 45, yeah. Looking at the cab, we're we're we're in the middle of AI and a hundred and well, two hundred and ten head this last few weeks. We've got 80 to do tomorrow, and we're finished with the AI. And uh, the more times I'm running these these three-month-old calves right now, I think I'm gonna have a really hard time calling down to 40 next year. It's it's gonna be an exciting year, so I'm trying to either see if we need to add more bunks or find a way to get some bulls' feed efficiency tested off the farm so that way I can get them all done. But that the bunk space thing has kind of limited how many I can keep. I don't want to keep 70 or 80 percent of the bulls either. That to me, there needs to be more culling than that. There's a lot of Angus bulls out there. There's honestly, there's way too many bulls that shouldn't be bulls. They're getting sold based on numbers and pedigrees and genomics and stuff. And I don't want to be that guy that just keeps everything just to have a bull to sell.
SPEAKER_02So you got this feed efficiency going on. What are the marks that these bulls have to hit to stay in tap so they don't get cut?
SPEAKER_01We're too new into this here. I've we're only three years into the efficiency testing, so I'm not really using that as a culling tool later on. Those bulls that I mean, if I've got one that's a 10 or 11 bead conversion, I'm probably not gonna keep that one. Maybe just take him to the sale bar and he'll do well. But I have some customers that that probably don't look at that yet. I've got several people that are heavily interested in the feed efficient candle, but until we're five, six, seven years in, I'm not really going to push push it that hard. I don't feel like I have enough data to be able to back it, even though we've been doing testing for a long time. But being able to do an entire group of bulls has has changed how I feel about that. I my goal with the feed efficiency testing is to try to keep my average well below the industry standard of a 6.5 to 1 conversion. If I can keep it down there by getting rid of the bottom end, I don't need the extreme feed efficient bulls on the top all the time. But if I can get rid of the low end and bring that average together is kind of what I want to do. What's their goal? Four to one? Four to one? If I keep them under a five to one, I'm pretty comfortable with the ration I'm on. They're not, it's not a hot ration. Nutrition-wise, I've been told I could bump it up quite a bit and be fine. But I want these bulls to be lean, hard muscled, ready to turn out, not gonna fall apart. We're not blowing their hawks out. So I can absolutely increase my my data by making that ration hotter or tweaking the dry ration, dry matter if I need to, but I'm keeping it keeping it consistent with making these bulls what my customers want, the condition wise. What do your customers want? It's pretty simple. The phone calls I get is I want a bull that's gonna last more than one breeding season, that's not gonna fall apart completely, and that's gonna make females that we can keep back. So they want they kind of want to know what the cows are like. They want to know what about the mothers, and the biggest the biggest thing I'm getting this sales season here, I've I hardly ever have anybody ask me what the bull's birth weight was. I don't I don't hardly at all get EPD questions. They just want to know if they're functional. And that they don't have to worry about getting a sale credit or buying another bull next year. They they want to make them last. Got it.
SPEAKER_02So there's two schools of efficiency, going back to the efficiency thing. There's two schools of efficiency. There is the efficient efficiency of the bull that eats dirt and air, doesn't put a lot of gain on, he's not eating a lot, right? There's that school, and then there's a school on the other side, which kind of over more of a biago type thing, where hey, well they're gonna eat, but they're converting. Where do you find like Leonda at?
SPEAKER_01I want them to have an appetite. We've got I I have uh quite a bit of the beer go genetics here. Their style of cattle fit where I needed to get ours back to. It was getting really hard to find bulls to AI to that was gonna keep my frame where I need it to be. I like we like bigger frame cattle. My customers want bigger frame cattle, they want calves that grow. What what frame is that? What frame? Six and a half average would be fine. I mean, I've got a I'm using a bull right now that's a five and a half frame, but he brings everything to the table. He's an absolute complete package. He's gonna balance out some of those bigger cows, but I don't need a whole herd full of seven frame cows. And honestly, I say 6.5, a six-frame would do me fine as long as she's balanced and has the longevity, can bring a good calf to weaning. I'm not too worried about Brave weaning 50% of their body weight every single time. It's I mean, that's gonna be hard to do. In a commercial program, you can look at some how heavy are these cows? Crunch the averages from from this spring, but I would say 1350 to 1400, and that is from two-year-olds on up.
SPEAKER_02You ever see these things where they talk about feed efficiency? You've probably seen them here on recently on Facebook. These people putting out these things. If you run a 106-frame and and they'll use a 1600-pound number on these cows. You run 100, 1600 pound cows, then you can run 130, 1100 pound cows. Do people realize what a 1600-pound cow looks like and how incredibly rare that is? Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_01Not enough people have scales. A lot of these tomorrow they don't they don't have the money, they don't want to invest the money to run to weigh their cows every single time they go through the chute. But it even goes back to the birth weight thing. There's not enough people actually weighing these cows. They look at the cow, and from what we've from what I believe and what we see here, a six and a half frame cow will make you more money than the 1,400-pound five-frame. You've got to have enough frame to be able to add that weight onto that calf. And those five-frame cows are never going to raise calves that are going to meet today's demand in the beef market. And no matter what people want to hear, we're selling beef. That's what we're selling. And we've got to be able to create cattle that if the if the Packers want 1,800-pound hanging weights, we've got to at least give them the opportunity to give them the frame to get these cattle there. Is it right? I don't know. But that's that's where we're at right now. And those framier cattle at Joplin Stockyard seem to do a lot better. I don't believe that cow size has anything to do with how efficient she is. I've got some what I've got a bigger cow right now. I think she's 13 years old, probably the best producing cow on the whole farm. She stays at a body condition of five most of her life. She's not the cow you'd pick out, but her weaning ratio on nine calves is 109. And she knocks it out of the park every time. So you're gonna go out there and look at that cow and say, man, she's not efficient because she's skinny. That cow's efficient because she's bringing the most pounds to weaning every single time. So there's feed efficient and there's just overall efficiency. And I think a lot of people get it mixed up. When we're feeding when we're doing the smart feed testing, we are looking at what these calves are gonna do if you uh uh keep them after weaning. If you're taking them to town straight on the trailer off the cow, it's probably not gonna mean much to you. But I think I think you're crazy if you're not feeding these calves 60, 90, 100 days with the cost of feed right now. Because cost of gain is cheap. And if you can have feed efficient genetics, it even cheapens that up even more, and you're you're just you're making more money. You're leaving a lot of money on the table by not taking advantage of that. So that's what I tell my customers is if you're gonna background these calves or keep them for any amount of time, look at the feed efficiency, look at where you're at on that. If you're taking them to the sale barn, straight off the cow, just buy the bully and have the pen you want to buy, and don't don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. You understood what I say. I was saying, though, about that 1600-pound cow. It's pretty rare to find out.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, that's yeah, it's pretty crazy. I've got out of the 250, 260 cows we have here, I think there's five, maybe six cows that that weigh 15 plus. One of them, she's she's stuck at about 1800 her whole life. She's 17 years old. She's finally fallen below that. Never misses. Wean's one of the biggest calves on the herd. That's why she's still here. If she if she quit producing, I would have taken her town. But yeah, the the the thought of that 1600-pound cow is pretty crazy because I said I I weigh my cows at least. Well, they get weighed every single time they go through the chute. So three times each spring, a time or two in the fall. And so I'm recording all the weights. And there's I'll I'll try to look at these cows and think, man, that cow's gonna weigh 1600 pounds. She walks to the chute and she's 1400. I'll have the cow that weighs a thousand, that I think's gonna weigh a thousand, she weighs twelve. But there was one the other day, and I actually it it crossed my mind. I thought, man, she is huge. She rolled in at 1430, and I'm like, oh, she's not that big. She just had the frame. So people get the pound, they get the size mixed up between how much they weigh and what's frame size. It just you automatically think a seven-frame cow is gonna weigh 16, 17, 1800 pounds, and that's not always the case.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And usually those guys that are pushing those heavy weights, 1600, they're not feeding them like you and I are. They're not they're supplementing them super hard, they're keeping them in that six, seven condition all the time. That's not a commercial upset. Those are show ponies and they're feeding them accordingly.
SPEAKER_01I see a lot of like things on Facebook and the internet and stuff about you know, about that. Guys, well, what if we're just running our cows on grass? Blah, blah, blah. Well, I think at some point we have or will be genetically creating these cattle to be dependent on whatever environment you're raising them in. And I think that's why our larger framed cattle here are different than those cattle that are supplemented with alfalfa year-round, or they've got a feed bunk every day, they're getting distillery cubes or whatever. Mix up again. These cows don't run on grass. The only time they're not is when they're up here on there's 160 cows on 40 acres for 10 days during the AI protocols. So I'm feeding them a little bit of just straight silage and hay. Then they go back to pasture to grass. But I think that's something that that we've created more of a problem on as these we've supplemented these cows so much that genetically they're dependent on that feed wagon in in some scenarios. Now, with your cattle, do you supplement with tubs? I am right now because of this breeding going on. I I get some tubs out that have the biomass in it, and I simply do that to try to control the scours, and it does work. They're up here, they're close to the house, so they're they they're on a high fat, high energy tub that I get from Kent. Other than that, no. They get free choice mineral year round, but I I don't keep tubs or anything like that out all the time.
SPEAKER_02That was a leading question because I knew you were. You use cant. I saw something the other day on social media about cant, and cant is not a Product that we have out here in in West Tennessee. Who is that? Who's that mental?
SPEAKER_01Kent Nutrition, they're out of Iowa. Growing up, I remember seeing that their logo on everybody's barn. Everybody had a Kent feed sign with their farm name on it on their barns. Just something I grew up always seeing. I got access to their products, it's been several years ago, and then I kind of went all in with them. Their salesman's been absolutely wonderful here in southwest Missouri. The feed store I was using went under, and I had to switch to some different products. It was an absolute train wreck. We you with the anaplasmosis and stuff, we used CTC year-round. I switched over to a company that was supposed to be better consumption. We were losing cows left and right. And thankfully, I was able to get back to Kent when they found another dealer here. I'm back on that stuff. Everything's straightened out. But our getting back on the Kent stuff, we I use it in my TMR for the Bulls. We had the highest percentage semen check rate this year that we've had in a long time.
SPEAKER_02What is your protocol for getting CTC into these cattles? It's a little bitter. It's kind of interesting for every person that does it. They do a little differently. It's in the mineral. That's where they get oh, it's in the mineral? Do they put anything in that mineral to kind of make it a little more intense?
SPEAKER_01I don't think so. I mean, that's not that I know.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I know my consumptions are better with the kit products than it has been with anything else. Well, then it's a legit mineral, a good mineral if they're gonna take it. I actually mix my CTC in cottonseed meal. And then I I use salt as a limiter.
SPEAKER_01We don't I don't add any salt with my mineral. I that this the products are designed for a certain intake. If we add salt or anything like that, it's gonna mess that up and with the Romansin and CTC and stuff. I I just run straight minerals. So they're they're not really backed off on there's nothing to slow them down if they need it.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna take you back to a discussion you and I had a little bit under a year ago. You and I were kind of on two different ends of the spectrum on this thing originally, and I think we you and I actually came to almost middle ground on it. The methane deal with the Angus Association. When you and I first talked about it, you and I were on both different ends of it, but I think for uh for different reasons. I was completely against it. I just didn't think there was a place for it within the breed. You felt there was a place for it, and so I want you to just take it from there because I don't want to put words in your mouth. What were your ideas about why there is a place for, and then how you feel now?
SPEAKER_01I don't want to dive too deep into it, but originally I thought let's we can get out ahead of this thing and prove that kettle are not not the problem. But more time I had to think about it. I'm like, well, are we actually by doing this, are we admitting that there could be a problem? And I'm still I I can't say I'm for or against it at this point. I'm just kind of moving on with life. I mean, it's what's gonna happen is gonna happen. I can't change things. I do not really appreciate the how the the feed efficiency has been thrown in there. I don't I think that was just kind of a way to appease some people because with us doing the feed efficiency testing, we're not taking part in this necessarily. I do think that if if this comes about and we get the data out there that the feed efficient kettle will be positive for the argument. If it's I don't want to get too deep into that, but if you're eating less and you're gaining faster, that's less days on feed, so it's less methane you're gonna put out if that's the case. But I do not believe there is a problem, never was a problem, never will be a problem. And I I just there was a lot of things I think could have been done differently from the beginning. Let's leave it at that.
SPEAKER_02Do you feel that they undercut some of the producers like you who are out there on their own nickel? You're paying for your own efficiencies.
SPEAKER_01Um I think I think the way it was done, uh it should have been brought to the membership. Membership should have had a say in it. And I do see there's some other programs now that are potentially doing some feed efficiency testing that probably would not have before. Some some larger ones, it sounds like. So it might have shed a positive light on feed efficiency testing. So that kind of gives us somewhat of an edge since we've been not fully focused, but focusing on that for for a long time.
SPEAKER_02I'll just go back to after you and I talked and light me on some things back when we talked about this, kind of brought me more to a middle ground. And I agreed with you back then. We already got guys like you doing this on their own nickel. Why didn't just the automatic, hey, we're just gonna team up with Gleonda Farms. If we want this study, why don't we just go ahead and with these guys that are already doing it, let's go ahead and team up with them. Um didn't seem right to me to go ahead and just start passing out grants to farms that never showed any interest in doing it. Does it make sense?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's at least one or two of those that I see that are potentially a fee deficiency testing that were actually very much against it for a long time. And I'm not they didn't really go out there and openly bash the fee deficient fee deficiency testing, but they sure didn't help give it a positive name. And so they weren't doing it, didn't want to do it because they knew their capital were inefficient. Now they're probably gonna find that out unless they find a way to skew the data. But yeah, I I wish that if this was gonna happen, I do wish they would have some smaller operations participate, whether they find a central ground for those people to bring several head in to test in one place. I understand logistically, you're not gonna be able to take this machine or whatever to somebody that has 25 cows. It's not really gonna work. I also don't believe that university sites are the way to go. I'm not a big fan of the university testing sites. It seems like whoever's paying for the data, they don't get their answer. It either doesn't happen, or if they or they get what they want, they blow it up. So it's always seems like it's always in the perfect scenario because they've got that funding.
SPEAKER_02I have that same jaded view as you do. I might be even worse because I have a feeling if certain cattle prove not to be methane efficient, the whole study will go away. Or if they find out the wrong cattle are efficient, the study will go away. Hope that makes sense. If Jeff Schmidt's cattle, his lines show to be the most efficient, they're not going to promote that.
SPEAKER_01No, that's I see that being made it maybe just kind of a little conspiracy theory in my mind, but it does look like a lot of the cat, a lot of the best cattle in America get shoved under the rug. They're not they don't seem like they don't, they're not allowed to advance on EPDs unless you use unless you've got a little bit of one or two programs genetics in your herd, the genomics will not pop. You're not gonna get it. You're just gonna be flatlined. And the best cattle I have, my lot one bull in my sale, he he's an eye catcher. Everybody loves him. He's a little smaller frame bull. His EPDs really aren't worth a crap. But his he's out of a Pathfinder dam that's proven. There's generations of proven stuff there. I've got another bull in the sale that I actually wanted to keep. He's out of, I think, between him and his fifth fifth dam back, there's like 10 years between every cow. And so those numbers fall off. There's some things that he's his protal EPD is absolutely horrible. I mean, bottom 5%. I've kept almost every son out of his mother. We've kept every daughter out of all them cows, never had a problem. So unless we're using the Bull of the Month Club, those numbers aren't gonna go up there to where those the top tier, if you want to call it.
SPEAKER_02Travis, I got a question for you. You're more in touch with the commercial than I am, the commercial industry. You're selling all these bulls every year and you got people showing up at your place to buy them. Are these commercial buyers, are they even paying attention to these EPDs anymore? Especially the Wien and the Yearlings.
SPEAKER_01I I will say I think the numbers that get looked at are the first four traits you see on that top line. After that, a lot of them don't know what they mean and they really don't care. Dollar values, commercial guy doesn't care about dollar values. The only the only reason I see dollar C as being a thing is so the guy's trading money back and forth because they have a competition to see who can be the next one to top that number and get it higher. I have one bull in my sale over $300 C. I don't he's in the back of the book, he's not that great. He's he's good, but he's not that great. I have I have seen that you get much over $300 C and functionality goes way out the window. I mean, it is gone. I look at these big numbered bulls around here in various places, and I wouldn't own most of them. Even in my AI protocols, I I sell theme independently for ultra genetics. I I make some phone calls to people that have used some of these bulls, but none of the bulls we're using this year in our AI program are under six years old. So they're they're they're they are out of fashion by the time I use them. Who are you using? I went in pretty thick with Fairmountain Justice again this year. I've got some amazing Justice Kevs that'll be weaned in August. GA Cruiser finally pulled the trigger on DL Zoom. Fortside is just power.
SPEAKER_02I'll tell you about Zoom. I got some. I didn't send any of the bulls to Green Springs. The Bulls for me were disappointing. The couple daughters I got, I'm smoking good. Smoking but good. But a little bit too much hair for down here.
SPEAKER_01And that was one of my work, but we've got we've done a really good job focusing on fescue tolerance, which fescue tolerance and hair shedding go hand in hand. That's I see that to be not be obvious. Number one I have here that we're really heavy on. I bred about 60 to him last year. I think I've got about 60 calves on the ground. I just bred 40 yesterday, turned him right in there. Is uh Virgo Riley, a bull that did not go through their sale. I saw this bull out on cows at their place a few years ago. I think he was two, two and a half years ago. He's five now. It took me a little while to kind of get the goal to beg them to let me have him. We made that purchase. He's the five and a half frame bull that he's a Keneally Clarity son. And these calves are they're a little smaller frame than we're used to, but phenotypically, structurally, some of the most sound cattle that we've got. And they uh they just they're gonna be very they're already very popular to guys that have seen them as babies. He's got a lot of hip. That Riley bull's got a lot of hip hop. He's got so much hip. He's he's just good and super docile. I've never been I I walked this bull a half a mile yesterday. I just just took him out of the walk, went and caught him in the pasture, walked him through set through a couple pastures, and just he's just so easy going. And his cans are doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_02Well, dang, he's in the top percentage though.
SPEAKER_01He's a 341. I didn't I did not know that. I didn't I didn't look at his numbers. I had no idea what his numbers were. It didn't matter to me at that point.
SPEAKER_02But dang, 93 for 93 for we need. So uh do you focus on carcasses?
SPEAKER_01I look in it. Uh we carcass scan the bulls and stuff. I try to keep a balanced approach there. I I do not want I don't want a bunch of cattle over one for marbling. I feel like we lose a lot. I've heard several guys talking that, oh, you can you can push that marbling and not lose anything. I've seen marbling to be very antagonistic. The higher marbling the females are, the on paper. The seems like the the less time they stay here. They're usually gone by five. So I know Riley has a lot of carcass traits, but I've got a lot of females that that don't have those numbers, and he's kind of there on those carcass numbers, I'm hoping will balance those out. I like I like a 0.7 to a 0.9 on IMF and ribeye. If I can be there, just have them consistently there. I mean, obviously it's not possible to have everybody right there, but that's kind of my tart. Um work. We just I killed a steer last fall that he his he was sired by a bull with a negative.05 IMF EPD in the damn thing graded prime. So it's uh it's a it's more about how you feed him than what the paper says.
SPEAKER_02I'm actually looking at Riley's EPDs here right now as we're talking. His PAP score, though, I'm surprised he's not dead at sea level.
SPEAKER_01He's a I that is heard some issues with some of the clarities on the pulmonary issues. Well, thankfully, we're not an LV LV. He is the slickest-haired bull that I've seen in a long time. He never put on hair in the wintertime at all. So I think that I I want to think there's a little correlation with the PAP and the fescue tolerance because the blood flow and things. I'm no scientist, so I'm not gonna dive into that. But after a few years of kind of taking more hair shedding scores and looking at some things, I'll maybe dive off into that a little bit. I do know a guy that he had that conversation with me that he feels like the PAP has some correlation with with the fescue tolerant cattle, because the fescue, the endophyte restricts the blood flow. I think that's how that is. I said no, I'm no scientist, but uh he he's really kind of believing in that. Kind of put that in my mind, and I thought to thinking these cattle that are slicking off really good seem to last a lot longer. You get something hairy here in southwest Missouri, when it gets humid, they're they're gonna slip a cap before anything else will.
SPEAKER_02Going back to carcass, you said that you don't like to go over a one. What is the detriment of doing that?
SPEAKER_01I just see I've seen the fertility. The higher marbling females don't seem to last. I don't see a problem with ribeye necessarily, but industry-wide, we get we don't want we don't need a too big of a ribeye that's gonna hurt us in the long run. Keep that in that in those CAB standards. But no, it's not just my perception on the marbling thing. I talk to a lot of people, I bounce a lot of things off a lot of people from here to Minnesota, the Dakotas. I try to talk to as many people about the sires I'm using, potentially using, what they're seeing. And that that's kind of the pushback I'm getting, and I'm really getting it from commercial producers that have gone out and bought these high carcass, high-numbered bulls, and they're like, man, these things ain't working. He goes, I can't keep they said they can't keep their females in the herd. They can't give them to breed. If they give them to breed the first time, the next time they're they're gone. Functionality, they just don't have as much bone. Seems like we have worse feet the further we push the marbling. Maybe you can say that's certain genetics necessarily. I'm not naming anything, but I'm sure there are a lot of people out here that can figure out where a lot of this carcass stuff comes from. But when the commercial man starts telling me, and these are guys that have a lot of cattle, that hey, I can't get these cows to stay in the herd past four or five years old since we've started looking more into these numbers and following this trend of, oh, we need this carcass, carcass, carcass. And I know my friends at CAB are probably gonna want to beat me over the head with a hammer, but balance, it's all about finding a balanced approach. And that balance is different for me. Craig Guffy's gonna tell you that balance in his perception is a lot different than mine. But I think if we can kind of if everybody could kind of go at their programs and find balance in what they want and not just chase this, chase that, push the extremes. Who doesn't like who doesn't want a 900-pound wean and weight calf? I mean, that's great. But in reality, that bull is an outlier. He's probably not gonna give you that consistently. I understand that. That's realistic. I mean, I would love to just to keep those bulls every time. I've got one on my sail that I would love to keep. I'm not, he's kind of on the outlier side. But yeah, that the carcass thing I've I've went back and forth on. We just need to find that balance, find a balance approach, and if we feed them right, they're all got grade prime if they're Angus.
SPEAKER_02You bred pretty heavy to Biergo the last couple of years, but what, three or four years?
SPEAKER_01Bulls that we spend quite a bit of money on, bulls that can walk in the farm at least half the year, collect semen that way I can breed 50 to 60 a year, run that bull behind them, and that pays that pays for a $20,000 bull a lot faster than just cleaning up your cows. And I did the math on it. Now, since I've started being able to sell for Ulta, I can sample some bulls a little bit cheaper that way because I don't have to pay that retail cost on my own stuff, but that's just 10 units here, 10 units there. So mapping it out, it was cheaper to buy a $20,000 bull, collecting, braiding for three or four years to 60-70 head, and he pays for himself faster. Now, I can't really continue to use those bulls after that time frame because I've kind of used that up. Did Alta and Gen X do a full merger? I can't answer that. They're owned by the same company. I well, I can say that I am only an independent rep for Alta, not Gen X as well. But I do have both inventories. Got it.
SPEAKER_02I thought that kind of merged it together completely, but I guess not.
SPEAKER_01The offices and the folks running it, I think, are the same, but as far as down towards your distribution, your reps and stuff is separate.
SPEAKER_02Hey, let's take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about your upcoming sale. Thank you.
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SPEAKER_02He's got a sale coming up on April 11th. Is it around noon? What time is the sale?
SPEAKER_01We're gonna start serving CAB steak sandwiches about 11 30. Dr. Tim Parks from Merck is gonna be down talking about the Tyler issues. He came down and talked about it last year, had a good response. And with the new stuff coming out about Tyleria, I figured we probably better talk about that again.
SPEAKER_02But Merck, don't don't just go past that.
SPEAKER_01What is Tyler? So the Tylerosis, however you say that, it's the Asian Longhorn Tick deal that is killing cattle. So it is in our neighborhood. According to veterinarians, everybody's got it. They just don't know it, kind of like anaplasmosis. But this one here, we can't treat it. We just gotta from what I understand, the best case scenario is that every it goes through every herd and there's no no no more naive cattle, and then it'll be kind of like your other diseases that we just uh have to deal with, but like anaplasm.
SPEAKER_02Huh. That's kind of morbid.
SPEAKER_01It's it's it scares me more than that screwworm ever did.
SPEAKER_02We got no shot at it. It's just they gotta get it.
SPEAKER_01They're working on things. My veterinarian is doing some crazy witch doctor hoodoo voodoo stuff, trying to find some cures and some preventatives. Uh, Merck's got some stuff coming out, I think, that's gonna be expensive, but you save one or two cows in this market. Uh that word expensive changes a little bit. But but uh yeah, Dr. Parks will be there talking about that. Merck Animal Health has been awesome with our program. We had some issues with some things, and I I reached out to a few different pharmaceutical reps, and Merck was here. We talked it over, they got us on a protocol with our veterinarian, and they've stood by us, by our side, help us with everything we need. We use nasalgen 3 pmh when these calves are three months old, and it seems like our respiratory is just almost nothing. I mean, we'll get we'll get a calf that kind of gets sick with some up-and-down weather before they get worked, but all the way through our black legs and Merck's been there. They're actually they sponsored my sale the last couple years. They want to be a part of our program, and I definitely give back to them what they give to us.
SPEAKER_02Go back to that long horn tick thing. Have you had any that have gone down with it?
SPEAKER_01I hate to admit this because I'm getting ready to have a bull sale, especially for folks that don't know they haven't, they might be a little reluctant. But I actually had my number one donor test positive for it, and she died within two weeks, which kind of sucked.
SPEAKER_02Sorry to hear that.
SPEAKER_01That one hurt pretty bad, but uh we've tested several. She's the only one. There's a commercial herd here within earshot of me, pretty much, that bought some cattle, brought them in here. Unknowing. Not it's not their fault at all, but like the whole herd was infected. I'm sure I think the sellers knew it. But they brought they bought a bunch of bred cows out of a sale barn on the other side of the state and kinda might have brought that. And I I think it was already here. I'm not gonna blame them, but I think it was here. I just know that if you've got a larger herd close by, then everybody else is gonna have it. I have a customer that lost about $50,000 worth of cattle last fall to this disease, whether it be embryonic loss or actual death loss of cows and cats. And so he tested, he tested a lot of his herd, or he's going to one or the other. I don't haven't heard any results. Kind of like Anaplas and Leucosis, my veterinarian tells me that you go out and test all the cattle in the state of Missouri, 70, 80% are all gonna be carriers or some sort of positive for for all of that stuff. And this one's gonna end up being the same way.
SPEAKER_02I'm surprised it's already that far out.
SPEAKER_01With the amount of cattle moving across this country, we're never gonna stop it. The people that I would be scared for are the ones up in the colder climates that might buy a bull or two when it's warm, bring a few ticks in there. There and get it in their herd, be spread by not changing needles and stuff, but find me a find me an operation that can change a needle between every cow when you're working 200 cows a day and giving four or five shots. I just don't find that that's going to happen very realistically unless you have two or three people dedicated to just changing needles.
SPEAKER_02I use an alcohol type drop thing. I'm looking at something like that as well. I dip every needle into alcohol before I give the next cow a shot. Alright. We just talked about some more stuff and it's just scared the hell out of everybody. Get back to the sale stuff. Let's talk about this sale. I'm gonna tell you my winner of the sale, okay? I'm gonna tell you the one. Lot seven. I don't know about the whole money ball thing, but I know the dam is a war alliance. We're going a little old school on the pedigree there.
SPEAKER_01And I'll kind of take a step back. I kind of I kind of missed on this earlier. I've for the last five to ten years, I have acquired, tried, tried to acquire 10, 15 units here and there, and use those every single year on bulls that are 10 to 20 years old, throw them in. Obviously, this one made a good female. It seemed like the war alliance, all I got was females this last go-around, which was great. That's what I that's that was my intention. That's what I want. Every mating that I make is intended to make females. I do not make any matings with the intention of the next big bull. That's not my goal. I gotta have the cows to make them. So I even went back as far as Pine Drive Big Sky.
SPEAKER_02There we go. That's how far I did you listen to the last podcast I did with Vince Santini?
SPEAKER_01I have not got there yet.
SPEAKER_02So when Shady Brooke first got going in the 1980s, his dad bought Pine Drive Big Sky the first year. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I so no, I I I'll I'll get to that in a second. I also used TC dividend. Some of the best cattle we had in the back in the day were TC dividends. We had a TC dividend son that was one of the most prolific breeders raised on this farm, and that was back before my grandparents really got out. We had to be our regular buyers. That bull actually got used for five years here and then five years somewhere else. And uh so the years that the two years back to back that I used Big Sky and Pine Dry and the TC dividend, both of those sires topped my weaning group. They had the heaviest wean calves two years in a group in a row. That was when I was using Birgo Black Magic, Beirgo Titus, and some and some other growthier sires like that, and they still topped them. Now I will say that's kind of where it ended for me. They didn't they didn't keep going, they didn't have that gas to continue on, but it just kind of went to show you you got a bull that's they almost say he's gonna wean negatively, and then here they go doing that. So you'll find some of those good bulls in the good old sires really close in these pedigrees. I see lot 10, his damn's an HA image maker. Another one that made some really good females kind of way out of his time.
SPEAKER_02Um 878.
unknownDamn.
SPEAKER_01That was that's what I was gonna get to next. 878, my favorite sire of all time. A lot of people loved 878, or he wouldn't have got used as hard as he did. Numbers are terrible, but those females, that cow specifically, the EO58 cow, is she's a pathfinder for a reason. I mean, there's no reason she shouldn't be. Phenotypically, everything, that's a that's a hell of a cow. I mean, she's an 878 daughter that goes back to Scotch Cap, 1407. And that's that's right there in that three-generation pedigree, and here we are in 2026. So for someone to say that those old cattle don't still work is wrong. You go up to lot 17 and the Glionda Infocus X003 there, you'll see him in the front part of that catalog where it talks about the maternal plus and the ratios and stuff. That is the best bull my grandpa ever raised. I still use that bull in our AI program today. He would he would have been 16 years old this year. We used him spring and fall from 15 months old all the way through 10 years old. And those females I will put right up there with the 878s. If you've got XO03 in the pedigree and you're looking to buy a bull to make females, that's the way to go. And I have never once, and I and I can honestly say this, I've never once seen a foot issue out of any of those cows.
SPEAKER_02You're looking to start your breeding this week and probably go for another month or so. Who's the old school bulls you're gonna be using?
SPEAKER_01I'm actually using that XO03 will be my old school bull this year. Okay. Um, because we were breeding so much to Riley, it kind of took a little bit off of what I could throw in there. So the XO03, they just keep doing it. I've I've got daughters that I bred a couple weeks ago that are turned out with a bull now. I've got some daughters that are three months old that are already rising to the top. I really intentionally want females there. His bulls were good, but the females were greater, and I think 878's the same way. You never really heard of a great 878 son, but the daughters just were.
SPEAKER_02That seemed like that was the whole deal with the new design stuff. That 1407 couldn't throw a sun for the life of them either. But they could produce great daughters.
SPEAKER_01I have some, I have some new Frontier 095 in the tank that I may throw five or ten in this year. I've got quite a bit.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01I came across a deal, I think, on SireBuyer or something. Somebody was basically giving away like 50 units for five bucks, and I'm like, man, that bull's too good not to have. And I I'll use some stuff like that on some commercial cows. And actually, last year on the commercial cows, I which we don't have very many, I just had a few commercials. I used, oh man, it's gonna kill me. I can't remember this. E161. I know there's a genetic defect there, but those cattle were really good on the commercial side, so I threw him in. I don't remember if I got anything to settle or not, but who's that you're throwing in with a defects? E161. The 1680 sun.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for the pretty he was a pre- I think it was twin valley precision E161.
SPEAKER_02If you do it right, you can keep the defects out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not so I don't really want to take that chance. I hate having to worry about the testing and stuff because I don't DNA test and I don't I don't do anything until I've already picked them. Yeah. So I've kind of got the carrier stuff out of here just so I don't have to worry about that.
SPEAKER_02We don't want to go through the entire set catalog, but give us some of the highlights. Who to look at.
SPEAKER_01Lot one, phenotypically, he stands out. He's gonna be sub, he's gonna be between a five and a five and a half frame, probably pushing closer to five and a half, I would hope. Typical iconic. The iconics, they just click click. They they kind of look the same. They're deep-bodied, they're thick, they're wide. I do have a he's close to a seven-frame. I do have a close to a seven-frame iconic out of that old donor cow I had, that that Birgo Stetson daughter. But for the most part, the iconics are moderate framed, well-balanced, Pathfinder cow. He's lot one because he took the best picture by far. The lot two bull, I mean, I I know we're not gonna go through the whole thing, but the highlights are kind of there. That Woodhill patent, I'm using 30 units of Woodhill Patent again after this deal. That bull is the one of the longest-bodied animals I've seen in a long time. Picture-wise, in my book, these bulls were just right at 12 months old. So looking at the pictures and seeing them today, it's a world of difference. They've really matured, but you can see he's got he's got a little bit of frame, he's got the length, good EPD package, a single sire group on that one. So I threw him up front out of that good magnitude daughter. When I put the catalog together, the reason lot three is not lot one is because I had two bulls in the same sire group and lot four didn't need to be lot two. Lot three is the best bull in the wholesale. I've had some talks with some guys about doing a 50-50 split on him. He's that good. Excellent EPD package for what I need. He's a five CED, and I'm still I'd still use him on heifers. But looking at his ratios from birth all the way through carcass, he just checked all the boxes. I mean, he's 110 weaning, 111 yearling ratio. Ribeye, he's a 113 IMF, he's a 107 ratio. A little high on the fat, but gotta have some fat to put the marbling in there anyway. So when I looked at the whole package on him, 4.77 ADG on test, he was a little higher on dry matter conversion than what I'd liked, but this entire set of bulls was a little higher than normal. I think the weather we had kind of contributed to that. But lot three, everyone that's looked at these bulls has said he is the most complete animal when you add everything in together. And and some guys have even said that without looking at the paper. That Southern Charm daughter that he's out of is she she's a she should have been a pathfinder. I her first calf, something I think she had one get sick, either her first or second calf knocked that ratio down. Because I'm not gonna lie about when I send in weights, I'm sending them in what they are. I don't lie about any of my data. I don't believe in that at all. So I'll wreck a possible pathfinder if if it's if it's reality. And so that happened there. Then you've got your your sleepers that kind of caught me off guard. Lot six and lot seven are both bulls that they were good to start with, but now they're really good. Lot six is exceptional, lots of hip to him, real deep-bodied, super gentle. You picked out the lot seven. I I'd actually thought about keeping him early on as well. And uh lot eight and nine is another another two bulls that are polar opposites. They're both Beergo sired. The smart feed's a just a gigantic bull out of a three-year-old, typical smart feed, 5.06 ADG on test, right at a 5.5 to 1 converter. It's gonna be that big frame bull that guys want. Lot 3 is a good way, which is an up-and-coming sire for beer goes out of a stellar daughter. A lot more moderate frame than the rest of the Beergo stuff, but super gentle, long bodied, tons of middle to him, and 93 weaning and 157 at a year with with a Cavanese bull. He's gonna get a lot of attention from some guys. My my commercial bull of the day pick is Lot 11. That is that bull is gonna be every commercial man's dream right there. He's he's out of that cow that has a winning ratio of 9 at 108. She does carry a little more birth weight, so he's gonna be a cow bull, but she's she's a 2015 model cow out of that Infocus Bull, Pathfinder Dam. Looking back in her pedigree, it's just just power cow after power cow. This calf here, there's only one bull in the sale right now that weighs more than him, and that's including the 20-month-old bulls. He's just big, rugged, and he he's gonna add pounds. I mean, look at this cow. I say I said he was an outlier earlier because of how big he was and everything, but I do think he's gonna be an outcross of somebody and make make a lot of changes in a commercial herd.
SPEAKER_02And his his EPDs probably got scotched a little bit by having that that uh X003 bull in his lineage.
SPEAKER_01Having an 11-year-old damn, you're you're gonna get dead. And so I don't know if you've noticed this. I don't have dollar values in that book.
SPEAKER_02I didn't really pay attention.
SPEAKER_01You have the ADG, you have the ADG and the dry matter, and I didn't pay attention to dollar C or not. I I just the dollar values to me are relevant to these commercial guys, and I'm focused on the commercial guy. If a registered breeder comes and buys a bull from me, great. But it's the commercial guys that this that this operation was designed to take care of.
SPEAKER_02So taking you back a little bit on the sale, this would be 66 years of the Gleonda program.
SPEAKER_01I think before this we were doing private treaty. We had the the last one that we had was in 2019 where we partnered with Gartons on that one. Sold some females, tried to kind of kick things off, and then I kind of came to the realization our business is not selling cows. To get cows sold, you need those purebred guys. And that that wasn't our shouldn't have been should not have been our goal. Probably sold some cows, we really shouldn't have sold. Made some really happy buyers that bought them, but our goal was to sell bulls, and we just weren't there was there was some things whenever I came back to the farm. My grandpa was getting up there in age, slowing down, not a lot of AI was going on. The bulls were kind of staying out for well, they were staying out until he decided to bring them in. As a breeding season stretched out, the contemporary groups were getting wider, and so I said, let's the one change I did make when I came back, I said, let's AI everything. Let's get them all synced together and let's pull these bulls at 90 days. He was not happy with anything under 120. And I said, Okay, well, just hear me out, let's try it at 90 and see what happens. We had more cattle at that time. We had enough, we we'd sold a couple pieces of land just to kind of get things lined out to where we could make some other business choices to better the farm. Um, but I remember that year we had 175 calves in the month of January alone by sinking everything. And I believe that was three-quarters of that calf crop in one month. And we had as many calves hit the ground in those 90 days than what we'd had in the previous calf crops. So we were able to tighten everybody up and get rid of those non-productive cows that when you leave the bull out that long, sometimes you don't catch that cow that's open until it's too late. And so we were able to do that and add that AI in there and get a little bit more eye-appealing genetics on that on that top side of the pedigree that gets some more people interested. It's my goal here in the next five years is to keep my own bulls and just and be selling our own program, but I had to get some numbers built back up. I had to get some net some pedigree back into those to kind of get the attention back. And in 2024, I guess it was, we had a private treaty open house thing. I had Corbett Wall come out, he was our keynote speaker. I had Dr. Parks, I had a few of the I had Kent Nutrition, I had another feed dealer we did some business with sponsor and do a little bit of speaking. We had a producer panel with Bryson Bergo and Joplin Stockyards and Corbett. And uh I had, I think, 21 bulls in that deal. Most of the people that showed up came to listen to Corbett Wall talk, which was the exact reason I spent the money to get him there because I knew that was gonna happen. We sold every bull, and I had one guy buy three bulls that did not see our sale book. We did have a sale book for that. He had no intention of buying a bull that day. He went back to the back pens, looked at our bulls, bought three of them, and after the sale was over, he goes, I've never seen a set of bulls so docile and so perfectly put together to where this he knew that he was going to be able to turn those bulls out and they weren't gonna crash on him. So there were several other guys that did the same thing that have come back the next year because Corbett told me, because of our private treaty open house, the bid-off thing, I expected maybe one or one person to pick each bull and it'd be simple, it'd be almost like first come, first serve. It wasn't like that. The top five or six bulls had like eight people. So Corbett actually had to start auctioning those bulls off from that from that base price. That sale aver that that private treaty sale averaged a thousand dollars more than what I would have if I just sold them off the farm. Oh and so the the word price discovery hadn't really resonated with me till that day. And Corbett said this was chaotic, it was a nightmare for me. I hated every second of that because it just was chaos. He goes, let's create the chaos next year, have an auction, get an auctioneer, just have a sale. He goes, You're gonna average even more money. Said, just let's let price discovery do its thing. So we decided to do that. My friend from Louisiana, he's a past Louisiana Cataman's president. He's my auctioneer, good friend. He comes up and hunts with us, so he takes good care of me there. He's my auctioneer. I've got some local guys that do my ring staff. We had that sale last year and it just blew me away. We sold every bull and we added 10 more bulls to the sale, and we're adding 10 more this year. So that's kind of how we got into having those sales was just we needed to find we need to establish what the true value of our cattle were. My grandpa was always so in tune with wanting to sell the bulls to the commercial guys and making them happy. He undervalued them for a long time. And he I heard him say it. I wish he was here today to see how many people are still buying into his program. This is still his program. I'm just fifth generation that's carrying it on. I didn't create this. This is this was his deal. And I'm not going to take credit for this cow herd that's built here. I'm just trying to continue it.
SPEAKER_02So this will be this is the third consecutive one, right?
SPEAKER_01This is the third sale, the second actual auction.
SPEAKER_02Are there any other bulls you want to cover before we wrap it up?
SPEAKER_01I do have lot 37. There's another iconic. The only reason this bull's not staying here is because of the other iconic son that I've already got out there that I'm that I'm using pretty heavy. Another one out of a Southern Charm Daughter. Man, he's he's super nice. I went with cat, I went in cattle, our number order there with those cows, but he'll he'll lead off the fall bulls, the older bulls. And those bulls have not been picked over. I strategically turned down people to have five or six older bulls for this sale.
SPEAKER_02People like the older bulls.
SPEAKER_01A lot of guys in Dallas, Missouri, a lot of guys want them younger because they don't want them fed that long.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01They don't want to have a bull that's two years old, that's that's never worked. Those bulls, a lot of there's there's some guys that do, but a lot of my customers like getting those yearling bulls, and they can take them home. And even if they're not turning them out the week after the sale, they can kind of get them acclimated and feed them the way they want and continue them to continue them on with their program.
SPEAKER_02The sale, yeah, going off. It's gonna be April 11th, doing it was it one o'clock, one o'clock start time? Sale starts at one, but we'll start doing the lunch and stuff at 11.
SPEAKER_01Okay. How can they see it? Is it on CCI? It could be on DV auction this year. We went back to DV. We've we've got the option. There'll be some in the catalog there. You can find the catalog on the American Angus Association website. We've got it on our Facebook page, the Gleonda Angus Farms Facebook, our website, gleondaangus.com. And uh there's we can carry some bids. I've got some bids out of state that we've got to carry if those guys can't make it on a DV auction. Delivery. I've I put in the catalog that all purchases over 10,000, I'll deliver. Deliver. That's when diesel was $2 cheaper than it is now, but I'm gonna say that I it's just me here. I'm the only person on this farm working, so I can't just be delivering bulls all the time. So I kind of had to set a standard there to make it worth worth the trip.
SPEAKER_02And how do they contact you directly?
SPEAKER_01They can give me a call at 417-536-8080. I prefer that or a text. Some folks will message us through the Facebook, but I'm not on that all the time. So we do have some requests for information on the website. There's a form you can fill out there. If anybody wants a catalog, they can view it online with the Angus Association. There's an option there to request a catalog there that goes straight to my email. It is too late to deliver a catalog. That's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02When you said delivery, I was thinking deliver the catalog. It was a little too late for that.
SPEAKER_01We're too far out there for that.
SPEAKER_02But are the videos up on DV Auction yet?
SPEAKER_01Videos are up on DV auction. The only bull that does not have a video is our lot 41, which is a commercial bull. I had a heifer that she pray checked open, sent her to my father-in-law's feedlot. She was not open. So the cow cow never got registered, so and she had a really nice calf. And uh so my father-in-law decided that he's gonna sell that one and give the money to my boy so he can use that to start his own herd.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we kind of skipped over that. I'm horrible at that part. There's other people on this family. You got two boys and a wife. How old's your sons? I've got one that's five and one that's ten. They like the farming? They like ranching?
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep. They both like getting out and getting dirty and and being boys. My oldest son Gus, he's kind of he's kind of getting in there a little bit, a little bit deeper in the cattle working and stuff. Denver's not quite old enough to to get in there, but he's starting to starting to want to help there. He likes to go in the in the ranger and go out and check cows and stuff like that. And so are you gonna put your on the future.
SPEAKER_02Are you gonna put your oldest son through the show circuit?
SPEAKER_01He has actually expressed some interest in it. I'm not certain that's something I want to do. I'm not a pay-to-play type of guy. And the genetics we have that I would want to show is probably not gonna not gonna want him to continue to do it. He's probably not gonna want to lose every show. The last we did show I did show some cows a few years ago and showed a cow calf pair, and everywhere we went they said that she was the best cow in the show ring, but she wasn't a show cow, so we've got last every time, even though she had a 900-pound calf on her that was not 205 days old.
SPEAKER_02You know they give ribbons and trophies for showmanship, too.
SPEAKER_01They do, yes, yeah, yeah. But I don't know, he's a heck of a heck of a baseball player, and he likes to play golf, and I'm gonna kind of let him choose his own path. I really hear that. We don't have the time to be breaking show heifers anyway.
SPEAKER_02My middle daughter, she showed for years, but she showed dairy for years, and that was always saying we didn't care how the cow did. Absolutely no interest in that whatsoever. It was what the showmanship brought. Yeah, that was that was her brook bread and butter. Yep. She now shows for people professionally. She's up at Louisville last year and did some showing on the dairy side. That's pretty cool to see. We went up there and saw her. Showing's always good for the kids.
SPEAKER_01If either one of my kids did that and wanted to go show for other people, that would they would be following in their great grandfather's footsteps 'cause that's a long time. He ran show barns and showed for people all over the country.
SPEAKER_02Well, let's wrap the show up right there. I want to thank you, Travis, for coming on and It was fun digging into your program. Kind of the whole point of the show is dig into programs that people don't know about.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me.