Cottonwood Connection

Cattle Industry

Season 5 Episode 7 | 24m 55sVideo has Closed Captions

Explore how early cattle drives and open range ranches evolved the cattle industry.

Aired 11/03/2024

Cottonwood Connection

Cattle Industry

Season 5 Episode 7 | 24m 55sVideo has Closed Captions

Explore how early cattle drives and open range ranches evolved the cattle industry.

Explore how early cattle drives and open range ranches evolved into one of the leading industries on the Great Plains and allowed the cattle industry to expand across the settled United States.

Aired 11/03/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS

Cottonwood Connection

Cattle Industry

Season 5 Episode 7 | 24m 55sVideo has Closed Captions

Explore how early cattle drives and open range ranches evolved into one of the leading industries on the Great Plains and allowed the cattle industry to expand across the settled United States.

Aired 11/03/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

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[MUSIC] From the earliest trails and cow towns to the most advanced and productive feed operations of today, the business of cattle has been a major industry through Western Kansas and the high plains. For this episode of Cottonwood Connections, we're in Sheridan County talking to Scott Foote. What is the name of your outfit?

Because it's been Northwestern, it's been Hoxie Feeders, it's been so many things.

Right, okay.

So our family company, we call it overall Foote Cattle Company. Foote Cattle Company.

And we're at Hoxie Feedyard right now.

And The Hoxie Feedyard.

Right.

Because you do have feed yards in other places in Kansas and also Nebraska.

Right.

Dad used to go to the Kansas City Stockyards.

He started an order buying business, so he was buying cattle for people out in Western Kansas, Eastern Nebraska, even up into Iowa.

He ended up buying a set of cattle and he'd grown to be friends with another guy there at the Kansas City Stockyards named Wayne Tilly.

Wayne said, "Why don't we just feed those together?"

From that point forward, they started a relationship partnering on cattle feeding.

Dad and Wayne were feeding enough cattle together at that point.

They thought, "Let's just have, maybe we need to just have our own feed yard."

And so we said, "Where do we want to be?"

And the advantages of Nebraska are more corn, more feed, a better price for feed.

The advantages of Kansas are better weather.

And so we said, "Well, let's try to meet in the middle between Southwest Kansas and Eastern Nebraska."

So we wanted to be kind of in this region.

Yeah, it used to be that there wasn't that much corn out here, so the cattle went to the east in the early days in the 19th century, going to Kansas City too, because the railroad was there and stuff.

And then they were mostly a lot of them going to Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois, because that's where the corn was. Correct.

There weren't many cattle out in Western Kansas while the buffalo were still here.

In the 19th century, or even before, they found that the high plains of Kansas with the buffalo grass is very nutritious, and the buffalo did quite well on it.

And that's why it was called buffalo grass.

And then when they were moving westward, a lot of times they were using oxen as the draft animals to pull the wagons.

The oxen would get foot sore, and so they couldn't go on, so they would leave them out on the grass.

They found out that these cattle got cured and were bigger the next season, so they could even get fat over the grass.

Okay.

And that's the way the trail drivers too, instead of driving all the cattle north to Ogalla in the 1870s, they found out that they could graze them here, and they would get fat, and then they could take them to Kansas City or Omaha, or maybe even on to Chicago, depending on what they had.

The feedlots were around for a long time.

So open range, it was where the grass was and no fences.

And it was public land, so anybody could use it.

But that wasn't putting the finish on the cattle, so you would haul the cattle by train usually, because the drives were too big to such places as Iowa, Illinois.

So you took the cattle to the corn because you weren't growing it there.

I think really in this part of the world, a lot of the growth in the feedlot industry started, I believe, in the 1950s, probably further down south, more in the Texas Panhandle, moving into Southwest Kansas.

Well, Garden City was big, but Colby, they had a big feed yard at that time, too.

Okay, so it just sort of grew.

In that time, this feed yard originally was built in 1969.

No doubt, it is a good area for all those reasons back in history.

And today, I guess a lot of the reason why we like to be here is because we have a good feed supply, but in addition to that, our environment is great.

So we have a low humidity point, and these cattle get pretty big, and if they have a humid day, it's tough on them.

The steer will weigh 1,500 pounds now, and so we want them in an environment that is comfortable for them.

Also, a good environment for taking care of the waste or the manure that we produce.

We want a nice area, and we have great neighbors and a great farmland area around here.

Yeah, the feed is what really puts the weight on the cattle, and they used to not have that. They were feeding maybe cracked corn in the early days, and the cracked corn didn't digest that way where they ran hogs in with the cattle, because with that cracked corn, the hogs would go through the manure and eat the corn.

So you're kind of fattening two things at one time. No doubt, definitely changed today, where we think we've got it down to probably more of a science than they did originally when they started at the times you were saying, and today we even check all the manure in our pens on a regular basis to see how much starch have we left in the pens.

In other words, how efficiently are we using the feed that we're feeding the cattle. So that's a real high priority for us, it's just efficiency.

So today, if the hogs were in there, they wouldn't have anything to eat because the cattle are doing a good job utilizing what we give them.

And too, the times have changed.

It's always been the consumer that has set the demand for the beef.

Even back in the 19th century, when they had longhorns, they didn't like that stringy stuff. And so they started crossbreeding, and then going into the continental breeds with the short horn, the Angus, and the Herford and stuff to improve the breed.

And also with grass fed, I used to hear old timers talk about grass fed beef was the best because that was just out in the pasture.

That doesn't go well now because grass fed fat is yellow, and people aren't used to yellow fat.

You bet.

If there's a trim on it.

I agree.

And you know, there's a whole story to go into there as far as nutrition.

And we're very proud of grain fed beef as being a good healthy product.

And grass fed beef is fine as well. But a lot of times there's a perception that maybe grass fed is healthier than grain fed or so on.

But we think we do really add something clearly to the flavor of the beef and maintain good nutrition in the beef whenever we finish them out this way.

The cattle that we feed here at Foote Cattle Company at Hoxie Feed Yard really have spent most of their life on grass, right?

I mean, they were born on grass, raised most of their life on grass, spent the last few months of their lives here at Hoxie Feed Yard. My name is Latham Schwartz.

Guess I'd say I'm a third generation rancher in a way.

My family actually more started farming.

My dad was the one that really liked ranching the most out of my grandpa, my uncle and him.

And he went to college at Hays and he'd always come back home on 24 just for a little bit more of a scenic drive.

And he always thought this area was really, really cool looking.

And he had owned just a little bit of ground over by my grandpa's farm. I think he basically traded that and got the ranch.

And him and grandpa bought more grass out here over the years.

And we're actually all connected, which is pretty cool.

Not the easiest thing to do.

How long has the family been focused on cow calf? My dad has mostly been focused on it, essentially since he got out of college.

For grandpa and great grandpa, I think it was more of a side that was complimentary to farming as opposed to necessarily their focus.

But to dad and I, it's more of our focus.

And so our family has farm ground and the pasture ground, which is our cow calf operation.

And then also a small feed lot where we feed our own calves out all the way to finish.

Cow calf having your own calves, you can put in your own feed lot and your own cows, you can graze on your own corn stocks.

It's all complimentary to each other.

And so now we run, depending on the years, anywhere from 600 to 700 cows, roughly down here, pairs.

And I just bought my own last January and calved them all out and then had a good year.

So I bought a few more this last spring and then here we are.

We've had another good year.

When I say cows, I mean a female bovine that has had at least one calf.

That's when I say heifers, I mean a female bovine that hasn't had a calf yet.

And bulls is a uncastrated male bovine and then steers is a castrated.

Calving season is as a rancher is our most busy time of year, I would say.

And I mean, especially with our heifers, I mean, dad's checking them as many times a day as he can, really.

That's just because the younger first calving heifers, sometimes we got to assist them. If she goes more than an hour, hour, hour and a half without some assistance that you might lose the calf.

For the rest of them, most cows that have already had their first calf do pretty well by themselves.

They'll have them.

And the most important thing for the calves is that their first drink, essentially from their mom, she has colostrum and it's basically that first milk is filled up with all kinds of antibodies and immunity that really boosts the calves and help them in those first month of life.

When I'm looking at all the calves out here, when calves get sick, they almost just look depressed.

Like they'll be laying down or even if they're up and their ears will be drooped down and they'll be hanging their head.

It really just looks like they're depressed.

That's kind of the main thing I usually am looking out for. That or of course if they're coughing or if the breathing sounds really heavy, mostly just looking at how they're carrying themselves is kind of the best indicator to me on whether they're sick or not.

This stuff, see, but you see stuff like this and you think all these cows have a lot to eat and they like that but usually this taller stuff they don't actually like because it gets tough and dad calls it rank.

It gets like a taste to it or a toughness that they just don't actually like that much.

That's why you see like where the grass is really short here is all buffalo grass and that's because when it's really sweet and tender to them. I mean a lot of our grass out here is buffalo grass.

As long as it's there, as good of a feed really for cows as anything.

It's super high in protein.

So in a cow's rumen, they have bacteria and the bacteria breaks down whatever they eat.

So essentially the bacteria has to get fed first for the cow to really digest her food good and the bacteria eat protein or they eat nitrogen essentially.

I think that comes from the protein.

So if their protein content is high and the bacteria are all fed well then they break down some of the other stuff better.

So that's why I think they do so well out here is they're already in a high protein grass.

So then like when it's really dry out here towards the end of the year we'll put out protein tubs and some supplements that help them meet their protein needs and help them digest and utilize some of this drier brown grass a little bit better.

We put our bulls out on June 20th is the day dad usually goes for and that kind of starts in calving when I said that mid-march the majority of them being in April.

Everybody has their own preference on when they like to calve just depending on weather, and some guys it's more about playing the market highs market lows because there is different times a year that typically a weaned calf is worth a little more than other times.

For us the market timing doesn't matter quite as much since we feed our own calves out all the way to finish whereas guys that are selling their calves right off the cow when they wean them it matters just a little bit more too.

Ours is more for weather trying to avoid most of the nasty cold we get in February still.

I think as the years have gone by more and more people switch over into Angus at least out here and that's kind of a big argument between a lot of people is what breed is actually best but most people out here are red angus or black angus and there's charlotte and Herfords here and there and some cementals.

So most of our cows are red angus and black angus so then they they also have some Gelby balancer blood in them which balancer bulls which they cross black angus or red angus with Gelby cattle.

The Gelby blood I guess gives them some more muscling and some good mothering genetics to go along with Angus is really good finishing so that's what most of our cows are is mostly red angus black angus with some Gelby blood in them. You'll actually see a lot of my calves are baldies because a couple years ago we had a little bit of an emergency with some of our bulls.

Dad went out and bought a few herford bulls that he found for pretty cheap to use on his emergency and that's what I used this last year.

That's where all the white faces come from.

I think it's a lot of the reason I like the cow/calf most is because I, kind of like my dad in the sense that I like being outside.

I get a lot more enjoyment from being out checking cows and doing things out here than I do riding in a tractor.

I love just the animal aspect of it and working with them and just sort of the challenge of picking up genetics and deciding how you're going to make your herd better.

The foundation of our industry is the cow calf producers and they will a lot of times sell their calves to a stocker producer and the stocker producers will grow those cattle up from let's just say nine months old up to a year 15 months old and then from that point those producers will get them up to a 800 pound steer for example. They'll sell those animals either in an auction market or direct to somebody like us.

What we tend to buy for is just an animal that has potential to grow.

We buy for condition, we also buy for quality. A lot of different genetics can fit into that right?

And they're working on that all the time not only for the final product of being meat but also resistance to diseases.

For sure.

One time a veterinarian told me the best medicine you can give is sunlight and you know I cannot deny that. I think that is a fact and so we think if we take good care of the conditions of the pens for the cattle feed them good nutrition and have them in a good environment like here in Sheridan County. We can reduce our dependence on things like medicine.

The weather is stress and sunshine and so if we can do a good job just with animal husbandry and nutrition we think we can you know like I say reduce our dependence on medicine which I think is exciting as well. Natural immunity seems to help the cattle as well like if we bring them in here and they're able to just adjust to their environment and the other animals around them.

We find that a lot of times these cattle are strong and naturally adjust to the environment as well as long as we're giving them good nutrition, good animal care standards.

We don't want to rely on a needle to keep our cattle healthy.

We rely on our work.

We have good people that understand the cattle and look them over and we have a group of pin riders, cowboys that really are watching the cattle every day and people that are experienced in feeding.

Now you have the what is it BQA?

Right yeah beef quality assurance.

So we all of our employees are trained on beef quality assurance so we make sure we do good animal welfare standards.

People are BQA trained to know how to handle the cattle and what it seems like it's done is is it helps the beef quality. The quality of life of the animal as well as the quality of work for the for the people working here and just the quality of the meat for the consumer.

Well and even for cattle handling when it used to be rough and tumble of getting a horse in there and if something got out you roped it and choked it and stuff you don't have that stress.

Right.

And so a lot of people are aware of Temple Grandin and what she did.

Sure.

And I think you followed some of her.

We do absolutely.

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University.

She has a form of autism.

She tried to put herself in the place of the animals and she would walk through even even go as far as getting on her hands and knees and go through facilities and try to imagine what would the cattle think of these facilities and how would the cattle handle these situations.

And it sort of developed a lot of the industry's thought process on how do we move forward with just training employees handling cattle designing different facilities.

And so really the industry from the ranch all the way through to the meat packing facilities has been affected by her work.

So how many how many times do you feed per day?

We feed everything three times per day.

Three times.

Here at Hoxie feed yard we have we have read at 60,000 head of cattle feed at any point in time.

So we'll feed probably today two and a half 2.7 million pounds of feed to those cattle.

What we do is we just work with local farmers to buy corn at harvest time.

We put in right about four and a half million bushel of high moisture corn into our pile here at Hoxie feed yard.

We'll also buy dry corn from farmers.

We'll bring it in and we'll basically cook it.

So we'll steam it for for about two hours and then crush it make it into basically cornflakes, more or less cornflakes cereal.

And some silage is kind of a lot of the fiber portion of the ration comes through that.

We have a location in Oakley where actually we bring in all of these nutrients that have been talking about calcium, salt, magnesium, all the little micronutrients, vitamin A, D and E and we'll put all those into a liquid-based supplement.

And you also use the Miller's grain.

Right?

Distillers grain is what we call it.

So the ethanol industry is really grown. They take the grain either corn or grain sorghum, milo and they'll ferment that grain.

And so all the starches will turn into alcohol and alcohol will be the ethanol.

Everything that's left over we call distillers grain.

And so that has a high fiber, high protein and has some fat in it as well. And tasty.

It really is.

Yeah, it really is.

Well, that's an environmental thing where waste from the the ethanol plants is being recycled right into the cattle and making meat.

We have three nutritionists that work with us that are working on balancing rations.

And so we'll take our ingredients that we own and the number of cattle that we have and how the consumption of the feed is, the weather, different factors.

Those rations could change on a weekly basis.

So we push that through a computer system out to the feed trucks that allows for the feed truck drivers, the guys running the loader operators, so they know... really it's the recipe.

The recipe of ingredients that we put together into the feed truck, mix it all up really well. And then the feed truck driver has to know whenever he goes and delivers that feed to each pen of cattle how much feed they need so they have the right amount of feed because we don't want to overfeed them.

We don't want to underfeed them.

And so it's something that we work pretty hard on every day.

That's a process, right?

365 days a year we have to be going.

So it just takes a lot of good people dedicated, wanting to be involved.

Like I said, we do the same thing today as we'll do Christmas day and every other day of the year.

So it takes a good team.

We've really made a push to understand our sustainability at Foote Cattle Company and really understand how much corn we use, how efficiently do we use it, how much distillers grain, how much hay, how many cattle does it take. In other words, what are our inputs to produce a pound of beef at the end of the day?

That is sustainability, but theoretically it's also profitability for us and for everyone who we're doing business with.

And so it is in our best interest to be sustainable at Foote Cattle Company. And that has been an exciting, I think, journey for us, like I say, to realize sustainability is good for us.

And so we want to do what's right for the environment.

We want to do what's right for our communities.

We want to do what's right for our employees.

We want to do what's right for our business, right?

And so I think it all ties together really well.

And it is important, you know, water conservation is part of sustainability.

And we've worked really, really hard on that ourselves, as well as our neighbor farmers have worked really, really hard on sustainability of our water resources.

And we have some great statistics about how we have been able to produce a large amount of output of grain and beef in our community while moderating the use of our water resource and the Ogallala Aquifer.

And you know what?

I think that's one thing we have to share in our communities is that we're excited to do it and we're proud of it.

You know, sometimes like you say, we're conservative.

We don't really talk about it very much.

And maybe so then some people in other areas might make assumptions about what we're doing because we aren't telling our story.

We have a great story to tell.

We're making food, we're feeding the world in a really efficient way.

And I'll tell you what, again, per unit of input, you can go right here in Sheridan County and we're producing more food for America than potentially anyone else worldwide per unit of input.

I'm just very proud about how efficient we are with it. It's a little fact that's kind of interesting that sometimes we'll talk about is that Foote Cattle Company produces about 2% of the United States beef supply.

And what I like to say about that is sometimes the local community doesn't realize how important their efforts are in feeding the world.

And it really is a big deal what we do here in Sheridan County, Kansas, and in Northwest Kansas, Southwest Nebraska, as we're feeding our world.

And we should be very proud of it.

I think that's important. [Music]

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS