Cattle Visions: Providing the Tools of the AI Trade, by Robin Kleine

Photos + Story by: Robin Kleine

Cattle Visions

Providing the Tools of the AI Trade

Think of Cattle Visions as the Amazon of the cattle genetics industry – reasonable pricing, fast delivery and a wide assortment of products – similar to the Internet giant, but with a personal touch.

A distinct focus on customer service has been essential to the Cattle Visions business model, a company supplying semen and artificial insemination (AI) supplies to cattle producers from coast to coast, in all spheres of the cow-calf sector.

“We want to be remembered as the best service provider in the genetics business. We’ve seen tremendous success and we appreciate that; we hope it continues,” Lance Ellsworth says.

“It’s more than that, I would assume most people want to aspire to be the best in their field, however I also want Cattle Visions to be remembered as a company that helped positively impact peoples’ lives.”

A Business Was Born

Since Cattle Visions was founded in 2002, millions of units of semen have been shipped in and out of the facility on Highway 63 in Clark, Missouri, just north of Columbia. In the nearly 20 year history of the business, thousands of delivery trucks have been in and out of the yard and hundreds of cattlemen and cattlewomen have attended AI schools put on by the small staff.

Lance Ellsworth, co-founder and coowner of Cattle Visions, grew up in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he still lives today on the family farm. He was active in 4-H and FFA and showed cattle with his family. He attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was active on the livestock judging team.

Out of college, Ellsworth began his career in the cattle genetics business, first with Western Breeders Service, an AI company in Madison, Wisconsin, and later

became the general manager of SemexBeef. “It’s where I developed most of my contacts traveling throughout the country, visiting herds, researching genetics and pedigrees,” he says. That is how Ellsworth met Carl Newbrough, an AI business veteran who worked for the Genetic Horizons group in Missouri, a company under the Semex management umbrella. When Genetic Horizons closed, Newbrough decided to start a business of his own.

Together, the two began a new venture, Cattle Visions. Newbrough managed the facility and a small staff in Missouri and Ellsworth handled bull procurement and marketing. Newbrough retired a few years ago and sold his shares to Jared Royer, who had worked for Cattle Visions for several years.

Together Ellsworth and Royer lead a team of professionals that work together to care for the livestock housed at the facility, manage the warehouse, use safe practices around liquid nitrogen, handle the logistics of their shipping volume and keep customer service at the forefront of their thoughts and actions.

Meeting of the Minds

The company has grown to include more than just cattle genetics. Cattle Visions sells semen, semen certificates and AI supplies, as well as hosting AI schools, providing local arm service and synchronization, and consulting on breeding projects. In 2019 a custom collection barn/housing facility was built for bulls to be kept on the property.

The Cattle Visions website heading reads: Helping Beef Producers Succeed with Artificial Insemination -- “Our genetic line up and professional services will bring your cattle visions to reality.” And it’s clear that the employees at Cattle Visions are using all their tools to help cattlemen and women put their best foot forward when AI-ing their herd.

When the business first started, Ellsworth would travel to Missouri every other week. Since that time, his young family has grown and his own involvement in his family farm has changed. Now he works solely from his phone and laptop at home, traveling primarily to bull sales and tradeshows. “I used to do all the marketing, bull leasing, representative correspondence and sign up development so to speak. As we’ve grown, I’ve been able to delegate and other people can help with all of that which is great,” says Ellsworth.

One of those people is Heather Dodd, lead customer service representative. Dodd joined the Cattle Visions staff in 2009. Dodd’s own knowledge of AI was limited when she joined the team. She had a few commercial cows at home but had a lot to learn about the business. What she brought to the team was years of customer service experience. She got educated on the “lingo” as she went along and learned about several new-to-her breeds of cattle – like the South Poll bull signed on by Cattle Visions recently.

Dodd’s main responsibilities revolve around customer service, everything from helping with the new bull paperwork, managing inventory, working with bull owners, training new employees on company-wide computer programs, as well as answering phone calls and web inquiries. “Something that is very different about our company is that we do not have ownership in most of our bulls like some of our competitors. We help multiple producers market their bulls,” says Dodd.

“We distribute, not just for multiple farms, but we distribute for multiple companies as well – Origen, Select Sires, Semex. That helps us provide more options for our customers. We save them shipping costs because all of this semen can ship in one tank and they don’t pay anything extra to get that semen offered by other companies, we offer it at the same price.”

Shipping

Getting semen to the customer requires a lot of logistics, a lot of delivery drivers and a lot of semen shippers. Dodd says that 300 semen shippers can be in circulation on any given spring day, and it’s not

Lance Ellsworth, co-founder/owner of Cattle Visions, Elkhorn, Wis. Heather Dodd works at her desk in the Cattle Visions office.

unusual for 60 – 70 tanks to go out per day at the height of the busy season (MidMarch through June 1). Packing that many tanks per day requires all hands on deck from the Cattle Visions team.

“We don’t stay open any longer, because the FedEx delivery in the morning until the pick-up time in the evening is the same, so we are all just working full speed ahead during those hours,” says Dodd. “We work well together as a team, that’s the key that keeps us on top of it … everybody pitches in where needed.”

The cost of shipping semen is set by FedEx and UPS. All semen is shipped in 26-pound tanks, regardless of the number of straws, and they must be returned to the Cattle Visions facility, so two-way shipping is included. Because of this set cost, there’s no minimum order requirement for semen shipments from Cattle Visions.

“We’ve always heard that most cow herds East of the Mississippi have an average herd size of 13, so we’ve always catered to the customer – especially as embryo flushing has become more popular. They will only need 2 or 3 units for a flush or even 1 these days,” says Ellsworth.

With the vastness of the catalog at Cattle Visions, inventory management is a big part of the job. “In our slower season, we take the time to contact owners of semen that is no longer selling so we can make room for the new stuff that’s going to come in the fall. Even if we’re not shipping semen out so fast and furious, there’s lots of work to do be done in the meantime,”

Marketing Semen

As part of her day to day, Dodd deals with bull owners to help market their bull’s semen. To have a bull listed on Cattle Visions, the process is straightforward. • Approval by Cattle Visions owner • Signed contract • Send a professional promotional photo of the bull and a short write-up to Cattle

Visions • Ship a small amount of semen to the

Cattle Visions office to have on hand • Finally the bull is added to the website and semen is listed as in stock

Show cattle, purebred cattle, commercial cattle and heritage breeds, as well as maternally focused and carcass-forward cattle all have originated from semen straws stored at and sold by Cattle Visions.

Ellsworth enjoys that he gets to cater to the purebred breeders and show cattle aficionados, as they do not have as many semen options available from other larger cattle genetics companies.

“Diversification has been pretty key to our success as far as having the ability to carry bulls that cover different niches of the markets. Since I grew up showing animals, the purebred sector and most specifically the show ring has been a major avenue that I’ve stressed,” says Ellsworth.

“To me, it’s important that the bulls we lease are marketable towards those segments. But we’re willing to entertain anything that has some viability and can serve the greater good of the beef industry.” Maine-Anjou bulls have been carried by Cattle Visions from the start.

Maine-Anjou

Personally, Ellsworth showed a few Maine-Anjou steers in his youth and added that in his Genetic Horizons and Semex days, they carried Maine-Anjou semen. “When we started Cattle Visions, we put a little more emphasis on the breed because

Semen shippers lined up at Cattle Visions.

that was an area that was really growing,” Ellsworth says.

He enjoys the broadening of the breed to include the Maine Angus and commends American Maine-Anjou Association Executive Vice President Blake Nelson for really enhancing the breed’s promotability with that program.

“I like the fact that they’ve become more data driven throughout the years as well,” Ellsworth says. “In general, I think the cattle have the opportunity to succeed in the future – to cater to both the show ring and the commercial man quite well by gathering premiums in the end with the carcass quality.”

GOET I-80, born in 2009, is a standout in terms of semen sales. Even at twelve years old this past spring, he was still a top pick for Cattle Visions customers. “He’s proven calving ease and was used by purebred breeders and the club calf industry which has made him so popular,” says Ellsworth.

Innovation

Like any business, Cattle Visions tries to reward their clientele for their loyalty. In the past year or so, Dodd and Royer have developed a customer rewards program to help offset the cost of AI.

“The majority of our customer base is the smaller producer and we have a lot of customers who have smaller herds, are 4-H / FFA kids, or someone just starting out in the business. We wanted to think of a way we could reward them, because they’re not going to purchase any large quantities of semen right away,” Dodd says.

The program keeps track of how many units of semen the customer buys, and every time they hit 40 straws, the customer gets free ground shipping on his or her next order.

Education and Resources

Part of the model at Cattle Visions includes teaching others to AI cows and providing resources to do it better, or get more cows bred.

Several AI schools are put on by the company every year at the facility in Clark, Missouri. Originally advertising was required to fill two schools per year, but now Cattle Visions hosts as many as 12, two-day classes per year. All classes have limited seats to allow for lots of practice with live animals and classroom work during the sessions, and sign up is done through the Cattle Visions website. Interested parties can sign up for an email list to be notified when the dates are announced. According to Dodd, more than 1,000 people are on that list.

Additionally, Cattle Visions has a team of independent sales reps located throughout the country. Nearly 300 individuals are in their data base and often have their own inventory of Cattle Visions bulls in their semen tanks.

“We also have field reps across the country that we’ll try to connect our customers with so that will save on shipping costs and sometimes save them on time, or even provide someone to breed their cows for them,” says Dodd.

Additionally, the owners, employees and field reps try to attend cattle trade shows throughout the country at large livestock shows or beef expos throughout the spring. Some of these events include the National Western Stock Show in Denver, North American International Livestock Exposition in Louisville, Iowa Beef Expo in Des Moines and the World Beef Expo in West Allis, Wisconsin. The crew can deliver semen to the show for customers, pass out semen catalogs and visit with owners about their herd sires or new purchases.

Dodd personally enjoys going to the tradeshows and meeting customers in person. It’s great to get to meet someone and put a face with a voice you’ve been hearing on the phone for the past ten years, she adds.

The staff at Cattle Visions is passionate about their business. Customer service has never been sacrificed, whether the team is dealing with a blown semen straw or a lost shipper.

“It’s so hard to predict from year to year, you don’t know just how busy you’re going to be. It’s interesting how we have grown, but one thing we’ve never compromised is the customer service. The customer is always number one. If our customers are not happy about something, we really do listen and meet and try to make any necessary changes,” says Dodd.

Another part of customer relations is the small celebrations, the walls of the classrooms are decorated with success stories of first AI calves born from AI school graduates.

Extremely good purebred animals are selling for higher and higher end value. When those animals are sired by Cattle Visions bulls, those customer victories are celebrated on social media and on bull listings in the catalog or on the website.

“There’s a line in our sire directory that says, ‘We love seeing everyone’s purple banners and high sellers in their production sales’ … that has always rang true for me,” Lance Ellsworth.