Young Beef Producers’ Tour Experience, by Levi Ramsey

Young Beef Producers’ Tour Experience

By LEVI RAMSEY

I had a great experience on the trip to Oklahoma and Kansas. I was able to see some land I had never seen before, as well as an in-depth look at some farming operations. I had not been able to see up that close before, as well as see some historical stuff for the area.

On Monday, we started off watching a live feeder calf sale at the Oklahoma City National Stockyards. We took a tour of the stockyards and learned how they operate, running so many thousands of head per day. We also took a tour of the National Cowboy Museum, which was very interesting because our tour guide was very good at explaining the history of the region. Then we went to Express Ranch and learned about their genetics operation for both livestock and horses. We got to meet the farm manager there, who was a great guy. We also got to hear from the Oklahoma Farm Bureau and Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association while there. They welcomed us to Oklahoma, and they were explaining issues that affect both the nationwide cattle industry as well as the Oklahoma specific issues.

On Tuesday, we headed north to Kansas. On the way, we stopped off at a feedlot called Buffalo feeders. It was in Buffalo, Oklahoma. This was a very informative experience. We learned some of the ins and outs of how feedlots work on this first stop of the day. The feedlot manager was very good at explaining how his business works and how we would be able to ship cattle to him if we ever thought it would work into our operation.

From there, we went on into Kansas, seeing some of the excellent Kansas high plains cattle country and farmland along the way. Our next stop was Midwest feeders, not too far outside of Garden City, Kansas. This was a large feedlot, the largest of the trip, feeding approx. 65,000 head but expanding to 90,000 head by next year. Their main customers were Tyson and Cargill. We were able to see some North Carolina and Virginia cattle that were in this feedlot. It was very neat to see the massive amounts of corn silage they had stockpiled from local farmers at this feedlot.

From here, we went to Garden City for the night and had a great steak dinner with the excellent folks from the Kansas Livestock Association. I really enjoyed getting to meet all of them. They welcomed us to Kansas and brought us up to speed on the issues facing Kansas agriculture. They also told us about their own farming operations and stuck around to hear about our North Carolina operations. KLA was very nice to us and gave out free eat beef tags for us to put on our trucks back home.

The next day the group split up. Some went to tour the Tyson Foods Beef Processing facility in Garden City, and the rest of us went to tour a 12,000 head feedlot in Scott City, Kansas. This feedlot was where I learned of a method of storing corn I had never seen before. The manager there said corn is picked with a combine at 30% moisture, then dumped in a silage pit, packed, and covered just like silage. That was the first I had ever heard of being able to store corn for cattle this way. The next and last stop was a smaller family owned feedlot and row crop operation in the central part of Kansas. This operation was a neat one to see. They educated us a lot on how the water situation was in their area since they were located on top of the Ogallala aquifer, and they were explaining how the water practices had changed over the years to conserve water and the current levels of the aquifer were holding up well in the drought.

After this, we headed back through the good grazing land of the western flint hills to Oklahoma City to leave out the next day back to our farming operations in North Carolina.

This was an excellent trip where I learned a lot about a side of the beef industry we don’t see in North Carolina. This trip helped me to make some great future business contacts in Oklahoma and Kansas for the marketing of our stocker calves, the hauling of calves to these places, and the potential for future employment at some of these excellent agribusinesses we visited. I want to very sincerely thank the N.C. Cattlemen’s Association and the N.C. Farm Bureau for organizing and taking us on this wonderful trip.