Profile – McLeod Livestock

from October 2012 Charolais Banner

by Charolais Banner

Charolais Life

It’s All About Quality

Darren Paget presented the ACA Breeder of the Year Award to April, Megan, Colby and Rod McLeod, of McLeod Livestock

PROFILE – McLEOD LIVESTOCK Candace By

Alberta’s Breeder of the Year this year was McLeod Livestock, Cochrane, Alberta.It is a small operation that has a high profile through youth activities, the show ring and strong marketing. Here is how it all came to be.

Rod McLeod was actually raised in the purebred Polled Hereford business near Claresholm, but his first job involved all breeds. It was a warm summer day in Mount Forest, Ontario, in 1984 and Rod McLeod was working for World of Beef as a fieldman. It was the OCA AGM and a whole weekend of activities were planned including a sale. Rod was working ring, as was Helge By.

Following the sale, Helge approached Hayes Walker III, the Charolais Banner manager at the time, and said, “I found the fieldman we are looking for.” Hayes replied, “Who?” Helge responded, “That kid I worked ring with today.” So when they got to Alberta, Hayes picked up Rod and took him to meet some of the owners, the Stettler crew of Don Pochylko and Don Peters. Rod chuckles, “Actually with Hayes it was more of a meeting with the women. I had to get the blessing from Sandra and Sylvia.” Thus started Rod’s introduction to the Charolais indsutry.

Later his parents would get into the Charolais business by purchasing a package of females by private treaty from Flat Valley Charolais, Reuben and Lorene and Eugene and Pam Ehret, Hilda, Alberta.

Rod worked with the Charolais Banner under the conglomerate of breeder owners until the opportunity came to buy most of them out in 1985. Then he, Helge and Mark Kihn became partners and owners. In 1991, he made the move to sales management and managed Charolais sales in Alberta for three years.

His cattle industry experience continued to grow when Rod became General Manager of the Canadian Maine Anjou Association. This five year period gave him increased knowledge of how cattle organizations work.

In 1999, Rod started working within the elk industry. Qeva was a publicly traded company, which was started initially to market elk and elk antler products. In January of 2003, it purchased a small abbatoir at Balzac, Alberta to

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B.O.S.S. presentations at a CCA AGM Rod McLeod working ring

market elk meat. In May of that year, BSE struck the Canadian beef industry and the plant experienced dramatic changes. Rod says, “It moved our production from comfortable to capacity. If you weren’t full during the first six months of BSE, something was wrong. We learned how to run at full capacity quickly.”

Rod and April purchased the meat plant in January of 2004 and have run it ever since. The previous owner only did custom work that came his way. He never pushed the retail end of the business, never owned or fed cattle or speculated on his own.

“When we took over, we started slaughtering elk. When BSE hit, we were running on capacity and the elk was too hard to market. It is a niche market and we had so much beef coming in, and it was easier to market to the masses.

“We do about 400 hogs each week, which is similar to what was being done before we took over. Hogs were easier to get. Truthfully we took it up to 800 per week up until the big hog crash a few years ago. Then when all of the hog producers got out of business it became hard to find hogs. Olymel contracts the hog production in the province. It has made it almost impossible to get a constant supply of pigs because they have control of the market. They contract the whole farm now. They send the trucks to pick the pigs up. If they catch you selling pigs somewhere else, they will terminate your contract. When the hog market dropped so bad, the few guys that were left in it were scrambling to make sure they had some place to go with their pigs. So they got a lot of the guys on board on two and three year deals. Not just a one year contract, like in the cattle business where Cargill will contract a pen. Olymel comes in and contacts your whole production, everything, it’s either all or nothing. The Alberta Hog Marketing Board collapsed and they used to take from smaller producers putting together liner loads. When the hog market crashed, they couldn’t market the product so they lost the producers and folded. Most of the smaller producers they dealt with are gone. The infrastructure in the marketing of pigs changed.

“We do 30-35 beef each week. To maintain a constant supply, I’ve either got them on feed myself, or I’ve purchased entire calf crops from producers. They feed them exactly the way I want them. I work with other producers too. I have some purebred breeders feed out the calves that will not go into their purebred herds to my specifications.

“I don’t do any cull cows or bulls. I can’t make the quality of meat that I want out of these cull animals. I still do custom work, I don’t turn it away but we always have a supply of fat cattle on hand as we have to keep the plant running at full capacity. I’ve got guys that do branded beef programs that bring their product to me. They market it themselves. I just package it up exactly the way they want it.

“John Lamb, at Balzac, is probably one of the larger grass-fed programs. We did 100 head for him last year. His daughter Nicole does the marketing and we do the cutting. I’ve got other guys that do 50-60 head throughout the year. “Our fund-raising deal has turned out to be huge. A friend of ours at Cochrane, came to us and said ‘We’re tired of selling magazines and chocolates for fundraisers. Can you put together a few beef packages so our swim club can sell them?’ So we came up with ten packages. Package one is thirty onepound packages of hamburger. Package two is ten pounds of New York steaks. We came up with ten

different packages and they get 20 percent of what they sell. They supply us with all of the sales and we have 30 days from the time they give it to us to deliver the product. It has become huge, we are turning them away. We’ve got schools that will sell $120,000 each year. Our average drop per fundraiser this year was $18,000 and we do three or four a week. Everybody says it is the easiest sell they have ever had. All they have to do is get the forms out there and it sells itself. People only have a certain size deepfreeze. So they can buy three cubic feet because that is the only space they have. But they find, that when it is there, they eat it and really like it and want to order again. The ones that were going once have increased to twice per year because of demand. People mark it on their calendars now to time their purchases with the groups they support. Everytime the fundraiser comes back to us it is bigger.

“We custom do steaks for guys that cater, like Eric Andrews that did the cooking for the CCYA Keep and Cull competition. He buys 5000 steaks a year from us. He won’t buy his meat anywhere else, because he knows he is guaranteed the quality and all he has to do is cook it and it is the same everytime. Nothing goes out of our place that isn’t aged properly. We do a lot of 28-40 day aged.

“I spend no money on advertising. It is all word of mouth. Our plant has run at maximum capacity for five years. We can’t do anymore, the walls are the prohibiting factor on what we can do. We can only do so much. We are turning fundraisers away. We can hang 240 sides in our cooler at one time. Our quality has to be at the top-end. The George Foreman is always sitting there and if anyone gets an inkling that something is wrong, we’ll cook a piece of the ribeye or striploin and try it. There will be four guys standing around and if one guy says it’s not good enough, we grind the whole thing. There is no hesitation. We have to have quality.

“We have 18 full-tme employees with no plans for expansion. When the developers move in and shut me down, we’re done. We just can’t afford to rebuild it. The number one problem is that you can’t build it in the right place. I tried once to build on the south side of Airdrie and the City of Airdrie just laughed at me. They told me there would never be an abbatoir built in the city limits of Airdrie. It’s one of those things the voters dictate. They want employmentin their neighborhood, just not in their backyard. We don’t have smell or odour or anything, but it is the perception. The zoning requirements are made for huge plants like Cargill. Even though we are small, the regulations we have to follow are made for them.

“All of our employees are from Calgary and getting them to commute a greater distance isn’t easy. Finding employees is another issue. Nobody teaches how to cut meat anymore. All they teach them is how to cut out of a box. Nobody teaches them how to break something down. The big plants teach them one specific thing. I always compare it to the construction industry. There are framers and finishing carpenters and everybody that works at my place is a finishing carpenter. They are the best of the best. They get paid accordingly. I have the highest priced meat cutters in all of Calgary, but they are all getting older. My employees have been with me for a while, there hasn’t been a change at my table for three years. If you lose one key guy when you are operating at maximum capacity, you’re in trouble quick. The only new guys coming in that are good are the Europeans. I have hired some guys out of SAIT and Olds College but they don’t work out. They can’t believe how hard the work is and what is expected. They are used to getting a box of meat they have to slice into steaks, they can’t start with a carcass and get to an end product.

“When we started there were over 100 red meat plants in the province, now there are less than 50. If you were to rebuild now, the exit plan is also not great. Nobody wants to buy a meat plant.

“In 4-H steer sale season, I become an investigator. People say I can’t be at the sale, but buy me something. So I get some of the damdest things, we won’t have phone numbers or names. We got one the other day that said Century 21 bought it. How many Century 21 offices are in Calgary and is it the office or a specific realtor? You hope the people will call you before the 21 days pass and you are ready to cut. If they don’t, you have to put your investigator hat on and try to figure it out. “This year I had one from

Dry aging at the meat plant

the Carstairs sale under a lady’s name. 21 days came and I hadn’t heard, 28 days came and still nothing. So I called the parents of the kid that sold the steer to see if they had a number for this woman. They said they didn’t even know who she was, she just stepped in and bought the steer. No clue at all who she was. So I phoned the Carstairs District who handled the sale to see if they could help. They only had her name and address and said she paid for the steer that day and said to ship it to you. So I googled her on the internet and this name popped up for a woman who worked for a company in Calgary. So I phoned the company and she was on holidays. They got a message to her and she called and said she had forgotten about it. We were at 35 days at this point. She said I’ll get back to you in a day or so because I’m splitting it with a couple of friends. I told her I needed to know now. It’s just one of those things.

“We do 120 plus 4-H steers each year. There aren’t many places you can take steers to process. I never slaughter a 4-H calf the day after a sale. I bring them home and rehydrate them. I put up some barley green feed so those calves can come and get refilled. They need to rest for three days so you don’t get dark cutters. The worst thing about 4-H is everybody works hard with their calf for two or three days before the sale. Some of them haven’t eaten or drank well because they have been worked hard and hauled around by some kid. So then it goes to town and doesn’t like the chlorine water, so they haven’t drank well. When we put them in the pen, they will play around for a while then they lay down. They’ll do nothing but lay around for two days. Then we just walk them up the hill with no stress for processing.

“When we do custom work, the animals are all penned individually and I have people bring them the day before. I never do them off the trailer.

“I don’t do many bison anymore because the price is so high on the rail. Everytime you have a price increase you lose a portion of the market. The bison market grew quickly because breeders were dumping cheap animals on the market when many of the breeders were getting out of the business. Initially the price of bison meat was cheap. Health conscious people liked it. As the price rose, you found out who was willing to pay for what they perceived as health conscious food.

“We don’t do any wild game. At our facility everything is inspected. I only do inspected meat, so the regulations make it impossible. You have to have separate coolers and it just isn’t worth it. I do farmed game, but there isn’t much of that around anymore either. Mostly it is a means of dispersing a herd.”

April works in Balzac Meats handling all of their cooked meats and sausage products. Rod is the guy upfront marketing that makes it all happen.

“We do some lambs, but not many. I used to do some specialty high-end restaurants, but I can’t compete with the big guys for price. The margin is just not there, I have to have full retail on my product because I can only do so much. I have to focus on what I can do right. I worry about quality not quantity. That’s the whole key, it’s just like what we do in our cattle.

“We worry about quality not quantity in our herd. We bred 25 this year, but we did some embryo work for the very first time. We just want to

get some more replacement females. We just want 25-30 of the best ones. The whole reason we are doing the transplanting is for females.We put in 28 embryos this spring.”

In the early years of their marriage, April competed with Quarter Horses in Western Pleasure. She had a horse ranked Top 3 in the World in Amateur All Round and achieved the Super Horse Award once. She showed horses for 17 years, but as time became more taxed with kids and the meat plant, the herd started to dwindle.

Megan still shows the 14 year old gelding locally, but only if there isn’t a cattle show. She started with her first heifer at age five and never showed horses until she was thirteen. Colby never did show interest in the horse side of showing, he much preferred dirt bikes.

“We have a family herd. The kids sold all of the bulls this spring. I only owned one, they owned the rest. It will go towards their education.

“The herd all started with the kids’ 4-H calves. We bought Target PLD Ginny 40P from Palmers and she was Colby’s first 4-H project. Every year they expanded to more projects and that is what the whole herd is built around.

“Megan wasn’t old enough for 4-H that year, but Grandma and Grandpa gave her MF Emily 303N and that started her herd.”

It is interesting that the kids first two females have turned out to be exceptional foundation females. They were the start of the cow families that have produced all the high dollar champion animals in the last few years.

“They’ve learned a lot of things and they have met a lot of people. It has given them the exposure to let people know they have the cattle. For new breeders coming in, the exposure is more important because other people don’t know what you are doing. You can buy them and take them home, but if people don’t know what you have, they won’t come looking to buy.

“The show ring has worked for us. It has made us be more critical of our own cattle, especially when we have to compete against all other breeds. In the most recent years, our kids have carried the Charolais torch at the all breeds shows in Alberta. There have been a few others show up here and there, but ours have been to all of them. It makes you aware of what is required to compete at that level.

“Colby learned more in 2009 when he had the silver steer that was champion steer at numerous junior shows and was the champion steer at the Calgary Stampede Steer Classic. It was the year it really started for him, where he wanted to be at that level. He got recognition and acceptance from other people by doing it himself. He won with that silver steer lots that spring. Then the Angus World Forum was in Calgary that year. He went from being hired as a shitline boy to being hired by people at the top of their game in other breeds. He learned more from the fitters that Hamilton Farms brought up for the Forum and that took him another step. When he went to Denver with Encore this spring, the new owners brought him to Denver to talk about the bull and help handle promotion. Then they found out he had fitting skills. At the end of Denver, they gave him a plane ticket to Fort Worth and left the other fitters at home.

“Megan is going into grade eleven and she is the student of the bunch. She has a lot of friends in the all-breeds functions. She has been able to be competitive with Charolais cattle at these events including having exhibited the Supreme Champion Female at the

Megan McLeod and her Supreme Champion Female at the 2011 Farmfair International All Breeds Junior Show

Colby won Intermediate Oral Reason, Steer Judging and Reserve Team Grooming at CCYA 2008

2011 Farmfair International All Breeds Junior Show.

“Learning about the business through the meat market has changed my views about cattle somewhat. As you get into the business and raise, feed and slaughter your own cattle, you learn more. Number one – the Charolais business has to concentrate on getting to a certain growth stage fast. It’s not about how big they get, it’s how fast they get there. They have to have early maturity. It’s no different than my feeding program, they have to be finished in 13 or 15 months. I am not in a grassfed situation.

“The Association is there to facilitate the registry and programs. The breeders have to direct the association. You can’t hire a fieldman to represent the breed the way the breeders can do it themselves. The association can offer the tools, but the breeders have to drive it.

“The show ring is important as a promotional tool and to compare genetics. I tell my kids to be the most critical of their own cattle, don’t worry about being critical of others. Analyze other genetics and select the ones that can complement your program. Be critical of your own cattle and recognize their faults. If you make a mistake when selecting an animal, just admit you made a mistake and dispose of the animal, the first loss is the cheapest one. Don’t try to sell it to someone else, that’s why we have slaughter plants!”

Work is something Rod is not afraid of and keeping up to him would be a problem for many people. Besides his kids’ activities, the meat plant and their purebred herd, Rod is also still very involved in helping other people market their cattle. Working as a ringman at many sales throughout the year in many breeds, keeps his fingers on the pulse of the entire purebred industry.

Beef is the business the McLeods are in, whether it is on your fork or in the show ring. Quality is their trademark. Even McLean’s Magazine found the product exceptional. Food critic Jacob Richler couldn’t find a good steak at Calgary Stampede time and complained they were all wetaged, waterlogged and mushy. When he went back to Toronto he started phoning packing plants to prove this wasn’t the case everywhere in Alberta. “Eventually I found the gold mine: Balzac Meat Processing, where owner Rod McLeod dry-ages steers – the best, most space-extravagant method known to man. He hangs the carcasses for 28 to 40 days. Shockingly, 90 per cent is snapped up by private consumers.”

It’s really not a shock, quality is what people seek. It is what keeps them coming back to Balzac Meats and back to McLeod Livestock for a superior product.