Brown Priest is Empress of Cattle Empire LLC by Teres Lambert for the Red Angus Magazine In his “On the Edge of Common Sense” column, titled, “The Feedlot Woman” penned a year ago, Baxter Black, D.V.M., wrote, “The women working there earn their place.” He pointed out that, “One of the biggest deterrents for women has always been that ground work in the feedlot is a dirty job, fraught with smashed fingers, stepped-on toes and pucky in your hair. But plenty of women can handle it.” Trista Brown Priest, CEO of Cattle Empire LLC, Satanta, Kansas, agrees with Black’s words, adding that, as
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CEO of a feedyard, she is happy to no longer have “pucky” in her hair. Family-owned and family-managed, Cattle Empire has a one-time capacity of 51,000 and is located in what people refer to as “the heart of the beef feeding empire.” The feedyard’s home county, Haskell County, ranks second for most cattle of any county in the country, and there’s a key reason for this ranking: Feedyards in Haskell County are within easy shipping distance to the four major packers. The third generation of the Brown family to work at Cattle Empire,
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Trista started working in the family feedyard at age 14. After graduating from Kansas State University with an M.B.A. in agriculture economics and finance in 2012, Trista returned to the feedyard where she worked her way to being named CEO in 2018. The feedyard has undergone a lot of changes since Trista’s return in 2012. Founded in 1978 by Trista’s grandparents Paul and Evelyn Brown, the business grew to three yard locations in two states – Kansas and Texas – and had a one-time capacity of 250,000. Her dad, Roy, began managing the
