THINKING OUTSIDE the BOX

from Todays Angus Advantage Winter 2023 Special Bull Buyers Guide

Taste Drives Demand and Profit

Origins

Henry Sanden was born in Harmony Township, Minnesota in 1882 his parents having come from Norway as many did at that time due to the state of agriculture. Looking to expand the farming operation Henry and Hilda Sanden immigrated to Craik, Saskatchewan in 1903 to the homestead. The family broke native prairie grass and started cropping wheat, flax, and oats alongside raising animals including cattle which the pastureland and valley pastures are suited for. “We have family pictures of them running an 11-man harvest crew after only a few years here. They were fortunate in that their arrival differed from others in the area who maybe arrived right off the boat without anything where Henry and his family they did operate a farm in Harmony before moving up here.” Henry and his wife, Hilda, had three children, Richard, Vernal, and Silvia. Having received their century farm status in 2003, this year marks 120 years and six generations of the Sanden family on the original homestead.

The eldest son, Richard (Dick), continued farming with his father after returning home from the war, where he served primarily as a pilot instructor. Dick and Peggy lived on their homestead located north of Henry’s yard. They had three sons, Philip, Richard, and Kirby. Dick eventually took over the main farm acquiring more land and animals while continuing to develop the homestead.

farm with Dick. They built a home 1 mile east from where Dick and Peggy raised their boys. Together, they grew the farming operation, acquiring more land and a larger amount of beef cattle. It was Phil who introduced the Red Angus genetics to the farm. Being the oldest of three boys his decision to come home prompted them to expand by buying land from neighbors and family starting the cow/calf operation with a Red Angus base. Over the years they have used multiple breeds of bulls on the herd including Charolais and Gelbvieh but always come back to the Red Angus. When asked about the size of the herd at the time Josh states “We would have calved anywhere from 150-200, throughout the 80s, until 2010. There might have been a little bit of influx in those numbers. I think the biggest challenge, was probably based on feed and we were also slowly putting a bit of land back in the grain farming. BSE was a hard shot on everybody, and we were able to grain farm some of that land which penciled out better during some of those years. So that number fluctuated by as much as 50 pairs almost every other year, or every third year, kind depending on the weather as well.”

The dairy herd got up to 12 head and they shipped cream out of Craik to a creamery in Regina every Tuesday. Phil and his family also had a local market for cream, eggs, and sides of pork. During BSE they also peddled 1.5 lb packages of hamburger into the city to customers, so we’ve seen a bit of that small box sales program — only out of the back of the trunk in a parking lot.

“My grandpa Phil, he was always there. The Real Trail Feedlot, they tried to start out right off highway 11, between Craik, Holdfast and Chamberlain area. My grandpa was a big part of that. There were around a dozen local farmers and cattlemen in the area working to get it up and going. We did downsize a little bit when he was working on that because he was the primary cattle guy. I know that took a lot of work to try and get that that running, and it ended up not going through. They couldn’t get enough funding, or interest from outside partners.”

Phil and Charlotte had three children, Steve, Mark and Angela.

Phil continues to grain farm with his boys and grandchildren. Phil, along with his sons Mark and Steve, dispersed the primary herd in 2011 at the Johnstone Auction Mart to make things easier to split ownership, opening the way for the future generations.

In 1993, Steve moved into his grandparent’s farmhouse with his wife Wendy, continuing on the family legacy. After the dispersal in 2011 he immediately purchased 30 Red Angus bred heifers building the herd to what it consists of today. They went that way because of the mindset “why fix what’s not broken”. They are also close to a lot of good Red Angus breeders that made buying good replacements bulls convenient.

Steve and Wendy had three children, Josh, Aiden and Hanna. Growing up with their love of the farm, all three children attended the University of Saskatchewan to study Agriculture . He continues the mixed farming operation with his dad, brother Mark, and his two sons.

Josh was born and raised born in Craik, like his family before him. Throughout his high school, while he had many friends in 4H and showing cattle, he and his siblings chose a sports route. “My mom worked full time as an RN off the farm and my dad worked as a mechanic early on in my life along with the farm. I don’t remember him saying “one or the other” but sports just took up and consumed so much of our life so that was primarily what we did. I got my first set of cows, personally, when I was eighteen. I finished high school, my parents again, had ambitions that we are welcome to stay around, but we had to go do something else before we started farming. I ended up at the University of Saskatchewan with a Bachelor of Science in Agri business degree. I convocated in 2017 and through all my summers during University, I found employment with BASF. It was awesome, they let me live at the farm and I was still active with seeding and harvesting, helping with the animals, cutting hay and stuff. I found full-time employment with them soon as I graduated. Now there is lots of time on the phone, some travel as well but it’s a good fit for what we’ve got going on, in terms of the personal side outside of work.” bred back to Red Angus making F1’s. “There’s always talk of my dad wanting to have maybe one Charolais or two Simmental bulls around, for some of the older sale cows. They run the herds separately running their few Simmental cows and young 2-3 year old Red Angus with a Red Angus bull. The calving herd right now is Red Angus with the potential to throw a Simmental or Charolais back in there, but as of today, they are running reds on reds that way.”

Josh met his wife Alana who is originally from Bethune through sports and their many of mutual friends. “Between sports and the agriculture industry as well, it’s a small world. Even through Agribition and stuff, I remember her uncle working with the Johnstone Auction Mart so there always seems to be some mutual connection.” She finished high school in Lumsden and then attended the University of Regina nursing program and has been an RN at the Regina General Hospital and then in Moose Jaw in the new hospital there as well.

Since the birth of their son Etsyn in 2021, they realized it was time to move the family on the farm where generations before them have raised their families and this year they plan on moving to the farm to continue the legacy of the Sanden farm. They are expecting another baby this spring and as Josh puts it “yeah piling them up now, I guess.”

To add to the Red Angus base last year, they started bringing a little bit of the Speckle Park influence in with the plans that they will be

They consider themselves part of the beef business more than a classic cow/calf operation. “Primarily right now, we’re calving from March 15th start date and April 15th end date. With the grain farm, we get pretty hard about the deadline. Maybe give or take, if there’s a really good cow that happens to calf three or four days late, no problem. If we have the young ones that start to make a habit of even April 20th, we’ll cull that kind of thing. So late March, early April, is our primary window. Then we’ll keep them at the farm until seedings done and then we’ll start to move in the pasture. We will send the young ones one way and then the older cows another way. typically to be bred to different bulls.”

“The grain farm is about 7500 acres, amongst the four partners. Everyone in the family does run their own entity per se, on paper, but share a lot of the equipment and everything else that way. Of the pastureland, my uncle is running some Dexter cattle, or I should say did. Amongst my dad, my grandpa, and my uncle, there’d be two sections of pasture that we would have at home. When you start talking about hay land, that’s another thing. We probably have, amongst everybody, six quarters devoted to cutting hay. That’s one thing we’re probably changing every year to be a little bit less and less. We’re finding a lot more success with going through the green feed route, meaning less land is required to produce the same amount of feed. With grain farming there is always pressure on that as well — do we have had enough hay feed for what we’re doing but there’s always that calculation, are we better off buying?”

What kind of changes have you seen over the generations from your grandparents to your parents until now?

“Obviously, the whole technology side and I know maybe with cattle it’s not as evident as the grain farm, but I think let’s just talk feed for a second. I don’t remember as a young kid doing anything with green feed, even our neighbors who would be much bigger producers, none of them were cutting silage back then. They still had the amount of cattle that they do today, if not more. I think, even on our own farm, green feed and straw feeding is something we are doing a whole lot of. Same thing with grazing, management is something we’ve focused on a little bit more. Hoping the weather cooperates a little bit, but even something like going and fertilizing some hay ground and trying to pencil in what that looks like has been one thing. we are starting to implement.”

“The generations ‘learning as we go on’ is probably a bit of a new mindset that, even my dad and myself have kind of gotten that way. Whereas my grandpa, I remember his seeding farmland back down to hay if he was short year over year, so I think just a lot of those little metrics come into play more these days. Same thing with technology I guess with the tractors and the balers and even building facilities to keep short tractors inside versus running cans of ether through them every morning. My grandpa’s never really built any structures beyond the house, any animals or any equipment my dad has, he makes sure that he has the infrastructure right.”

“That cold snap before Christmas, I think that was one of our points, to make sure there was room to put some equipment inside. Even coming from my grandpa and my dad — what we’re looking for in cattle differs a little bit over time. We’re looking for things that are easy calving. It’s probably not always on top of everybody’s mind but I think, for us, perhaps that’s one of the top. If we get into mid-April gearing up to go to the field you know we really need to make sure we can check in and we don’t have to intervene a whole bunch, that’s a really big benefit for us on the farm, on the grain side.”

“I think probably it’s just as unique that, or I should say it’s interesting, to see how agriculture and public comes in swings a little bit. Everybody, although there’s five generations on the farm, everybody had to work off farm, from my grandpa onward. Even with a relatively decent sized land base, and the animal mix, everybody still had a job off the farm. My grandpa, he was a welder, my dad is a mechanic, I went to university to work in the Ag industry, so did my brother, my uncle spent winters working away, I think that’s something that probably helped with succession. When you do have lots of people involved, I guess I’m an advocate for it if you are able to do that. I think it helped a lot of tough years to come together.”

“I think there’s a cost and the biggest thing I talk about all the time and especially my generation, is what is your time worth. I think that’s one thing, my grandpa, if you asked him what his time was worth, he probably say “Well I’m here anyway”, whereas myself, I’ve got a big price tag in my mind of other things we could be doing around the farm or with my current employment.” How did West 3rd Ranch come into being? Did your family always sell beef off the farm?

“I remember my grandpa and grandma always did it to some degree. Primarily just the relatives, my grandma had a big family, all over, lots of them from Calgary and Regina. My grandpa’s two brothers were both in the city, so in some fashion, on top of beef for the family use, they always make sure that there was more around for the people that needed it. I remember they were even, selling beef jerky at the golf courses and stuff like that locally. My grandpa saying, they used to do a bit of it, but it was really hard then with just word of mouth marketing. How do you advertise in the 90s kind of thing, putting ads in the papers, so that was start of it. My dad didn’t do quite as much, just given the grain farm was expanding. If you take us to where we started, the pandemic wasn’t good for much, but I think it’s probably taught us a lot about consumers in the way people access food or maybe take the access that we have to food for granted, a little bit. We actually started with a meal subscription service here in Craik, I think probably right before the pandemic. We started trying it through some discount codes and stuff and I just couldn’t get over how convenient it was for every Tuesday for there to be a box on my doorstep with everything in it. The price, I knew was more, but I didn’t care because of the convenience. One of the things I remember, is cooking it with my wife and like most farmers we’re spoiled in that I don’t know if I’ve been to the grocery store to buy beef more than five times in my entire life, if that, or because I was on holiday or something. Having a farming background, we’re used to farm raised beef, and you could tell the cuts in the meal subscription boxes were not good. I remember multiple comments about “all this would be awesome, if we could just get the ingredients and the produce and let us apply the meat” and then we honestly, from there, started looking into what that would look like, and this was born. Talking with my wife, she’s made some friends through the pandemic, a lot of people probably spent a lot of time networking or just talking online and were curious about us. If we are selling a lot of beef, a big thing was “we don’t have storage for anything else outside of what subscription boxes bring us”. We said “OK, that’s interesting, but it makes sense. A lot of people that live in the city don’t even have deep freezers” I would say it just had a snowball effect of the “it would be cool if we could have our own meat In these boxes” to “OK could we make boxes” to “what would you take?” Basically, from there, we found a supplier of insulated boxes, established suppliers for dry ice, if our shipments were outside of a certain window, I found a list of couriers that come by Craik. I had no idea what happened, it just kind of grabbed momentum overnight.

We have always had a few steers that we would background anyway so it’s not like we had to go out and buy animals to background or anything like that, we had some ready. We found the butcher that would meet our specifications for packaging and then we started that way. The pandemic obviously was hard for a lot of things, but I do think it was a bit of that push to draw it up, that connection between the consumer and what they’re eating, and what they’re willing to pay or inquire about because of it.

Right, you’re always going to pay a premium for quality, but that’s not a bad thing, right?

No, I think the convenience maybe even trumps quality a little bit. I’m a prime example of the meal subscription service, so that was one of our models too. Right out of the gate, I didn’t want to be driving to Regina to sit in Costco parking lot for four hours and then people will meet there to buy. I wanted the model that say, you want it to show up at your doorstep or if you live rural, let it show up somewhere you can go grab it. That was one of our things right out of the gate that was non-negotiable, for the convenience.

What kind of time line, how long did it take to figure out packaging? Was it quick?

To be honest with you, we still are a little bit. From a like logistics standpoint, I work with a good friend of mine who was involved with the cultivator program through Conexus. He has been a really good resource on the technology side of things. Somebody that was able to put a website together, so it could have a shipment label created in there, and all that stuff. I think once we understood that the website was possible, the box and the insulator were actually really seamless. The way the supplier website was setup, they sent me out a couple sample boxes and insulators that I used. One of the bigger challenges was what people want. If we go to the market with either too much or too little or too expensive or too cheap, I think that was probably one of the hardest points to figure out. We tried to run a bit of a thinking pool with some of our friends and family of what they’re willing to spend, but when you ask people you know, you probably don’t get a very fair answer out of them. They’re going to say what you want to hear. I think that, out of the gate, was a challenge we went a little bit blind into. If we’re not selling halves and quarters, which most people were used to, what do people want? So basically, we started this in October, I would say with our first launch, first go to market, it was a little bit slow out the gate. We pre made our boxes so when we got our animal back, we had an inventory list and I wanted to make sure we didn’t have anything left in the freezer and those boxes were sold. That’s how we started it, how many boxes could we make and X, Y and Z. It worked out to the pound of ground beef, if I’m being honest with you, that took about a month to sell. In the midst of that, we were doing online giveaways, trying to get some foot traffic on our social media and just found tremendous success. I would say, the word grew overnight and we correlated data visits on the website, that we could also track. It just kind of correlated to sale, so we launched that in

October, it took through the first week in November to sell out. We butchered again that first week in November, we launched it before Christmas and sold out in a day, like in 4 hours. The whole brand itself grew substantially within 8 weeks. January 26 is our next estimated launch date. It’s crazy, we have some people asking if they can get on a list, and I’m trying to stay out of that right now. I just wanted to be first come, first served. The 26th will be our next launch, in a perfect world I’d be able to do one a month. Especially if I could have my animals finished over a period of time versus all at once, now it goes back to you asking me if we’re trying to breed calves twice a year. I think that might help us answer a little bit of our problem. Obviously not a quick solution, because of how long it takes to get animals to get weighed but I think that’s where we want take it.

You were telling me you are going to have an option so customers can reorder every week?

That is one of the things that we are considering. When you look back to the meal subscription service model, I think it worked because you’re on a subscription basis, so it basically is like an auto ship kind of thing. There have been weeks where I’ve forgotten to go on and skip it if we aren’t home and then shows up at my doorstep. We were talking about going that way, but I know you’d ask me maybe where a few bumps are going to be. I’m a little worried about that from using my own supply chain. If we had a steer fall into the dugout that we had scheduled or we had a sickness come through, or whatever it is, there’s 100 things that could happen to some of the animals. If I have one that is pre-sold, what do I do? I don’t want to go down the road to a neighbor to buy a steer because our model is, it’s ours from calf to finish, so I don’t think that we’re there yet. I’ll be honest we are in the honeymoon phase a little bit here. Maybe if you got outside of that, if you were trying to promote a little bit more repetitively, you could offer subscription, you could offer a discount, it would definitely help with that for sure, and it would probably help your herd management. Are you going to buy more breeding stock? Are you going out to buy more feed? I think that would, be a good tool, like hedging your calf crop a little bit. I think the idea of it is a great idea, I just think it would take a little bit logistically to probably get there. Just from the position we’re in anyway. We just we don’t have enough cattle yet because we don’t calve twice a year, just yet but probably after that, it’s coming.

October was our first selling, this has been a brainchild from March to last May. Farm machinery is my favorite place to stop and think. Sometimes it gets dangerous and you overthink, but I think you get a lot done going back and forth, so I think back to our October. We found out we’re also left a little bit to the environment. We had a truck that picked up a box from us, breakdown on the side of the road, a courier truck, so it’s out in a 25 above day, for six hours waiting to be towed. That’s one thing I can’t control. We were working with the purchaser, trying to find ways to have a bit of an insurance program. We started shipping stuff, if we know it’s going a certain distance, if ended up costing you another 13 cents/kilometer or something like that, you have to kind of eat that on the back end. There are things like that that you’re trying to stay on top of. I think it is a bit of a challenge if you’re only as good as the information. I think that’s probably the challenges we’ve seen and been able to overcome a little bit. it potentially might be not till the next day or making sure there’s dry ice. If the couriers ran into some bad weather, or sick employees, even delays from our processor or the butcher shop, it pushed things back two weeks, so we were scheduled for the 26th launch date, but if that were to happen, that would be February 9th, then back your subscription comment, potentially the next subscription is only going two weeks apart. I don’t know if there’s any gold star there yet but that’s something where we’re kind of learning as we as we go. Also, the variable costs are hard to play with. Not so much the cattle, if you had to go buy feed I guess when feed is more expensive than other years and all that, more so speaking directly to some of the beef selling where there’s a fuel surcharge, adjusted every week. Our prices are only adjusted every launch, all of a sudden, you have some packages that get shipped out to Saskatoon, which

I think where we want to go, is continue on with our story. We’re not the only company selling beef off the farm. I would probably even admit, ours aren’t the best, because I know some really good cattle producers that are doing it. I think one of our big mission statements is, let’s tell the story and let’s be really upfront with what the animals are eating, and what kind of life that they’re living. I think there’s been a huge demand for that at the grocery store level, at the consumer level, and that’s one thing we’re really trying to provide for consumers. I think at the same time too, we are trying to promote the industry a little bit. I need to do a better job of that. That’s the one thing I’m really trying to wrap my head around. How we could get on board together and everybody respects the farmers, it’s the bigger picture. How can we help promote the cattle industry a little bit more, I don’t have an answer for that, otherwise I would tell you today. I also want to take a little bit of our, call it our split print, that we’re trying to make here and spend some time promoting, not just our company, but let’s promote the guys that are producing the purebred bulls, for myself and others to use. For the consumer at the end of the day that control, a lot of the trends, we want to see beyond just our brand.

Right, do some supplier profiles, where you say, hey this is the guy…

Yeah for sure, whether it’s where we are buying our bulls from or even if the neighbor up the road, who’s maybe selling the bulk beef that we’re not. Helping guys, share success. I was asked to I speak at the Sask Young Ag Event last week, actually about this, and a guy came up to me after, and just asked “Who do you use for your couriers for ‘cause I can’t drive around the province” and I had no problem sending contacts to him. He wasn’t actually sharing his company name or anything, but we have to do that to help each other out and I think that’s one thing we’re always going to continue to do. in growth model too, so it’s no different than working off farm again. This is another way to try be profitable on the beef farm that is up against it and I’m sure you’re aware that.

There are very few guys that would be close enough to major centers to even make it viable.

Oh for sure, and that’s the thing, we’re on the main vein of the province with highway 11, so this works primarily because of that. I’ll be the first one to admit that, I don’t think this model works if you live in Nipawin, SK with limited shipping avenues of same day service.

The time and work it takes to do it too, I think, if you’re if you’re selling out in days or hours it becomes pretty easy to put a day’s work to it, splitting up boxes and stuff if you had to do it for three hours every day, then it needs to pay going back to, like you were saying, the value of your time.

Yeah, everyone is. Just off the top of my head anyone who I’ve bought beef from, I can’t see a single one of them selling four steaks and a pound of whatever…

We talked a little bit about the subscription, but another thing we want to be able to do is we want this to be seen as an item that you could provide your staff for a Christmas gift. We did up some custom boxes for a business that wanted to give to their staff as a Christmas gift, instead of a bottle of booze. Where they could take it home and enjoy it with their family. One thing that we said was “OK let’s even tailor them to the seasons that we’re in promotions”. Also, I think getting on other social media platforms. It breaks my heart a little bit to even say, we’re hoping to be on TikTok. We’re going to try and go that way, just help with sharing our story little bit. I just go back to the amount of people, kids or teens that are on TikTok, learning how to put air in their tires, that’s where they’re going to learn things. I think we’ve got to show up there to show them how we feed our cows right. I mean probably for the average person, even in this province, if you could somehow help someone understand a little bit more about how animals are fed, not even for promotion, not to generate revenue, just clear straight up knowledge. We are fortunate with these gadgets over here, I think is a tool we want to try and use as well.

I think another part of that too, is the major centers and just being close enough to the cities to promote. It’s really easy for us to say, when somebody says Craik, everybody knows where it is. As well, my brothers coming back to the farm, and my dad is still

Right, each generation gets further removed from the farm. Those younger kids are another generation further from say, going out to grandpa’s farm. Absolutely, I think the more you can share that, the better.

U2 MALBEC 195D

Tuesday, March 21, 2023 – 1:30 p.m.

JTM LIVESTOCK, MINITONAS, MB (5 miles East of Swan River on Highway 10)

• Big, Solid Bulls that can Cover Pasture

• Lots of Hair – Full of Meat • More Bull for Your Dollar

• Semen Tested and Ready to Work! • Performance Tested

• Good Feet, Structurally Sound, Easy Fleshing

Orland Walker Box 235, Hudson Bay, SK S0E 0Y0 T 306-865-3953 C 306-865-6539 diamondw@sasktel.net

SALE MANAGER: 306-584-7937

Helge By 306-536-4261 charolaisbanner@gmail.com

Commercial Consultants: Clayton Hawreluik, Heartland Livestock, Yorkton, SK 306-621-3824; Ron Reed Livestock, Lethbridge, AB 403-625-0233; Jared Moisiondz 204-281-5588; Randy Hart 204-734-8624 Sale broadcast live at DLMS.ca

TWo Year Old Bulls

ese 2 year old bulls selected as calves for 2’s and pastured separately, weaned later and back grounded on silage and chopped feed en they go to grass early June until October. en they are fed similar to the yearlings until sale time. ey will last a long time. Many of the Two year olds were selected for their potential as heifer bulls. ese aged heifer bulls will breed more animals than yearlings and are a very good investment.

lot

U-2 ANEXA 271Y

RED CROWFOOT MOONSHINE 8081U

RED SIX MILE MOONSHINE MAN RED LAZY MC SPARKLE 2

RED RSL MISS TEE 284D

RED STOCKMAN OF CUDLOBE 12L

RED SPITTALBURN MISS 407P RED SIX MILE MISS TOPPER 91G

- very smooth shouldered, long Bull