Another Excellent Week in Kansas!

February 14th I attended the Kansas Livestock Association (KLA) meeting in Topeka with the Collegiate Cattleman’s Club. I was very lucky to sit in on the meetings. There was a lunch, presentation and a dinner. It was a good opportunity for me to learn a little about Kansas state level politics. The meeting and presentation covered current Kansas State Laws relative to the Livestock industry and the changes currently being made.

On the 16th of February my Beef Systems Management class with Dr Dave Nicholls and Dr Larry Corah had a phone conference with Jerry Wulf from Wulf Cattle Co. Now this is a seriously cool business! I was so intrigued, that by the end of our conversation I’m sure I had probably written 24 pages of notes! This is a company I would definitely like to get involved with this coming summer. It is a family run business that had originated purely from the feedlot then stepped out to the seed stock industry. This enabled them to buy back cattle with known history and genetics, proven for higher yields, feed efficiency and dressing percent to address their primary focus of selling a premium product. I found it very interesting listening to Jerry talk about the company. They have many different niche market set ups to cover all bases throughout the feedlot alone, which is where my primary interest is. These include their naturals and non-HGP treated cattle, the breeding to feeding cattle program, the contract fed cattle and the dairy breed Limousin cross cattle, just to name a few. I was also interested to hear about the calf feeding set up and would like to learn more about both that and the seedstock side of their business as well. I’m sure I will be in touch with them in the near future.

The weekend following was the Kansas State Rodeo it started Friday night the 17th of February and went through every night that weekend till Sunday the 19th. It was a good show. I love how passionate everyone is with their college sports, sure makes for a good time!

The Kansas Cattle Drive was on in Buhler during the day that Saturday (the 18th). We left early and made the trip down there for a look also. It was a trade show type set up with some livestock handling presentations and a long line of cattle pens set up in the street on hauled in dirt. The pens were full of heifers and bulls advertising local bull studs throughout the area. It was a very lovely day, really sunny which made me very happy after having so many (by my standards anyway) freezing cold days in a row. Having left so early, we hadn’t yet had breakfast so we went down to the town deli (I forget what they call those over here... oh the Diner!) and got caught up on all the local gossip over bacon and eggs.

It was funny, back at the Cattleman’s stall there in Buhler, we were at the booth telling people about their club at K-State. Future students and people who were just generally interested in what the club is involved with. We also had a little jar of lollies (candy) for the young ones and I cant tell you how many blank looks I got from all those little kids who just could not work out why I talked so strange! One poor little bloke was so confused he went to instant ‘stranger danger’ mode and literally ran! I didn’t realise I could be so scary just by answering his question hahah!

Curt Pate was the name of the man giving the presentations on stockmanship. I thought they were very good. He had a little trouble getting the life up in the cattle and had to use a little extra energy than he’d originally said he’d have liked to whilst trying to demonstrate how stress free and easy cattle education should be. However these were a mob of very quiet heifers to start with and considering they were also black cattle that had stood out in the warm sun all day after constant exposure to what I had considered a very cold winter, they had every right to be a little doey.

Some cattle require a little more encouragement to move than others and I really enjoyed hearing him talk about both sides of the spectrum and actually having to demonstrate his theories with doey cattle. This is because sometimes, and I very loosely quote, “naturally as a predator animal, when the human decides he’s in a hurry and runs out of tools, he starts to get a little tough and impatient. The result a lot of the time is to get violent.” Back home in South Australia (as with everywhere I guess), we work with cattle that come from all different backgrounds and previous human exposure. Some of the cattle we purchase for the feedlot including our Angus cattle and most of the British breeds, are quite easy going and some, occupying a more unknown genetic decent, have hardly even seen a human before. I used to enjoy leaning about livestock behavior

and stress free handling purely for the love of it. But, I have since come to learn that there is also great economic value in educating yourself to become a better stockman and learning to communicate your ideas with your cattle in a way that they understand. Personally for me, it is also quite rewarding.