This year’s Western Livestock Journal ranch tour took members to an unusual area to learn unusual things. The first half of our touring took us to several commercial operations where producers have to deal with toxic forage and too much rain, to Tyson’s newest chicken hatcheries of all places.
The tour started in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, ventured into the northwest corner of Arkansas, and swung into the southwest corner of Missouri. One of the most notable things about this country to a western eye was how wet and green everything was.
There were many old faces on this year’s tour, one of the largest to date with about 150 participants initially signed up. Some of the new faces came a long way to join the tour, however. First-timers Peter and Karen Berwick traveled all the way from Tasmania to be with us this year. The Berwicks raise and feed Angus and Hereford cattle in Ringarooma, a city in the northeast of the island, which sits off the southeastern tip of Australia.
Day one
Airline troubles meant some tour members—or their luggage—got held up or delivered to the wrong place. But the tour got underway Monday, May 20 mostly without a hitch. However, the lead bus must have had its GPS set to “scenic route,” because we saw a lot of beautiful country along the winding back routes of Oklahoma and Arkansas and were running about two hours late.
The first stop was the Yazel Land and Cattle Company of Vinita, OK. The Yazel team was processing spring calves when we arrived. Calves, between a month-and-a-half to three-and-a-half months old, were roped and dragged, branded, castrated, ear-notched, tagged, and vaccinated.
Owner Mark Yazel called his ranch to a “no frills” cow-calf operation. Though it was recently the Ratcliff Ranch, a purebred Angus operation, Yazel bought the bulk of the cows in 2014 and transitioned it to a commercial ranch. Today the ranch runs about 5,000 head of mostly Angus black mother cows, with a bull battery of about 60 percent Angus or SimAngus, and 40 percent Hereford.
The fact the ranch is in fescue country was one of the biggest management issues Yazel has to deal with. The biggest concern with the fescue is with the heat, he said. However, providing shade and ponds for the cattle to cool off can deal with a lot of it.
Though he told tour members that he didn’t want to get rid of the fescue, Yazel said he wanted to keep it below a third of what his cattle consume. The rest of it is bluestem and bermudagrass. He estimated that he could run one cow on 4.5-5.5 acres on fescue and said that the bluestem winters cows marvelously.
We arrived at our second destination very late and very hungry. The guys at Jac’s Ranch of Bentonville, AR took care of us, however.
After lunch, Lamar Stieger, fresh meat consultant for Walmart and whose family owns Jac’s Ranch, told the tour about some of Walmart’s plans related to beef.
“Walmart is moving towards almost all Choice,” he told the group. “Eventually, they’re going to be all upper two-thirds Choice. It’s really going to affect y’all’s business.”
He also went into detail about a new partnership between Walmart and the 44 Ranch of Texas; Prime Pursuits.
“Prime Pursuits is going to start out procuring 2,500 head a week. These 2,500 head will supply about two-and-a-half feet of shelf space of upper two-thirds Choice for just 400 Walmart stores,” he said, adding that Walmart plans to build its own case-ready plant to supply those stores.
Day two
History was the name of the game on Tuesday, May 22. The tour started off in Fort Smith, AR, were we toured around the town, visited several of its historic locations including the old bordello, “Miss Laura’s,” and visited the museum dedicated to the fort and its impact on the area.
The fort for which the town was named was first built in 1817 and rebuilt in 1838. Before the Civil War, the fort was something of a terminus on what is now called the Trail of Tears. During the Civil War, it served as a Confederate supply point, but was taken by the Union in 1863.
In 1872, the fort was converted into a federal court, a jail, and offices for the U.S. Marshals. Judge Isaac Parker—known as “the hanging judge” for sentencing more men to death by hanging than any other judge despite his opposition to the death penalty—presided over the fort’s court from 1875 to 1896. During that time, ex-slave Bass Reeves worked as the first black U.S. deputy marshal to serve west of the Mississippi after the Civil War. Reeves brought thousands of felons in to Parker’s court to stand trial.
The theme of history was continued at our first ranch stop. The McMahon family of the Belle Point Ranch in Lavaca, AR, welcomed us all like family. Though there were some impressive bulls penned up for visitors to look at, the main attraction was the stories of the family’s own history as told by Julie McMahon French and her mother, Mary Ann McMahon.
Lunch and the for-fun raffle that followed involved beef and Budweiser as a tribute to the family’s roots; before they started raising cattle in the mid-1950s or bought the ranch in 1975, the McMahons sold beer for Anheuser-Busch going back to the 1940s.
Jim Dunn, a retired attorney and friend of the McMahons, also spoke to us at length about history. As the president of the U.S. Marshals Museum Foundation, he highlighted the impact of the U.S. Marshals had on the area and the country; from their involvement with Fort Smith and the Trail of Tears to enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act prior to the Civil War to the integration of schools in the 1950s.
Dunn told the audience that the museum effort is both needed to recognize the contribution of the little-known branch of law enforcement that is the U.S. Marshals, and is in need of help. The project still needs roughly $19 million in funds.
While the focus of the Belle Point Ranch visit was history, Moore Cattle Company in Charleston, AR, was all about the numbers. Owner Jim Moore explained to tour members how his “data-driven” commercial cow-calf operation produced cattle and beef of such a quality to be recognized as the Certified Angus Beef Commitment to Excellence Commercial Producer of the Year.
With a combination of specific selection, culling cows and bulls that produced low-value carcasses, genomically-testing prospective replacement heifers, and collecting individual carcass data for 25 years, Moore Cattle Company produces about 94 percent Choice or higher-grading cattle.
“There’s a myth out there that you can’t have carcass cattle and maternal cattle and they be the same,” Moore observed. “I would say that 45 years of raising your own replacement females and feeding cattle for 25 years, we’ve proven that myth wrong. Those cattle can do the same things.”
Day three
Despite this being a ranch tour full of cattle producers, on Wednesday, May 23, the tour focused on chicken. The major feature of the day was a guided tour through Tyson’s Incubation Technology Center (ITC) in Springdale, AR.
Despite incubating and hatching chicks, the ITC is no mere hatchery, the Tyson representatives explained. It is new, first of its kind, cutting-edge, and as fully automated as was feasible. Additionally, it is young, having opened its doors in September of 2017. By comparison, Tyson’s 33 other hatcheries average 30-35 years old.
The Tyson tour guides explained that the commercial chicken industry is broken down into different stages much like the cattle industry is. Companies like Tyson maintain the proprietary genetics and bloodlines much like the seedstock portion of our industry. They provide breeding animals to contracted breeder farms where the hens lay the fertilized eggs. Eggs are sent to facilities like the ITC where they are raised, vaccinated, and hatched out. Chicks are then shipped off to contracted grow farms.
The ITC could be summed up with the phrase “automated precision.” Everywhere throughout the facility there were digital readouts measuring incubation conditions. Vaccinations of eggs and chicks is done by robotic arms as eggs and chicks are moved by conveyor belt. The automation is so complete that, unless a chick is judged to be unfit, eggs and chicks are never touched by humans after the fertilized eggs are brought into the facility.
Vaccinating eggs and chicks is understandably different than for larger animals. The Tyson tour guides explained that eggs are vaccinated by short needles piercing the egg shell on day 18.5 of incubation. The vaccine is injected into the air pocket inside the egg. When the hours-old chicks are vaccinated, they are sprayed with the vaccine solution. The chicks either inhale the spray, it absorbs through mucosal membranes, or they preen it off their fluff and ingest it that way.
The chicken-focused day saw the tour digging into some Southern favorites for lunch—fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, coleslaw, green beans, cobbler, and (of course) a lot of sweet tea—and ending the day on a riverboat. We cruised on Table Rock Lake in Branson, MO aboard the Branson Belle Showboat for dinner and a show that really rocked.
This was just the first half of the 2018 Ozark-Osage Ranch Study Tour. Due to WLJ’s press schedule, you will have to wait until next week’s issue to read about what happened on the last days of the tour. — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
