What a week in Kansas!
What an incredible week in Manhattan!! Monday brought a return to classes, and there was certainly a buzz in the air, as students discussed the record-breaking sale last week, when an Angus bull was sold for $800,000 (US). Meat and livestock eval class, was incredible to see the steers we had assessed in the yards last week, hanging in the chiller for us to assess. Also to compare and contrast our physical assessments with our carcass assessments and animal performance. Kent Jaecke, from Rockin’ K Productions presented to our livestock sales class in the afternoon. A great opportunity for the class to learn tricks and tips for marketing livestock, and I look forward to spending some time with Kent later in the month.
Determined to experience all that K-State has to offer, in the evening I took myself off to the McCain Auditorium on campus to see Jersey Boys – the show was incredible!
Later in the week I was lucky enough to spend a day travelling with John Butler, CEO of Beef Marketing Group. What an incredible day! We travelled to Ellsworth to Sellers feedlot, and met with feedlot manager, Kevin. A great chat in the office – with the most incredible view - about Australia, America and feed yards before we headed out to tour the feed yard, which included inspecting the newly constructed feed pens, which will increase capacity by 2,000 head. The new bunks are level at the feed trough, but then decline inwards and downwards for drainage, which makes the end fences look wavy. Interestingly this feed yard had 100% custom fed cattle, not retaining ownership of any, currently.
John and I then travelled onto to Great Bend, to meet the team at Innovative Livestock Services and discuss their progressive beef program. We were also able to visit Great Bend Feeding Inc. with Brandon from Innovative Livestock Services. We first saw the scrapings from the feed yard, which are composted and used as fertiliser in their farming activities. We then moved onto the feed mill, where I could see corn being steam rolled, and then loaded with a weighing bucket used to mix feed, in 22t batches. We were also able to inspect the cattle pens, which included custom fed cattle, company owned cattle, sustainability project cattle and cattle which are in a DNA testing trial.
Later in the week I attended the ‘Women Managing the Farm’ conference, gathering women from all over Kansas right here in Manhattan. A dynamic and inspiring collection of speakers and workshops, highlights included meet Marji – Founder of FarmHer, Allyson Perry, Mary Lucas – author of ‘lunchmeat and life lessons’ and about 250 incredible farming women from all over Kansas.
On Saturday I made the drive down to Buhler for the Kansas Cattle Drive with members of the collegiate cattleman’s club. A field day type event, where they close off the street, bring in bedding, yards and cattle and trade displays. They also offered workshops and education sessions, my favourite was the BQA training, which concluded with an autopsy of a weaner – was great to see and to pull all of my learning together.
The weekend was the K-State Rodeo – was incredible atmosphere and full program of events and I had a great time cheering on the K-State Rodeo team!
