E ducation doesn’t rest within a diploma; it takes many forms, never ceasing in presenting its opportunities. Although experience is the headmaster in the world’s classroom, anyone who wants to share can take a turn at the teacher’s desk. Barb Downey and her husband, Joe Carpenter, use all means of education to grow and strengthen their 6,000-acre Downey Ranch Inc. They manage 550 commercial and registered Angus cattle in the Kansas Flint Hills, just north of Wabaunsee. “We are always willing to hear suggestions from anywhere,” Downey says. Sorting through them has helped evolve ranch management over time. “That’s where your college education can really suit,” says Downey, who graduated with an animal science degree from Kansas State University (K-State). “It sets you up to learn and interpret data.” By studying science, she and Carpenter, also a K-State graduate, adjust everything from cattle handling and marketing to calving and feeding. First they collected some data of their own, though. Right genetics, right outlet “The best thing we ever did for our bottom line was to investigate retained ownership,” she says. The opportunity came through an early 1990s Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) program. In 1993, Downey Ranch cattle earned the top spot in the CAB Value Discovery Project. “If you take cattle with the right genetics and find the right outlet for them — then do all of the little handling things that help you and don’t do the ones that hurt you — there’s some pretty serious money to be made,” she says. Downey figures last year’s calf crop returned $257.31 per head through grid marketing as finished cattle vs. selling them as feeder calves. “On the flip side, another reason to retain ownership on small groups is to get a baseline,” she says. Once they found out their cattle could grade 90% Choice and better than 40% Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®), they started to build up numbers and began feeding commercially. Then the couple focused on what could be done at the ranch to increase those numbers. “Everything’s about making sure from Day 1 they have the best chance to meet their genetic potential,” Downey says. Healthy from the start After a bout with scours, they took a K- State veterinarian’s advice for calving the next year, an idea they’re hooked on now. Using the Sandhills calving program, each week the pregnant cows are moved to a new pasture, leaving the new mothers and their calves behind. “Otherwise, the shedding from your older calves is affecting your new calves, and then it just accelerates and exacerbates,” she says. “You’re overloading even the healthiest calves with the best start, to the point where their systems can’t handle it.” @ Above: Higher-quality beef has been the focus since the start of the Downey Ranch Inc. commercial cow herd. Open to Suggestion Kansans use advice, experience to bring on “perfect storm” of finishing. Story & photos by Miranda Reiman 172 ■ ANGUSJournal ■ September 2007
Transcript
Education doesn’t rest within a diploma; it takes many forms, never ceasing
in presenting its opportunities. Although experience is the headmaster in the world’s classroom, anyone who wants to share can take a turn at the teacher’s desk.
Barb Downey and her husband, Joe Carpenter, use all means of education to grow and strengthen their 6,000-acre Downey Ranch Inc. They manage 550 commercial and registered Angus cattle in the Kansas Flint Hills, just north of Wabaunsee.
“We are always willing to hear suggestions from anywhere,” Downey says. Sorting through them has helped evolve ranch management over time.
“That’s where your college education can really suit,” says Downey, who graduated with an animal science degree from Kansas State University (K-State). “It sets you up to learn and interpret data.”
By studying science, she and Carpenter, also a K-State graduate, adjust everything from cattle handling and marketing to
calving and feeding. First they collected some data of their own, though.
Right genetics, right outlet“The best thing we ever did for our
bottom line was to investigate retained ownership,” she says. The opportunity came through an early 1990s Certifi ed Angus Beef LLC (CAB) program. In 1993, Downey Ranch cattle earned the top spot in the CAB Value Discovery Project.
“If you take cattle with the right genetics and fi nd the right outlet for them — then do all of the little handling things that help you and don’t do the ones that hurt you — there’s some pretty serious money to be made,” she says.
Downey fi gures last year’s calf crop returned $257.31 per head through grid marketing as fi nished cattle vs. selling them as feeder calves.
“On the fl ip side, another reason to retain ownership on small groups is to get a baseline,” she says. Once they found out their
cattle could grade 90% Choice and better than 40% Certifi ed Angus Beef® (CAB®), they started to build up numbers and began feeding commercially.
Then the couple focused on what could be done at the ranch to increase those numbers.
“Everything’s about making sure from Day 1 they have the best chance to meet their genetic potential,” Downey says.
Healthy from the startAfter a bout with scours, they took a K-
State veterinarian’s advice for calving the next year, an idea they’re hooked on now. Using the Sandhills calving program, each week the pregnant cows are moved to a new pasture, leaving the new mothers and their calves behind.
“Otherwise, the shedding from your older calves is affecting your new calves, and then it just accelerates and exacerbates,” she says. “You’re overloading even the healthiest calves with the best start, to the point where their systems can’t handle it.”
@Above: Higher-quality beef has been the focus since the start of the Downey Ranch Inc. commercial cow herd.
Open to Suggestion
Kansans use advice, experience to bring on “perfect storm” of fi nishing.Story & photos by Miranda Reiman
Since adapting that Sandhills program to their Flint Hills pastures, the ranch went from losing 20 calves with scours in one year to treating just two mild cases in the last four years.
“Like a lot of things you fi ght at fi rst, it turned out to be a whole lot easier than we thought it was going to be. It’s defi nitely easier than treating a bunch of sick calves,” Downey says. “And anytime something gets sick, we’ve all seen the data on what that does way down the road.”
The effect on both gain and grade can hurt producers, regardless of marketing avenue.
“The system is zero stress, and you’re setting your calves up to succeed whether you’re selling your calves at weaning or taking them to the feedlot,” she says. “A scoured calf is not going to wean off as heavy, and in the feedlot, a calf that has gut damage is not going to perform as well.”
Downey and Carpenter are learning that other practices they once thought impossible easily make the ranch tick now, such as low-stress, fenceline early weaning.
“The pairs spend a day in the same pasture, so the calves are familiar with it,” she says. “They’ve grazed it for 24 hours and know where the water is and all of that.”
The next day the cows are sorted off and locked in a two-acre pen. The perimeter fence is fairly standard, but the point of contact between the animals is reinforced with high-tensile electric fence.
“The calves will immediately go back out and start grazing. They haven’t even fi gured out yet that Mom’s not with them,” Downey says. “They’re not spending all of that time bawling; they’re eating. You can just tell from their behavior that their stress is less.”
After a few days in this setup, cows are moved and the weaned 4- to 5-month-old
calves start on creep feed. Postweaning vaccinations are given three weeks later to spread out stressors.
The calves gain 2.25 to 2.5 pounds (lb.) per day on a growing ration when they enter the nearby Kniebel Cattle Co. feedlot. Once on a fi nishing ration, they’re implanted with Ralgro® and pushed to harvest as 1,270-lb., 13- to 15-month-old animals.
The perfect storm“It was a really fun feeding year,” Downey
says. “I call it ‘the perfect storm.’ Most everything that anyone in research says you should be doing was basically done to these cattle.”
The producers’ careful study has allowed these cattle to make the grade. Steers from the ranch’s spring herd averaged 55% CAB and Prime. The 139-head group had a 3.8-lb. average daily gain (ADG) during the feeding
phase and earned $17,000 in premiums when compared to the Kansas weighted average for that period.
Downey and Carpenter have been focused on adding value all along.
“We started this commercial cow herd with the emphasis from the start on trying to produce higher-quality beef,” says Downey, who was raised in Michigan. Her dad, Joe Downey, is a third-generation cattleman and always wanted to return to his Kansas roots. In 1986, he founded the ranch that Downey and Carpenter now operate.
They added their fi rst registered stock in 1993.
“We were already keeping the kind of records that you’d need, and we had established a real fi rm idea of what we wanted in our seedstock,” she says. “We have a very grounded idea as to what’s important
@Barb Downey and her husband, Joe Carpenter, added seedstock to their 6,000-acre Downey Ranch Inc. in 1993. “We were already keeping the kind of records that you’d need, and we had established a real fi rm idea of what we wanted in our seedstock,” Downey says.
@Since adapting the Sandhills calving program to their Flint Hills pastures, the ranch went from losing 20 calves with scours in one year to treating just two mild cases in the last four years.
to a commercial man in our area, because that’s what we are.”
Their tie to a small feedlot lets them cull a little deeper than most, she says.
“Our seedstock partners, Kniebel Cattle Co., have a similar philosophy and operation, in addition to a 1,500-head feedlot. Anything that’s not working out can get sent right into that feedlot,” Downey says. “If it doesn’t look like a bull’s going to be top drawer, off he goes with the spring calves already on feed.”
Open to Suggestion CONTINUED FROM PAGE 173
@“Everything’s about making sure from Day 1 they have the best chance to meet their ge-netic potential,” Downey says.
Rather than losing an investment on the young bull, its value is recouped by feeding.
“You can be really hard on them then, whether it’s performance or structure or temperament,” she says. “We’re pretty ruthless.”
Heifers that fail to breed in their short breeding season are treated the same.
“Things that historically would be a loss center for an operation can become a profi t center,” she says, noting that the heifers fi t in with calves from their 130-head fall herd.
They also have a growing market for commercial replacement heifers and, for an extra fee, they’ll calve those females out and guarantee a live calf.
Downey doesn’t view any of these profi t strategies as top secret; instead, she shares them with her customers.
“Getting people to make that leap to retained ownership, even on a few head, is harder than you’d think,” Downey says. “It can be intimidating for people, because it’s a
whole other world with a whole other set of terminology.”
Through feeding partners, Downey Ranch offers the chance for customers to feed as few as fi ve head and get carcass and performance data back.
“We’re always attempting to get closer to where the market value of beef is determined,” Downey says. “Retaining ownership allows us to realize the value of all the little things we’re doing.”
