NFO-265 (AV10766): US Farm Report: Feeder Cattle Facts

a special interview with bill Gottemoller of Versailles Ohio an NFO member a cattle feeder a national plowing champion and a visit with Bob Manki who is the director of the feeder cattle division of NFO on today's u.s. farm report so stay tuned [music] hi everybody and welcome to us farm report yes on today's show as a part of our recent u.s. farm report field trip tour we will take you to the farm of Bill Gottemoller in Versailles Ohio a fine young man national plowing champion a member of NFO president of NFO in his county and an outstanding cattle feeder in our studio as a part of today's show we welcome back once again Mr. Bob Manki bob is no stranger to us farm report he is the director of the feeder cattle division of the national farmers organization Bob it's a pleasure to welcome you back Thank You Val now let me ask you this I have heard or read that about 1 percent of the feedlots around the country control around 60% of the fat cattle now this being true where are these feedlots concentrated? well the main feedlots and the largest ones are in Colorado, Texas, California, Nebraska, and it's mainly the heavy grain producing areas where these feedlots are concentrated one thing I want to mention on this bill it's very difficult to pinpoint that this is true because the feedlots are normally listed at a thousand header over but these are the best estimates that we can get from people that are very knowledgeable and with what we found out in the cattle feeding industry. Bob, where does Bill Gottemoller who lives in Ohio go for his feeder cattle? Well normally and this is something that's happened in the past the people in Ohio and Indiana their large supply of feeder cattle come from Kentucky and Tennessee; but one thing that's happening now is that the large feedlot are beginning to come into these areas and buy large amounts of feeder cattle and it's beginning to get more and more difficult for these people to get their supply of feeder cattle. one of the things that we feel quite confident of bill, and this is quite serious, that the capacity of the large feedlot at the present time is capable of feeding out all the cattle in the United States with no independent feeders taking having any cattle at all. mm-hmm and that's how dangerous it's getting. The southeastern part of the country then is most significant in feeder cattle numbers right? Yes one of the interesting things here that you'll note is that Mississippi has a million two hundred and thirty-five thousand cows while Montana here only has a million five hundred and fifty-five thousand, and with this taking place Mississippi is going to have some of the possibly the largest free supply a feeder cattle available in the United States and all of the southeast including Arkansas and Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida these states are all nearing the million cow mark, million head of cows in each state, and this is a large supply of uncommitted feeder cattle. I think it doesn't hurt at all to repeat Bob if you will the many advantages to the cattle feeder in buying his feeder cattle through NFO. Well this is one of the important parts of our program Bill. We've had seeing that this is the second year of our feeder program we've had a lot of repeat orders and just to give you an example of what one feeder told us that he said when he bought them these cattle that they were two dollars too high. He kept the records for 30 days and after showing us the records between the cattle that he bought from us and cattle that he had purchased through another source, he said our cattle were two dollars cheaper at that time 30 days later but the benefits that we can give to the feeder are really, are four of them one of them, that we get ranch fresh cattle into the feedlot and if we can work it right down to the amount of hours that we normally have the cattle in our gathering or collection points is that maximum four hours. The charge is for the services of the assignee and the NFO are known both to the buyer and the seller; and the identity of the cattle are maintained. The feeder knows who these cattle came from, the price paid for each drive to cattle, and the shipping time and the stress is kept to a minimum on these cattle. There's no dealer cattle or anything allowed in our NFO not gathering part. Bob you mentioned a minute ago that you're in your second year now of supplying to cattle feeders and you mentioned a plus the reaction of some of the people to whom you're supplying a feeder cattle generally is it going well? I would say yes the ranchers are satisfied because they know that these cattle are going the majority of them are going into NFO feedlot and they also know the price that they're going to receive for the cattle before they deliver their cattle, and we're spread into a lot of new areas that we weren't last year right at the present time we're putting together a feeder movement down in New Mexico. mm-hmm We've had them in Florida, in Georgia, we've got one coming up in Alabama. We've been in Texas at Oklahoma and all of the other states I would say that right at the present time we've had feeder cattle movements and all of the major cattle feeder states in the United States. Any new developments in contracts? Well there's one principle that I would like to take a minute and talk about Bill, and this is on the subject of contracts. We have offered contracts for future delivery in some of the western states but while we're talking about these contracts there's really two types and one of them is an individual contract that is signed with a buyer and an NFO contract where a group of farmers get together and group their production and contract for delivery at a future date. Well there's really two different effects or market effects that happens when these two types of contracts are used. One is that when an individual contracts with a buyer it has a ceiling effect on the market and the other one is that when a group of people or a group contract and it's signed with the buyer it has a floor effect so really if they were both signed at the same price the contract where the group action has been used has a much greater and upward price pressure on the market and this is just one of the techniques that is used and can be used to have upward pressure in the market. Now, these people that have used these contracts can pick about a ten day delivery date come fall and they know what price they're going to receive and so I would say that it's a tool that's going to be used quite a bit more in the future now. Bob ranchers are saying that they need 40 cent cattle to break-even to make it, can they do this in working through NFO? Yes he can bill. One thing I'd like to just take a minute and I've checked a lot of records ranchers records in the states of Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Missouri, and from what we can find out right at the present time on a 400 pound choice deer cast it will take 40 cents a pound to keep them in business but the one thing that we have to understand we build a price by cooperation and the more that we sell together and work together we can stair-step this price right up to the level that we need and this is another truism and in fact in NFO that we are not just rancher oriented we are cattle industry oriented and we are bringing the rancher and the feeder together to accomplish a higher price level in all phases of the cattle industry so they all can survive Bob join me if you will and let's revisit your friend and mine Bill Gottemoller farms at Versailles, Ohio. Bill Gottemoller and I are standing in front of probably one of the world's best traveled plows, a contest plow. Bill you were the National ploughing champion in what year? In 1966, bill out in the state of Iowa up in your neighborhood. And this plow, of course, you took later to Rhodesia. I didn't take the whole plot to Rhodesia but I took parts of it the cost prohibited me to have taken it I was lucky enough to get myself there being a young NFO man but this plow has plowed in national competition several times in the state of Minnesota, in Iowa, in Illinois, in Pennsylvania as well as Ohio here and several other states throughout the Corn Belt well now your dad before you entered in many of these contests did he not? That's right dad started out way back in the years of 1935. He plowed with horses and then several years they didn't have national plowing contests and along about the late 1940s they started having a national competition and being a plowing family why we got right in it again and dad won the national championship in 1956 and 1957 and then just ten years later I won national in 1966 in the same state that he won in Iowa that's a real coincidence. Oh bill how did you come out in competition in the world ploughing contest in Rhodesia? Well I didn't win it but I come in ninth out of a field of about 22 plowmen from 17 countries now I wasn't disappointed in the least I felt that I had done as good as I could and the closest anyone from the United States has ever gotten was eighth so I felt pretty good about it. Well you should have, why is it incidentally that United States contestants in this world ploughing contest I've never done any better than that? Well the main reason is you're competing with Plowman from Europe especially in there they farm on a much smaller scale they're much more skillful with some of their equipment and when they farm in such a small scale they just do a perfect job of plowing and whatever they do yeah they plow like that all the time on their farm which I can't afford to I use this contest plow here for contest work but I hooked to a bigger plow and I go out to plow out the corn. Well in this day and age on a farm the size of yours you'd have one heck of a time getting much done with this plow right? That's right I'd have to do a lot of moonlighting yes you would. Well Bill now you have sophisticated this plow somewhat for contest use. Why don't you show us what what you've done to it and how it's better for a contest use than a stock plow? Okay I think one of the main features would be right here on our levers this little roller in here will roll up and down and it gives you a half a notch adjustment. It's a much finer adjustment as well as when you get the lever it all the way down I'll move over here and show you move it all the way down and I can't hardly reach it from the tractor seat I can flip this lever up like this and it makes it much more convenient as I work this lever up and down you can see it works much easier to than the old levers did on the old plows it took a man and a good-sized boy to raise some of them old plows. Now one of the other features if you come over here and notice the cold errs we have joiners on this plow. The purpose of this jointer here is to cut a little thin slice of the furrow off as the furrow starts to turn and it covers all your thresh no I do use some pieces of wire on here to drag down some of the Thresh to do a better job but those joiners there are really the little tool it's just a simple thing that really make a perfect job. Now of course you can't always use those in corn stocks because they plug up but in contest work we normally plow sod, Bill, and or stubble gone they work real good. Now this is something that interested me this age you and keeping your furrow straight would you explain that? Yes that's true this is kind of a gauge that I've devised on there and it'll it runs right along my furrow wall and in the black ground where my plow has a tendency to pull in well I can immediately notice it and I'll make that adjustment on the hitch to allow for that and also on light-colored ground its the plow has a tendency to pull out. Yeah I don't know about you folks but I've always had the notion, wrongfully so, that the ploughing contest involved speed and Bill Gottemoller tells me that there is no speed involved in it whatsoever in fact just exactly how to do the contests work bill? Well we have a half acre to plow each contestant gets a half acre and if you use a to bottom plow you'll get about ninety six minutes to plow that half acre and normally you can you can plow half acre easily in that time however this is not a speed contest and we want to do a perfect job so we take our time we try to do a straight a job as we can we try to have the soil broke up as much as possible and have each furrow so that you can't pick one furrow from the other to make it look to make it look realistic we just like to have it look like if a man went in there with twenty enormous plow and just made one pass and plowed the whole half acre. Excuse me, another thing that is kind of tricky in plowing contests and that is you're closing furrow. A lot of we have a lot of good plowman in the country but a lot of plowman can't make a good closing furrow and i've beat a lot of men on this in competition some of them beat me too I haven't always won but you have to be a good loser so those are some of the points bill in the contest it's it's just more of a sport contest I'm not in it for the money as a matter of fact it gets kind of hard sometimes to travel clear across the United States to compete the prize money is only $200 or something it can be a loser financially really that's right it's it's a real sport well you're gonna try it again that soon that's right we're holding the national contest right here in dark County this year this is the first time it's ever been in this county and I think it's gonna be a wonderful show speaking of dark County some rather famous people you tell me have come out of this area who are some of them well Annie Oakley, the famous lady marksman was born and raised just about four miles north of where I live here and she lies in a cemetery up there now. Lowell Thomas the famous news commentator was born in this county and and as well as that dark County is leading the agriculture County in the state of Ohio I kinda like that bragging. And you should indeed that's that's really something. Incidentally when we arrived here today we met Bill's children two of his daughters were dressed in special costumes having been to nearby Greenville for some sort of celebration depicting and commemorating an historic occasion. What historic occasion was that Bill? This is commemorating the 100th 75th anniversary of the signing of the Greenville treaty with the Indians. This is quite historic due to the fact that after this treaty was signed this opened up the entire Northwest Territory for the white settlers to settle and after that pretty well done away with the Indian Wars and so forth and I think it's quite historic mm-hmm These girls of yours are really something now what do they do are they drum majorettes? Yes they have a group of drum majorettes here in my hometown of Versailles and they look forward to these a parade events and I think they've done real well today let's talk about your farming operation here a bill this is a family corporation isn't it? That's right my dad and I have two brothers in this family operation with me. We've recently incorporated due mainly to some tax reasons and also to transfer this real estate in this part of the country our real estate is rather high-priced and for a young farmer to come out here and buy his own farm and start out farming it's it's just out of the picture you just can't borrow enough money to do this. What is your corporate name? What do you call it? Gottemoller stock Farms incorporated. How many acres do you farm? We farm 750 acres part of it is pasture land we raise approximately 400 acres of corn, 50 acres of hay, and some wheat and some soybeans. Do you feed that most of this to your cattle? We feed all of our corn and hay we do sell our beans and wheat is cash crop but the corn we don't even raise enough we have a good number cattle on feed and we still have to buy some corn in addition to what we raise? Bill how many head of cattle do you fatten, feed, and sell every year? About 500 head is what we fatten and feed and we have 70 head of brood cows which we raise about 70 calves a year and we put those on feed and we pasture the cows on corn stalks and on some of our permanent pasture that we have around but we actually in our feedlot here on dry feed we've got facilities for approximately 500 head and their sets on three lots. mm-hmm now we've looked around your feedlot here and it certainly looks great it's fairly new isn't it? Yes I started about 10 years ago in 1960 it started and I've just added on as used went along do you buy your cattle through NFO as well as sell them through NFO? Yes this year we bought every head through NFO. Last year we just got started in this feeder cattle business in this area and we bought about half of them but this year we bought them all and we're really satisfied with them. What do you feel some of the advantages of buying NFO cattle are? One of the big advantages is they don't lay around in the stockyards and the collection points long they'll be brought into their collection points in Kentucky or Tennessee or wherever we buy them and immediately they'll be trucked out and there's only about a matter of twelve or fourteen hours and this really helps, you don't have the problem getting shipping fever you don't. They go on feed a lot quicker and we feel that you can just about save two weeks and feeding bill you've really sophisticated your feeding setup here it's really a matter of walking out there and pushing a button isn't it? This is right however you do have some problems occasionally and you have to be an engineer to figure out where that problem is right sometimes people think well farming is getting to the point where you just sit there and push buttons well as long as everything works it's alright but a lot of times on a Sunday morning when you're in a hurry to get to church or something that's one of the things don't work. When it goes to pot. That's right well I think that's true most everything the more sophisticated these machines become the more chance of course for failure and the more difficult they are to to fix and repair but you have these feeding bunks out here and your silos of course stand there and there must be tremendous capacity silos yes although they're making them bigger and what these are these hold 400-ton apiece and we fill them twice a year. We fill them with corn silage in the fall and as soon as the first ones empty why we fill it with ground ear corn which we have in some of our cribs we mix water with it and then as soon as the second one is empty we fill it with haylage so we feed out of those silos a year round. That's great, well let's talk a little bit about your investment here looking around your farm you have an excellent home your outbuildings are all first class repair and in fact I notice you're laying a foundation for a new building what's that going to be? This is gonna be a farm shop or machine shed we put this job off for several years mainly because we didn't feel we could afford it machinery just had to set outside and in some of the old buildings that I had but now we feel that since NFO has helped us out enough that we can afford to put up a shop and a good machine shed and and that's what the foundation is gonna be you know how many tractors do you have? oh we have six tractors the biggest one is about a 90 horsepower and they range on down we have two tractors with manure loaders on them they just about had manure loaders on year round your manure problem is a big one isn't it in a feedlot situation like you have? Yes I think this is a problem it's an endless problem that nearly every feedlot has however we spread all of our manure on the land we spread it on either just before we plow or on the idle ground or something like this and I think it saves us a great deal on fertilizer. What are some of the other items of equipment we've seen? Well one of our most used items is our feed grinder which gets used twice a day and and we have several big plows and and of course the full line of tillage equipment which man needs now to raise four hundred acres of corn and we have the full line of hay equipment as well as insulates we have our own unit harvester which we use for harvesting our grain and vintage crops. Bill, how much investment do you feel you have here and land your buildings and your equipment? Well in our entire operation we have three feed lots and altogether it would run in the neighborhood of four to five hundred thousand dollars. This is a great investment and as you can see it's more than any one man can can take over. Indeed you have any idea what kind of return through the years you've been getting on the investment? It averages approximately five to five and a half percent return of course that doesn't allow us much for labor. Well what about your education bill have you gone to college I attended some short courses in agriculture at Purdue University and also the high OH State however I never felt that I could gain enough from getting a degree from college but since I've been a member of NFO I joined in 1962 since that time I feel I've got enough education through NFO that I would have got through four years of college. Do you feel that NFO has helped you greatly in dollars and cents you must feel that way you say that you're able to build that new building out there because of NFO. Well that's true I can't put my finger on any particular dollar sign now how much it has helped us it's helped us considerably as a matter of fact if cattle prices today were like they were back in 1962 and 63 I doubt very much whether we'd be feeding cattle today, as a matter of fact I doubt whether we could that we would be able to borrow enough money we'd probably been bankrupt by now. Bill I want to wish you the very best of luck in this year's ploughing contest. Well I'll need it I look forward to it and I'm gonna do the best I can I have one more crack at the national competition if I win it again and they disqualify me and they say I've had enough I'm gonna give her all I got. I hope you make it. Quite a fella, Bill Gottemoller. Bob in closing today is there anything particularly you would like to say to the farmers who are looking in. Yes I would. When people are unaware and are not knowledgeable of the problems and how to solve it. Someone else can be blamed for their plight but once they understand and they know how to solve their problem at this point if they don't, it's their fault and NFO's success is based on cooperation and all I say to these people that haven't become a part of helping to solve the problem, ask your NFO neighbor and go to his meetings it will be a big help. Bob thank you very much for being my special guest on this week's US Farm Report. Well thank you for inviting me Bill. It's been my pleasure. My special guest this week has been Mr. Bob Manki who is the director of the feeder cattle division of the National Farmers Organization. US Farm Report is seen each week on this station at the same time. Until we meet again, so long everybody [music]