STRATHMORE, Alta. – Greg Appleyard came to Cattleland Feedyard as a brash 23 year old looking for a job.
Owner Pat Fisher gave him a one month’s trial as farm manager.
Seven years later he owned the place.
“It was a matter of opportunity and luck,” Appleyard says today.
He and his wife Candace and partners Karen and Joe Gregory took over the 25,000 head lot and 16,000 acre farm in October 2003 from Ben Thorlakson.
Fisher, Thorlakson’s former partner, had retired but has returned to manage the feeding division.
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Karen Gregory was an accountant Appleyard met through other business transactions and together they believe they have something to prove to the establishment.
“Everybody says young people can’t ever make it farming so that’s where the desire and passion comes from,” he said.
“The reason our partnership is so strong is she is a detail person and I’m the idea person.”
Appleyard had abandoned his goal of becoming a lawyer because he wanted to farm. His parents had a small feeding operation south of Strathmore and at 18 he started buying cropland and cattle.
Some might question the wisdom of buying and expanding a feedlot at the height of the BSE crisis, but for these new owners, the timing worked.
“It’s usually the best time, truthfully. I’ve always said you could never afford it when times are good.”
Fresh ideas from a young team drive the diversified operation of 43 employees. Each sector is treated as a separate business unit, whether it is the cattle research component, grain farming, feedlot, feed mill or trucking units.
The feedlot is a profit maker, which could be enhanced once expansion in the bull test station area is completed. The company can test 3,000 bulls and will be able to handle another 2,500 once the new facility is ready.
Steve McKinnon was hired to run the test station, where this year net feed efficiency will be measured along with other standard performance criteria for young purebred bulls.
The test station is being built to accommodate the Growsafe program for the net feed efficiency tests.
This computerized program uses special troughs and precise measurements of how much and how often an individual bull feeds. This is the first application of Growsafe on a commercial basis in North America.
Bulls arrive in October and are sorted by frame size and type into pens holding 20 to 150 bulls. They are put through a 28-day warm-up period and a 112-day test on a special bull feed ration.
Each bull carries individual electronic identification and the Igenity gene marker test will be used to genetically differentiate and further sort the bulls.
A spring field day and sale will showcase the results, including a $25,000 prize for the top bull. Bulls are nominated for the top prize and a panel of judges select the best bull overall. There will also be an opportunity to win a bull.
Few bull research centres are left in Canada at a time when producers want more solid data on individual breeding animals.
“When times get tough, the first thing to go is marketing and research,” said McKinnon, who worked with Beefbooster bull tests before joining Cattleland.
The company eventually hopes to conduct progeny testing so it can measure the performance of each bull’s steers and heifers.
If a feed-efficient sire is identified, the calves may actually garner a premium payment from a feedlot.
“The one problem is we don’t have a North American index for feed efficiency within breeds,” McKinnon said.
The program is drawing bulls of all breeds from across Canada. While McKinnon hopes to develop a benchmark for different breeds, he warned that feed efficiency is not a magic bullet to market bulls.
“You can’t put pressure on an individual trait. It still has to be a formula of a group of traits you are selecting for, weighted properly.”
The company has tested 1,700 steers with the Ingenity system and sorted them according to the genetic results.
Appleyard felt the test was probably too expensive for a commercial feedyard, but the steers were sold 45 days sooner than under normal feedlot practices and earned more than the weekly fed steer average price.
Cattleland’s research division adds value to the operation but it is just one component.
The farm grows most of its feed, including 250,000 bushels of barley for the custom lot. It uses up to 12,000 bu. of barley per day and silage is made from June to October to keep up with the demand.
Corn, sorghum, hay, triticale, winter wheat, nine types of canola and barley are among the crops grown under irrigation. Hay is cut from about 2,700 acres. In addition, Appleyard runs 500 commercial cows.
“A cow herd isn’t really a profit centre,” he said.
“It’s something that cleans up fence lines in the fall and I have a love for cows.”
The company has its own trucking division to haul feed, animals and manure. It has enough farmland to spread manure but agreements were formed with neighbours to take some of it for themselves.
The operation’s location north of Strathmore is a good spot for a major feedlot because neighbours are scarce and land for expansion is plentiful.
As relative newcomers, Cattleland’s owners study successful operations so they can soak up the information and add to their success with a sprinkling of youthful passion and attitude. They are willing to try new things and dream of building a national reputation for quality work in the agriculture business.
“We try to do things right. We try to do things high end,” Appleyard said.
He attributed most of their progress to the quality people hired to run each farm division.
“The corporation is just bricks and mortar. It’s the people and the attitude (that determine) if it is successful or it isn’t.”
