EDMONTON – The importance of family and being the best you can be comes up a lot in conversations with the McLeod family.
Rod and April McLeod, with their children Megan, 15, and Colby, 19, have had the show season of their lives this year.
“We’ve had a good year,” said Rod as he did chores in the barn at the recent Farmfair show in Edmonton.
“We knew we had some good ones and so we were hoping we could do it.”
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The family had the grand champion female, supreme champion bull calf, division champions and breeders herd at Farmfair. They were also named premier breeders and exhibitors after the Charolais show.
As well, their entire string won the major awards at the Charolais division of the Olds Fall Classic, which qualified them for future recognition at Farmfair’s Alberta Supreme and Canadian Western Agribition.
“This is the one thing we do as a family altogether. We don’t holiday a bunch and each of the kids has each of their own things,” Rod said.
“The one common denominator is the cattle.”
The herd consists of 20 cows on their farm north of Cochrane, Alta.
“We don’t want many. We just want the best ones,” he said.
The children enter steer shows. Two years ago, Colby won the Calgary Stampede event with a steer that earned him $16,000 throughout its career.
“Rod spends more time with the kids hunting for steers than anything else. It is a real family thing,” April said.
Rod has been involved in the pure-b red business for many years, including ownership of the breed magazineCharolais Banner.These days he can be seen taking live bids in the ring at purebred sales.
Breeding cattle is their most recent venture.
“The whole herd started with the purchase of 4-H heifers,” he said.
The grandmother and mother of the 2011 show string were the first 4-H heifer the McLeods bought for Colby. He now works off the farm in Calgary, but Megan is a full participant as she fits in shows between high school assignments.
“I started showing when I was five. I was showing a 1,500 pound cow,” she said.
Megan has stayed on the honour roll as a Grade 10 student at Cochrane High School, where she is also a football trainer with five other people for a team that ranks first in the province.
She makes this schedule work with e-mail and wireless internet in the show barns.
“During the school year, you try and work it out with your teachers and I e-mail stuff in and do stuff early,” she said.
The family owns and operates the province’s largest abattoir.
Balzac Meats processes beef, lamb, hogs, bison, elk and poultry.
The McLeods have built a solid base of customers who want local, high quality meat.
“We’re not the cheapest place, but our quality is second to none. That is our philosophy in everything we do,” Rod said.
They have seen a trend among customers who want to know the source of their food and see the face of the farmer.
“It’s more personable,” April said. “We find there are a lot more people being responsible for what they eat.”
They handle custom orders, but also work with local lamb and beef producers who share their philosophy. Animals have been fed and treated the way they want. They have developed a specialty market offering hormone-free, 21-to 28-day aged, grain-fed beef.
The cattle are finished at Rod’s parents’ feedlot in Claresholm, Alta., and with other colleagues in the feeding business who can maintain the quality they want.
“We take the philosophy in our meat business, the same as we do in our breeding cattle, where we only offer the best and everybody knows us for our quality in the meat business,” he said.
