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Ryan Vos, host of the J and R morning show on KJOE radio (106.1 FM), joins the OG3 to discuss his family's cattle operation and how he fits everything into his day-to-day life as a radio host, feedlot manager, cow-calf herd owner, and hog barn operator.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We are here. OG3 is back together. Bradley's been missing for a few episodes and we're excited.
Emily: Yes. Totally MIA. Welcome back, Bradley.
Bradley: Yes, I'm alive and I'm back. It's good to be back.
Emily: How many pounds lighter are you now?
Bradley: No, I'm zero. I've maintained.
Joe: Maintained.
Emily: Good for you.
Joe: That's still 33 pounds down from a while ago so it's important.
Ryan: I found them. He didn't lose them, I found them.
Joe: So did I. That voice you're hearing is Ryan Vos. He is our guest today. He hosts a morning show, The J&R morning show on KJOE radio. K-J-O-E Radio. That's 106.1 FM, down in Southwest Minnesota. He's joining us today really random way that Ryan and I met, I don't even remember most of it. Someone put us in touch to do an interview, and Ryan and I probably talked for an hour past doing the actual interview and now he's here. Thanks for being here, Ryan.
Emily: Wow.
Ryan: Yes, no problem. I'm happy to be here. It's Angie Ford that actually got us in touch. The Murray County Cattlemen set it up where once a week I do an interview with somebody and they said to do it with you and I did it. We just ended up talking for quite a while afterwards.
Joe: Well, shout out to Angie Ford. She has been on this podcast before way back.
Emily: She was on a very early episode, one of the original guests.
Bradley: Right. Yes, almost a year ago.
Joe: Yes, it was a while ago.
Bradley: It's crazy we've been doing this for a year. Hanging out for a year.
Joe: It's really interesting.
Emily: Yes, nothing else has really been going on this past year so-
Joe: It's true.
Emily: -nice to have this.
Joe: It's true. Well, Ryan, before we get going here, Emily's going to lead us through two very important questions that we ask every guest.
Ryan: All right.
Emily: Yes. There are no wrong answers, although Bradley and Joe would probably disagree with me. Your first question, the super secret The Moos Room question number one is, what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Ryan: Favorite breed dairy cattle?
Emily: Yes.
Ryan: Oh, boy. I'll actually go with the Holstein just because-
Emily: Yes.
Ryan: -a buddy of mine has a Holstein dairy so I went over there and I helped him milk one. That's the only thing I've ever had to do like dairy in my life.
Emily: You love to hear it.
Bradley: We'll let it slide since you've only seen it once.
Joe: Yes, that's fine. It does unfortunately put Holsteins in the lead at eight votes. Jerseys have seven; Brown Swiss have four; Dutch Belted, two; Montb�liarde, two; Normande, one; and we have one neutral vote. That's where we sit, unfortunately. Holsteins are back in the lead.
Emily: Yes. Joe and Bradley are big fans of little brown cows, the Jerseys.
Ryan: Okay.
Emily: Your second question, super secret The Moos Room question number two, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Ryan: Oh, that's Angus, no question. [crosstalk] beef cattle. We got them.
Joe: Wagyu.
Bradley: Cut him off now.
[laughter]
Emily: Let's see. What does this red button do?
Joe: Yes, hold on. That's a great answer. That's my answer so you're recovered from the dairy answer? That does leave Hereford still out in front though at six.
Bradley: Yes.
Joe: Closely behind them Black Angus at five.
Ryan: If you ask my girlfriend though, she'd say Hereford in a heartbeat. She's a big Hereford lover so we're not--
Emily: Okay.
Bradley: We need to have her on just to answer the questions.
Joe: Hereford's at six; Black Angus at five; Black Baldy is at two; Belted Galloway at two, which was a big jump on the last few episodes; Brahmans at one; Stabilizer, one; Gelbvieh, one; Scottish Highland, one; Kenana, one; Charolais, one; and Simmental, one.
Emily: Boy, the beef tallies was a mess.
Joe: It is. It's a huge mess.
Emily: There's a lot of beef.
Joe: Maybe that's where Ryan's headed in the future. If his girlfriend loves Herefords, maybe he's going to be a Black Baldy vote in the future. Maybe he'll start in the-
Emily: That's true.
Joe: -crossbreds going.
Bradley: No, it'll probably just be Hereford.
Ryan: I only have 14 cattle at my place. Our feedlots are at a different location but at our place, I wanted an Angus, she wanted Herefords, we negotiated and we got Herefords.
Joe: That sounds about right-
Bradley: I like her already.
Joe: -but Bradley is happy with that.
Ryan: Yes, right.
Joe: All right. Well, as you heard, Ryan does have cattle at home and operates a feedlot, a fairly big feedlot at 1,800 head, at least for the Midwest, that's a big feedlot and that's plenty of work. Walk us through your operation a little bit, Ryan.
Ryan: Our operation's split up between two sites right now. We did have a third site where a guy custom fed for us. One location is my dad, his place where he lives. He's got about 800 head of cattle there. It's probably about 600 head of cattle there right now. The balance is at a different feedlot that we have. We have a hired man that lives over there. It breaks down. My farming operation is my dad, my brother, and myself. My dad and my brother take care of the home site, where we call the west farm, which is where our hired man lives.
It's my responsibility to manage it, his responsibility to take care of the chores because he lives on the site. I guess that's how it breaks down the rest of the cattle. Some are at dad's, some are at our west farm over there.
Joe: That's a lot going on. It's always a little difficult when you have multiple sites and trying to manage multiples of that and communicating. Even though it's looking like you got your dad, your brother, yourself, and a hired man that still can be a challenge to communicate with four people. How do you guys all stay on the same page?
Ryan: Basically, it comes down to my dad and my brother every single morning, they have what they call the morning meeting. That includes my dad, my brother, and our full-time mechanic. They sit down and talk about here's what we're going to do throughout the day. When that meeting is going on, I'm on the morning show. I call my dad as soon as I leave the station saying, "Hey, what's going on? What did I miss." Then I get filled in, I go over to the west farm where-- actually I go to my hog barn first.
I also have a 2,400 head hog barn that I have myself that's not affiliated with my dad or my brother. Then after that, I go over to, it's actually just a quarter mile away from our cattle site and I go down there and I catch up with Jeff and I say, "Hey, what went on here? What's going on? How are the cattle doing?" We take a walk through them together, take a good look at them, and then I call my dad again and I say, here's what's going on over here. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's what we need, and so on down the line.
Emily: Important question.
Ryan: Yes.
Emily: Do you ever sleep?
Ryan: Not much. [chuckles]
Emily: Okay. Well, then it's my job to say that you need to be sleeping. You should be getting seven to nine hours every night. Self-care is important.
Joe: Well, here's the deal, Emily, because this is something that I remembered from my time talking to Ryan before.
Emily: Oh, you're going to, here's the deal me, huh?
Joe: Well, here's the deal, because you're going to appreciate it because Ryan gets even less sleep because he gets up early before the morning show to go work out.
Ryan: Yes, every morning.
Joe: Ooh, okay. Mad respect for that. Fair enough.
Ryan: My day starts at about 4:00 AM.
Emily: Same.
Ryan: Again, between 4:00 and 4:15, I go to the gym. I used to coach football at South Dakota State so I train a guy named Blake Schmitz, he's going to play quarterback down at Furman University in North Carolina. Him and I, we go workout together in the morning. Right after we work out, I then shower at the gym, I go to the radio station, do the morning show. After the morning show's over, I then go to my hog barn, then I take care of my cattle, and then I go to my dad's and help him out with whatever is going on throughout the day. Then I end the day by doing chores again and going home.
Joe: When are you in bed? That's an important question. Is this like a six o'clock bedtime or seven o'clock?
Ryan: Oh, no. I'll start my night chores around five o'clock and then I'll get done with my hog chores about six o'clock. I then go do cattle chores from 6:00 to about 7:30 and then I come home here. I just bought an acreage myself so I got my own acreage down here. As I told you, I got some cattle here so I got to do chores here, stuff around the yard. I will then eat supper and go to bed. I would say I'm in bed between 11:00 and 11:30 every night.
Emily: Oh my gosh.
Joe: That is shortage of asleep, you got Emily's response.
Emily: Ryan, that's not enough. That's not enough.
Bradley: That sounds like Brad when I was 19 and 20 years old.
Joe: I don't think I could function on that little sleep and do all of that. If I just had to sit around all day, maybe.
Emily: Yes, with this, like cushy extension job.
Joe: Well, I think that a big thing to note is that Ryan schedule sounds busy and it's all over the place because it is. It's not that unusual for a lot of farmers to have a schedule like that. Now, getting up and working out in the morning might be a little extra for a lot of people, but otherwise, it's not that far off.
Ryan: No, definitely not. My dad's day starts at 5:00 and he's not going to the radio station, he's going to the office, getting his bookwork done, and then going out and starting chores. My brother's day starts probably around 5:30, 6:00. I would say I'm only adding an extra hour on top of it and that's about it.
Joe: You got to prep for the radio somewhere in there too so when does that happen?
Ryan: That happens while I'm eating supper usually.
Joe: There you go.
Ryan: I'll walk in the house, I'll sit down, I'll grab a plate of food, I'll throw my laptop next to me. I got a notebook on my right, laptop on my left. I start scrolling and I start writing and eating at the same time.
Joe: Got it. I mean, you don't waste any time during the day.
Ryan: Definitely not. No.
Joe: It's really cool. It's a different story on how you got into radio. You said you used to coach football at SDSU, unfortunately, that's the wrong school, but it did lead you somehow to radio. Walk us through that.
Ryan: I graduated high school in 2015. I went to South Dakota State and I got out there and football was just an absolute passion of mine. I was sitting at Buffalo Wild Wings with a bunch of my buddies, freshman year, and all of them had a test that I had taken that day. They had the next section, so it was the next day. They were like, "I got to go study for the test." I'm like, "Are you serious? The football game's on, we got to watch the rest of this game." They're like, "No, we're going to go." I'm like, "Okay, well, I'm going to stay and watch it."
Because we're in the dorms, we don't have tv, and that was what I wanted to do. The waitress comes over and kindly asked me if I could move up to the bar area. I sat down up at the bar area and I was sitting next to this guy, and he was sitting there talking to himself and I'm like, "Who's this guy? He's a goofy guy." His name's Mitch, got to be good buddies, but then I'm like, "Who's this guy? He's just a weird guy talking to himself."
He was saying everything wrong and he'll tell the story differently I promise you that, but he kept saying, "The Linebacker is going to Blitz. The safety's on a roll coverage." I said, "No, he's not. That Linebacker is not Blitz. He's dropping back." We started talking. He goes, "How do you know so much about football?" Told him I used to play it and I love to watch it. It's something that I'm very passionate about. Well, he asked me to come to the stadium. I said, "Well, who are you?" He goes, "Well, I'm actually the Quarterbacks coach for South Dakota State.
I'm like, "Oh, whoops." Shouldn't have been telling him what he wasn't doing. Anyways, so we started going on and on and talking about football. I ended up going to the stadium, got offered a job, and they said, "We'd like to offer you a job." I said no because I thought it was going to be an equipment job. They said, "No, no, no, we're not going to make you climb the ranks. We just want you to be the assistant Running Backs coach right away. Here's the job." I said, "Okay, yes. I'll take that."
I got the assistant Running Back coach, coached there for three years. It was part of our responsibility to do so many interviews, press interviews, radio interviews, TV interviews, and stuff as a coach. I got always drawn for the radio one. I got to talking with the same guy that would always want to do the radio interview, and he retired. He did a sports show on Wednesday nights, lasted two hours long, 7:00 to 9:00. I came on at 7:30 and I was off by 7:45, and it just talked to SDSU football.
Well, once I was done coaching, we lost James Madison in the semi-finals and I got a job offer to go coach down at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I turned that down because I knew I wanted to go home and farm, so I said, "I'm done with coaching. I'm not going to come back for spring ball." Then I said that on my radio interview and he goes, "Well would you like to just come on and be a full-time host with me from 7:00 until 9:00?" I said, "Yes, I would love to do it." Then he retired two shows later, so I must have been bad luck.
He just retires on me and they're like, "Do you want the show?" I said, "Sure. There can't be much to radio. All you got to do is talk sports." Well, it was sponsored by Cubbies, so from 7:00 until 9:00, there was no commercial breaks. It was just two hours of talk radio.
Joe: Wow.
Ryan: It's crazy.
Emily: That sounds awesome.
Ryan: It was awful. I did that for about eight months, then I left. I left South Dakota, came back home to the farm. I was at a corn and soybean meeting, and the current owner at that time, he was one of the managers of the station, comes up to me and he goes, "Are you the guy that did the sports radio from Brookings?" I said, "Yes, I am. How do you know that?" He says, "I'd recognize that voice anywhere. I loved your show." I said, "Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you."
He goes, "We actually have a part-time job opening up for the morning show, but it's not going to be open very long. I know you're farming. It'll just be like--" I think it was May that he talked to me about it and I started in June. He's like, "By August, when you get in the field, we're going to have somebody else. It's just a short-term deal. Do you want to do it?" I said, "Yes, that sounds great." Well, August came around and nobody was hired yet. Christmas came around, nobody was hired yet. Summer came around, now I'm at a year, no one's hired yet.
Now, here we are, it's nine months later, still no one's hired. I'm pretty sure I'm stuck there.
Joe: It's just a happy accident almost that you got into radio in the beginning and then like you said, maybe a little bad luck that the guy retired so quickly.
Ryan: Yes, right.
Joe: Tell me what you were thinking that first time you were on the radio and you had no commercial breaks. When did you get into that first show and how quickly were you like, "Whoa, this is a challenge"?
Ryan: Well, I was told ahead of time when I was going to be guest starring with this guy, he's like, "I'm not feeling very well so I'm going to need you to lead it. I'll run the soundboard, I'll do all that stuff. It's fine." I said, "Great, sounds good." He said it's two hours to talk radio, so come with plenty of stuff. I came with a notebook. I kid you not, three pages front and back. I'm like, this is way more than enough. I got 45 minutes into the show and I'm out of content, and I'm sitting there on ESPN.
Emily: Oh, no.
Ryan: [crosstalk] ESPN as hard as I can, just reading anything. I'm talking about amateur golf tournament where a guy got a bogey off after hitting a car. I was like, "What am I reading?" I wasn't even sure what was going on. I then knew that I needed to start really preparing. My time that I thought I was getting back after coaching, because coaching is like, if you don't think I get a lot of sleep now, you should have seen what we were doing when we were coaching football.
I thought the time I was getting back would be more used for fishing, relaxing, golfing, getting to know the area, and having more fun. Well, now, it turned out to being more watching sports center, reading everything I can get my hands on to do with sports because I had to do a two-hour show coming up in four days.
Joe: I can't imagine. We like to talk. Bradley, Emily, and I all love to talk and we still--
Emily: Who? Us?
Joe: Yes. Sometimes we still get to an hour in and we're like, "Mm, I think we're done because we're out of content." I can't imagine trying to talk two hours straight. It's got to be a lot of prep work, and like you said, just trying to soak up everything that's in the media. While we're recording this, just so everyone knows if you hear us being distracted at all, it's because it's opening day for the Twins when we're recording, and it's important that we keep up with the game. Ryan is a huge, huge Twins fan.
Is that a radio thing, Ryan? I mean we've had Tom Rothman here before and he is also a just massive Twins fan.
Ryan: I think having to really do sports radio for the eight months or nine months that I did it, made me appreciate everything, and as bad as it sounds, appreciate everything except football. I love football. Now, I'm back to loving football. I'm actually a volunteer coach at our high school for football too, but I struggled to really like football after I spent 18 hours a day looking at film, so I started to find a different love and that was baseball. I was like, "Man, this is awesome."
My great uncle, when he was still here, when he was still alive, we went to every opening day for six years in a row, and I just fell in love with baseball. I guess this just comes with the territory of wanting to talk and liking to talk, you got to have a lot to talk about.
Joe: I think we can all agree that baseball's not the fastest game sometimes. I mean, just being able to talk at the game too and really have it be more of a social thing when you are either watching the game on TV or listening on the radio or at the game itself, it can be a pretty social occasion as well and I love it for that reason. I do wish they would speed up the game just to touch, but they're working on it. I know that.
Bradley: Let's talk about cows, feedlots, what do you see happening in the feedlot business now and what are the challenges?
Ryan: Yes. The biggest challenge that I've ever had with cattle, I'm 24 years old, my 24 years of being around cattle was this whole crisis of the market that we just had going on this last year, where the boxed beef got too ridiculously priced, but I remember there was one day, somebody called me and was like, "If you follow back the standard of what we should be getting paid based on what boxed beef is going for, we should be getting paid $2.35 per pound." I was like, "Really?"
I talked to my cattle buyer on the phone that morning trying to sell cattle, they bid me 98 cents and I was like, "Really?" That hit a little bit different when you're expecting to get so much more and you don't, and now, you got to think, I'm feeding them corn, I'm feeding them hay, silage, distillers, that stuff's not free. Plus, the shots, the implants, we have two guys that work for us full time. Everyone is got to make a living off of this.
It was a struggle for a little while, and now, we've seen it turn around and things are starting to go a little bit better as we progress throughout the COVID, pandemic, but the biggest struggle that I've seen is proper marketing tactics. If I would've been a little bit smarter in my marketing, I could've avoided all of it by just having it hedged on the board. During all of that, I guess it really just taught me the main thing with cattle is be persistent on your numbers. Make sure you're crunching numbers correctly. Make sure you're double-checking all your work you're doing. Make sure you're not being lazy when you're feeding. Properly reading the bunk because wasted feed is wasted money. Staying on top of the people who work with you, because if they make a mistake, that's not just their mistake, that could become your mistake as well with your cattle. I guess coming back and taking a leadership role, the thing that I've really learned the most is being persistent.
Bradley: I'm curious, we talked about cattle. We can talk about breeds. We talked about that in the beginning. Are you doing any dairy beef crossbreeding, feeding out some of those steers and how do they compare with the regular beef or not doing any really of that?
Ryan: Yes, so we buy all of our cattle in between 700 and 900 pounds. We feed them out to finish. My brother, just out of nowhere last year, calls me up and goes, "Hey, I'm at the sale barn." I said, "Oh, okay. What are you doing there?" He goes, "I just bought 72 bottle calves of dairy Holstein cross." I'm like, "You did what?" Just out of nowhere. We're not--
Emily: I love me a good impulse purchase and that is an excellent one.
Ryan: You got to keep in mind, we're not set up for bottle calves whatsoever. He calls me and he goes, "I am five minutes away with him. Can you come over to my place?" I said, "Sure." Drive over there, it's 15-minute drive over to my brother's. I drive over there and he's got cattle tied up in a machine shed to whatever you can imagine, tied up to this like wheel over here, tied gate over here. I'm like, "What is going on?" They turned out to do really well.
We just sold those and I'll say that they didn't yield as well with the dairy cross in there and maybe that was just the group of cattle, whatever it was. We found most of our luck sticking with the Angus, maybe the Baldys, they've done well for us in the past, but we've always just been Black Cattle all the way through. Back when my grandpa was feeding cattle, they fed Charolais, and he said if it didn't have a black nose, they didn't want them. We've feed everything on our farm throughout between my grandpa, my dad, and now me and my brother.
I got Herefords now but I guess we found the best luck, the best rate of return, the best daily gain coming off of just Angus cattle.
Joe: Where are you sourcing those, Ryan? Are they coming from a sale barn or are you going out west? Are you going trying to go directly from the ranch or how's that work?
Ryan: Yes, so my dad's cousin is actually a cattle buyer. Him and his son are cattle buyers out in South Dakota. A lot of them come directly from ranches and a lot of them come directly from sale barns. After doing this, my dad's been working with Ron for a lot of years. We usually buy the same cattle. We have this ranch out in South Dakota that we really like to work with. They are really good and I don't know their names, my dad does, but he'll call me and say, "Yes, that ranch from Belle Fourche wants to know if we want their cattle again."
"Yes, we want them." They go right through our cattle buyers. Between Ron Hens and Tater Hens, they do our sourcing of finding our cattle.
Joe: Well, that's a huge value there. When you find something that works in your system and works super well, you want to hang on to that and that's worth a lot to be able to know how those cattle are going to perform ahead of time, be able to know that whatever you're doing, whatever feeds you have is going to go so well.
Ryan: Go ahead. No, you're good.
Emily: No, if you were going to respond, go ahead because I--
Ryan: I was just going to say we do a lot of record-keeping with data. That's a big thing for us is this group of cattle came from here, how did they do? Then that is saved on our computer and then we can go back and look and we can say, "Okay, here's this rancher's head of cattle, here's how they did, do we want them again?" Like I said before, proper record-keeping is just helped us out a lot.
Emily: I saw both Bradley and Dr. Joe nodding in approval when you said that Ryan, so excellent.
Joe: It's really hard to get people to do so. I'm glad you're doing that.
Emily: Yes. Well, and it just makes me think, Joe, of when we were talking about the vet logs in our spring cleaning episode, anywho, but my question, staying on the cattle but shifting a little bit, I'm curious, tell us a little bit about the facilities you're working with. Is anything built new? Are they retrofits, monoslope? What are you work with?
Ryan: Too very-- I don't want to say very new. One was built in 2015. One was built in 2017, monoslope sheds. Other than that, it's all concrete. Everything we do is concrete. We found that works better for us. We do have a dirt yard that we don't utilize anymore. The only two sheds that we actually have cattle in are monoslope sheds. That's only two of our 6 pens, have sheds. The rest of them are just on concrete with windbreaks around them. We found concrete for us works better in the spring and stuff.
You know how it goes when it's wet and muddy and you can keep them dry, you can keep them clean. Then we have a pit off to the side that we can push everything down into this pit. When the field's properly set up, then we can go load out. Keeping them dry, keeping them clean has been just on concrete-- in my life, we've changed everything to concrete. We've had almost all of it was dirt when I was really young. What we've learned is happy cattle and dry cattle do better than wet and miserable cattle.
Let's spend the money now, let's get the facilities up to date and doing well, and then the cattle will pay for a return on investment.
Emily: We love people who prioritize cleanliness, so that is so awesome to hear. Yes, concrete is great for that. I would love to see your setup and how you have that kit and that just sounds super--
Ryan: You're always welcome. Come on down anytime.
Emily: Moos Room field trip.
Joe: I'm still definitely going to do it. We're down in that area. Everyone's smiling anyway, so we'll have to hit you up. I like seeing people do stuff with not lots of facilities, not a building left and right and being able to know that, "Okay, if you can keep cattle clean and dry, which is a lot of the concrete, a lot of bedding, and then having a windbreak, you can do just fine." That's the same thing that we've talked about with Bradley, even with dairy cattle, you don't need crazy facilities with every single bell and whistle that there is out there.
You need a windbreak, clean dry cattle with enough bunk space and enough water space and you're set to go. What bunks do you guys have? Are you using J-bunks or are you feeding on the fence line? How are you guys working that?
Ryan: At my dad's place, everything is bunk-line. It's just bunk-line feeding. You stay on the outside of the yard and you bunk-line feed. Over at the place that I manage, I have my monoslope shed, it's the only shed that I have bunk-line feeding. The other two yards that I have over there are all H-bunks down the middle concrete, H-bunks and the cattle can approach it from both sides. I have drive-through gates, so I open the steel gate and then I have the drive-through electric gates, I drive-through, I feed them.
Then as I feed them, I then get off my tractor, I walk around the cattle as they're all walking up to the bunk. "Okay. Who's not walking up to the bunk?" I feel like that is such a huge benefit. Bunk-line feeding is great, don't get me wrong, but physically being able to stop, get off, and why is that calf not going up to the bunk? Why is he not eating right now with everybody else? Is he's sick? Gives a nice good look at the cattle. I actually prefer these drive-through gates because it lets me really get a good look at the cattle and get a good feel for them.
Joe: Yes, I like that. I think that's a good point. Especially if you're doing it every day too and the cattle get used to you.
Ryan: There's so much tamer.
Joe: They're used to you walking around, they're used to you checking on things, and it's not weird to see someone out of the tractor. I like that and I like the chart in the yard, so you might as well go ahead and get out of the tractor and look and see what's going on. That's really nice. I know that's not everyone's choice. Have to drive into the lot to feed, but I do like it and it does. To me, it makes a lot of sense if you can set it upright. Ryan's pressed for time. We've all noticed that already. You don't want it to take a lot of extra time to get it done either.
Ryan: Exactly. Efficiency is key. When I'm over there feeding, it's when I'm running the feed off, somebody else is walking a different pen. If I'm loading feed, somebody else is walking a different pen. If they decide they want to load that day, then I'm out walking the pens, and that's how we like to do it. We make sure we get all of our cattle that we have on feed, all of them stand up twice a day guaranteed because we're walking through the cattle and standing them up twice a day.
Now, obviously negative 40-degree weather, you're not making them stand up twice and 120-degree weather, you're not making them stand up twice. Just being able to maintain the-- they're used to you. When I walk through the pen, they're used to me. When it comes to loading the cattle, that makes it so much easier because all you do is walk up to them and they look at you and they're like, "Oh, it's just this guy. I'm going to walk over here."
Joe: You mentioned really hot weather, really cold weather in the summer, in those open yards with the windbreaks, how are you getting those cattle shade or are you getting those cattle shade?
Ryan: Our windbreaks actually it's the concrete wall that goes all around the pen is probably four feet tall, and then on top of that we have another eight-foot steel windbreak. That's what our windbreaks are. Just looks like the side of a shed. That's cast a nice shade coming in. If the yard doesn't have shade-- the windbreaks wrap around the yard, so no matter what, they're usually getting shaded. If it gets too hot, we do have overhead sprinkler systems.
We don't like to turn those on because once you turn those on, you have to turn them off. You can't turn them off. I'm sorry. Once turn them on, you cannot turn them off. That is last resort. Do not do it unless it's just miserable. I think in my lifetime, we've only turned them on twice.
Joe: Yes. It's usually a combination of factors. It's got to be fat cattle, it's got to be crazy hot, and like you said, yes, important point. If you're going to get them wet, you got to soak them all the way down to the skin because if you don't, then you've just made it worse.
Ryan: Yes.
Joe: Back to how your operation works, just a little bit. Do you guys split things up? It sounds like you probably have a good handle on maybe some of the books and the data and the records, some of how the health records go and the closeouts and everything like that. Do you guys split it up so that everyone is responsible for one thing or do you all try to work on that together?
Ryan: We all really work on it together. Our farm is called Vos Farms. Now, inside Vos Farms is Dale Vos Farms, Kyle Vos Farms, and Ryan Vos Farms. I have my cattle, Kyle has his cattle, and dads has his cattle. I don't run the breakevens for Kyle's cattle or my dad's cattle unless they ask me for help. They run their own, but when it comes down to working the cattle, walking the cattle, just the husbandry to the animals, that's all of our responsibility.
If dad decides, "Hey, I'm going to go down to--" If say he's going to go down to on a vacation somewhere, then it's just go take care of his chores. That's what we do for each other. As far as like bookkeeping and everything, I have my own office, they have their own offices, and my cropland and my cattle are my responsibility. Same with my hog barn. Kyle's is his own and so is my dad's.
Joe: I like how that's set up so that everyone knows what's going on in each position. They're a little clued in for any conversation that could happen. Then does that mean you guys are sourcing cattle separately, or are you sourcing them all together, and then splitting it as they come in?
Ryan: Our buyers the same. My dad's and Kyle's and myself, we all have the same two buyers. If my yard's empty and I happen to be talking to Ron on the phone that day, I'll say, "Hey, Kyle needs a pen of cattle." If dad say, he might say, "Ryan needs a pen of cattle," but really, it's all sourced from the same locations and they all come in. It's just who doesn't have cattle at the time? My cattle that I have right now are set to go out in May, and the first week in May, they set to go out. Right after that, the next pen of cattle that comes in, that'll be my pen of cattle because I'm empty.
Joe: Incoming protocols, receiving protocols, and then do you guys just work that together just to be less stressful on the cattle and everyone gets the same, or do you guys disagree on certain things and different things happen with different cattle?
Ryan: No, I think we've watched my dad do it for so long and my dad's been-- I look up to my dad more than anything. He is, in my opinion, the smartest cattle feeder that I've ever met. If my dad tells me that I need to go out there and kiss all of them goodnight, I'm going to do it. When it comes down to implants and shots, we might voice our opinion and say, "Hey, I think we should give them Synovex or I think we should give them Revalor. Ultimately, it comes down to, "Dad, what's going to be the most beneficial?"
He'll say, "This is going to be the most beneficial because of X, Y, and Z, but it's your choice." If it's my pen and cattle, I get the final say, but really, it's just dad saying, "This is what you need to do."
Joe: That makes sense. That makes sense. I like that the final decision is yours though. That makes sense.
Emily: It's important to have those people that can help you in that decision-making. You don't have to do it alone and especially when you have somebody who's really knowledgeable, that's right there, use your resources, I'm all about it.
Ryan: Exactly. Checking even with you guys, the extension website, we use you guys a lot for different types of feed additives. I've talked to quite a few people from the university that says, "Hey, due to the increasing price of distillers, what can we do?" We go through the university all the time so just utilizing all the resources you have, whether that's SDSU, whether that's the U of M, whether that's just farmers near that have been doing it a long time, don't ever be afraid to ask for help. Asking for help, you're never going to go wrong.
Joe: I can't imagine that you always listen to your dad. There's no way that you didn't learn that by making a mistake in the past. Walk me through that. How did you learn like, "Oh, maybe dad is right"?
Ryan: I guess the really big one was I bought this pen of cattle and they were great. They were a great pen of cattle. They came in and I gave them the virus, I gave them the implant, and I gave them cleanup, and we worked them, everything went great. Dad goes, "Hey, I think we need to work these cattle again." I said, "What do you mean? They're healthy as they can be, they look amazing. They're huge. We obviously don't need to implant them again." He goes, "You don't want to work them again?" I said, "No, I don't think it's necessary. We're quite a ways out from that, but I think they'll be fine."
Well, they finished out too light night and seven die. At that moment in time, I stopped for a second and I swallowed my pride and I said, "Dad, I should have treated him again." He goes, "I know." He goes, "But you had to make that mistake."
Joe: I love this story. I love how you guys have it set up. I love that your dad knows what's up, but he is still willing to let you make your own mistakes. I don't know if there's a faster way to learn.
Ryan: There wasn't. That one hurt, that was a gut shot.
Joe: You have to learn it. There's no way around it. I'm glad you learned it. I'm glad that, I'm not glad that you had to go through that to learn it, but--
Ryan: Right. I wish I would've lost one and been like, "Oh, dad, maybe it wasn't that."
Joe: Maybe, maybe. But now you know and that's important.
Emily: Now, you'll never do it again.
Ryan: Never, no. I will always give them their booster on their virus.
Joe: Well, and you said your dad has been around the game for quite a while. What makes him good do you think? Is it just the time that he's spent around cattle or what makes him successful?
Ryan: I'm actually a fourth-generation farmer. When you look back to, I guess you could say I'm a fifth because-- who started our farm was BF Lindsey. Then it went to Jake and Lillian Vos, and then it went to Frank and Sally Vos, then Dale and Kristen Vos, and now, it's my brother and myself. We are 5th-generation farmers. I think my dad has just seen-- He's been farming since he was just old enough-- Back when he was growing up, there wasn't a choice. It was when you come home, you're helping on the farm. I think he's been there through the good times and through the bad times.
He's learned that when you let the good times pay for the bad times, the bad times will never drag you down. We don't need to be the nicest equipment operators. We don't need to be the fanciest setup operators. At the end of the day, it's just, if we make a bunch of money on a pen of cattle, there's no reason to go out and buy brand new pickups and new tractors and all that stuff. What it is, is put that money aside because chances are you're going to have a bad one coming up very soon.
I think just his knowledge of seeing it all done and been there through good times and been there through bad times and his attention to detail really sets him above everybody else.
Joe: I think that that's a trend. That's not just beef either. That's dairy. That's any farming operation, knowing that everything is up and down, and there's not who could have predicted years like this one. Like you said, if you are very diligent and meticulous about how you go about the finance side of things and where you really need to spend money and where it's just nice to spend money and figuring out that line, it really does let you ride out some of these bad times to get back to the good ones. Anyone can learn from that one.
Hopefully, you can really take it to heart and not have to go through a lot of bad times to figure that one out. Here's my question. Last one, we'll wrap after this. I can't get away from it. How is the veterinarian involved on your operation and how do you see that relationship going? Do you have a veterinarian? Do you see value in it? Is there value there or not?
Ryan: There is huge value in having a veterinarian on site with you. Our veterinarian's name is Connie McNabb. She is truly a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful lady, and she is there whenever you need her. You call her midnight. "Connie, something doesn't look right. Walk me through this." Just being able to have somebody that you can trust because I didn't go to school to basically be, you guys are like, if you think about it, you break your arm, you go to the doctor. You get sick, you go to the doctor.
There's a reason I don't call myself a doctor because I don't have the proper schooling to do that. Knowing that I have somebody in my back pocket that I can call it any minute, at any time, and say, "Something's not right here. Using your expertise, what is it?" Having them just say, "Okay, I'll be right out." She lives just a few miles away from us. It really does work. Having a close and personal relationship with your vet and making sure, I guess, the most important thing with your vet is he or she needs to know your operation.
They can't just pull on the yard and say, "Oh, this is what's wrong." They have to know the ins and out of your operation because if they don't know what your cattle are usually like or what they're supposed to be like, they can't judge your cattle. Having a close and personal relationship is so important.
Joe: Well, there you go. There can't be a better note to end it on that. Emily and Brad might disagree, but--
Emily: Well, actually, right before you asked that question, I thought of one more.
Joe: Fine. You just don't want to end on that. That's fine.
Emily: Sorry, Joe. It's not that, but it did work out really nicely, that, I don't know. Ryan, I'm curious, and you kind of touched on this, but what is the most important management lesson you have learned in your time farming?
Ryan: Most important management lesson I ever learned was, a pen is your best friend. Carry it with you. You can never, ever, ever write too much stuff down. If you don't think you're ever going to need it again, still write it down because you will. If you don't write stuff down, if you go through the mindset-- and I had to learn this one the hard way too. If you go through the mindset, I'll remember that in a couple of hours when I get back in the office, you're not going to.
I always carry in my pocket a little notebook and a pen always, and I'm constantly writing stuff down because whether it's in the field, raising a crop, whether it's in the cattle yard, looking at your livestock, whether it's for the radio station, talking to clients, you're always going to need to have a notebook with you. Writing stuff down is so important and good note taking, good record keeping is just the most important management thing you could have.
Emily: Oh my gosh. Now that is how you end the episode.
Joe: I agree.
Emily: I have to say it.
Joe: I cannot deny that at all. That is the perfect way to end. Important management tip from Ryan here. Carry a pen, write everything down. I know that I have to, I never remember things two hours later when I think that I'm going to so do that. Thank you, Ryan.
Emily: Ryan, you're young. Just wait until you get older. It gets so much worse.
Joe: When you get as old as Bradley, you're going to really struggle.
Bradley: That's why you use a camera on your phone to take pictures of everything so you remember.
Ryan: Yes.
Joe: Yes, same thing. All right. Thank you, Ryan, for being here. We really appreciate you jumping on today.
Ryan: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
Joe: Awesome. Check out Ryan's morning show, J and R morning show. It's on from 6:00 to 9:00 or so on KJOE Radio, K-J-O-E. That's 106.1 FM. If you need more information about his show or the broadcasting network, you can go to christensenbroadcasting.com. If you have comments, questions, scathing rebuttals for us, please go to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's email themoosroom, which is T-H-E-M-O-O-S R-O-O-M@umn.edu. You can also find us on Facebook at UMN Dairy and at UMN Beef on Twitter @UMNmoosroom, @UMNFarmSafety, and of course on YouTube, U of M Dairy and beef teams and U of M Extension Farm Safety and Health.
Joe: Thank you for picking me up, Emily. I appreciate it.
Emily: I got you, man.
Joe: All right. Catch you guys next week. Thank you for listening.
Emily: Bye
Ryan: Bye.
Emily: Row The Boat, Ski-U-Mah, Go Gophers. Row The Boat, Ski-U-Mah, Go Gophers.
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