Stockmen Tour Western Kansas Operations
The third installment of the 2011 KLA Young Stockmen’s Academy (YSA) was held this week. Twenty young producers spent three days touring various segments of the beef and dairy industries in western Kansas. Vista from Merck Animal Health is the exclusive sponsor of the YSA program.
Stops were made at Sandhill Farms near Haviland and Woolfolk Ranch at Protection. Kevin and Vera Schultz, owners of Sandhill Farms, gave the group an inside look into their breeding program, which consists of Polled Hereford genetics. Kent and Tyler Woolfolk explained how they manage salt cedar trees on their pastures to improve grazing.
Ted Boersma, co-owner of Forget-Me-Not Dairy near Cimarron, told the group during a tour of the milking parlor the facility produces 12 to 13 truckloads of milk per day. The class visited Empire Calf Ranch LLC, near Satanta, which feeds all its calves by hand for up to 90 days using 24,000 bottles per day. The importance of managing risk in the cattle feeding business was highlighted during a stop at Beefland Feedyard near Garden City.
The group also participated in a Beef Quality Assurance injection site demonstration and visited the National Beef Packing Plant in Dodge City.
For more information visit www.kla.org.
