America’s Land Auctioneer
Captivate and celebrate the dynamics of rural America, American Agriculture and inspire and teach others how to live a bold and abundant life in rural America. Background: The intrigue, endless opportunities, and romance of rural life in America have never been more on the minds of Americans. The recent pandemic and civil unrest have Americans of all ages earning for a more peaceful, less hectic life. Even billionaire Bill Gates is now the largest crop landowner in America. As many Americans look for peaceful refuge in the rolling hills and wheat fields they are faced with a richness of opportunities. But where do you begin to look? This show will highlight and feature endless opportunities in every state. What is it that is so unique about rural America, the land and what it produces? How can I live that life? The American Land Auctioneer will tell stories and weave into those stories a place for you to dream, live and enjoy the abundance of all that rural America has to offer.
America’s Land Auctioneer
Revolutionizing Cattle Management: The Future of Ranching with Max Cassette and 701X
What if you could revolutionize cattle management with just a tag? Join us as we uncover the innovations in livestock monitoring with Max Cassette, VP of Business Development at 701 Autonomous Rancher. From his roots on a row crop farm to spearheading the charge at 701X, Max shares his journey and the cutting-edge tech his team is bringing to ranchers. Discover how their GPS ear tags not only track cattle in real-time but also monitor health, offering ranchers a powerful tool to tackle challenges like cattle straying and early disease detection—transforming the age-old practices in the cattle industry.
Max also walks us through the strategic acquisition of Digital Beef and how this integration turbocharges rancher data management. Imagine having registry software seamlessly combined with cow-calf platforms, paving the way for improved genetics, health tracking, and ultimately a better return on investment. The innovative XT Pro GPS ear tags are more than just trackers; they are a game-changer in genetic monitoring and herd health, providing ranchers with a cost-effective solution to boost calf production and reduce losses. It's a testament to how incorporating technology can lead to substantial long-term gains.
The future of ranching is in the hands of those who dare to embrace technology, and Max sheds light on the pivotal role young ranchers play in this transformative era. We explore the valuable collaboration between generations, where technological savvy meets traditional wisdom to conquer rising land and production costs. By leveraging digital tools and software, ranchers are not just surviving but thriving, as evidenced by the success stories from test ranches. With a nod to the past and an eye on the future, Max illustrates how 701X is not just keeping pace with industry demands but setting the standard for modern livestock management.
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Welcome in to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm your host today, jack Pfeiffer, with my co-host, christian Miller. I've got a very special guest today, max Cassette, with 701 Autonomous Rancher here. Max, how are you today? Good yourselfself, good, good Christian, how about you?
Speaker 3:Hey, I can't complain, Jack. We're back in the studio for another episode here. I'm excited what we have going on here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got the new studio set up in-house today. It's going to be pretty fun, but, yeah, very excited to kind of ask Max some questions today and learn a little more about the company he works for, 701x. But yeah, max, what's your role over there at 701X?
Speaker 4:I'm the VP of business development.
Speaker 2:Okay, very good, very good. And then, how long have you been with the company?
Speaker 4:I'm coming up on five years here in March, so I was actually the first employee.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, oh, very cool. And who is? Were you the founder?
Speaker 4:of the company or who founded it. Kevin Biffer was the founder and CEO. Okay, very cool.
Speaker 3:So you guys started up about five years ago then.
Speaker 4:Yep, exactly. So March of 2020, in the heart of COVID, kevin decided to start a business and came and talked to me first. I guess, yeah.
Speaker 3:Great time to introduce technology, wasn't it During the COVID time, right it?
Speaker 4:was. It was interesting. I mean, everyone was kind of wondering why we were still going to the office and working, but it was actually a really good time for us. We were able to get some really key team and personnel. Big engineering firms in town were laying off, so we picked up some really good employees from the get-go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. He must have had a lot of faith in you, with you being his first call there. But what's?
Speaker 4:your background like and what kind of got you into this industry? Yeah, I grew up on a family operation, a row crop farm, and primarily raised soybeans and corn alongside my father and brother and went to NDSU, got a degree in agribusiness and they wrote me in to go into grad school. There had no plans of doing that. I was planning to go back to the farm, for sure. And then did so.
Speaker 4:When I went to grad school, did all my research on precision ag technologies and kind of the farm for sure. And then, uh, did so when I went to grad school, um, did all my research on precision ag technologies and kind of the adoption of them. And then, yeah, I graduated in December of 19 from grad school and then it was like March when Kevin called me up, so it was just a few months after graduation. I was doing some snow removal and stuff for the winter and um sounded like a really cool opportunity. I had the idea to GPS track cattle because he grew up on a farm and ranch operation out in western North Dakota and his sisters were still having a lot of problems with cattle getting out and just realized that was an industry that he kind of wanted to get into with the IoT devices. He always wanted to have a hardware and software company.
Speaker 3:Right, Very interesting. Now you mentioned something there that caught my attention right away. I'm not a big tech person. So what's an IOT device?
Speaker 4:Internet of things I guess sort of stands for, so it's like a wearable device. Basically, iot has a lot of different applications, whether it's health care, different industries, but mostly wearable devices like your Apple Watch would be an IOT device, ok.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very interesting yeah, and it seems like kind of a common sense thing to have this right, to have this on all of your cattle. But is this pretty common in the cattle industry or is it kind of a new trend or what's kind of a?
Speaker 4:We're kind of the first ones to do it, and I mean there's a few other competitors, so to say, but it's very new. We were kind of the leaders in the industry. At the moment, I would say there's really not many other companies out there. There's Outfit in Australia that's doing it too, something similar, but that's really about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what exactly? I guess we can just dig right into the products that you guys offer. Right, so like, what, so like, what are the products and the software system and the app and all that? Just kind of a rundown in general of what you guys offer.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely so. We've got a software platform. It's a digital record-keeping app for cattle. It's a cattle record-keeping management platform. It's an app that works offline so you can record your records on your phone when you're out in the pasture, or pen, because a lot of these ranchers are in such remote areas that they don't have good cell service or Wi-Fi or anything like that. So we had to make it for that use case. But then we've also got hardware devices and kind of.
Speaker 4:Our flagship product is our XT ProTag. It's a GPS ear tag that takes a GPS position on the animal every five minutes. Inside the app the rancher actually picks the fences and draws their fences of where the animals are supposed to be and then if they go outside that fence every five minutes it checks am I inside the fence or outside the fence? If it's outside, it sends an alert to your phone immediately letting you know. You know animal 162 is outside the pasture. And then there's a lot of other sensors in there as well that track all the movement of the animal and we're actually able to tell if the animal gets sick. So we give you an alert when your cow is sick or your bull is sick.
Speaker 4:And then we did. We noticed a lot of people were putting the tags in their bulls because they're their most expensive animal, they're the most they jumped the fence to go breed the neighbors cow herds and things like that. So we had a bull mounting detection to the tag so it actually gives you a daily value of how many mounts each bull had and you can kind of compare them against each other and see which ones are most efficient and productive and which ones are kind of being lazy out there yeah sure, that's, really interesting wow that is very interesting and I was actually going to ask you about that.
Speaker 3:Are guys using this more for grazing purposes, or is it more for breeding purposes, where they're tracking, like you said, the mounts that a bull has?
Speaker 4:yeah, some people are looking at the you know grazing management, you know what areas of their pasture are really being utilized the most. But I'd say, for the most part, people are utilizing them on the bulls, seeing which ones are most effective and efficient. We also have, like a bull not mounting alert now. So after a few days if they don't have many mounts, it gives you just a quick and easy alert. You don't have to go, you know, sift through a bunch of data and figure out what's going on. And then we've been the bull market. There's about 2 million bulls in the US but there's about 35 million or 38 million head cow herd.
Speaker 4:So we've been trying to get more into the cow side of the operation and we've released estrous detection. So like when the cows are going in their heat cycle, a lot of seed stock producers will actually artificially inseminate those cows. So we're trying to help them really find that exact ideal time to artificially inseminate them, because they're spending a lot of money on the AI straw, the medications to get them sync up and everything, and then they're only getting about a 50 to 60% conception rate on average. So we're trying to help them time that. And then we've got calving detection coming out soon this quarter we're planning to have that released as well, Just so that people don't have to get up all hours of the night to go check on their cows.
Speaker 3:Right, right, sure, that's a huge benefit to a lot of guys. We all know what calving season looks like around here, especially during wintertime or early spring, where a lot of guys are really concerned about the health of those calves and they're spending a lot of time outside at night looking for calves and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4:Exactly, and that's what we're really trying to be, you know, with the name autonomous rancher. Just help kind of be those eyes on your animals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so you don't have to be out there all the time.
Speaker 2:Right, right, cause yeah, it really is one of the most labor intensive industries out there. I mean, that's all you hear from from guys in that industry, so yeah, anything to kind of alleviate that a little bit seems like a major benefit for sure. Yeah, what's your guys' team? You guys said you've been around for about five years. So kind of how have you guys grown as a company? What's your team and your staff look like these days?
Speaker 4:We're approaching 40 employees now I think we're at like 38. Wow, it's very heavily engineering-based, so we've got a lot of mechanical engineers, software engineers. Heavily engineering based so we've got a lot of mechanical engineers, software engineers. You need a very diverse set of engineers to be able to solve these problems, to build these IOT devices, I call them, but these wearables. But we like to do everything in-house. So the software app that's developed in-house, our hardware, developed in-house, manufactured in-house right here in Fargo, north Dakota, and with that, whenever a customer calls with complaints or anything to our customer sales reps or the customer service representatives, they take those issues right away to the engineer so that we can solve those problems and, you know, give the best customer service that we possibly can. That's really what we pride ourselves on and have basically built these products around from the get-go is customer feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's huge, huge in any industry, right? Christian?
Speaker 3:Yes, it is. Yeah, we deal with a lot of that where we're getting feedback and trying to make adjustments to serve our clients better. I think that's especially in your industry where it's very crucial to their livestock and their living. I'm sure the feedback is a huge asset to you guys.
Speaker 4:Exactly. I mean, yeah, those animals are their livelihood and they care very deeply about them, as anyone should. But I think in any business, no matter where you are, customer service and satisfaction should be number one priority.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you guys you're based out of Fargo, then for the most part, do you guys have employees kind of in other locations as well.
Speaker 4:We've got a test ranch out in the western side North Dakota, where we actually have our own herd about 150 cows out there and we've got a ranch manager that monitors those animals. And then we've got one sales rep down in central Kansas that travels around that Midwest area.
Speaker 2:Okay, very cool.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, that's very, very interesting there.
Speaker 4:We like to do everything in-house and we believe the collaboration between the engineers. We kind of need to do that in-house, so that's why everyone works out of the office here in Fargo, North Dakota, other than those two people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, and I heard about you guys through social media. One of my buddies from my school, zach Willis, is another NDSU grad who works for you guys and it's been reposting a lot of the social media stuff. And you guys have some really cool social media stuff going out with showing the showing the track in on the app and showing showing different bulls following cows around on the app. It's really really cool stuff that you guys are putting out and things that your programs are able to let people see, so that's really interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, Zach's a great guy. We're lucky to have him on our team at 7-1-X and he'll let you know. He only won three national championships at the NDSU.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm kind of glad he didn't come in today with the Bison plan. I didn't need to hear any more of that.
Speaker 3:We all know Jack is a UND grad. He could have brought up some interesting conversation there.
Speaker 4:Yeah no, we got another sales guy in the house. That's an SDSU grad, so whenever we play them they have bets of. The loser has to wear the opposing team's jersey.
Speaker 3:Oh, there you go. Keep things interesting at the office, right.
Speaker 4:Absolutely no, it's fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, boy, that is something, and not a small company by any means with 38-some employees. And do you guys have one big building then where everybody comes in to their offices?
Speaker 4:Yep we're located downtown Fargo kind of at the corner of Main Avenue and Broadway. It's 700 Main there and that's where we're out of. And you know, we give a lot of our customers and people that stop by tours of the manufacturing so they can actually see like, hey, we do design and develop everything and manufacture it right here in-house, because you look at the outside of the building you never know what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's pretty cool that you guys are able to do all that, even in-house, the manufacturing and everything.
Speaker 3:It is, yeah, made in the USA. That's something fewer and fewer companies are able to say these days.
Speaker 4:So that was kind of my boss, kevin Bifford. His background was he was in automation or automated manufacturing. So he had a previous business called Fargo Automation that he built up over the last 25 years prior to starting this venture. But he was doing a lot of like machines for medical or pharmaceutical companies where he was packaging glass syringes at like 1200 a minute. So just crazy automation with no labor involved, and that's what we kind of see with this industry too. When we get to high volumes you know there's 35 million cows in the US and about 93 million cattle total or if we get to those high volumes, kevin's ability to scale and ramp that up fast and efficiently is going to be a huge competitive advantage for us For sure.
Speaker 2:yeah, Well, folks, we're out of time for Segment 1, but I want to thank Pifers for sponsoring this episode of America's Land Auctioneer.
Speaker 1:We will be right back after this break welcome back to america's land auctioneer.
Speaker 2:I'm your host today, jack pifer, along with my co-host, christian miller, and a very special guest with uh 701x autonomous rancher, max cassette. How are you doing today, max? Good, can't complain, good, very good. Christian, how about you doing today, max? Good, can't complain, good, very good.
Speaker 3:Christian. How about you? Hey, I tell you what. I'm in the same boat. No complaints over?
Speaker 2:here. Very good, just weathering out a cold North Dakota day here, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3:How about this weather? We're talking about ranchers. They're taking the brunt of this cold. That's nothing to be messed with here, especially as guys start to get into early calving a little bit here. I think there's a few guys that are starting to watch their herds a little bit. But we were just talking before we went back on the air here and we had a little break and we were just talking amongst ourselves and we had a question for Max that we wanted to dive into on the air here and let the viewers in a little bit. There's big news over at 701X and we were talking about how you've gotten this technology out to the consumer and how you've made them aware of it, and you started talking about a big acquisition that you've had over there. Max, can you tell us a little bit more about it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, back in September 701X acquired a company called Digital Beef and you know, prior to acquiring Digital Beef we were kind of recognizing that a lot of these commercial cow-calf ranchers. You know, selling them a software application was kind of a difficult sell. It's changing some of their farm management practices and we looked at Digital Beef and they already had 9,000 ranches on their software platform where we had about 350. But we really saw the collaboration of their software. What they do is they have a registry software that serves breed associations throughout the US and some in Canada, and then we hada cow-calf management software and we're currently working to integrate those two platforms together so that you can quickly and easily record your data on our cow-calf, on 7-1-X's cow-calf management software, where it's a mobile app that works offline, and then it can actually transfer that data seamlessly over to your registry software platform where you're registering your animals through your breed association. And then we also have those added benefits of our hardware, our tags, the XT Lite and XT Pro tag, that we can kind of add on top of that.
Speaker 4:But yeah, we were really, really excited about that acquisition. Um brought huge growth to us and we're getting, you know, more involved with a lot of these seed stock producers. And then the timing our estrus detection, our xt pro tag actually came out in august of 2024 as well which, without that user base of these seed stock producers um, that's what they're really excited about and kind of looking forward to is because they're having a lot of issues, you know, with the 50 to 60 percent conception rates on average. Just everyone hates wasting that money, right, and they all want better genetics in their herd.
Speaker 2:So trying to help them solve some of those issues right, right, yeah, because every animal out there I mean that's, that's your money, right is is each animal you have out there on the pasture. So, um, I guess we could talk a little bit about you know you talked about how some guys are, you know a little, a little weary of of adding this kind of software to their, their, their cattle management systems. So you know kind of talk about a little bit of the, the cost effectiveness of this and you know how it can really, you know, benefit people in the long run.
Speaker 4:Right. I mean the software app alone kind of allows you to, you know, look at your historical records and make management decisions based on that. We've even at our test ranch out in Grassy Butte, north Dakota, we've noticed a few things, like we had this cow that was flipping its calf in the air this year and we look back and we separated them, gave them about 24 hours apart and put them back together and then they she took and it was going just fine. But we look back, well, the previous year we had marked that she was aborted and there's a picture of the calf all muddy and we're like, oh well, that cow killed its calf last year, unfortunately. But we would have never known that without recording that data. And we do this working cattle mode. So when we work all of our animals, you can see which animals were worked and which ones were missed and you know, just with the software we could recognize.
Speaker 4:Okay, you know, two cows didn't come in this time. We were working on when are they? And we went and, you know, looked for them on pasture. That was prior to having the GPS ear tags and now we don't have that issue anymore. But some of the biggest value I see in our products is our GPS ear tags at XT Pro on bulls. So I like to use the example.
Speaker 4:At our test ranch We've got five bulls and 130 cows. Well, for the first year to adopt it on our bulls it's about $750. The second year it's about $250 for that cell service plan on the pro tag. So you've got a $1,000 investment over two years on our five bulls. But making sure that bull's in our pasture breeding our cows Even if we were to just get you know, keeping the bulls with the cows to get two more calves, well, the calves right now are worth about $2,000 apiece. So you know the ROI's there pretty easily on that. But prior to having the tags each year we had a bull that died the two years prior and they were both $5,000 bulls. So we lost $10,000 worth of bulls from health issues that we now detect and can kind of make them aware of. And then, like I said, if we could get two more calves each year, well, that's another $4,000 in your pocket. So you're looking at potentially about $18,000 for a $1,000 investment over two years.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And when you talk about the health detection unit, you can tell an animal's you know behaving unusual. Is it just kind of? Does it track like the steps of the animal or the movement of the animal? How can you tell when it's you know, when you think the animal might be sick?
Speaker 4:Yep, so we track the footsteps of the animal, their walking behavior, their eating behavior, ruminating and resting behavior, so we can determine deviations in any of those behavior patterns based on kind of their average behavior. And once that gets out of line we give you an alert and say hey, something's wrong with this animal. And it's kind of up to the rancher at that point to check on it and determine what to give it. But just this winter we saved three of our cows they kind of got like a walking pneumonia type thing and gave them some medicine, some antibiotics and they recovered and we could see the footstep trend go right back up to normal and, you know, kept a lot of money in Kevin's pocket at his ranch out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. At the price of cattle right now. I mean, that's three cows, that's a huge chunk of change, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I was reading something earlier about the new USDA rule where certain cattle are going to require electronic tags. I mean, does this kind of fit into that? Or I don't even know all the full specifics of that rule, I think it was something about cattle being transported across state lines or something required tag. Do these tags fit into that or is that kind of a separate deal?
Speaker 4:So those are EID tags or RFID tags, a lot of people call them. Those are kind of just general premise tracking tags. So you scan those tags with an RFID one. It gives you a NIC identification number. Our XT light tag does have EID technology inside of it so it can be used for that, but the pro tag doesn't really follow those. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that makes sense. Go ahead Christian.
Speaker 3:I was just going to. I was just going to follow up a little bit more on on detecting if they're sick. That alert is then going to come straight to your phone, is that correct? You just like a text message or something. You're going to get an alert and then when you click on it, does that take you into your account or how do you take you directly to the alert?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so basically it pops up an alert saying hey, you know, animal 163 is sick, and then you click on that alert and it pulls up your app and shows you a precise GPS location where she was when that alert came. So you know, if it just popped up immediately, you'd see right where she is right now.
Speaker 3:That's very interesting. That's kind of how it works.
Speaker 4:Going back, Jack, about the EID thing On our software app, though, we have our own EID wand that integrates in our software platform. So people that are using those EID tags, we have this app and just Bluetooth right to our tablet when you're working your cattle so you can quickly and easily identify those animals and type in what you're doing to them, whether it's preg check, you know, or taking weights of those animals. You can record the information on the animals on our software app that associate with that visual tag or that EID tag number very quickly and efficiently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool, very cool. So your role over there, what is your role again? Is it VIP of or not VIP VP of business development, right? So what exactly is your day-to-day kind of look like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I kind of wore a lot of different hats throughout the process, you know being the first employee. So I was kind of in charge of sales and marketing for a while and kind of relieved myself of some of those duties. And one of our employees, sam, kind of took that over and I've been dealing with. We have been raising a round of funding. So I dealt with investors for a while with their Series A round there. But I go to a lot of different industry events, like next month in February I'm traveling down to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and I'm traveling to Bozeman later this week actually for some different events as well. So I'm kind of, like I said, wherever I need to step in, I step in.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I'm sure, with with you being one of the first guys on board, I'm sure. Yeah, you've worn a lot of different hats in the past, in the past five years, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4:And a fun journey, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. Yeah, well, folks, we are running out of time for this segment here, but I want to thank Pifers Auctioneers and Land Management for sponsoring today's episode. You can contact anyone at Pifers at 877-700-4099 for a free land consultation or talk. Land management or equipment needs anything like that. So thank you again to Pfeiffer's Auction and Realty and Land Management for sponsoring today's show. We will be right back after this break. Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer.
Speaker 2:I'm your host today, jack Pfeiffer, along with my co-host, christian Miller. Hello everybody, how's it going today? Very good, very good, and our guest today is Max Cassette with 701X. Max, it's been really interesting today to hear you talk about your company and all the benefits it has. So one thing I wanted to ask you is you know what's kind of the biggest lines of feedback you guys get from from your customers about, about using your guys' system?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean mostly when they first call in they're kind of wondering, like you know, how should I make this work? What? How many pro tags should I have? How many XT light tags should I have? But a line of feedback has been great. I mean it's mostly they call us on the phone or send us emails and but getting getting that feedback from them of issues they're having if they have a bug on the software or anything like that, the nice thing is our sales team brings it right to our engineers and solves those problems for them right away. But you know they've been for the most part, you know, very happy with the products They've always kind of dreamed about. Something like this is what they all tell us. Like you know, I've been thinking about estrus detection on my cows for 20 years but I've never had a good way to do it. And now that we're actually bringing these solutions to them, they've just been very happy about it.
Speaker 2:And yeah, right, right, like I said kind of at the at the top of the show, it seems like one of the more common sense you know things out there to be able to monitor your herd remotely and and all that. And so I'm surprised it's not more of a more commonplace, you know, I I suppose there's you know a lot of reasons for that and it's you know, kind of an industry that's that that's been the same for a very long time and so I'm sure that's one of the kind of one of the challenges you guys run into as far as getting people to adopt a new practice. But yeah, to me it just seems like really cool tool for people to be able to use. And, christian, I know, when I first showed you some of the posts and stuff I was seeing on social media, you were pumped up to learn more about it.
Speaker 3:I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that you could just track your cows and know where they are at all times. And you were even telling me about some of the add-ons. Jack was telling me oh yeah, you can see if they're sick or they've been grazing an area, maybe a little heavier in one area, or, and I just I can wrap my head around that that to me, when I'm around my friends that have ranches and some of them farm and have some cows and and it always just seems like there's, there's always something with cows. They're either sick or you have a fence issue or, like you said, maybe some cows don't take and there's just a. As a rancher, you're just constantly problem solving, it seems, and I mean you're dealing with animals. So it's kind of the given there.
Speaker 4:but yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3:It does seem like this app is very multifaceted and can help ranchers in a lot of different scenarios.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I kind of mentioned earlier on you know, I grew up on a row crop operation planned to go back to the farm after college but I got this call from Kevin and decided to, you know, work at 7-1-X but excuse me. But with that I started looking into it. When he called and he told me about his idea to GPS track cattle, I started doing some research on the industry and I was like just blown away, like this is a huge market and there's nothing. You know there's been no new technology, hardly in the industry for 20, 30 years. I mean those EID tags that you brought up, jack, earlier, those came out, you know, 20, 30 years ago and they really haven't gotten widespread adoption up until now that they're being, you know, mandatory, right Forced on some of these ranchers. But I was just blown away by it too and I just thought there's so much, you know, opportunity here and things that we could do for these ranchers to help solve their problems, like you mentioned, that they're having every day it's if it's not one thing, it's another, and that's why we keep adding to our products too.
Speaker 4:You know we started off with our minimum viable product. It was just a gps ear tag that lets you know when these cattle are getting outside the fence. And then we added on health alerts, because a lot of people brought that. Our customers brought that up to us and then we saw, you know, they're putting these on all their bulls and we don't know which bulls are productive. So we added bull mounting. And then they're saying, well, we artificially inseminate our animals and we spend so much time standing out there watching our cows, watching you know what is their mounting behavior, things like that. So we added that in as well, and it's just one thing after another. You know, I don't think it'll ever go away. There's always going to be more issues that come up, but we're always out here trying to solve those issues and problems and automate as much as we can with our technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think that's a sign of a of a really good company too, when you're when you're taking the direct feedback and and implementing it and trying to trying to solve problems right. That's how, that's how any good company gets started is identifying a problem and trying to help solve it. So the fact that you guys are doing that on a daily basis, taking feedback and working to make people's lives a little bit easier, I think is a really good thing.
Speaker 4:Kevin Bifford, our founder and CEO. He's an engineer by trade. He's got degrees in like mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering. But his big thing that he always says that he believes any problem can be solved through engineering.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I believe it, yeah, especially in today's world and this industry.
Speaker 3:I think the ranching industry is just ripe for innovation like this. I mean, you come from a row crop background. We all know about ExactApply and JDLink and these huge pieces of technology that have come together to help row crop farmers, and I don't see anything out there like that for the ranchers.
Speaker 4:That's just exactly it. Exactly. I grew up, you know, around a lot of precision ag technologies and then I saw in the cattle industry. I was like they have nothing, like they need stuff and I truly believe you know, someday this is kind of going to be the auto steer of cattle. Like you know, I couldn't get in my tractor nowadays and go drive. Like as soon as the auto steer shuts down, I shut everything down.
Speaker 2:I love my straight rows.
Speaker 4:I'm not messing around.
Speaker 3:Call the dealership Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you still get calls to come back home and help during harvest season or anything like that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, I still farm with my brother and I take off all the planting and harvest season to go help out during those seasons. But for the moment, you know, take care of it. Otherwise we've got one farmhand and my brother take over the daily operations and that's been going really well. They're both very talented and do a great job out there.
Speaker 3:Very good. Yeah, it just seems like in the current climate where we're at, technology is becoming more and more prevalent in agriculture, and I think years ago, if you had a ranch or a farm, that's all you did. You spent your time dedicated to the farm, and I think in today's world, where we have more technology coming into play, it's allowing guys to do more than one thing. They might run cows and they might also have maybe a business on the side, or they might row crop and they might work with a technology company type of thing, but that's not possible without the technology to allow you to have more freedom where you're not manually having to do everything, which eats up a ton of time For sure, checking cows manually and that sort of thing, yep, and we're obviously working on a lot of those things.
Speaker 4:I'd be curious from you guys too, like you know, what do you guys hear from ranchers? For the most part, if you ever hear them complain I don't know if they might be a totally different story Maybe land prices.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we hear some of that that's yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, we hear some of that, that's for sure, yeah. But I mean a lot of it is just you know, like krisha was saying earlier, you know kind of all these these little daily problems you know cows getting out or ken cows getting sick and stuff like that and and you know, it seems like your guys's company and your guys's products. I mean they're not, you know a direct solution, but they, you know they're, they're part of the solution to to alleviate some of those things. Right, and absolutely, you know, obviously those problems aren't gonna aren't gonna go away and it's still a very labor intensive industry to to be a part of. But yeah, I mean this just seems like a a really good, a really good resource for for people to use.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And, max, you brought something up there. We see land, and even pasture land, continues to climb in price, and if you're a young guy and you buy pasture land, every dollar counts. And so if you're losing calves or your cows aren't taken and you paid a premium for grassland, you're going to be in a tough position. You're going to be in a really tough position.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. I mean, with these cattle prices, especially your calves, like if you can get your cows bred, because we experienced this out at our test ranch in Grassy Butte. I mean we had 15% open rate two years ago and this year we got it down to 10%. I mean that's still a lot of animals we're losing. I mean that's still a lot of animals we're losing. I mean that's 15 cows that aren't getting bred this year and it was 22 last year. If we could get, you know, $1,500 for every one of those calves, that's a lot of extra money in our pocket and you've got to be thinking about that. When you, you know, are making an investment in technology, sure, the upfront price might be a little bit of a sticker shock to some people but, like I said, just starting with putting on your bulls, $1,000 investment could easily turn into an $18,000 return over two years for us.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think that is the technology is the way forward on a lot of this stuff. And I do see a lot of older guys. I mean, when I was younger, you'd look at the older generation and they'd struggle to use an iPhone and maybe the laptop and things like that, and I think the older generation is starting to see a lot more benefit in this. I see a lot of older farmers that are looking to their son or even grandsons to say, okay, how do I implement this into my farm and you help me run it? Yes, it might be my farm, but you help me run it and show me how this side of it works. And I think there's a lot of collaboration between the younger and the older generations in the farming and ranching practice.
Speaker 4:For sure. We definitely see that a lot. You know the older generation's got the checkbook and the younger generation's, the one that's excited and eager to, you know, use this new technology. Like I said, I feel it's a lot like auto steer. I mean, back in the day, you know the older generation was like why would I need that? I can drive my tractor? I got to be in there anyway, why can't I steer? And then you know, you see all these other added benefits and efficiencies that it drives. You know just the spacing of your seed and no overlapping, and you know reducing your seed costs. That way, I think a lot of those same things are going to come out of this technology in cattle that people aren't even realizing yet. Like at our test ranch we had a bull that got out of the pasture and we were able to bring him back in within two hours. But then the nice thing the ranch manager liked he's like well, it showed me right where the fence was broke. I didn't have to go drive around for three hours.
Speaker 4:Like I see a little line between the two dots. That's where it was. That's another benefit to it right there. All those little things add up over time and it just brings you know, like I said, a lot more efficiency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we say, a Piper's time is money right, that's right, and it is in every business, yeah. So yeah, saving your time is saving yourself money for sure. Well, we're getting towards the end of this segment here, segment three. I want to thank Piperiffer's Auction and Realty and Land Management and Equipment Auctioneers for sponsoring today's episode. If you guys have any needs for a land consultation, equipment sales, land management service, contact our team at Pfeiffer's Auction and Realty, call into the toll-free number at 877-700-4099 and reach out to our wonderful staff at Pfeiffer's. They're happy to help in any way they can. We'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1:We'll be right back and I have something to say Right there. Good bird, just straight by.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm today's host, Jack Pfeiffer, along with my co-host, Christian Miller. Christian, how are you today?
Speaker 3:Hey, I'm doing good, Jack. We're in our final segment today.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's going by quick today because we've got a great guest in today, Max Cassette with 701X, Autonomous Rancher Been, talking a lot about their company and all the added benefits it has to the ranching industry. You know, I kind of wanted to dive in a little more on the software side of things for you guys and kind of all the different benefits that has. And then you know also, if you want you can touch a little more on the acquisition and how that has changed things over at 701X.
Speaker 4:Yeah, probably you know, a lot of people with the acquisition have a struggle understanding like, okay, you guys had a software company and Digital Beef was also a software company. So like what, you guys had a software company and Digital Beef was also a software company. So like what you know, why did you do that and what's going on here? But the one thing I'd like to highlight is that Digital Beef they were a registry software. So basically they have 17 different beef cattle breed associations and then there's like two horse associations and two sheep associations that they service and obviously we were most interested in the beef cattle side of things. But we're happy to serve those other livestock and we expand and we plan to expand our other technology, the wearables, into those industries at some point as well, much further down the road. But basically these breed associations they require certain amounts of data to be able to get a registered cow or bull. Um, a lot, of, a lot of times you'll see bull sales and most of the time those are registered bulls through an association. So like, um, we service the limousine association, the Galvey association, but like I couldn't have a Galvey cow and go try to register it to the limousine association, I mean similar to, like dogs, having them registered to the American Kennel Club or whatever. But so they have this desktop app. You know a lot of the users will write down all their data pen and paper. You know everyone's got their little calving book that they have in their pocket. That's kind of their Bible. They write it all pen and paper and then they go back to their desktop and enter all this data into Digital Beef for their birth date of the animal, the birth weight of the animal, so that they can do these genetic evaluations and figure out, you know, kind of a ranking of how well does an animal perform in certain categories, like how well does it perform in the weaning weight versus the birth weight category, or average daily gain. You know how fast does it grow or the milking ability of the mother. So they had all that already, you know.
Speaker 4:But I said it was a desktop app that you had to kind of go back and reenter all your data. Well, we're trying to streamline that whole process with our cow-calf management app. So instead of taking out your pen and paper now you take out your phone and record all your data on our mobile app that works offline. So it's basically like a digital calving book to record all your data and then that data seamlessly goes to this digital beef platform for our registered members of those associations. And then the other.
Speaker 4:I mean the calving book is a main point of data collection for ranchers, but the other main point that I see is when they're working their animals. You know, bringing them through a shoot and doing preg checks, different things like that is kind of the most labor-intensive time for recording data. And what we did is we built this working cattle mode. So basically you can take an iPad or any sort of tablet and or even your phone if you want to use that, but I'd recommend a tablet at that time, just because it's so much going on. But we sell mounts that actually mount right onto your chute, so your tablet can just hang there and then you set it up. So if you're preg checking cows, you can put, hey, we're preg checking, we're going to apply these different medications to the animal. You can kind of preset them up or you can skip them as you get to certain animals if you're not giving those things and then awaits.
Speaker 4:So we have direct integrations with a couple different Bluetooth scales.
Speaker 4:There's a TrueTest S3 scale and then a Gallagher W0 scale that we integrate with, so, as these animals are coming into the shoot, we can identify them quickly with that EID1, and it pops up right on our software app that, hey, this is the animal you're currently working right now.
Speaker 4:You don't have to, you know, type in manual numbers that way, and then that Bluetooth scale automatically put that weight right into the app. So it says, okay, this animal weighs 650 pounds right now. Or if it's a cow, you know it's a 1,210-pound cow and I can click if she's pregnant, open or late. And then if the vet shouts out you know, she's 63 days bred. If we type in 63 days, it'll give me like well, we expect this animal to calve on May 3rd. So it makes it really easy. Once you get to calving season it's like okay, I know which group of animals I should really keep a closer eye on, and then all your medications and everything in the animal as well can be recorded right then and there. So you have just records that you can go back to and see what's been done to this animal throughout its life.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's incredible. Data is very important for ranching. I think it helps a lot with your overall herd health and those sorts of things and be able to put it in there autonomously almost. I mean that's for the scale to just bluetooth to your, to your iPad. I mean how many, how many ranchers are able to do that? That is, I guess everybody can participate now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's oh, it really helps streamline the process. And now when we're looking to cull our cows this year, we're just kind of looking. We've got a nice report in there of the average daily gain of those calves. We can see, like you know, some of our calves were gaining nearly three pounds a day and some of them were gaining a quarter pound a day. It's like, well, we don't want to keep those mothers. It's pretty easy to look back at the data and just figure out which mothers you know perform the best and which don't. And you know, I kind of saw this on the row crop side. You know we weren't recording our data the best at first it was all pen and paper records. Well, going through this data over the years it's very difficult to do Right. And once we digitalize that it's like okay, I can see this seed variety is five bushels an acre better than these on the average. You know we had it on the same ground just two years apart.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what I want to stick with going forward absolutely, yeah, yeah, wow, that's really cool and then yeah, so that's kind of the the software side of things. You know all the information you can you can gather throughout that. But then I know we talked earlier a little bit about just all the products you guys offer and you touched on some of them there. But maybe just give another quick rundown of some of the products you guys have yeah, our, our XT light, our XT pro tag is kind of our flagship product.
Speaker 4:It's really can be used on your bulls or your cows. For the bulls we've got, you know, the out of fence notifications, health alerts, mounting detection so you can get daily reports and compare them against bulls and which ones are most productive and which ones are lazy, and then mounting not mounting alerts if that's going on out in the pasture. And then for the cows, you know you got the out of fence and health as well. But then we also got estrus detection in there and then calving detection is coming out this quarter. And then we've also got this other tag called our XT light tag and that's kind of more recommended for the calves but it kind of piggybacks off of that XT pro tag. It's just a Bluetooth tag with that EID in it as well, and then it's got an accelerometer so it tracks the footsteps of that calf. And then we're currently adding in health alerts. Those will be available for that light tag here this quarter as well.
Speaker 4:But the ProTag for the first year it's $150 and then it's $50 every year after. For the cell data plan, that light tag is $20 and then it's got a three-year battery life. So most calves go to. You know they're 18 to 24 months, they're going to slaughter, so you can get the full use of it on your operation. But what that really allows you to do is every five minutes when that pro tag's taking a GPS position, it scans around Bluetooth and says what animals are around me. Well, I can see these five calves around me with light tags and then they check them in as a relative GPS location because it's within about a 50-foot radius for Bluetooth. So then you've got good relative information of where your calves are. And we say you can have one pro tag for every 10 light tags to get pretty good relative tracking data out in the pasture there.
Speaker 3:Wow, that is very interesting.
Speaker 4:Great way to maximize your money as well just a cheaper way to, you know, kind of overwatch your whole herd. So even we'll see some people that'll you know. They'll put five tags in their bulls, 20 pro tags in their cows, and then the other 130 of their cows they'll put the light tags on, and then light tags on other calves as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think if I was someone who could possibly use this, I think I would probably just want to at least start off with a you know some small amount of of the technology, just to kind of mess around with it, cause it's so interesting, all the information and and just being able to monitor everything from you know, so you don't have to be outside on a cold day like this and you can just watch from home see what all the cows are up to. But, yeah, really cool stuff. Max, thank you so much for coming on. It's been really cool to learn from you and learn a little more about the cattle industry and your company. So thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4:Thank you guys so much for having me. I really enjoyed our discussion today. Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2:Max, yeah, I want to thank Pfeiffer's Auction and Realty and Land Management for sponsoring today's show. For any of your land management or equipment needs, feel free to give any of our great staff over at Pfeiffer's a call at the toll-free number 877-700-4099. That does it for this episode of America's Land Auctioneer and we'll be back next week.