Keeping Good Records with Gabe Wight

Freedom, being outdoors, a love of animals, family legacy and a million other things could be the reason cattle producers love the cattle business. One thing that probably didn’t tempt you into the livestock industry? Record keeping.

While keeping records isn’t the most fun task on your operation, the insights gleaned from data collection and herd management could mean the difference between making it or calling it quits on your dreams of ranching.

On this episode of Angus at Work, our team visited with Gabe Wight, founder of herd management platform Herd Advisor, regarding the importance of record keeping, where to start, why an easy-to-use management software is a solid investment for commercial cattlemen, and more.  

Find more information to make Angus work for you in the Angus Beef Bulletin and ABB EXTRA. Make sure you're subscribed! Sign up here to the print Angus Beef Bulletin and the digital Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Contact our team at abbeditorial@angus.org. 

Transcript

Host Lynsey McAnally (00:28):
Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit-minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin, we have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics and management. So let’s get to work, shall we?

Freedom, being outdoors, a love of animals, family legacy and a million other things could be the reason cattle producers love the cattle business. One thing that probably didn’t tempt you into the livestock industry? Record keeping. While keeping records isn’t the most fun task on your operation, the insights gleaned from data collection and herd management could mean the difference between making it or calling it quits on your dreams of ranching. 

On this episode of Angus at Work, our team visited with Gabe Wight, founder of herd management platform Herd Advisor, regarding the importance of record keeping, where to start, why an easy-to-use management software is a solid investment for commercial cattlemen, and more. So, let’s dive in!

Welcome to Angus at Work. I'm your host, Lynsey McAnally, and today we're joined by rancher and founder of Herd Advisor Gabe White. Gabe, thank you so much for being with us. Do you mind giving us a little background on yourself and your history in the cattle industry?

Gabe Wight (01:35):
Yeah, sure, Lynsey. First off, thanks for having me! It's a real pleasure to be here. I've been raising Angus crosses like so many others for many, many years and appreciate what the Angus Association does. I grew up on a small cattle ranch. We were flashlight farmers, we call it here. 

My parents worked off the farm and when I was a kid, I kind of took over the cows and all the animal husbandry and just loved it. And this is back ... I'm old enough to remember when round bales were just starting to come out. So it was stacking the square bales on the truck and taking them out and pitching them off the truck for the cows. I just fell in love with the cattle. So when I finished college, wanted to put together a ranch of my own few animals. Honestly, it was pretty hard.

It was hard to scrap the money together and start building a place and building a herd and all that. But I'm a cow-calf guy. I tend to raise right now ... the last probably three years I've been selling about 700 pound calves. I'll wean them, hold them for a little bit. I've got more grass than animals the last few years.

Host Lynsey McAnally (02:33):
Not a bad spot to be in.

Gabe Wight (02:34):
It's an amazing spot to be in. I used to be overstocked like most of America probably and I sold them right off the cow and then I started to dwindle down the herd. Actually, I think I'm a little understocked now. I need to add a few more, but it's been ... I mean, in the wintertime, it's pretty awesome when you only feed hay less than a month. That's pretty amazing.

Host Lynsey McAnally (02:54):
I guess I'm curious with that kind of background, what led to wanting to found your own herd management software?

Gabe Wight (03:02):
I've always been a bit of an entrepreneur and, like my parents and my grandparents before me, I was a flashlight farmer as we affectionately refer to them here. I always worked off the farm. I worked in traditional advertising after college. I had my undergrad in poultry science and my Masters in ag business and then worked outside of the ag industry for a long time in advertising then went into brand management for a group of outdoor brands. Mostly in the hunting and outdoor space. 

Then founded a software company in 2019 and we were doing analytics on what was new at the time: Instacart or store delivery from grocery stores. I saw this pattern starting of, "Hey, wait a minute: Walmart, Kroger and Instacart just launched this. We'll put your groceries in the back of your trunk." And I thought, "I don't want to go to the back of the store for my milk and I bet other people don't either." And at the time it was brand new and all of that was in testing and I thought that's going to be big at some point.

And so we started an analytics company that we really just analyzed sales through those channels and help brands grow sales, mostly food brands that had never had an oportunity for e-commerce. You're not shipping gallons of milk through Amazon. I'd never really had an opportunity for e-commerce before. Launched that January 2019. In 2020, of course, COVID hits and everyone is shopping that way and it was just a tremendous opportunity for our business and sold that in 2023. My passion has always been cows. After I sold that, I was thinking about what I wanted to do next. 

The reality is I took some calves for sale one day and I was pulling out of the parking lot of the sale barn and I thought, "Should I have sold this week and should I have sold here?" The two questions I always ask myself. And I thought, "I've got this analytics background. Why wouldn't I put together a forecast for myself?" So I built a forecasting system with some very accurate machine learning models. It was pretty game changing in when to sell and where to sell. And I thought, "This is great." 

I started sending that out to friends and not long, just a few weeks after that, sitting at my desk and realized my big issue is cattle records. I've always struggled with cattle records. From the day I started when I was a kid growing up, we struggled with cattle records. Who's lost the book? Who's lost the paper? Which book is this? Did anybody look into one in the tractor? You try to look something up. It was always in a different book, always somewhere else. Didn't matter if it was ... Then I moved to spreadsheets, same issues. I had to text myself, write it down somewhere, transfer it in.

I was sitting at my desk on a rainy day. I had two notebooks and a clipboard sitting beside me about to enter records. I thought, "This is crazy." There's got to be a better way to do this. A lot of these records that I'm entering are ... they're stale. They don't even matter anymore. I'm about to enter calves that maybe I've even sold already. That's what did it. I was so frustrated and thought, "I never want to sit down at my desk and have to enter another record again."

Host Lynsey McAnally (05:57):
There's always that moment - that light bulb moment - that really sparks where you're headed next.

Gabe Wight (06:05):
And most of the time it's out of frustration. I think what is the old saying? Necessity is the mother of invention? The frustration sits right behind it where I'm sitting there ... like that day I was looking at two notebooks and a clipboard and there was about to be a lot of data entry. I don't know anyone that really likes data entry they probably also like, I don't know, spiders and cats and things that no one should like.

Host Lynsey McAnally (06:35):
I think it gets to be very overwhelming, right? I don't think there's a single person on the planet that wouldn't argue that it's valuable to have that information. It's gathering the information and then inputting it into something that actually spits back out the data that you need.

Gabe Wight (06:52):
That's such a big part of it because it's one thing to have the record. It's another thing to have that record accessible. I built myself years ago a really lightweight ... Meaning just a very simple app I had on my phone. I use it, it backs up into a spreadsheet on my computer. I used it for a few years, but I still didn't want to pull my phone out when I was in the pasture. 

I still wrote things down or I wouldn't want to open the app. I just do a voice text to myself or something. I still had records scattered. Well, scattered records are inaccessible records. Even if you're driving through the pasture in your truck and you've got the notebook in your tractor that says which calf belongs to which cow, then all of a sudden that's an inaccessible record and you can't make decisions off of those records that aren't accessible.

Host Lynsey McAnally (07:41):
That technology is becoming more and more valuable to people, especially as we talked about previously, those inputs are going up. We're trying to be ethical producers but also try to find ways to profit. And so one of my questions to you is from your perspective, how important is it for those commercial producers to keep records and better than just records but keep accurate records?

Gabe Wight (08:08):
I'm going to answer this with a fork tongue. On one side, if you're not going to use the records, don't worry about it. I know a lot of people that they keep records, they'll never look back at them and those records are just wasted effort. However, in my experience he records make such a difference in profitability and to be able to make decisions. I'll give you just an easy example of this. 

We run fall calvers and spring calvers. We have a fall calver that I may be, I'm pretty sure that's a fall calver, but she rolls into spring or she doesn't have a calf. So I'm like, that's a really good cow I'll roll her into spring. We can argue all day if that's a good idea or not. Then say the next year, she doesn't have a calf in the spring. If I don't have records I can go back to or get to easily, I would tend to maybe make that decision on, do the kids like feeding her range cubes?

If so, we'll roll her into fall. If not, then she's probably that one that I rolled last time from fall to spring. From a profitability perspective, records are such an unlock in getting to profitability and taking the emotion out of those other little considerations like do the kids want to feed her range cubes? And there's nothing wrong with a pet cow, but at least with records, you know we're keeping that cow around and she's a pet. She's nonproductive. Instead of we've got a cow we like to feed and we're counting on her to have a calf, well, she's probably not going to have one. So records really make all the difference in being able to make decisions and be able to go back. I mean, even simple things like pasture records every year, every year I go through and now I keep them in my herd advisor app.

So it's super easy. I go through and I'm like, "Okay, now what herbicide did I use last year? Did I spray this pasture? How much did I use? How fast did I set my speed on the tractor? Did I get a good kill or not? " Knowledge compounds the ability to do these things better and better and better. But if you don't have a repository, if you can't keep that knowledge, then it can't compound and it's just like starting new. I know when I bought my first few animals, I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate that I hope I don't repeat. That's a big part of keeping records: Learning from not repeating mistakes and capitalizing on the good decisions that you can make.

Host Lynsey McAnally (10:21):
Absolutely. Like you said, and like we spoke about a little bit ago, maybe before we started recording, if you have that information and it's spread out across multiple generations of family's calving books ... Because if you have a book in the feed pickup and you're trying to keep one in your home office and all of those things aren't in one spot, then that data isn't able to be put to use.

Gabe Wight (10:44):
That's how it happens. We've tried to build the app where it's really easy for that. We even have a multi-owner mode where you can, let's say that for them they've got three generations or however many generations. They can turn multi-owner mode on and they can tag each animal to the person or the family that owns that animal. One of the things that I just love about what we do is that it really is a community and it doesn't matter. I can't tell you how many times if I'm driving through the pasture at night, I'll get calls like everybody else. "Hey, headlights in the pasture. You're circling. Do you need help? Have you lost a cow?" You get calls from neighbors. You get calls from people driving by? "What's going on out there? Do you need help?" And it's such a community industry, I guess you'd call it.

So you want to make it so that you can, you try to match up your records to how each ranch actually works and a lot of ranchers work off of, "You know what? We run with our family, we run with our best friends we've got a combined herd." You want to keep those records and be able to analyze those records individually. And so we've got that as a part of the app as well.

Host Lynsey McAnally (11:46):
These records have value. So what do you think typically prevents ranchers from keeping those records?

Gabe Wight (11:53):
They do have great value to be able to make decisions real time and ongoing. And I'm going to speak to that for just a second and I'm going to talk about why we don't keep better records. One value is how many times have we been moving some cows, we're at the chute and a calf comes through and it's like,, "Okay, now who's that calf's mom?" I mean, just simple things like that, not to mention when you get down to, like in the Herd Advisor app, when you move your bulls into a pasture, we know what cows are in that pasture. We open an exposure window and then when you move your bulls out, we close that exposure window. So we know that if you move your bulls in Thanksgiving, they should start calving in September. We know exactly which cows because we know what that bull movement was coming in and you can make decisions when those cows don't start calving or don't calve and we'll flag them up, "Hey, this cow's overdue." We know, "Hey, wait a minute, I need to make a decision on this cow.

Do I roll her because she's not been exposed again until say, I don't know, May. So that's a long time to carry an open cow." What keeps us from keeping records, I think a couple of things. One is there have been times in my life when I've been very prideful and I thought I know everything and I can remember it. And then I got a little older and I realized I can't remember everything as time goes on. I don't remember if that's the cow I had to trim a hoof the last two years and I want to cull that cow I have to trim her hoof so bad, but I can't remember exactly which one she is. I can't remember that. So good records. One is I think just the pride of I know everything. The second is none of us got into cattle to keep records.

I love raising cows. I like being out. I like fixing fence, not in August and Arkansas, but I like going out and building fence. I like being with my cows. I like working cows. I did not get in to keep records and there's a big piece of it that is a frustration around just trying to keep the records. I think the third reason is that so many people who have kept records, those records haven't been in a format and in a way where they can really make good decisions off of them. So it's like, what really do I get out of this? And if your records aren't in a place or in a way that you can make decisions, then you have to just ask, is it really worth it? And frankly, maybe not if you're not making good decisions out of your records, then why do it?

So I think those three things.

Host Lynsey McAnally (14:16):
Let's get into Herd Advisor itself. If you had to give somebody an elevator speech about the tools and capabilities that you have built into that platform, what would you tell them?

Gabe Wight (14:29):
Yeah, I think there are a couple things that really set it apart. First off is, it is so incredibly easy. I've used I think most of the cattle record software out there and one of the things that I'm really, really proud about is it's so easy. In fact, I don't have to unlock my phone and it works offline. It works online, phone, computer, it's so easy. 

So most of my records, 90% of the records I keep, I just talk to my phone. I'm going to turn my phone off for a second and I'll do it. I just say, "Hey, Siri, cattle record with Herd Advisor." And I just say, what happened? Cow number two had a calf. It's a bull. We castrated it, weighed 50 pounds, black with a white face, whatever. Hey, Siri, cattle record with Herd Advisor: Remind me in two days to check on my Bull 53.

He's got a litle bit of a limp. I just talk it in, but I don't unlock my phone. I just ride around in the truck, on the horse, in the tractor, walk through the pasture, don't have to type anything in. It is the easiest way to keep records I know of. I think that's the big thing. The second thing is that it really is a pretty complete record system. 

So we talked a little bit about multi-owner, but all of your core animal all the way down, obviously registration number, etc., all the animal characteristics or attributes are all there. But then also we have embryo and semen inventory trackers in there. We have a really nice broad and robust suite. And so I would break records down maybe in a couple of ways. One is descriptive what is there like, I have this cow, she, I don't know, weighs this much, her number is whatever.

And then there's also the more predictive side, which is where are my cows in terms of their calving cycle? How many of my animals are in early pregnancy vs. late? And we do a lot of this based off of, like I mentioned before, pasture movement. Also, if you record your sales, it will start to understand even if you record like a bulk sale, you kind of know, okay, I took them to the sale barn or whatever, but I know this cow had ... her steer was in one of the bigger steers. I see the bigger end group. 

Just record what information you have. And after a couple of years, it'll start to say, wait a minute, based on the number of days old that her calves are, she's underindexing. Her calves are selling less than her competitive set, the other cows in your herd. So it really makes it where you can see, hey, this cow here, she's selling at about 11% discount her calves to all the other cows when you adjust for the gender, when you adjust for the age, like down to the day, all these things, but you can really start making profitable decisions.

And that's number two. Number three is we just launched this last week an AI chat feature and I love it. And so instead of having to go look up a record, which is really easy to do, but you can also just ask really any question that's trained on so it understands your herd. So you could say things like, I don't know, I see calf 95 with a purple tag out in the pasture, who's its mom? 

Or you could say, how many heifers do I have at the home ranch? I'm about to work cows, help me put together a medication protocol and what medication I need to buy. It's also trained on a lot of university research. So you can say things like, "I've got a cow with the limp, help me diagnose and understand how to treat it." It will go through university research, here's how to think about it.

So one of my passions in this, I know when I got started, even though I grew up on a small cattle ranch, I still felt fairly ... I mean, honestly, I still feel pretty ignorant on a lot of things. I still sit down on Saturdays a lot and talk to the guys, but it's hard to get started. And I don't know anybody that's so, I don't know, prideful maybe to say, "Yeah, I've got this all figured out. " We're all trying to learn. And so having that at your fingertips has really been pretty amazing and a little plug here. 

So many of the people I talk to who use the app, a lot of them are maybe the wives and their husband calls with questions nonstop and that little chat feature has been a game changer for them. She just types into the chat feature or has gotten the husband trained to type in the chat feature to ask any question and there it pops up the answer.

Host Lynsey McAnally (18:39):
And I think that goes back to it really is a family industry. The cattle business is built on those relationships and the grandfathers, fathers, mothers, whoever it may be, but you're constantly learning from them as a young producer. The thing I've learned the most is that those folks that are good at what they do, the ones that are the people I reach out to to ask questions, they never stop learning, right?

Gabe Wight (19:05):
That's it.

Host Lynsey McAnally (19:06):
They focus on bettering themselves and I think that's where these data points come in. So what data sets do you think can't miss collection points within a commercial herd or those folks that are using Herd Advisor?

Gabe Wight (19:21):
I'm still shocked at how many people I talk to. I say something like, "How many mama cows do you have? " And they're like, "I really don't know. All of them out there that are still standing are still alive." So from a basic perspective, what animals do I have? And then now we've got to get into what are we actually producing? We're cow-calf. We're producing calves. What animals do I have? Cows, bulls, calves, etc. What my cows, when do they have a calf? If you don't have written down when your cows have a calf, then you sure can't keep up with, did they miss a cycle? Even if you leave your bulls in year round, we calculate calving interval. Is that cow getting bred back quickly or is it taking her a while to get bred back? You've got to run a profit-loss operation. You've got to know which animals do I have, when are they having calves and then are the calves actually making money or not? When I sell these calves, which ones are selling at the top end, which at the bottom? You've got to be able to see trends. How many times do we miss the point that maybe a cow, or maybe she's a heifer, and we have to pull her first calf and it's stillborn by the time we get to it. Then two years later, all of a sudden she has another, remember that, wait, that's two out of four calves that she's lost. All of a sudden, she's in a risky category. But if you don't have the records, you can't go back and you can't make those profitable decisions because profit is made on the margins. It isn't made in the bulk of what's happened. Eighty percent is going to go just fine no matter what you do.

]It's the 20% that you really need to be paying attention to. Make those decisions within that 20% because that's where you're going to make your margin or not. And for me, I tell this fairly often. When I started out, what I wanted was I wanted a really good looking herd. I still do, but I was optimizing for appearance not for profit. When you start keeping records, it kind of forces you to start optimizing for profit. And those other things, she may be a little ugly, but what if she raises a great calf? I'll take her. I'll take her. So I think those are some things that really make a difference in recordkeeping.

Host Lynsey McAnally (21:40):
I'm curious, have you heard from folks that use Herd Advisor some interesting things that they took away from keeping this data in a good system where they could access ...

Gabe Wight (21:53):
Yeah, it's so interesting. The variety of people. So a lot of cow-calf folks, of course, that's the core of the business. But then even folks that raise exotic ... We've got a guy in the upper Midwest who raises exotic animals for high-fence hunting. I'm like, "What are you doing with a cattle app?" He's like, "It's so easy!" And, anyway, so I think that's kind of interesting. I love these business models.

There's a gentleman in, I can't remember if it's Ohio, Pennsylvania, get to talking and he owns ... he lives in a subdivision with a small yard, has a great from a dollar perspective business. He contracts with dairy farms and embryo transplants and then sells them right out of the cow. Sells showsteers and show heifers right of the cow and has no land. I think the stories though that I really appreciate are the ones where it's a couple that resonate with me.

One is I'm standing by the chute. A gentleman drew from Texas today. I was talking to him. He said, "We weighed our entire herd at this one farm. We had 147 mamas or 157 mamas maybe. We weighed them and we just voiced in the weights. It was the easiest thing I've ever done." That gives me such gratification. 

And then one of the AI ones, there's a couple, Rick and Susan, and she was telling me that her phone rings nonstop with the, "Hey, Suze, when do you turn those bulls in on those heifers down in lower pasture?" Hey Suze, remember those calves we bought last year? Who did we buy those calves from?" And so between us, we kind of effectively call the AI the Hey Suze system.

Host Lynsey McAnally (23:33):
There you go. I love it. So if you were going to say one thing that Herd Advisor does, what would you say gives your customers the biggest bang for their buck?

Gabe Wight (23:41):
Yeah, I think it's actually the cattle records that they actually keep. It's easy enough, especially with the voice piece, you actually keep the records. And when you start keeping records, anyone who starts keeping records, they typically start with rather ... let's call them simple records. But then when you find out, hey, this is really easy, you get into maybe a little bit more detail and a litle bit more detail. 

Then all of a sudden you're looking at real lineage and progeny. What kind of genetics lines are coming through here? So as an example, you're starting to put in your weights and understand if I'm, go back to me, when I'm raising five weights, I need to get to a five weight as fast as possible. I don't care if the calf falls off after that. Now that I'm raising seven weights, I need to get to a seven weight as fast as possible.

I don't care if it takes a little longer to get to five weight, I've got to get to a seven weight. And so as you keep records and the records are easy and just an easy part of what you do, then you start to keep more and more detail and you find them more and more useful. It's all building blocks. But I think the whole thing with Herd Advisor is the number one feedback I get: "We actually keep the records now." That's the thing.

Host Lynsey McAnally (24:46):
I could see where that would be really handy for those folks that it's perpetually an issue with having enough hands, right? There's never enough labor. It doesn't matter if you've planned and you think you have enough, you can always use more help. And so especially for those folks that are standing shoot side, I can imagine that it's very helpful to go ahead and just speak that into the program vs. getting those printouts and having to go back to the office and hand log that information.

Gabe Wight (25:17):
It's hard to imagine right now we're in the, what is this at the end of June. But the other thing is wintertime with your gloves on, who wants to in the middle of winter, take the gloves off, dig down their pocket. I just leave my phone in my chest pocket of my jacket, never take my gloves off. It's the convenience. And we all think, " I'll remember this when I get home. Now what some of us do is in some records we do, but there's a dropoff there.

Host Lynsey McAnally (25:47):
Those list takers of us in the listenership certainly appreciate that.

Gabe Wight (25:52):
That's right. That's right.

Host Lynsey McAnally (25:53):
So for those producers who, whether they're new or very seasoned in the cattle industry, but for those producers who haven't recorded herd data before, where do you recommend they start?

Gabe Wight (26:05):
Well, so we have a lot of folks that start with nothing and I'll tell them this. I would hate to sit at a computer and enter one animal at a time. I get it. I wouldn't like it. A lot of people have, they maybe have a few scratch pads or something. You can do it all by voice. I'll say just drive out in your herd. We all like being with our herds or sitting your La-Z-Boy at night and just do it by voice and say, "Enter a new animal. Cow number 46, she's about eight years old." I mean, if you don't have any records you're dealing with about-withs, put the about-withs in there. If you say it's about eight years old, the system will pick it up and it'll say, okay, we'll set a birthdate for July 1 of, what is that, 2018?

Or even it was, she had a calf that was born in November of 25 and it'll just set the birthdate at November 15 and put that as an estimated date. But just sit in a La-Z-Boy or out with your herd and just add new animals by voice. It's so easy and you get to do what you're doing, which for me is either like I'll sit in a truck with my family or we'll jump on horseback and sit out there and just enjoy being out and not behind the computer entering records.

Host Lynsey McAnally (27:13):
What capability is there for bringing in the folks that are on your team? So we talk a lot at the Angus Beef Bulletin about how it's important to build up your network. That network might be your veterinarian, it might be your nutritionist, it might be the guy you buy your bulls from, the guy you buy your commercial females from. What kind of network is there or tools are there for providing that data to those folks that help you make things run?

Gabe Wight (27:41):
Yeah, I'm glad you asked. There's actually a couple of ways. Number one, we don't have a limit on number of animals or number of people you can have in your account. And a big part of that is go back to the community aspect. And so if you wanted to invite your vet or if you have a lot of farm hands, you can bring them all into your account, you can manage the access they have and what they don't have so I could see everything. 

So that's kind of one side of it. The other side of it is we have a pretty neat catalog builder and so you've got all your records including the system. You put photos and I keep all my ... If I go to the vet, I'll take a picture of the vet bill or whatever and attach it to the animal. But we've got a nice catalog builder that you can add your own branding to, select the animals, build a catalog, and then you could choose which record types go in.

If you don't want your treatment records in there, you don't have to put them. But if you want all treatment records in there, they can see the treatment records. And then it's a shareable link. So we have a lot of registered folks that they'll run bulls sales and they'll put their bulls in and then they can go on and take bulls out as they sell. So that link is always updated with which bulls are actually available. 

You can download a PDF and email out a PDF if you want to that way. But the nice thing is it's built from the records so you know it's consistent, you know what's there has been recorded over time. And again, you can exclude things if you want, meaning you can't exclude specific treatments, that wouldn't be quite right, but you can exclude the entire treatment thing or if you don't want the notes. If you have notes that are maybe more personal notes, I have no idea what those would be, but you can exclude the notes area, but that's a nice feature, that catalog builder.

Host Lynsey McAnally (29:18):
I was kind of curious, if people are interested in trying out Herd Advisor, what would you tell them or where would you tell them to go?

Gabe Wight (29:26):
Yeah, two things. Number one, there is an app on both Google Play and the Apple App Store. If you're going to try it out though, if you go through the app, it forces a charge right out of the gate. But if you go to the website, herdadvisor.com, there's a free 14-day trial. Do that every time. Take the free days every time. 

And then secondly, if you have records there's a really nice import option that works great. That can be intimidating and/or we work with, I don't know, two, three, four producers every day that they'll call or email and say, "Hey, I've got records, but can you help me get them in and we just sit on the phone with them and import on their behalf. We've got maybe a few more tools on our side. And so one thing that should not cause any anxiety is getting records in.

If you have nothing, sit in the pasture and just talk them in. If you have something, then you can either use that bulk import or call us and we'll help out with it.

Host Lynsey McAnally (30:18):
All right. What have we forgotten? We've covered a ton of ground, but what have we forgotten that you want people to know?

Gabe Wight (30:24):
Maybe a little bit of just the spirit of all this is that it's not easy making it in the cattle business or any business, really. There's not an industry I know where people are just throwing dollar bills at you and saying, "Here, please take this." My heart is that I love it. If we have a useful tool that helps people getting started or helps generational ranches stay in business, I think that's just such an important thing. 

And if you're not record keeping, whether it's with our tool or something else, you're just not setting yourself up for success to be able to manage your profit well. I think that's really important and that's really the heart of this. We want to be super useful, but really useful as it relates to how do we actually use our herds, steward them well and make money.

Maybe another thing we've forgotten is customer service. We're very, very open to customer service. You call or email, text anytime we're open. I think we've got a nice reputation for customer service. So if you have questions or want to reach out, just do so and you'll hear from us pretty quickly.

Host Lynsey McAnally (31:23):
All right, Gabe, like I said, we've covered a lot of topics in this conversation, but I just want to tell you again, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. We always like to end Angus at work on a positive note. This conversation's been one that's kept me smiling the whole time, but what is on good thing happening in your life either personally or professionally that you are thankful for?

Gabe Wight (31:46):
Oh my gosh, Lynsey, the problem is this is like a whole seminar of good things. I'm probably the most blessed individual you'll ever meet. I've got an amazing wife, two unbelievable kids, family, friends, but something that I think is maybe for everyone is just the possibilities. It's so easy to watch the news and say, "Oh my gosh, we're screwed." 

And maybe we are, but life is really fun. Life's got some really hard parts to it, but life is really fun. And for people who are optimistic and curious and willing to work hard, you can make it in just about anything. I think that's just an amazing thing and that this day and age, the possibilities that are there, the ability to move locations, move industries, move what you're doing, find community is just unbelievable. I just think it's such a unique and special time and I'm thankful.

My wife always says, "You should have been born in the 1800s because I'm old fashioned." But at the same time, I'm really thankful I'm alive in 2026 there are just a world of possibilities and yes, terrible parts of the news cycle and personal terrible things. That doesn't minimize any of that, but we're just all ... Isn't it wonderful to be alive in spring? It's great.

Host Lynsey McAnally (32:56):
For sure. Oh my gosh, I can't think of a better way to have ended that. Well, Gabe, thank you again so much for joining us on this episode and we are so looking forward to getting this out to our audience.

Gabe Wight (33:06):
Thank you, Lynsey. It's been a pleasure.

Host Lynsey McAnally (33:14):
Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You can subscribe to both publications in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work!