93
Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
93
Hannah Connealy - Connealy Angus
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, we’re joined by Hannah Connealy—a creative entrepreneur and the social media force behind Connealy Angus, based near Whitman, Nebraska. Hannah’s passion, creativity, and dedication to her family are on full display as we dive into the behind-the-scenes efforts of preparing for a bull sale, along with the unique challenges and opportunities facing the cattle industry today. Her heartfelt reflection on what the Nebraska Sandhills mean to her is truly unforgettable.
You will look out and see a mile and a half view of a lush meadow, a lake at the bottom of it with swans and ducks and geese and deer and sometimes cattle, heifers with calves at the side, and the way that the sun hits that grass and the waves just ripple across it. It it just brings me like immense peace and joy. Like those hills made me in a way that somebody who has not been of a place can conceive. They taught me beauty and they taught me failure, and they taught me grit. Not necessarily only through my own experiences, but through the experience of those that I know came before me and struggled and then eventually succeeded.
SPEAKER_01Nebraska, it's not just a place, but a way of life. It's 93 counties that are home to innovative individuals, caring community, and a spirit that runs deeper than its fertile story. It's a story that should be told. Welcome to 93, the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to 93, the podcast, where we talk about Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry, agriculture, and the people who make it happen. I'm Mark Folson, your host for today's episode, brought to you by Nebraska's law firm, Rembrandt. The Nebraska Sand Hills. It's the hidden gem of Nebraska. Sitting on top of the Ogallala aquifer, it's home to 20,000 square miles of rolling hills and grass-covered dunes, hundreds of thousands of cattle grazing under the open skies in an ecosystem teeming with a diverse array of wildlife. It's also home to our guest today for this episode, Hannah Keneally of the Keneally Angus Ranch, headquartered near Whitman, Nebraska. Hannah, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me, Mark.
SPEAKER_02So you give us your background. You've got to have an elevator speech. If I if I was in an elevator and we had never met, what would you say?
SPEAKER_00I would say, hi, Mark. I would we wouldn't be on a podcast, but thanks for having me on this podcast. I've I looked through all the episodes and listened to a number of them. I'm really honored to be here. I'm Hannah Keneely. I'm fifth generation on my family's Angus Cattle operation in the Nebraska Sand Hills, along with my parents and two of my three brothers and all of our families. We raise and sell over a thousand bulls a year through two live auctions, one in the spring and one in the fall. My role there, I guess how I got there, I was raised on the ranch. I graduated from Mullen High School, class of 10 people. Sarah? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 10 of us. Uh, then I went to uh Creighton in Omaha. I ran cross-country there and I got a degree in exercise science. From Creighton, I took the leap to Boston. I was on the East Coast for five years and I was in the fitness industry for a few years, and then eventually worked my way back into agriculture and ranching through startups and then a startup of my own. And then in 2018 moved back to the ranch. And now I get a partake in all parts of the ranch. I'm outside a lot, which I love working cattle. Um, that's one of my favorite parts of what I do. I help my mom in the office. There's a ton of bookkeeping and like data entry that happens when you're a registered operation. I get to tell the story of our family on social media, which is probably my favorite part.
SPEAKER_02And you do a really good job, but we'll get to that.
SPEAKER_00Thanks. And I do the events. Um, and that frankly, like all of that suits me perfectly because I love a good party. I love to throw a good party, I love to tell stories, I love to be outside. I'm definitely not as good at the office side of things. I don't have the mind for that, but it takes all types. And luckily, my mom is that type. So that's my elevator pitch and my background. I never thought that I would be back on the ranch. Like I studied abroad twice in college, thought that I was gonna live abroad, like thought I was gonna be in the big city, and then got away for a few years and just like really had terrible FOMO about all the cool things that were happening on Keneangish. So I'm super grateful to be back.
SPEAKER_02So, Whitman, what Nebraska County is that in?
SPEAKER_00Oh, right. Whitman is in 92 counties. So 92. Okay. So I'm so so we're 92 of 93, but I'll I'll qualify that because um, like half of our land, a little less than half of our land exists in 93 counties. So I'm not sure which box you still need to tick. Maybe I've taken both of those. I was gonna say you can choose which one you want to take. Because I did have a 93 license plate until this year, and I transferred to 92. So you you can choose whichever one you need.
SPEAKER_02Um so give us the history of Keneally Angus. It's obviously uh, at least based upon your social media posts, there's an Irish element to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we play that up real hard, don't we? That's okay. I actually, on uh St. Patrick's Day this year, I um had a post that um was sort of proof that like it's not just for fun. The shamrocks aren't just for fun and the green isn't just for fun. Um my my family, my ancestors would have immigrated from Ireland probably in like the 1860s to 1880s. And I don't know how this has happened, but the the gene pool hasn't been diluted very much because we like to say that we DNA everything on our ranch. Every animal is DNA'd, and we also DNA ourselves. Like that's something that we find really interesting. And my dad is 98% Irish to this day. My mom is 95 or something, so I'm like right in there, 90 to 95% Irish. So the gene pool hasn't really been diluted. Keneally Angus is an operation, it was started in 1960 by my grandparents. My grandmother was third generation. Uh, her grandparents settled the sand hills in the 1880s, and we started raising registered Angus cattle in 1960. Keneally Angus is a brand has been around since then. And so that was our first bull sale. Um, my dad came back in the 1980s after having met my mom here at UNL in an econ class, and I love to tell the story of my parents. Um, I'm really proud of them. I I really am proud of my mom and my dad for separate reasons. Just the fact that they came back and that my mom, who was from Omaha, graduated from Omaha Westside was City Girl. City Girl, like 800 people in her class had no idea what she was getting into, but was madly in love with my dad. And the faith that she had in him and that both of them had in their partnership to move back to the Sand Hills in the 1980s when left right up and down, everybody was going bankrupt and losing their ranches. And the fact that, you know, from the outside, it looked really silly what they were doing that they did that and they had faith and grit that and that they they made it and it is what it is today. Um, of course, with it wouldn't have been possible without my grandparents. But um, I really love to tell that story. It's just like my mom is so gritty and I'm so proud of her and like amazed at what she's done and my parents together. And and now the operation, it's I'm as I mentioned at the beginning, it's me and two of my brothers and their families. So there are 17 of us with 18 on the way. Not me. My brother, my oldest brother, and his wife, Jace, are expecting number 18. Um, so it's it's really special. And that multi-generational aspect of it and the richness that that brings to our story and our operation um is just really special. And and that's part of what's so fun about telling the story.
SPEAKER_02So give our listeners an idea about the expansiveness of your ranch. Uh it covers quite a wide swath. Uh, and if I'm not mistaken, one of your brothers actually has a pilot's license so he can check cattle by playing. Give our just describe the ranch.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. Well, as in most parts of the United States, it's really hard to buy land contiguously, and it's the same way in the sand hills. So if we want to expand and grow and progress, you're not able to be very picky about the land that you choose to buy. So our our ranch from headquarters goes, we've got a place that's about 45 minutes north. Um, we have a place that's 45 minutes to the east, that's our development and our farm location. It goes west about 15 miles, and then it goes south about 15 miles. So there's a lot of ground to cover. We don't use horses because we're frankly not able to, where there's just too much to cover. We use four-wheelers, and then yeah, Jed has his pilot's license. So does his wife Jace. He has uh a plane that he's able to take up. Um, and he's able to run and get vet supplies from Valentine if he needs to, or take semen somewhere if he needs to, um, if he needs to check windmills, he's able to do that. And uh he doesn't have to do it terribly often, but when we do need it, it's really important to have. And, you know, this sounds kind of dramatic, but even from the perspective of healthcare and medical emergencies, you know, I have a nephew who has an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts. It was just last month that um he unfortunately was exposed. And so Jed was, we were all texting and he was like, you know, the plane's ready if we need to take him somewhere. Um, and you know, where we are, we just have to be. We're an hour and a half from the closest hospital. Um, and sometimes you just have to be prepared. And layers of insurance like an airplane aren't a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02You recently completed your spring bull sale, March 22nd. You kind of have a set date, and that's common in Nebraska for bull sales. What is your set date for the spring bowl sale?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the fourth Saturday in March is our spring bull sale. The third Friday in November is our fall bull sale. You're right, you have to have your date, and that's for a couple of reasons. The first is that you gotta be careful not to step on anybody's toes. You don't want to hit the same date as another big sale where your customers would overlap and it's just not good for anybody. Perhaps the bigger reason is that when you have an auctioneer, that's like a marriage. And we've been with Joe Goggins, who's our auctioneer for decades. He does an incredible job. We can't imagine having a sale with anybody else. And so our scale sale schedule is pretty dependent upon when he has a date available. So uh we've had the fourth Saturday in March for as long as I've been alive. Um, we just switched our fall sale because he had that Friday available, and so we snatched it up.
SPEAKER_02So uh you sold over 500 bowls. The top bowl went for 150,000, if I'm not mistaken. You did your homework. I did. I look at sale reports. Um walk our listeners through the prep that has to happen for a bowl sale. I mean, some of your social media does a really nice job of showing all the work that goes in. It's not just the auction, it's all the prep that goes into it. And then we'll talk about what happens after the auction. So what's the prep? What's the prep look like?
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah. The prep uh on the cattle side of things, the bulls have to be like show ready. They got to be runaway ready to come through that auction block. We still run everything through the ring, which uh is not a super popular way to do it anymore, but we find that the vibe and the excitement in the seal barn is just unparalleled when you have that animal in the ring.
SPEAKER_02And so you say show ready, it means are you how much clipping are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like we clip for a week, we have to give them all haircuts. Sometimes you use a flamethrower to do that. Um, and you've got to get make sure that their swimmers are all swimming. So we fertility test everything.
SPEAKER_02I like how you phrase that.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's sort of like the most ladylike way that I can think to say it. Yeah, you know, I posted something on social media and I have to say things like semen and testicles and like a scroll circumference. And I keep waiting just to be like totally kicked off of social media for saying these things, but I don't know another way to say them. My vocabulary does not expand that far. So we gotta make sure that they're swimmerswim. We've got to make sure that they're freeze-branded. That's a week-long process that my brother Gabriel is in charge of. He freeze brands over a thousand bowls a year for both of our sales. Um, so that whole prep takes, you know, from January. We're ready, we're getting going on all of that stuff. Um, from the marketing side, my mom puts together the catalog. She still does all the nuts and bolts of that. We have not outsourced our catalog production. And so she and dad sit down and they do the catalog, and that starts in January as well. Um, from the event side, you know, I mean, it's a little bit copy paste because we've done it so much. It's we always say it's kind of like having two planning two weddings a year because we've got to have the food and the music and the venue and like the show itself, and you know, have all the help lined up to make sure that it goes off without a hitch. So that is a little bit copy and paste, but it's also really important to us that we have surprises at each sale that are a little bit different from the last.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's so what was the surprise this year?
SPEAKER_00I we have to think of moments um for our customers to be able, like, I'm like, what can we do to just delight people that have driven for you know four, five, six hours or taken a flight? And you know, many people come from all over the country to come to our bowl sale, like women Nebraska. And so we try really hard to make it worth it for them. This spring we had we always give gifts, and it's always a surprise what our gift to everybody is. Everybody who comes to the bull sale leaves with like a party favor.
SPEAKER_02And this year, you or last couple of years, you've had female merch, as I would describe it, which I think is you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, female merch. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't know. Women in this industry, I feel like it overlooked a lot because um they they just aren't often the ones who are out day to day and and maybe not as much the face of the operation. But look, I know as well as anybody that behind the scenes, without the wife as the partner in the in these businesses, there's no way that they would continue to rock and roll. You know, I watched my mom and my dad together, and like my dad would be up a crick without my mother. So we do recognize the women and also like that's fun for us. So this year we gave, we did uh for the women, it was um a favorite thing. So each of us, my mother, myself, my sister-in-law Jason, my sister-in-law Becca were like the four women in the operation. We all chose one of our favorite things to give to our favorite women who are our customers. And so that was our lady gift. And it was very fun to put together. And we just want them to know that like we see you so clearly, and we're thinking about you, and thank you for all that you do in your own operations. The guys got car heart vests, which is exciting, but not nearly as special, I don't feel like as what the women got. Um, so that's kind of like the event side is just making sure that everything is lined up for that to go off without a hitch.
SPEAKER_02So the sale ends. I assume you just go home, rest, there's nothing more to do. What happens after the sale?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, we always say that we are like bull tail hungover just from the months of preparation, and then we all kind of crash for a little bit afterward. But I say that, but it that we actually don't because we can't afford to, because a lot of folks need their bulls yesterday because their heifers are calving and they they need their bulls. So Jed and Gabriel and Brody and and Brock and like our whole crew, they hit the road in every direction. Um, north, southeast, west, like coast to coast, making sure that the people who need their bulls immediately get them. So I actually just posted that um we have delivered over uh 250 bulls so far. And I posted a question box because uh I've been posting delivery content and like everybody's been everywhere, and it looks like we've delivered a whole bunch of bowls. We had a thousand bulls to deliver between the spring and the fall, and um over 302 total stops around the country. And I posted a question box to people and I asked, How many do you think we've delivered? And most people said, like, I think you're you've already done 800 or 600. I think you're all done. And the reality is that we've only delivered 250 so far. So, you know, there's a lot.
SPEAKER_02It takes a while, a lot to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, so mostly that's what's happening right now is everybody is delivering, and then you know, the ranch has to still run as well. So we're still breeding, we're synchronizing. I think they're weaning this coming week. We're weaning calves. So everything, all of that still has to happen as well.
SPEAKER_02And yet you're in Lincoln today.
SPEAKER_00And I'm in Lincoln this weekend. Yeah, I snuck away for the weekend.
SPEAKER_02So when we first connected, uh, you were doing some direct-to-consumer stuff for Keneally. Uh what were the lessons that you learned from that? But uh again, I I don't think you're still doing that, at least to the same extent you were. But tell us, tell our listeners about any lessons you learned from that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the company that I started back in 2016 was called Honest Beef. And I started that after living, having lived in Boston for several years and realizing to a degree, a higher degree than I ever had, that beef has a real image problem. And a lot of that revolves around trust in consumers, especially in urban areas and probably more so on the coast, just not having any idea what we do. That's not their fault. That is a hundred percent our fault. We've done a terrible job telling our story. PR in the beef industry is really that leaves so much to be desired. Uh, and a lot of that is because we're a horizontally integrated industry. We're not Tyson. We don't own both the egg and the chicken breast at retail. It's segmented. And so it's hard to have one uniform voice to get our message out. I realized that when I was talking to my clients um and my friends on the East Coast, and so I started on this beef uh in with the goal to for every steak and pounderground beef that left our doors to be traced back to the animal from which it came. Um and I it I it resounded. Um, we kind of like went off with with uh with a bang and got some media attention and and um all of that was online. We weren't doing quarters, halves and holes. So I had a third-party fulfillment center and they were doing all of the shipping and it was going all over the country and it was fun. Um when I moved back to the ranch in 2018, we rolled that entity into what is now Caneliangus meat market. And we took all of the shipping in-house and found that after doing it for like a year, that it was not the most efficient way for us to brand. And so we decided to go exclusively wholesale and that it was better for our business as a whole, seed stock and otherwise, to be on menus across the state as opposed to shipping a couple of ribs to New York City. But there's a place for that, but for us, this is a better use of our time. The biggest lesson that I learned in direct-to-consumer beef sales was that it is a game of quality, but I would say even more so it's a game of marketing and it's a game of authentically telling your story well and connecting to people and showing the good stuff and the harder stuff, life and death, um, and just being transparent about it. The other thing that I learned in direct-to-consumer sales is that as an industry, beef also likes to demonize the consumer. That's a really dangerous place for us to be. We like to say that the consumer is so uninformed. Like, why wouldn't they want hormones in their beef? Um antibiotics, which are occasionally used, right? Sure, or antibiotics. And and and, you know, as an industry, we have good reasons to use all of these tools for hormones. You know, if we use synthetic hormones in order to grow product faster with fewer resources, so there's also like an environmental bench that we could take to that. We're we're utilizing less resources for a shorter amount of time to produce a higher quality product, and that's what hormones allow us to do. But the consumer doesn't really like that. And so if the consumer doesn't really like it, we need to respond to that. And either we need to stop doing it or we need to educate better and tell the story better. If we educate and tell the story better and they still don't like it, we need to do something different. So that was a I think the other big thing is that you gotta listen to them. The only new dollars that get introduced into the beef industry come from the consumer. That's the only new dollars that are here. So it doesn't do us any good to tell them, shake our finger at them, and tell them you don't. Know you're wrong. That's silly. You know, you're too that's too sciencing. That's so silly. It's a very, we're gonna cannibalize ourselves by doing that. So I I try to talk about that is that we have to listen. If they don't want hormones, if they don't want antibiotics, if they need to see more proof that our practices are sustainable and regenerative, or whatever the buzzwords are that you want to use, then we need to do that.
SPEAKER_02So I have seen your beef in some restaurants, one of which is Ruleman's in Ashland, Nebraska. How is that going for you? And are you in restaurants outside of Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Ruleman's was a very fun project for us to take on. Our first restaurant account was the Copper Mill Restaurant in McCook, Nebraska, owned and operated by Adam Siegfried. And they also have a location in Kearney. Adam's an old friend. He really helped us to understand what restaurants want and need. And he's just like a rock star in his own regard. Um, we are also in Kincator Brewery in uh across the state for our burgers. And then, yeah, Rulman's Phil Ruman called me a few years ago and said, I'm opening the steakhouse in Ashland. It's gonna be unlike anything anybody's ever seen. And we want to exclusively use caneally beef. And um I kind of said, okay, Phil, like that's are you sure? That's really, really hard. It's very hard to balance a carcass with all the ground beef out of a carcass. You get, you know, less than not 200 pounds of steaks and 300 to 350 pounds of ground beef. And it's super hard to keep that balanced. And to Phil's credit, he learned from having known nothing about balancing a carcass, he learned everything about it. And Phil is the reason that Hive that took off. I had a relationship with Hive. Phil's the one who really closed that deal. Um, and so when they opened August 1st of 2024, they were taking eight head a week, which was a lot. And he had it balanced enough that he was going to High V and he was going through his restaurant. He has a meat market. Um, I think that he had to store some of the outside meats and then in the wintertime work through that. But Phil's Phil has done something that I hadn't seen done before for a restaurant trying to use ranch direct beef.
SPEAKER_02So the Nebraska Sand Hills, uh, not a lot of folks have been there, and that's unfortunate for them. But if we were to try and paint a picture for the folks listening to this who are not in Nebraska or who haven't been there, sort of a describe, if we're at your ranch at your headquarters, what the Nebraska Sandhills looks like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I am going to describe this from what I consider to be ranch headquarters, which is through my mom's office window, because my mom basically is ranch headquarters. So through my mom's office window, you will look out and see a mile and a half view of a lush meadow with in the springtime and summertime, a lake at the bottom of it with swans and ducks and geese and deer and sometimes cattle, heifers with calves at side, and you will feel embraced on three sides by hills that have a steep grade as you look to the east and a sloping grade as you look to the west. Their horizon meets the hills in a really gentle slope. Um, and if you didn't know any better, you would think perhaps from the top down, if you were able to see them, that it looks almost like a moonscape, especially when the grass gets more lush and the sun shines on it at that golden hour, you know, in June between six and seven o'clock, the way that the sun hits that grass and the waves just ripple across it. It it just brings me like immense peace and joy. You know, I'm somebody who has been able to experience what it's like to be not just in a place, but of that place. Like those hills made me in a way that somebody who has not been of a place can conceive. They taught me beauty, and they taught me failure, and they taught me grit, not necessarily only through my own experiences, but through the experience of those that I know came before me and just struggled, and then eventually succeeded. They've taught me success, they've taught me sorrow. Like I've been through so much in those hills. And they taught me about a creator bigger than I who uh entrusts our family with the smallest of his creations that live in the land that we are entrusted, entrusted to be the stewards of. And I think being able to be that uh close to the land and sort of what we were created to do, just from a very human biological perspective, uh grounds a person in a way that's even hard to explain. You know, I'm talking too much, you're gonna have to cut this out. But I just have beautiful. I I just like have so many thoughts about this. Like it's so interesting to me that pop culture has tapped into a yearning and a longing by the millions of masses to be closer to country, culture, and farming and ranching and the romanticism around all of that. Like Yellowstone, for example, has figured out how to that that's something that people are craving right now. And I think that it's because we are feeling so far away from that. And don't get me wrong, progress is a beautiful and important thing. And science and technology are incredibly important to the the our culture and just the progress of humankind. And I would never wish it away or to slow down. But a side effect is that of that is that I think a lot of people are feeling disconnected from something that's innately really human, which is to be connected to a piece of ground and to land and to be able to feel like you have domain over your own life, and that if something were to happen, that you have the resources to be able to keep your family going, at least for a little while. And I didn't realize how they how Yellowstone was doing this until I recently started watching um 1923. Have you seen that?
SPEAKER_02I have.
SPEAKER_00So I'm only on like episode three of season one, and this is the first of the series that I have watched. Um and like halfway through episode one, Kara Dutton, who is the matriarch, is speaking to her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. What's her name?
SPEAKER_02Uh, I'm not good on that stuff. I just watch.
SPEAKER_00So she's speaking to her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law lived on the East Coast and was educated with fancy degrees and lived in the city, etc. And she's talking to her and she says, You have those experiences, but what you don't have is an education in this way of life. You will miss more than weddings for cattle, my dear. You will wade knee deep in mud to help a sick foal. You will drive a hay wagon through a blizzard toward a pasture of cattle and hear them screaming their gratitude. And you will be free in a way that most people can barely conceive. And when I heard that, I was like, that's how they're doing it. They are speaking romanticism to most people. And I say that in quotes when she says, most people can barely conceive. Like people want freedom and they crave freedom. I'm like getting way into the weeds on this. And but my point is that um what I don't even know what your question was, Mark. But my my point, I was talking about the teenos clearly, like, I'm so passionate about this. And like I'm so passionate about this way of life. And I think that it's really important. The the too long don't read of this is that it's really important to me to preserve this way of life. Family farms are going out of business, unfortunately, and they're being gobbled up by larger operations. And it's really important to me to preserve this way of life and to allow younger generations a pathway to come back to their families' operation in order to preserve this way of life. Because as a society, I think it's really important that we don't lose that.
SPEAKER_02One of the things that I see in your social media is family. What does it mean to you to be around each and every day? Family operating Caneli Angus and the opportunity to interact, to work together. Some folks wouldn't want that, but uh it appears to be working and it appears to be a source of joy. Maybe I'm mistaken, but fire away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is a source of joy. I mean, I think that's a lot of the reason that I'm there. It is a source of joy. It's it's so what I say about this life is that it's not ideal. You know, so few things in life are ideal. They're never exactly the way that you want them to be, but it's idyllic. The fact that my dad, who lives up the hill from me, can putter down the road on his four-wheeler and stop in front of my house, and my kids can run out the door and hop on, and they go out into summer range and look for turtles and deer and check cows and learn all of those life lessons is idyllic. So there are challenges, and we've gone through a lot of them. It's very difficult to be in a family operation and try to navigate being siblings or parents or daughters or sons, and also employees, employers, colleagues. There's lines there that sometimes you cross that you need to figure out how to navigate the other side of. One thing that works really well for us in our operation is that we each have a different skill set. And we each have somewhat of our own lane, and we kind of stay in it. I don't have the same gifts that my brothers have. My younger brother, Gabriel, graduated from Creighton with a degree in finance, and then he went to the University of Nebraska and got his master's in animal breeding and genetics. And my brother Gabriel follows most closely in the footsteps of my dad, who has this sixth cents for cattle like I've never seen before. And the way that succession works is that you have to have a succession plan for the person who does the genetics, and that's Gabriel. Gabriel has that gift. My brother Jed is gifted in relationships. Jed hits the road so hard and in pursuit of bidders in order to help market our customers' calves. And that's a value-added part of our entity that really is invaluable. Jed does um our embryo work. He's got a different set of gifts than Gabriel does, but we would be nowhere near the size that we are today without Jed. Same goes for Gabriel. I don't have either one of those gifts. I didn't pay attention growing up to cattle. It doesn't really bring me like immense joy or happiness. I'm not good at it. I don't have the brain for it. But I hopefully have a different set of gifts that contribute to the pie. You know, when you come back to an operation, you've got to figure out how to not make everybody's piece smaller, but at least maintain the size, which means that you need to bring your wage back to the operation. You have to figure out how to make that pie even bigger than it was before you came back. Because when you just start dividing it up, everybody gets bitter. And if you're not adding anything, then why are what are you doing? Don't be a mooch. Come back and bring your wage with bring your wage with you. And so that's something that works really well in our operation. And, you know, sometimes it's hard to say the least to be in a family business. But most times we find that um the value of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
SPEAKER_02Well said. So there's one social media post you did. I just want the backstory on it, in which some of the grandkids, uh, your dad kindly allowed them to shave him. What what was the backstory on that one?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_02Did he because he doesn't normally have a beard?
SPEAKER_00No, that was the first time he'd ever grown a beard messed in my mother's chagrin. She was like really grumpy about that for a few months.
SPEAKER_02I'm married to a similar woman.
SPEAKER_00She's very particular. And um, yeah, dad, so the backstory is that everybody else was, I feel like last fall was like in our neck of the woods, sort of the year of the stash. Yeah. And uh everybody was growing a stash, and I think dad just wanted to like prove his manhood. And so he grew up, dad grew like this full grisly beard, and um, you know, then he I think he got hot. He let the grandkid shave it. That's sort of all there is to that. It looked fun. Yeah, it's really cute. Yeah. So I did not cry.
SPEAKER_02Just maybe a little bit. So you are, in my opinion, one of the industry's best when it comes to social media. How did you come to be a master in social media?
SPEAKER_00Oh, Mark, I am not a master in social media. Yes, you are. And social media, I am not. I promise I'm not. Um, I've really leaned into this, I would say, in the last year. Like it was a year ago. It was, I would say it was a couple years ago that I realized that um we had an asset that we weren't leveraging, and that was our story. And a lot of people in agriculture have this rich multi-generational story, and it's a really romantic one to tell, and it connects to a lot of people in different ways. The fact that so many of us are back on our operation makes that story even richer, in my opinion. The fact that we have so many different characters and storylines almost, it's really fun for me to tell. Um, and frankly, like not none of us. It was a year ago that I was kind of like, guys, we can't not do this. Like, we had an empty Facebook placeholder page that people would like check into and we would wish that they didn't. We like didn't have an Instagram account. We weren't, we just weren't anywhere because like nobody really wanted to do it. When you were in established business and you already have a reputation to then like have zero followers on these social media platforms, like nobody really wants that. Right. And so it was a year ago that I was like, we guys, like, I will do this because I think I like it, I think I can do it, but you all have to be comfortable with the camera rolling and with me, you know, being in your face and asking you questions. And it's been a learning curve. And, you know, we're like everybody's slowly getting more comfortable with it. But I just enjoy it. I really enjoy the storytelling. I see, I think because I lived on the East Coast, I understand the importance of it from a consumer perspective. And I also love the branding side of it, um, just helping our bull customers to be able to know who we are a little bit more because they only get to see us, you know, maybe once or twice a year if they come to the sale, because they can also uh buy online. So I like that. I like music, I like editing. I don't know, it's fun for me. But I'm not, I'm definitely not a master at it. I hope I'm getting better, but um, I have a long way to go.
SPEAKER_02So, what's your favorite social media platform?
SPEAKER_00The only one that I'm really any good at is Instagram and and Instagram cross posts to Facebook. I think our demographic mostly engages on Facebook, uh, just because that's a demographic of our seed stock um clientele. They're older. So that is gonna turn in the next five to ten years. That generation's gonna turn. And so I want to be where everybody else is. I'm not sure that that's Instagram. Um, TikTok we're on, but I don't want to invest time and resources, energy into it until I know it's here to stay because it just feels a little volatile right now. I don't know exactly what the future of TikTok is. But TikTok is a platform that, man, it's so different. Like I will post something on there, and I think I get the most authentic engagement and questions on TikTok. Um, and I I I have not figured that out. But you know, I'm always like, oof, do I need to be on? I know Snapchat, I'm not on Snapchat, but I know Snapchat has like a reels thing, and I'm like, oh, do I need to be there? I don't really want to be. But so the answer is Instagram because that's the only one that I'm any good at.
SPEAKER_02So your music choices are unique for AG, I would say. That's again my opinion only. So how do you come up to your the music that you often uh have accompany some of your Instagram posts?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, thanks for noticing that. Okay, I think that I do that because, well, for a few reasons. It helps to use trending audio, it helps the performance of your reels to use trending audio. And I usually like the trending audio. You're right, it is not like Western country, 90 country. It's not, it's not at all. And I do that for a couple of reasons. Like, number one, because I enjoy it. Like I like creating things to those beats, but I also don't want to appear like we're so Western, because we're not. Like I am like a, I always say I'm like a city mouse who happens to live in the country. I love, yeah. Like I feel like I'm really, I don't want to, I don't want to portray that we're like super different from from the folks that we're ultimately feeding in more urban areas because we're we're super not. Like me and my mom and my sisters-in-law, like we love going on trips and like going shopping and getting dressed up and getting our nails done. Like, I am not like a ranchy, I mean, sometimes I can be, but I I'm not like that's not me. I want I can relate to all the girlies who live in the city. And I think like my brothers are like that too, though. And maybe that's something that makes us a little bit unique, is that we we just like are a blend of of like city and country, like Gabriel. Um Gabriel played basketball at Creighton. We both went to Creighton. He has like super city friends, and Gabriel is just like that as well. Um, and so that's it's just natural. Like it's not that I'm trying to be like, ooh, like look how cool I am. It's just it's just like what I like. And I think also a way for us to bridge the gap between um somebody feeling like we're so country, so western, and the lives that they know and can relate to.
SPEAKER_02So if listeners want to follow Ceneely Angus on any of the social media platforms, where should they go?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, at Kenealy Angus, C-O-N-N-E-A-L-Y, Angus, uh, on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
SPEAKER_02You're in town, town being Lincoln today. Uh, you I believe you gave a presentation to the Nebraska Junior Angus Association. Well, what was your presentation about?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's tomorrow morning. And it's tomorrow morning. It's going to be it's too. I think so. This is actually really helping me to prepare because a lot of the talking points are the same. They gave me total attitude to talk about whatever I wanted in the keynote. And I just chose that I wanted to speak about multi-generational operations. And just like I was talking about before, a lot of these kids that I'm gonna be talking tomorrow are um high school and college students. And so I'm gonna implore them. Like, I know a lot of you want to go back to your family operations, but please bring back your wage in order to have a successful operation ultimately. Um, so I'm gonna talk a lot about that, and then I'm gonna talk about telling their story, just like we tell our story and tell their story to folks who might be their direct customers, whether they're in the bull business or the beef business or whatever. And then also as a favor to the beef industry, as I alluded to our image problem prior, as a favor to the beef industry, tell your story to the people that we're ultimately feeding. Even if it feels like you're talking about something that is elementary, that your direct customers would like very clearly already know the story behind. Still tell it. You know, I try to talk about everything as if I'm Speaking to somebody who has no familiarity with agriculture, with beef, with ranching, with cattle. So if I'm talking about breeding or calving or our embryos, our DNA, whatever I'm speaking about, I try to speak about it frankly, like as if I'm trying to explain it to myself because I'm I don't know a lot of this stuff. And so I try to just tell it as if I'm speaking to somebody who doesn't have any background on it. And so that's what I'm trying to tell them is bring back your wage and tell your story authentically.
SPEAKER_02So let's step back a little bit, not focusing on Keneally Angus, but the industry at large. What do you see as the greatest opportunities for the beef industry in the US in the coming years?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, over the last five to 10 years, the beef industry at large has been able to produce an unprecedented number of prime and high choice and certified things as beef carcasses. Through an improvement of genetics, of feeding, of a lot of things, we have more prime carcasses than we've ever had. And somehow, especially through COVID, supply and demand have defied each other. That the more prime carcasses that we produce, high-quality carcasses we produce, the more the consumer demands that and is willing to pay a premium for it. From an economics perspective, that doesn't necessarily make sense, but that's currently what's happening. So the opportunity lies in operations who have focused on the quality of the genetic makeup of their herd, who have spent years or decades building a genetic foundation that is right there, ready to provide and produce prime carcasses, certified ingus beef carcasses, upper choice carcasses. Their focus has not just been on quantity and pounds, um, but has been on quality. So that's where I feel the biggest opportunity is is for those people who have focused on quality for years.
SPEAKER_02How about the biggest challenges facing the industry?
SPEAKER_00This one was easy. This is that I'm gonna go back to our PR problem. The beef industry has had challenges forever and ever. Amen. Whether it was uh demonization of the fat content, whether it was that it's poor for your health. Currently, the challenge that we face is that uh beef is perceived by some to be harmful to the environment through methane emissions and KFOs, feedlots. Our challenge is to come together as a unified front in an industry that's horizontally integrated, to come together as independent people, have one voice to tell the story about our closed circle carbon cycle, about how cattle stomp carbon back into the earth, about how our grazing practices are actually really great for the atmosphere. Um, there are numbers that get pushed by certain environmental groups that put um cattle's contribution to climate change in like the 13 to 14 percentage points, which is just not true. In the United States, especially, cattle producers are wonderful stewards of our environment. And we have figured out how to produce more pounds with fewer resources. In some parts of the world, like India, for example, where cattle are holy and they're just everywhere and like not producing anything, and they are really just emitting methane, those numbers might look a little bit different. But in the United States beef industry, we do a really great job of have having regenerative, sustainable practices. And that's a story that we need to tell because I do think that that's our biggest challenge is are the environmental um perceptions about beef.
SPEAKER_02So, Hannah, we ask all of our guests this one question. So you get one word and just one word that to you best describes and explains this great place in which you and your family live, where you're raising your children and where your family is raising what is perhaps the best registered Angus cattle and beef in the world. Uh, what's your one word for Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00My one word is gritty.
SPEAKER_02Explain.
SPEAKER_00Gritty tells the story of the work ethic that folks think of who are not from Nebraska. It alludes to what it has taken to settle the state is grit. It alludes to an attribute that is required to have a multi-generational operation, especially from the time of homesteaders and Kincaiders, when you were asked to farm, especially western Nebraska, which it's just not possible to farm the sand hills. A lot of people went broke or starved trying to do that. And I think that is just how Nebraskans are. We're resilient, we get back up, we're resourceful. And I think as a whole, like we take personal responsibility and accountability seriously. And so, you know, I would be honored if anybody ever called me gritty. I don't I don't think of myself as as that, but I think that that's sort of the environment in which I was raised as one in which you were expected to have grit.
SPEAKER_02Hannah, thank you. I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule to come in and chat with us. Folks, uh, if you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or whatever your favorite podcast app is. And please keep listening as we release additional episodes on Nebraska. It's great communities, Nebraska's number one industry, agriculture, and the folks who make it happen. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01This has been Nighty Three, the podcast, sponsored by Nebraska's law firm, Rembolt Ludkey.
