Value-Driven Decisions in Ranching

The hosts discuss a listener question about what drives value in a seedstock operation versus what customers value, using AI sire selection and customer demands as examples. They emphasize prioritizing phenotype (especially feet), maternal function, usable pedigrees, and avoiding EPD “train wrecks,” while arguing value should come from matching cows to environment and market, especially under widespread U.S. drought and input shortages. They critique how online discourse and association tools like EPDs and genomics can create value swings, accelerate churn, and penalize alternative programs, and they stress longevity and fertility as core value drivers even though they slow “genetic progress.” They also touch on strategic, limited flushing of younger and older proven cows, and briefly promote Vince’s upcoming Shady Brook Angus sale in Tennessee.

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so it took us 51 minutes to find that record button. Welcome to Around the Shoot. Welcome in everybody. Today we've got a listener question that is, uh, that's kind of centered around what drives value in your operation. But, but for now, we were just discussing how Vince has not seen a certain iconic Western that I think probably 90% of our listeners have seen. I'm gonna be getting on it. I'm getting on it tonight. Tonight. It'll happen tonight. I think it would be an interesting poll if you, if you polled our listeners, how many had seen this show? It'll happen tonight. I'm, I, I may have seen the show. I'm not going out a limb, but I'm kind of feel like I haven't, let's not, let's not name the show. Let's just, let's just try to mix in a couple quotes. Joe, let's, what's some quotes from the show? Lori Darwin, you bastard. Lori Darwin. Yours Pretty as the morning. Okay. It just sounds like something can't stand that I didn't watch. I can't, I can't stand rude behavior in a man. I won't tolerate it. Now. That sounds like something I did watch anyway. Like fun loan, some dove. What do we like? Money. And you like fun even less than you like money if that's possible. What? By God, Woodrow. It's been a hell of a party. What do we, how do, what do we, how do you not, you had to have seen some of this, Vince. I'm pretty sure I have. It's pretty iconic. I don't, I feel like I didn't like it as much as a kid though. Corbin, I, you like it better now? I was scared of blue duck, blue duck's. Pretty terrifying. Still. I'm still scared of him. When, when he talks about cutting out his tongue and feeding it to his wolf pups, it makes me shutter. That's wild. Have you seen the, uh, the sequel? Oh yeah. Return to Lonesome Dove. I feel like the, I feel like that one's even scarier. Shouldn't that be called Lonesome Duck or something? The, you know, I, that one would've been just as popular. It would've been not so lonesome, not so Lonesome Dove Return to Lonesome That move, that one would've. It was the Lonesome.'cause it didn't have the two iconic actors in it. If Tommy Lee Jones would've been in it. I do have a question. It would've been way better. I, I do have a question. Joe. Why do you have a Highlander on your coffee mug? It's a gift from somebody that, or a Scottish Highlander. Not a Highlander like cattle. They just know that I like cattle. That's a cool gift. That is a cool gift. But that's, some of my buck would die in Tennessee. Look at all that hair. Oh, it'd die anywhere. They're all hair hide hooves. That's all they are. So are they? I mean, I guess I've never seen one without hair. Oh no. I knew a guy that had a direct to consumer beef program that was, he got'em cheap. Yeah. And he's like, oh, I'm gonna try to feed you. Feed'em forever and ever and ever. And you gotta get'em in the corral to get your hands on them to see how much covers there.'cause they got so much hair and they're just Yeah. They were not So they're not d they're just bones. Uh, yeah. I mean, I've seen some big fat barren ones. Uh hmm. Like shows and stuff. Well, Lily had some get over here one time my name. Oh, that's right. Was the one named Broccoli Sun? No, no. Broccoli and Sundance were jeans. And, um, that was a Charla baby, bull calf. And I think, um, Sundance was a Charla baby bull calf and broccoli was part red. Angus, you had some of their calves, didn't you? Fortunately, yes. We were able to share those genetics a couple years. Amy, Amy would definitely own a, um, miniature island. I would be, I would've been happy to have shared 1770 two's calf with Amy for sale credit in the upcoming Shady Brook production sale. Is that what her calf was? It was cute. Yeah. It was a JC son. Um, who's jc? Jesus Christ. No, no. JC was the, uh, miniature bull, actually. He was a, uh, red Galloway. He may have been a half brother to Bob. Was he Jane's too? Oh yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so you did have some of You had some of his, yeah. That was what, 1772 had one. Why? Why did you have it? And she was already kind of a moderate rain dance or rain rainfall. Moderate rainfall. Did the bull, did the just get under the fence? Yeah, he went under, he didn't go over? No. When you know how it is when feed gets short places, he took defense with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it had he got that wreck, you think it had something to do with feed, or you think he did what bulls do? Oh, I think it was a combination of both, but yeah. Yeah. That's the hard thing about ranching out here, honestly. You guys experienced that too. Yeah. I had some baldies this year. Yeah. And I just have noticed a lot of my neighbors now are in the recreational cattle space. Where I used to be more like commercial cattlemen. It was like somebody's bull got in. At least you had a saleable calf that was worth it. Darn. And right. And I'm sure that those cattle really have a lot of value for a lot of different people. And that's fun. You do. You. But man, they don't fit any of my markets, that's for sure. So you're saying you didn't make any money on the calves? Sied by Broccoli's brother. What's his name again? Jc. Jc? Yeah. Jc. Yeah. And I didn't ask stand, what, what did JC stand for? I didn't ask. See, I got ahead of you on that one. I don't know. Um, Jamal was named after it was, it was not. No, no, no, no. Maybe he was named after he was not a cattle photographer. Speaking. Speaking of Jamal, my photographer, Andy Higgins had a new baby this weekend. So congrats to the Higgins' and baby Jamal. Listen, it's family name. It's all I gotta say. Okay, what have you. You've been, so this is an awkward, these podcasts get awkward because it's like now we have all this time and we, the three of us should probably be taking a nap or doing something else. We've been up against it, all three of us. And so then finally, I mean for the listeners to understand since we've been on a podcast together, been about, what's that going on four years now? Maybe five. Yeah, I don't recall, but it's been a long time. We are texting all the time, or calling each other all the time, and it goes in waves sometimes. Corbin calls me every day. Sometimes I call Corbin every day. Sometimes Vince calls Corbin. Sometimes Vince calls me sometimes, you know, who knows what's gonna happen. We're talking all the time. We have not visited for the past two weeks, hardly at all. And so before we press record, we sat here for 45 minutes just catching up on stuff, and Vince is in a hoodie. Sophia's room. It's 59 degrees. 59 degrees. It's warmer outside. What is the temperature outside there, Vince? I don't know. It's uh, probably 60. Oh, it's 85 here today. No kidding. Are you guys burning up? Corbin? Oh man. It's really, it's really sucky right now. Did you get any of that rain that just came through?'cause we're dry. We're so dry. It's 70. How we had, so we had, uh, I'm looking at the weather right now and we had a 90% chance of rain next Wednesday, and they've already knocked it down to 32. Hey, we're at 49%. So what's with that? What, is there something in the modeling, in the weather predictions now where they're totally, totally wrong? Have you guys noticed that? Yeah, no, I have noticed it. It's where they put rain. It's like. Somebody was telling me the other day, he said they put rain two weeks out there. So you'll have something to look forward to. And then as it gets closer and closer and closer, it gets smaller chance, smaller chance, smaller chance. And how do we always go from 90% chance of rain? 90% of four inches is what I was supposed to get on Monday, two weeks ago. And then at whipsaw, whipsaw for two weeks. And now we're lucky if we get a quarter inch, went to bed going, well, we aren't gonna get hardly anything. Woke up now and it's starting to creep back up. It's like up around half an inch. There's something wrong with the modeling. And friend of the friend of the uh, program, Aaron Strum, sent me this weather thing and it says, this is not accounting. It would account for Oklahoma. Oklahoma's on here. California shows really good. North Dakota shows really good. And the top half of South Dakota shows really good, but it still says 77% of the United States is abnormally dry, and 56 is under official drought conditions. More than half of the entire country. I mean. What is this gonna do for beef producers? What is this gonna do for forge availability? Tennessee, Vince Tennessee is pretty droughted up on this map that I'm, we're dry. Kentucky's better. Kentucky's a lot better. We're dry. We're dry. You know, I think, I mean, you can attribute it's, it's not just been this year though. I mean, if you look back over the past, I'd say five or six, there's been a great part of this country that's been in some sort of a drought. I mean, this is our fifth year in a row of being, we got paid on it four years in a row, or three maybe. But this is the fifth year in a row now. Okay, so here's one. I wanted to talk about this as a topic and I'm just gonna bring it up. So this would be one of those, what do we call'em? Vignettes, right? Mm-hmm. Um, good news to our listeners. Some of them haven't even been in the business long enough to see this, but our good friend, Al, the poster, has resurfaced. Oh. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Where's he been? Have you seen this, Vince? No. Ha. How? Oh my gosh. Oh, it's because you've been, it's because Vince has been so busy doing all this stuff. He's, it's been videoing cattle and getting ready for his sale, but I wanna spend some time talking about that and tie it back into drought. I mean, this guy has gone completely, I, I talked to him in the old days. He was a nice gentleman. We had a good visit, but he's gone completely off the rails. If you don't raise Iowa cafes that finish at 14 months, at 1800 pound prime yield, grade one carcasses, you have no place in the industry and you make dog food. And I'm sure he'll find a way to get ahold of one of these snippets and he'll flip out about me. I hope he does. It'll get some plates. I hope he does too. I hope he does too, because we have enough of a listener base to think, dude, just shut up. But I don't understand. With all of these environmental constraints that we have and all these seasonal changes, how do you even build a cow for the future anymore? We all think that we need to produce more tonnage, and I agree with that. And we need bigger steers and we need bigger production because of the cost. Just like coal mines got bigger and all that, but who's gonna graze the corners? We, the, the fertile farm ground now is in competition for data centers, for uh, right wildlife, for conservation companies, all this stuff like, we're gonna have to graze as, as a nation's cow herd, crappier country all the time or go to confinement. Those are the options. And I guess this gentleman thinks that we should go to confinement. I don't say anything against that. Fine. If you want to do that, that's fine, but what about the cows out in the country? What's she gonna look like? And I, I actually think Corbin, she needs to be a practical sized female, which I don't know for my country, I know that 1200 pounds straight up is not a practical size. She needs to be bigger than that and she needs to raise a big sail, whopping steer that's as big as we can get without making the heifer mates bigger. Is that fair? Yeah, as as big as as many pounds of tonnage as you can put into a calf without that cow being open. And the great thing about this is that's, it's kind of a moving target and kind of what you're getting at is 56% of the US has been in a drought. So there's some cows that, that have been cold from our program that probably of, if they had been dealt a little bit better hand would still be around. But I'm, I'm kind of for running'em with the, with what the environment says they should be run as. And uh, yeah, we don't have as much, uh, we don't have as much feed around, so that kind of screws us up. But I think there's a lot of people to feed. So, I'm sorry. You could just put cows only in Iowa and you still wouldn't if there's not enough space. We got a lot of great listeners in Iowa. I mean, if that's your bag for sure. It's all good. It's all good. Yes, you're close to the corn. That all makes sense. I get it. Me too. But what we're trying to say is, I, you should not, you should be matching. I I think that my personal prescription is match what you have to your environment and your market. That's so there's a, there is, this has nothing to do with what you were just saying. I guess it has a little bit to do with it. They're, some of these commodities are becoming very hard to get. If you can even get them, um, like cotton seed hulls and cotton seed, you can't get that. You can't hardly get it anymore. And peanut hole pellets that might be remedied. I think there could have been a plant down or something. But peanut hole pellets were hard to get ahold of for a while. Um, they having, what were they doing with them? Uh, same thing as the cotton seed holes just kind of a filler. No, no, no. What, what are they doing with them? Oh, I don't know. I don't know what they're doing with them. I really don't, they just can't. I mean, the cotton places are shutting down. Right? Um, are they valuing up into higher value crops or is it a labor issue? Um, I'm not sure. I just know that you can't hardly get'em. It took me over a year to get a load of cotton seed holes and when I finally did, I had to pay out the nose for it. So What about fertilizer? Are you getting whacked by that right now? Well, it ain't cheap, but thank goodness my co-op bought a bunch when it was cheaper. What about diesel? Um, diesel's going down around here. Are you serious? Yeah. It, it dropped like 50 cents the other day. Oh, it hasn't hit this Hasn't done that here yet. What about so, so big Al's back. Big Al made a post some. What do you think? Listen, so he makes this post on this page. And then people comment at him for a while. The post is done dead and gone. Four days later, he comes in and says some other mean thing, like to no one. He just posts another comment under his post. Do you think Ricky's coming back? Because I miss Ricky. Oh, Ricky. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Those were the good old days. Weren't that? Did you know we're getting old? God, that was like seven years ago now. Why that long ago? It, I think it was pre COVID. Oh, that was so good. We miss him. No, isn't that funny though? How this Angus history, like it's like the history of a college. Yeah. There's trends that kind of go, but the students flop every four years and there's like. Yeah. Oh, he's back. It's like, could you imagine being a professor where you have to teach, like at these Ag colleges, for instance, you have to teach these guys all the same lessons, every single. So the people that are still here for more than four to six years are the professors. Yeah, that's right. Right. Or we're the long-term students that never graduate. Maybe it could be, yeah. Good luck to, this is why we have management issues, I guess. What are we talking about today? Corbin already teased it. We're talking about something and I don't remember what it was, but the owl piece, I just, yeah, it just blows my mind how it, it also just blows my mind how nasty people have gotten online. It's just like, and I do think he would say it to your face, though. I, I do think he would say it to those people's face. He was. I do too. But it's just so ignorant. So ignorant of the industry. And I also don't think. He can back it up physically. So I think that would be a problem if he did say it to someone. What if he knows karate? What if he's that Grace? Did y'all see this about that girl in the pizza joint? Grace? No. What happens? He said no, these, I don't know where the pizza, I don't know where it is and I don't. I've looked and looked and looked for the video and I can't find it. So these four or five girls roll up and come in this pizza joint where she's working the jumper? Yeah. And she's been training MMA and she smashed them all. All four or five of'em. Well, what about now the, the kids' mothers are trying to sue her. She's fighting with a deadly weapon, huh? What about maybe their kid? Maybe the kids shouldn't have been there to try to jump her, right? If the kids were at home or doing whatever they're supposed to be doing and not out causing trouble, it wouldn't be an issue, would it? Right. Especially if it wasn't on camera, you might have a better argument. I haven't found the video yet. I saw a real, just a snippet. And she smoked this girl that came at her. Good. Absolutely. Yep. So, okay, Corbin, you're gonna lead us into our topic. We had to talk about it. Our banter is kind of boring this time because we bantered before we got on here. But why don't you tease it and let's see if we can do a good job with it. So we, uh, we did have a, a podcast on consistency. And I think that this, this topic is kind of related to that a little bit. Um, like a cousin, a distant cousin. It's a cousin. It's a cousin, okay. But Josh was listening to that episode and he got to thinking, and he asked me this, he said, what drives value for you in your own operation versus what drives value for your customers? Now what he is getting at by that is. He said, some people can say consistency, but the reality is, every year guys sell top end bulls out of just cows in their operations. So what made that bull be a high end seller? Was it numbers? Was it muscle? Was it frame? There's so many commercial guys that just don't look at the bull regardless of what the cow is. So does he really do? Do we want to talk about what really drives value in our operations or what we place value on? Or both? See, that's the thing. Everybody play looks at value differently. You know, some people just rely heavily on EPD. Some people do not rely on EPDs at all. So you know, there's different things, what you consider to be valuable. Well, let's start with this, Vince, why don't you start with the things you personally value when you're looking for an AI sire to use. I think he's gotta have the phenotype look, I think he's gotta have a good mother behind him. I think he's gotta have a pedigree that I can live with, and then he has to be in 36 traits. He's gotta be in top 1%. No, I'm just kidding. Um, the EPDs, you know, as long as they're not gonna crash me, it depends on how good the bull is. Um, if it's a bull that I just, golly, I'm just infatuated with and I gotta use him and the actual data is saying maybe opposite of the EPDs or something like that, then I'll still use him and just try to manage the EPDs. Um. But I, the EPDs are, I just gotta make sure I don't get a train wreck. Okay. So I wanna follow up with what, go ahead, Corby. Go. What's correct. So just on the EPD deal and I just, just to comment on that. Yeah. There's no way to avoid a train wreck at this point because I understand that, but I, let me, I guess, let me explain. Um, I think I said this before, like you could have a pedigree that the sire is a good milker. The mother's a good milker, the but genomics comes back and says, this bull is a 12 or whatever, milk. Okay? You people are not gonna buy those bulls if they think they're gonna suck all the milk out of their cow herd. You see what I'm saying? If they're gonna retain females. Whether that's accurate or not, they're not gonna give that bull a hard look. Does that make sense? We can argue that that milk, EPD is bologna all day long, but to people, you know, if you could carry him out there and show him 12 milking sisters, or 12, you know, whatever daughters of this bull, okay, maybe, and they're all sitting there milking hard. Maybe the guy says, okay, well I can buy into that. Well, I think, uh, I think you make a good point. I think it's important to try, if you have something you believe in that's a 12 milk and this, this, this cow family traditionally milks better than what the EPD says. I think it's important to try to convey that message to your customer. Yeah, but it, you can't talk over the talk to every single person all time when you're, but, but we're talking, selecting an AI sire. Whenever you go look at one and you say, oh, he is a 12 milk. Maybe I should, maybe that just rules him out. I I could, I could get, I mean, I, I understand that. I mean, what about Angus dropped a, a ai So down to three. Yeah. Yeah. That's no-go zone. I can't, I can't do that. Well, no kidding. But does he really a three regardless, just you just saying that's what, regardless, that's what I'm saying. They cut his head off when they dropped him to a three. The unfortunate thing is, I already used him and have daughters. I did. They're better than a three. Well, they might not a four though. They might not be a four, but when you have bulls, the daughters, the daughters, you can, if you have a daughter that has a low milk EPD and she's wet when you're trying to sell her, people can look at that and say, okay, I like that. Right? I don't care what the piece of paper says. Yes, I like that. But on a sire, you cannot. Right. That's the, the only thing's Correct. The only thing you could do is paint the, paint the picture for him to say, Hey, his SI's wet. Correct. His mother's wet. And I'm just using that as an example. No, I get it. I understand. I mean, you could, you could say the same thing for the foot EPDs or the, the Tet and Utter EPDs or Hair Shed. I mean, you're not gonna know any of that until you dive into it and get it. So does, what's frustrating is that those numbers still, we've still, and, and I, I'm not gonna beat up the association. I've been down that path enough and I'm not going to, but we keep screaming sort of that they're tools. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. But I'll tell you what, you get in a 95th percentile for a Tet and Nutter, and that's a black mark on you. That's a black mark to overcome because if, if we assumed, which I, I'm not gonna say that we do because we know that there's bad under Angus cattle out there. But if we assume that Angus are generally good uttered, maybe there's not that much of a difference between a top 1% and a 95. And we're just saying as a tool, this is a way for you to improve. But you've got that black mark on that animal now at the 95 percentile and people have shown that number, it is going to create a tremendous amount of value discrepancy. Correct. The unfortunate reality too to that is that the more I see some of these EPDs be used, like if I know the interim, like on my own, if I know the interims and the interims are worse than I think they should be, and they generally with that genomics, it generally makes'em go up. So. That's the unfortunate reality is I've seen those numbers be, those genomics actually be correct, uh, quite a few times. So it's hard. It'd be hard for me to overlook it for sure. So wouldn't it be nice if they, the association would just come out and say, you know what, these here, these certain EPDs or all EPDs are not as accurate. Do not, do not wholeheartedly believe 100% this is just a guide. Or pick a few certain EPDs like the the Tet Nutter score. Hey, only, only a few people are, have turned data in. We really need you to turn the data in. This is not wholeheartedly Still go look at the animals. Maybe like a, maybe on the ones that. Aren't set that they don't have a lot of data on. They could put like a little asterisk or something in the pedigree. Yeah, that'd be nice to know. Something like, like that or some kind of deno denotation to where, you know, how much like, okay, this one's pretty young. You know? I mean, there's not a lot of data on this something, I don't turn it in. I don't have time to turn all that in. As you guys start wrestling through this, I still just get to a spot where I'm like, it is preposterous to me that a breed registry differentiates value. A livestock. We don't need to like, it just, it blows my mind and our cattle. I think when I speak, when I say our, it's me personally, our cattle have kind of a middle to upper third of marketability EPD profiles, so I'm not complaining there. Right. We, we, we have a decently marketable set of EPDs. But I think about some of these producers who are doing what they're convicted in, um, and they've got twenties and thirties on yearling weight. I mean, those folks, can you imagine trying to sell that? Can you imagine? Oh, they're, they're, they're swimming upstream against the large marketing giant that is the association and then every breeder that falls in line with it. I mean, I don't know why those people, I commend them for staying committed, but I would be incredibly frustrated if I were them to say, Hey, I still pay my dues. I still donate to the foundation, or whatever they do. Like they're, they're contributing data and their cattle are marketed against so, so heavily and, and we see it through, I'm hearing more this spring about the, the Gene Max marketing or the GMS scoring system and wanting to differentiate value from an association's perspective at the feeder calf level. It's gonna end up being at the replacement female level. I mean, man, I just. It's very, very frustrating, but that's not what we're talking about today. I wanna circle back, Vince, and, and run down the list that you said, because I want to get back to Josh's question about differentiating value within your programs.'cause I think we have something unique here to, to kind of parse out. Vince, you said for me, when I look at Cys, it's the phenotype or the look, the mother, the pedigree I can live with. And then are the EPDs good enough is basically what you said. So let's go through, uh, well, I left off, I left off one thing too. Be honestly before all that, I mean, the look attracts me and gets me digging into the animal. But he's gotta have good feet. Oh, sure, sure. Okay. He's gotta have good feet, so, we'll, we'll put under phenotypes. We'll also Sure. I thought you were gonna say he is gotta be Angus. No spots on the any anymore. I dunno. First and foremost, we're we're also, but, but we're gonna say that phenotype includes things like how particular you are about feet, right? How particular you are about, that's in the phenotype, how Right, how particular you are about tt size, those sort of things. The mother would include mothering ability and stuff like that. So, okay. If we were to think about your customers though, your customers driving value and the things that they purchase from you, how much do they care about this? The phenotype things? I, you know what I, I think, uh, I think this is where we get back to trying to sell them for the maximum amount of pounds we could sell'em in within our environment without having open cows. I think if you dumb it down to being that simple, um, if we're sorting for that and then our customers are also sorting for that. Then we're, we're, we're all going in the same direction. And that seems like a good idea to me. And is it the same with bulls that is females Not for me. Well, no, it's a lot of similarities. Okay. So how are they similar? The fertility, the feet, uh, the phenotype. Yeah. They gotta have, they gotta look the part, they gotta have the pedigree. And when I say the pedigree, I want good damn stacked in there. Mm-hmm. You know, or good sire stacked in there. And when I, when I make the comment a pedigree I can live with, what I mean is if it's a little bit outside of the box for me, maybe there's a couple of things in there that I'm not overly wild about, but I'm not overly against. Does that make sense? Because we've been talking a lot here lately about trying to think outside the box on some of these sis. Um, she's still gotta have good feet and good legs and good udders. Right. Just like I would want the Bull's mother to have. Mm-hmm. She's still gotta be hopefully fertile. Well, you hope that the bull's fertile too, right? I mean, really It's almost all the same. It's very similar. Do you have some EPD flexibility with the females though? Yes. Birth weight, generally I can. I can handle a high birth weight. I can handle a high birth weight cow because there's a lot of bulls out there. You can drag that birth weight back down with mm-hmm. A high birth weight bull, if you only have so many cows in your herd that you can tolerate that like a five pound bull. I generally try to use him on anything that's under A one, A one and under on my, in my herd. So when I'm sorting, who's gonna go with this bull and who's gonna go with that bull that weighs in heavily. So I don't make a lot of six pound,'cause I don't wanna put a five or a six pound or four pound cow with a four pound bull because I'm gonna make, if she has a bull, I ain't gonna be able to sell him. Not in Tennessee. He'll probably be a plus 10. 1.2 birth right In all. Yeah, if I, I mean as long as I can stay under a three birth, I think I'm good. That's prob, but if you put a plus four birth with a plus four birth, I think you would be absolutely shocked at how many, three point eights, how many. Well, genomics is gonna come back at one sometimes and sometimes absolutely. The full brother could be an eight. Right? And then they got this one over here to one, right? Mm-hmm. Here we are talking about EPDs again, and that's not what we're supposed to be talking about. Joe, I'm sorry. I know we aren't supposed to, but I do think on the female side of things, there's. You're selling to a customer who has to think about how they get value, right? And they can see her right there. Whereas if we're talking about commercial cattlemen, most commercial cattlemen are, and, and I'm not gonna come up with a new list I'm gonna steal for me because it's very, Vince's is very similar. I like these bullet points because I talk about the same things. My customers are not as particular about asking questions about particular cows because they know the kind of cow I want, which is why they come in the first place. And so they're just hoping to harness some growth from a different sire line that I have been trusted to go and vet out that won't hurt their female lines. Right? And so my customers, honestly, I, I think they, what creates value in my deal. Is bulls that are the outliers on type or the outliers on performance generally, you hardly see the middle cut of the bulls that you just go, wow, that's a nice bull. After a nice bull, after a nice bull. Very few of those will sprout up and bring 50,000 or 40,000, whatever the number is. We've never sold a bull for 50, but I think that's also why in my particular program, you don't see a lot of inconsistencies on price. You know, you'll see, you won't see 80,000 bulls. You won't see a hundred thousand or bulls. Um, you'll see wherever our sale average is. I would say that the highs are within, let's say, what would it be, 30% of there, and the lows would be within 30% of there. It's a pretty tight little data set because the bulls have been bred for consistency, but then I'm not, I'm not at all criticizing anybody because some people have found their business model out of selling that seed stock bull for 180,000 to someone. That's part of their, their business model and where they derive value from. We just don't, because our commercial guys want to know that they can, they want a bull from our cows. That's what they want. Then secondly, they go, am I heavy on this SI line or am I light on this SI line? And so that's why I've been trying to use SI lines multiple years so they could buy those so lines for multiple years and then when I've moved on, they can keep using and not get stuck. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. So with that said, if your customers started coming to you and said. We really need more marbling. Are you gonna go out and try to find some bulls with more marbling? I would have to consider the customer requests for sure. And it would just depend on who the customer was. But you see what I'm saying? So like I think you can listen to your customers, but I think you also like taking into consideration what they need and what they would like. But maybe also follow up that with. Why do, why do you think you need more marbling? Right? Absolutely. If you're convicted in what you're doing already, yeah. Then you are, whenever your customer says, Hey, I think you need to breathe for marbling, you're gonna be, you're gonna be like, well now hold on. I mean, I get what you're saying, but this is what I'm breeding for and why, uh, and that's why I think marbling is what it is or whatever, you know what I mean? So, right. Um, I know, I know guys that have a, a, a threshold in a lot of EPDs that they have to meet. Like they might really like this bull and he checks the boxes and 18 outta the 20 EPDs. But like if he's a 0.60 on marbling and his threshold is a a 0.15 for the lowest, he's not even gonna look at him. I'm gonna tell you something. These commercial customers of mine, they are not near this picky. I think this is a difference between. Some seed stock ERs. Well, that guy wasn't a commercial guy that I was just mentioning. Right. But he, and that's what I mean, you, his customers, he's trying to hold that threshold for his customers. But see, you have a lot of pure bred customers, Vince, so you, I mean, if they, if that's what they wanna breed for. Well, you have to breed for, you have to be able to sell'em, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess if, if my customers were like, Hey man, I gotta have some EPDs in these things. And I was hearing that over and over and over and over again. Right. Um, but I've also, I've also taken it upon myself to convey the message of what I'm trying to do within my cow herd. And that's make cal make calves that weigh as much as they can when you sell'em. Right. And if you keep heifers, I want that cow to be bred back whenever you come, preg checker in the fall. So that's pretty much the best. Yeah. But you can, that I try to convey every time I open my mouth, you can manipulate it a little bit. You could take, okay, this, these four cows wait, make the heaviest calves year round. Every year. I mean, year in, year out, let's, let's find a good bull that we can still live with that maybe boost my marbling and breed those and not, I'm not talking about breeding across the board. And then maybe, oh, for sure. Maybe those cows can carry the loss that you're gonna have and weight for the, the marbling part, you know what, what I thought about doing, I thought about doing, because it, I had one customer that that kind of had asked me and, and it was good enough. Good enough customer that I thought we might do that, but just flushing a cow to a mar, to a higher marbling bull. Right. Uh, you know, be, be intentional with what we're doing, but try to se select something with a little bit higher marbling to flush a cow, to make him a couple bulls. Maybe if you end up with a female, you just, uh, sell her because she still has value somewhere. Or you keep her and see what happens. You know? I mean Yeah. It's not because she still might be good, she's still out of a donor cow. Right. You know. So I wanna speak to that a little bit, Corbin, because I appreciate what you're saying and I've been there on my journey too. I, I actually flushed some animals of a different breed. So it's actually a, a much more stark contrast, uh, because I had customers asking for the option for that other breed. And so I went and I did it sourced the best ones that I could find, and by the time I had those animals in the pipeline, they felt like they needed something different. And then I was left holding the bag with something that did not fit our current program goals or where we were at. I'm not saying it's wrong because Right. If you have a, that good solid customer who's always coming to you and they ask for something, you need to be willing to do it. I'm gonna say, now what I try to do is now I try so hard to drive the conversation so that they don't say, I feel like we need some more marbling, or, I feel like we need some more milk, or, explain it. We need some more scrotal. I'm trying to be in tune with them quick enough so that by the time they ask me to zig, I've already zagged. Does that make sense? Yes. And because the, the generational lag time is so long, so I think this is the fun tie in though guys, is to Josh's question, how can you have consistency consistently be consistent when you're constantly kind of nudging this bar all the time? And I think. I don't think about matings as changing cattle. I just think about it as we're trying to build this crop that has the most amount of value and the most amount of value is gonna be derived when it creates value for someone. That's how I think about it, you know, and, and also to that point is it's like, um, how do we drive value into our operation may be different than, you know, what our customers buy is a byproduct of what we're trying to do within our own cow herd. So while my customer may not ask that I value a cow that breeds back, but that cow that breeds back brings me so much value. I'm not willing to sacrifice that for my customer. Right? Like they've gotta breed back or they're open and they're not making me any money selling bulls either. So it's not like I only do that for the customer. Like I have to, I have to do stuff for me too. You know what I mean? I have to do what I have to make cows that I like or make cows that I can live with. Right? And I've had plenty of people telling me, is that better, Vince? Little bit. Little bit, okay. I've had people telling me that they're gonna switch because the commercial customer has become so honed in on a lot of these terminal indexes and traits, and they don't want to handle the coal rate associated with that in their own cow herd. So they're using sex semen for the bulls that they're gonna make, and then they're breeding their cow herd differently with sex female semen. I can understand why people would do that, but it kind of to me gets to the point of what do you stand for? Absolutely.'cause that person will eventually re they aren't terminal. Our end user is not terminal. They are going to retain those females. Eventually they're gonna end up having the same call rate that you're avoiding by not using that stuff and then ultimately they're gonna leave you and not come back at all. Absolutely. And I really wish on this episode that we were recorded on like YouTube or something because there's been, I feel like we've been a little low energy, but we're all kind of nodding like, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I agree. I agree. Because we've been on this journey long enough. It makes sense. Now, Corbin, you've used some bulls that are a little bit of a nudge outside of what you do. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, uh. I think you, you acknowledge some of the flaws in within your cow herd and you know, I noticed that we're getting kind of small in some areas and so I, I go by a herd side that's got a little bit more size and a little bit more, more. Go to'em. Um, oh geez. We're having mic issues. No, it's just me. It's not the mic. And it's better now. Isn't Oh, there you are. There you are. Do you remember, do you remember when I, now back up, bro. Now back. Oh, perfect. So we're gonna get this Wednesday call from Amy that's gonna say that audio is terrible and we gotta rerecord. No, I could hear you pretty good. I can't hear Vince because he is on mute. Vince is on mute.'cause we still haven't figured out how to use a mute button in five years. But hey, do you remember me when I took off my, when I took off my earphones and I had the fake throw a fit earlier when Corbin switched up my microphone. Something's happening where maybe my cords are funny and it's kicking me off of that.'cause you were right. As soon as I switched it to the microphone it was better. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead Corey, what you were saying? You thinkable, was it doable or do we ruin? No, no, no. It was good. It was fine. Okay. She'll fix it. So what I was saying was, I have no idea what I was saying. Okay. So since you don't know what you were saying, I know we're not, this was not the EPD episode or whatever, but this goes back to the EPDs because if a customer comes to you and he says, I need more marbling. And you want to start talking to why do you need more marbling, blah, blah, blah, blah. How many of'em are gonna say, because I retain in, I retain the calf to the rail, I ta I'm taking'em all the way to the rail and they're not grading good enough. That is exactly the scenario I'm in. Or, or how many of'em are gonna say, well, I just think I need more because of this. EPD is saying this bull is too low on marbling. So for my scenario, legitimately, he is taking them all the way to the rail. So what do I do? Okay, well that's different. He actually has a legitimate, and it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be my genetics. It, it would be some of the start of our genetics that wouldn't be, I'm hoping, hoping some of the stuff we've sent the last couple years is doing a little, a better job, is what I'm saying. The, the problem that I see is a lot of people. Do not retain interest on to the rail, but they think they need this and they don't even know why. They think they need this. If they're selling by the pound, they need weight. They don't need all, they need all this other crap. Absolutely. They need pounds. So that goes to the other thing that I was thinking about when Joe was having his issues. Okay. So we talk about all these EPDs and all this stuff that we think our customers think that they need. How much variation is in those EPDs? Yeah. I wanna sit here and say the majority of'em are inaccurate, but how much variation is in the, what is the true difference? Absolutely. In in a, what's the difference between a 75 year lin weight and a one 90? How many pounds? Hundred percent. How many pounds? Yeah, because you can't put a number to it. Okay. Because you're gonna get, a lot of older genetics are gonna be in the 75 yearling weights and all this, and they're gonna whoop the dog nasty out of them one night out of this. Yeah, a hundred percent. I've seen it hands down a hundred times. So why can, I mean, it's like they're afraid. Angus is afraid to sit here and, and try to educate people on this. And if, if we go, if we truly say Angus comes out and they says, we're gonna fix this. We're gonna, we're gonna make the EPDs off everybody's true merits. There would be very little fluctuation in those numbers. Very little. Yeah. It would be so much tighter. Go Joe. And would it therefore sap all of the value differentiation on the high end modern sis every single year? 100%. So this quest of pushing, pushing, pushing. I'm air quoting, genetic progress is benefiting the sellers to an ex on, on the, on the, on the net side, on what their gross revenues are. It's benefiting because it's driving people to buy the latest and the greatest. Here's another scenario. Go ahead, Corbin. Well, let me finish real quick. I, I paused for too long. Can I say this real quick? Yes. Go Joe. Golly. Why do you need to buy the new next Hot Dollar Sea Bowl? If you could go buy for$10 a unit, Leachman right time that's still floating around or wouldn't name the bull, I don't know what he is, right? That's about 200 a bull that produced a pile of semen that was put away all that time. But thank you for the, thank you for those, uh, congratulations balloons, but, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Like it would sap the AI industry wouldn't Oh, yeah. Yeah. It would, which wouldn't So, go ahead. That was my thought. Yeah. Basically I was just saying, um, without the way it is, without the push for more numbers and different numbers and higher numbers and more EPDs, the churn slows down. And if the churn slows down, the energy goes down. And if the energy goes down, it's hard to get. It's just a way to get people excited. The flip side to that is these, these people that are, that don't breed cattle that way, that are having to try to market theirs. That might be just as good and sometimes, and a lot of times better cattle than what is being pushed. Uh, maybe it would, maybe that, maybe that energy would be there without the numbers and it would just be more derived from performance, real world performance. Okay. How about this? You have a calf that hits the ground. You run out there, take a TSU sample as you tag it. You send it off, it's off the charts. Dollar, C dollar, whatever, Ajax, whatever the hell, all those dollars are. The growth, everything top, top 1% in 20 traits. Okay? They try to start marketing that calf before he's even six months old. He, he gets marketed and somebody gives$800,000 for this calf. By the time he's even old enough to make semen, he's on, he's not even, he's probably in the top 1% for maybe five traits, if he's lucky. And by the time people get the first calves, he's not even the top 1% on any of it. You just painted the entire picture as to why they do it, the why it's done, the way it's done. It's exactly why it's done that way. It's so it can move at a faster pace because if we're having to do it based on real world performance, the needle doesn't move as fast. It doesn't, it's not as steep of an incline, but there's not as much push, there's not as much chase. What, what do you get out of that as my question? You get nothing out of it. You get crappy cows and a participation trophy. Well, I mean, you get good cows. I'm pretty sure that's what Eves is doing. I'm kidding. That's what I'm kidding. Josh, I'm, that's why he wanted us talk about this. Well, and don't you think on the female side of things, and I'm just, I'm saying this to say it. Yeah. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. Say it. If we truly, truly, truly, truly valued and selected for longevity, it would slow down, quote unquote genetic progress. And there wouldn't be a lot of cattle out there that really have value. No, absolutely. Because if we made'em live until they were 30 and you only needed one third of the replacement females that you used to have, or even less, then all of a sudden it's like there's no need for the churn.'cause cattle are less than long enough. And I mean, it's just, it seems so counterculture to just be selecting for cows that last a long time and it really shouldn't be. I mean, no, that should be the top thing. Absolutely. That's the lowest fruit. What's what's great. Yeah. And what's great about that is, is it's something that if we all put our minds to it, we can all do it through coaling, no matter what herd cires you choose to use every year. If you use one sire and you breed a hundred cows to one sire, or you use 30 cires and you breed a hundred cows to 30 cires, there will be something out of those a hundred cows that does its job. And it lasts. And if we all just concentrated on the ones that were doing their job, put the pedigree aside, know the pedigrees there, know that there's red flags in certain pedigrees. But if we all went to our, if we all sourced bulls and we all went based on the damn being 10 at 1 0 5 or 10 at a hundred or 10 at 99, I don't care if it's 10 at 99, that cow's still doing her job over a long period of time and she deserves recognition and her sons deserve to be used within the nation's cow herd. I would agree. So Corbin, what are the ages of your donor cows right now or in general? Generally? So my donor cow cows, I mean just gen, just generally what you, you just outlined that you're shooting for. So I flushed a 6-year-old cow this year. I flushed a 14-year-old cow this year. I also flushed a 3-year-old cow this year. The 3-year-old cow I flushed was out of a 15-year-old cow who was out of a 20-year-old cow. So the longevity is there and, and most of the breeding decisions that we make. And then, um, just within the herd, cis we've source. That's been a big, big factor in the bulls I've bought to use on these cows too. What about you, Vance? Do you know the answer to that? Oh man. Uh, nine. Um, nine and seven. I haven't flushed that many this year. I've flushed the same one. You got a ton of eggs. Yeah, you gotta put I eggs outta, I got a 10 year, I got a 10-year-old that just calved that I'm fixing to do. That you're, I did just, I did just, uh, flush a 10-year-old cow this fall for the first time because I'd noticed after it took me that long to notice that she had done her job that well. Right? She's like eight at 1 0 4, and I look up and she's got a really nice udder and she's raising another one. And I thought I just flushed her one time. She made 15 eggs. I put'em all in. Um, and I kept her going. She's, she's bred, bred back and hopefully stays on time. And, um, if she does it again, I might steal flush outta there next year too. But, um, some of these things, it's funny how a donor cow comes to me in different ways too. Um, it's always with longevity in mind, but it's not always the oldest cow either, right? So what about. Changing gears just a tick. Uh, we had a listener, and I apologize, I apologize. I tried to look up in my text, but I had so many texts and messages and whatnot, um, that I, I've not been able to find this guy's question, but he wanted to know what, is it better to keep a mediocre calf out of a great cow? Or is it better to keep a great calf out of a mediocre cow? What do you guys think? Don't everybody answer it once. Oh, it depends on what you, what's mediocre, I guess. I mean, and I hate to say that, but it's like if we're, if we're selecting for longevity and that calf has mediocre performance, then I'm like, okay, I'd rather have a calf with mediocre performance out of an incredibly long-lived female. Now, if you want longevity and that calf is incredible on look, but mediocre longevity, then I don't want mediocre. Right. And, and, um, I also think, I also think for what we do, I'd always rather have a female that. Lines up all the stars rather than the bull that happened to have everything environmentally happen perfect for him. And he happens to present as this incredible specimen on sale day. Um, what you hope though, is that you get one that's in the top third of your females and he is in the top third of your type and in the top third of your performance and just kind of, he doesn't have to be the one percenter. It, it, I say you, I hope for that individual in our program who doesn't fall short at anything. Um, and I don't want to just say jack of all trades. I don't, I don't, I don't necessarily believe that, but he needs to be incredibly well-rounded in those key areas. Like you mentioned Vince of Phenotype, mother pedigree, and EPDs. Um, and, and we've had the EPD episode, I mean, so many times. When I say good EPDs, um, I look at a lot of them. I mean, to me, for what I do, a 40 on milk is not a good EPD. They would be in the top 1% of the breed or whatever, but that doesn't usually fit the goals of our operation. Um, so, and, and yearly weight is another one of those traits where I don't necessarily get super excited if they have 1 60, 1 70. They need to have yearly weight that falls in line with what we do. Right? Corbin? So what's really funny is, um, I think I found a way to tie it back in as to why every donor that we don't, that we flush isn't 10 plus years old. So I think as we do these things and make these mating decisions, we. Get further down the line as to what and closer to what we're trying to do. And that's create the most amount of pounds on the, on the amount of forage we have with a cow that does it right, phenotypically and does it over a long period. Um, so if we waited till every cow we flush was 15, well then we would be falling behind how quick we could improve our cow herd too. So like if I'm, if I'm doing my job correctly, these heifers I'm having now are gonna be better than the ones I'm gonna have next year. Um, now granted, we'll be able to see, and I'm not saying that you, you need to have the older cows that you're working with too, but these younger cows, I think it's sometimes smart to steal a flush and to keep moving that forward. You've got older cow. Older cow, and then she's a young cow, but she's out of a sire whose mother is 10 at 1 0 5 and out of a mother who's nine at 1 0 2. But she does something a little bit better than what her mother did. I agree. And so you want to try to capitalize on that before you let the cow herd all just be old. So I, I want to get back to your question though, as to which one's better. Uh, a good bull out of a mediocre cow or a mediocre bull out of a good cow. And I think that that's gonna differ for me in a lot of situations. It's gonna depend on what I'm trying to do. If I'm trying to sell feeder steers, um, I believe that that good bull has a, if that's, if I'm selling'em by the pound, I believe that that good bull might have a better shot than that mediocre bull that's just out of a pretty cow at selling, at selling more pounds. Um, so I could see that situation work for me where I'd take the, take the good bull outta the mediocre cow. Now granted, um, if I know the backstory about the, about the cow, um, this mediocre bull. It might be something that I could use to make more cows in my cow herd. And if I'm still close enough to center with what the amount of pounded poundage I'm selling, I could still choose that one too. What about a female? So it's just gonna differ for me. What about on a female? At a female? Um, man, so, so much anymore of the decisions I make is just based on production. If I'm buying a cow, um, I just like to see production within that pedigree. Um, and so there's a lot of cows that, that automatically get ruled out because they're heifers outta heifers. Well, I mean that, that's not something that I wanna concentrate on as far as, but if it's a heifer out of a 10-year-old cow, um, that's, it excels, you know, then that's something that I'm interested in. Yeah, but heifer's, I don't believe in this crap where everybody's talking about we gotta discard the heifer's first calf and don't give it any value. Oh, I don't agree either. I don't agree with that either. You know, heifer's gonna have to have a calf at some point. Every heifer is supposed to have a calf at some point. So what if that heifer goes on to be 10 years old and you've kept every heifer outta her. Right. You know what I'm saying? So I guess for one, it depends on what your goal is.'cause I was just thinking about this while you guys were talking. It depends on what his goal is. For two, it also depends, you know, you guys talked a lot on the backstory. Okay. So the, let's say this mediocre cow has had eight smoking calves. Why? Heck yeah. She's not mediocre then I, I wouldn't eat well mediocre to look at. I wouldn't hesitate. Right? And, and then we always go to the Don, you know, our mind always goes to a donor cow. Well, why would you flush a mediocre donor cow to see if you got something good? So I think this is not necessarily towards donor cows, but the other side of that kind of falls towards donor cows because you always pick the smoking good ones to be your donors. And how many times have we decided to flush a cow? Maybe we just bought it or whatever, and we don't know the backstory. Well, we bring her home and we flush her. And guess what? She's just making mediocre calves. I don't think she's a good cow then. How about those ones that, uh, those ones that are just turned out with the cow herd that, that are just out of a cow family that you've never really concentrate on that do it every single year, year in, year out. Best cow, you own, you never flush those because the pedigree is just not quite right. You know, it's just not quite marketable enough. So, uh, it's definitely, so Corbin you just described the 9-year-old we flush this year, you know, it's like she was incredibly, you waited until she was nine. She was incredibly mediocre for her first, second, third cabs to look at. But she brought home plenty of tonnage and just kept working within our operation. And so I just said, darn it, if we wanna really value performance within our program, this female has checked all the boxes. There's some parts in her pedigree I don't just love. Um, but we're gonna do that. And it just sets up the really. It. It's very unique and difficult. You know, there's a terminal program out there that a couple years ago in their sale catalog had a big, long description of how with genomics and different ways of looking at traits of economic importance, and I'm air quoting those again, which are basically your terminal traits. They didn't need to own a cow herd anymore. They needed to be flushing younger and younger females because the young ones were so much better than the old ones. If you're breeding a cow herd that works, you could apply the same method. The problem is you can't vet it out. You can't vet it out. Right, exactly. Corbin. So if you are a terminal breeder, you'll know in 18 months if your selection criteria worked or if it didn't. But if you are a breeding for longevity and female makers in an environment and all those things. At some point you have to get the data set somewhere. So yes, that first calf heifer will be your longest lived female. Some point in her life, one of'em will be. Right. But you don't know because you need to vet that out. Right. Right. And all of her heifers. So that's why we tow this line of when should I flush her? Right, exactly. And sometimes, and I'm telling you guys, I flushed a wet 2-year-old this year because I don't wanna fall behind on what I think I've got here. But it's not like I'm sticking my nose out there so far by choosing, I'm choosing sis like, uh, you know, older proven sis that are 10 plus years old to, to flush that cow to that. I, I know what I've got. So, um, so, so the bull Vince owns from us. Um, that's what happened with his mother was when we really started, I didn't want to screw up her production record. And so, and, and then younger than her was oh 7 2 6. And we been following this for several years now. We'll steal a flush. One time to a highly proven sire, put those eggs in and breed her right back with her contemporaries. She does not become a lifer donor. Anything. And you know, if it wouldn't have worked out, I think she had seven total calves. You could steer every one of the bull calves, you could call every one of the females. It's not really a big deal. You cut your losses right and move on, but you won't have lost that opportunity that Corbin's speaking about. Right. You, I had 62, 11 was gonna be the next chosen one of the Blackbird 60 71 cow. And you guys don't even know who that cow is. I, I still cont pretend he died. I do know I've told you that story. Yeah. Jared Herps was out here touring and her third calf. I'm like, there it is. And there she is dead with placenta hanging out of her throat and I'll have some purist listener that'll says, see then she wasn't the right one because of placenta killed her and we can't propagate these things with a blah, blah, blah, blah. I really don't care. Go lock your cattle up and feed them. That's fun. So you were talking about the pedigree being just a little bit off. Well, I've got a cow here that honestly, if I'm looking at her, I probably should be flushing her. She just made Pathfinder this year, but her pedigree's just a, a teensy bit off, and I think she is better than just a cow for me, if I'm being honest. Oh, is it 50 six's mom? Yeah. Oh five four. Oh, freaking knuck. So I think in that, in that scenario, in that scenario, Vince, I think you do what me and Joe just, just describe, do steal, just, just steal one steel one go. And with the, with the IVF stuff. Yeah. It's really easy to do now. Steal a flush out of her. Yep. Flush her to something you know, is proven. Don't go flush her to some, don't, don't make that one of your wild card flushes. You know, really, really think about that flush and what you could do. And that's kind of what I've tried to do with the, um, so actually the one cow that I flushed that was older, I wanted to flush her because she had only had bulls. And then there's another cow that I flushed because she had had so many heifers and I wanted to see what, what kind of bulls I could make out of her. So, um, both scenarios and she will probably actually this year raise another, she'll probably stay in contention and get another Pathfinder award. Let's go. Either that or you use the sunburst. That's the most economical way if you have Well, I had a son and guess what I did with him? Sold him. Sold him? Yep. Okay. So Vince, your connection's unstable, but what, just for a couple minutes. We aren't gonna, we aren't gonna do what's wrong with I stable and unstable. Anything exciting? It doesn't say on my end when we hang up, I'm going to be booking my flight. Woo-hoo. It doesn't. So on the cover, it doesn't say like the 26th annual or the hundred and 26th annual. It's the 52nd, isn't it? Because he had the 50th two years ago, or was it three years ago? 53rd. 53rd. 53. Yeah. But here's the deal. That's bull crap. It's 53 years. Been in business, not the 53rd sale. No. You've had 530 sales. You had like Yeah, exactly. 10. 10 sales a year. We've had, we've had 18 Dispersals. No, I'm kidding. Gonna say, Hey, I speak, speaking of Dispersals, hey, I would like to thank David Yak for having me on his pod Eckley is great, man. Yeah. He loves your program and he, he's a good dude. He is good. And he was so excited to interview you and I've only listened to about half of it and I was glad he did it and I appreciate him doing it. He was talking about it about a year ago and then he just fell off the face of the earth. Well, I'm glad he's, aren't we glad he back. Yeah, he's back. He's back baby. Yeah, there's, I mean, he occupies a unique space, that's for sure. And you know what I see right here, what I see on the inside cover, the Shady Brook Angus production sale, livestock mortality insurance. David Yaley of Tennessee Ag Insurance will be providing mortality and infertility insurance. He'll be on sale site at the sale. So Yak will be there. Corbin will be there. Corbin will be there. Corbin will be, theres Is Josh come with Corbin? I, I think Josh has come with Corbin. Is he really? I think Josh is coming. I think Josh is driving. I think that's what we decided. When was the last time we were all together. Do you have a Rustys there? No. Yeah, the bistro. The bistro. Bistro. The bistro. You know, the last time you, and do you know the last time you and Vince were together? Never. Never. No. I had a cardboard cutout. We propped up. I was there in spirit. You were there in spirit. No, this is gonna be, it's gonna be fun. I'm really excited. I have not been to Tennessee. Oh goodness. It must have been 2003 or oh four. So I don't think my bride's coming with me though, which is gonna just kind of stink. But we're just, we're really, really busy right now. Is is, uh, Randy coming? I he has a shoot or one of the others that week. I gotcha. No, no. He has a, he shoots, uh, he shoots trap and so, yeah. That's cool. He's really serious about that, and I think he has a meet that weekend. But no, I'm ex I'm excited, um, be out there and go meet a lot of people who've already reached out to me. I will already apologize in advance. I'm, I have a couple places I need to go that I've been promising to go for decades now. Um, and we're gonna try to hook up with those folks. And if I miss your place, um, I'm not intending to, it's just there's not enough of me and enough time to go around. Um, but if you're coming to Vince's sale. And don't look at me like I got three heads. Um, I look unapproachable, but I am. I would love to visit. You are unapproachable. No, I'm not. I'm not unapproachable. Are you bringing the flat, the flat hat? The notes? No, I gotta go get a new lid'cause I'm not gonna take a felt hat to Tennessee. We got Mennonites up here. That'll have them there. Won't be shaped just like you like'em. Oh, they're like jaggedy on the end, right? They're like, no, no, they're Well, they got nice ones. They got nice ones. They're like woven ones. Yeah. Oh man. They could hook you up with some denim. Pants and denim. Coat cover and denim shirt. And what kind of pants do you wear that aren't denim? Do you wear polyester pants or whats the deal? I said whole. I went, I went on to say shirt and coat. Are you gonna wear coveralls? Vince is ha No. Vince is gonna wear a Carhartt hoodie with a Carhartt shirt, with Carhartt pants, Carhartt shoes. That one day actually put a button up on on. No, he won't. Has he has an embroidered button up. I see. I have an embroidered button up. Vince told me I have to. Vince told me I have to dress nice. We need to get a picture after the picture. I don't care if you put on your Crocs. I don't care if you go put on your Air Force ones and your shorts, your swim trunks. I don't care. Listen, these girls, I've got this shirt with Larry Bird. Fucking double birds I'm gonna wear. That's all right. That's fine. I love it because at mass today there's all these, we have incredible choir now. It's so good. And all these kids are going to hang out with their friends and stuff. And so they've got long dresses on and they're dressed really, really dice. And I see'em coming outta the parish hall after bass. They all brought like shorts and stuff to go change it into Yeah, that's gonna be corvin. Corvin is gonna be like dress sorta of nice, but he's gonna have a duffle bag. He's be like, do you, do you have a, do you have a port? You so cor in, you can come over to the house, change your clothes and I'm going to hammer down. I'm not gonna stand next to you if you got Crocs on. I'm gonna tell you that right now. I'm not gonna wear Crocs. I'm gonna wear my Air Force. You know he's gonna wear Air Force once. I'm gonna wear those in the pictures. You gonna get grass stain. Him and Nelly, they are dirty already. That's right. Oh, perfect. Red dirt Air Force ones screams. That's awesome. You would know because they're green and orange. They're blue and orange. Blue and orange, whatever. Alright, well, Amy's gonna love editing this one. Uh, yeah, no joke. I did. I would like to invite everybody out. Uh, Saturday, April 11th, 5:00 PM Um, there'll be some people here Friday night, uh, just coming after Ingram's to you guys will be here coming after to, uh, just kind of go through the cattle, the people that are in town. There'll be people out Saturday morning even though we're not having a sale till five. Wait a minute. I got the most important question. Are you feeding people or do we have to bring like brown paper, lunch sack lunch. We're feeding people Saturday night. Yes, sir. What about, what about the day before? Um, no. Okay. So, yeah, I'll go to the, what do you call it? We'll, to Kin Restaurant with the We'll, oh, kin. Yeah. That one at the, yeah, it's got the Listen guys. Hey listeners. Vince sent me a picture of this outfit. You know those numbers you put on the side of a mailbox? That's, that's what it says the name of the restaurant they got at the hardware store. They stuck them on there, but they, the stupid part is they put that on their door and three feet from the door right beside the door is a nice sign. So they didn't even need it? No. How about Randall? Randall was asking for a place to eat in somewhere, Tennessee, and I tried. I looked all over Google Maps. I cannot find that Jetski restaurant. I searched jabs kid. I searched everything. I was like, I think I played, I did. I searched it Corbin, because I was gonna put it on social media and say, Randall, I hear this place is great. This is where you should go. That's the called, that's just what I call it. It's, it's not s it's something, something Mexican and Japanese. I don't know. El El still shoulda come up. Elham, Padre, El and Padre or something. I don't know. El El. Alright, well also this is gonna come out either before or after Easter. We wish everybody a happy Easter, um, real important holiday to all of us. Absolutely. And again, we continue to pray for the protection and blessings of our troops overseas. And the ones here, um, just keep those people outta harm's way and God bless our troops and those who listen, who are members of the armed forces. Thank you guys for everything you do with that, Vince. Vince, shout out. Shout out to our brethren in, uh, Nebraska who are dealing with the fires and stuff too. Oh yeah. Yes, I was, I was just fixing to say about the fires as well. Keep all those folks in your, in your prayers as well. They're dealing with a lot. Um, alright guys, take it away. We will see you next time around the shoot.