The Angus Conversation
The Angus Conversation
The Angus Advantage: Discussing the Market, Research and What's Important to Breeders
In this bonus episode, new American Angus Association president Jim Brinkley joins fellow Board members Darrell Stevenson and Ron Hinrichsen to recap Angus Convention, what they learned and the conversations had among Angus breeders in Kansas City.
The 142nd Annual Convention of Delegates concluded the weekend of education, fellowship and celebration. The group shares updates about newly elected leadership, strategic plans and what’s ahead.
HOST: Mark McCully
GUESTS:
Jim Brinkley, 2026 president and chairman, has served on the American Angus Association Board of Directors for the past seven years. Along with their children, Crystal and Justin, Brinkley and his wife, Sherry, own 1,300 acres and 400 registered Angus cattle at Brinkley Angus Ranch (BAR) near Milan, Mo.
Darrell Stevenson, 2026 vice president and vice chairman of the American Angus Association Board and native of White Sulphur Spring, Mont., holds strong ties to the Angus breed and a history of activity in the Montana Angus Association. In 2019 Stevenson and his wife, Sara, expanded from Hobson onto a new unit in White Sulphur Springs to establish a later-calving herd operating as Stevenson Down T. Although separated by a mountain range, Darrell continues to breed and market genetics with Stevenson Angus Ranch.
Ron Hinrichsen, director on the American Angus Association Board, has been involved in multiple sectors of the beef cattle industry throughout his professional career and is a third-generation Angus breeder. Ron and his wife, Lynne, established R&L Angus/Hinrichsen Ranch in the Flint Hills of Kansas near Westmoreland, upon graduating from Kansas State University. While raising high-quality cattle, Ron and his wife, Lynne, have two children — Cale and Eva. Along with the cattle operation, Ron's professional career started in semen sales and later moved into animal health sales.
RELATED READING:
Angus Genetics Inc. research projects
American Angus Association Annual Report
Don't miss news in the Angus breed. Visit www.AngusJournal.net and subscribe to the AJ Daily e-newsletter and our monthly magazine, the Angus Journal.
Mark McCully:
Welcome to The Angus Conversation. My name is Mark McCully, Chief Executive Officer of the American Angus Association, and I'm flying solo again, but have brought three wonderful guests in to do a little recap. This is really a special edition of The Angus Conversation. We are literally, haven't even left the hotel as we wrap up a great weekend here in Kansas City with the Angus Convention and we just had over a thousand people, a thousand of our closest friends, Jim, join us. Jim Brinkley is joining, newly elected President and Chairman of the Board of the American Angus Association. Jim, congratulations and thanks for jumping on here this afternoon.
Jim Brinkley:
Well, thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. It's certainly a huge honor to sit in this capacity and represent membership in this capacity. Great, great weekend. I mean, a huge turnout, and the attitudes was really positive. Received a lot of great feedback. It's fun whenever it's like this.
Mark McCully:
It was. Family reunion, I always call it.
Jim Brinkley:
Yes.
Mark McCully:
To my left, Darrell Stevenson from Montana, newly elected into the Vice Chair and Vice President role of the American Angus Association coming off a year of being the Treasurer. So Darrell, welcome to the podcast.
Darrell Stevenson:
Mark, thanks for having us. I really appreciate the opportunity. I'll echo what Jim just said, I'm just so thrilled with the events that took place this weekend and the engagement and the enthusiasm. There was some controversy and that's absolutely fine. We welcomed it all and just so glad to have such a successful event.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely. And Ron Hinrichsen. Ron, a year ago, you were just elected onto the board, so you have just done a year lap as being as a board member and first time we've been able to snag you and get you on the podcast, so welcome and thanks for being on.
Ron Hinrichsen:
Well, thank you Mark, and it's been a pleasure to serve with everybody the past year, and definitely fun to be here the last few days and see all the people and get all the good feedback from all the membership and breeders that came to town, so it's a pleasure to be here.
Mark McCully:
It's probably a little more relieved than going through the process just a year ago.
Ron Hinrichsen:
A lot more relaxed.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely. Well, let's get into it. As many know, the board meets on, in this case Thursday with a little different format on my days. I have to check with my days, but so Thursday afternoon the board came together and had a meeting. This year was a little unique in that two of the committees, both the Breed Improvement Committee and the Events and Junior Activities Committee had met beforehand via virtual meetings or a couple topics that wanted to pick up in a timely fashion.
One of the committee topics was, or the Breed Improvement Committee met to discuss the dollar value indexes in cases where we had component traits, component EPDs unprinted. And this is a discussion that had started really back in September, but it was a topic, I think we just scratched the surface of it in September and the committee wanted to pick it back up and have a little discussion with it here again before we wait all the way to February. Team prepared some data and showed you guys some data of just one of those topics to continue to look at.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yes. So serving on breed improvement, I mean, we chose in September, we had just glanced off the surface and thought this would be another opportunity for a deeper dive into it. There's been no decision. I mean this is not uncommon actually through the suite of value indexes. And so I look for this to be continuing discussion to really analyze how we move forward and I think it's bringing everybody into light on what we're dealing with and might hear more from it coming in down the road in February perhaps.
Mark McCully:
Yeah, and that was really the decision was to keep looking at it, keep analyzing it, keep trying to understand and make sure what the implications are. But Ron, as you said on breeding, or excuse me, Events and Junior Activities Committee, the committee picked up a couple topics relative to our Junior Show and maybe ways to increase participation, get more kids involved. Maybe talk about those two decisions.
Ron Hinrichsen:
Absolutely, Mark. It's been a discussion I'm sure with previous boards for several years, talking about family ownership or sibling ownership, and we chose to allow up to three siblings to be on a registration paper and that way they can choose which sibling is going to exhibit at the shows, bred and owned animals. The breeder will be the person who shows that animal in a sibling rule, as well as lowering the age to seven years of age beginning January 1st. We've lowered the age down to seven, so exciting times for young people in the junior program.
Mark McCully:
I think, Ron, you had mentioned earlier that that was a discussion you were a part of prior to being on the board, but years back, I think the sibling ownership rule has been one that I know has been discussed and looked at, and I think just as times change and family schedules and activities are super busy, and I think it was just one of those things we continued to hear. And again, we know in some of the other national junior shows, they are lowering down and offering that opportunity for younger kids and wanted to offer maybe the same thing here at the National Junior Angus Show, so that's going to be the plan moving forward.
Ron Hinrichsen:
Absolutely. I know at our household when my kids were still showing, if we could have had the sibling rule like that, it would've made some decisions a little easier from time to time on which kid was going to get to show which heifer and that kind of thing. And so look forward to seeing how this works and increasing some participation in our junior programs.
Mark McCully:
Yeah, awesome. Well, those were really the main topics, and again, we'll have more of this information covered, but that was the big thing. We really just spent the rest of that board meeting really wrapping up the year-end went through this would really be the first time you guys would've seen the year-end financial reports. As members should know, per our bylaws, we have an audit done of our financials each and every year. And so you guys went through the full audited financials because of course, back in September when we were in session last as a board, those weren't all wrapped up. So went through all of those details and then really again, just in preparation for the next couple days.
Darrell Stevenson:
I'm actually very proud and pleased to report in concluding the year as treasurer that we ended in a very, very healthy financial status across AAA and all four entities actually. I mean, this is quite an enterprise that we deal with, and I hope the membership realizes how much effort we do put into creating these budgets and staying within these budgets. And I think it's important, we will probably mention this here shortly during the annual meeting, there is a rather lengthy presentation, but I think that's critical for understanding on where these bottom lines are and what percentage of our consolidated assets are actually in the investment portfolio. As a for instance, four years ago, we would've lost 15% on that portfolio, which was a loss of $8 million, whereas this year on April 1st, the report would've been a lot different on July 1st and then it rallied and we ended up actually gaining 10% on that portfolio, which made us actually look good.
And across each entity, I mean, the projections almost at every level has exceeded our expectations. CAB has had another tremendous year, the 10th year of 1 billion pounds of sales. AGI has over exceeded genomic profile tests. I think it was up 9%, which was considerably higher than what we were projecting. And I've said it a couple times today, it is just amazing to me that API, Angus Media revealed that by year-end they had 113 million touchpoints. I mean, that's just staggering to me on the outreach that we've got within our own building that's there for education, communication, and marketing for nothing but service for our membership. Very proud of where we landed, put a lot of work into balancing those budgets moving forward, and I think we're in good shape so my thanks specifically to Kenny Miller and Tara Adwell, they work every day on this membership's behalf, so good report there.
Mark McCully:
Awesome, good stuff. Well, let's go ahead and flip then into the opening. We get into the convention now and we're at Friday afternoon, and I got to give a little welcome, but the highlight was truly Randy Blach coming after me. I know that was for sure. And we hadn't had Randy speak to the group here in a little bit, and boy, our timing was perfect because there's been a little bit to talk about in the markets, but I guess, what did you guys hear when Randy was up there?
Jim Brinkley:
Well, I mean, Randy's very knowledgeable and he studies that thing from top to bottom. Exciting times. We all know that we've got record feeder cattle prices, we've got record bull prices, we've got record female prices. It's really exciting. And one of the biggest kudos that I took out of that was Randy complimented Angus breeders on how good of a job they've done in improving carcass quality. I mean, for a man of that stature to pat us on the back, I thought, I was very humbled by that.
Darrell Stevenson:
Truly.
Jim Brinkley:
And to be honest, I mean we deserve it, but he recognized it and he knew where it come from. So cool.
Ron Hinrichsen:
I think the big question a lot of people ask is when are we going to start retaining heifers and start the build back of the cow herd? And one of the things I took out of that, that he is predicting that 2026 will be the low number of our cow herd or the record low number of our cow herd before we start seeing some build back, and before we start seeing that market shrink back as those replacement heifers get into production and those calves hit the feeder cattle market. That's what I took out of that from looking at when maybe we will start retaining some heifers.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yeah, I know. What was interesting to me is through all of his historical data through decades and decades is that if that is the case where we do start rebounding next year, his claim is that market highs are the year prior to that. So he's actually suggesting that all feeder calf market highs, and probably maybe fat cattle as well, are actually going to be towards this year-end moving forward. I found that interesting. And then he was willing and brave enough to actually step out and discuss a little bit about the current imports from some of these countries on how they're affecting or assisting, and it gave some real confidence to everybody in that room, actually, quite frankly, how little it's going to affect the supply, especially when you're talking lean meat versus quality meat, which is what we're focused on.
Ron Hinrichsen:
And also, the consumption of just protein in general. There's a big push right now for added protein in the diets, and the young people are enjoying beef as part of their diets, as compared to when I was in my 20s, and it maybe wasn't quite that way at that time, it was all about lean, and now it's about quality and consuming more protein in our diets.
Mark McCully:
Yeah, no. It was perfectly timed. I think he was able to really kind of give us the big picture from a supply standpoint. And Jim, I think to your point, I think Randy really appreciates the shift. He's seen it, the shift in quality, of the product that this industry presents to its consumers today and recognizes the power of Angus genetics and the role that Angus has had in shifting that mix from where we were. So it was a really good session, and then kind of came together that evening and opening reception.
This was the first, as I mentioned earlier, it changed format. In the past, we'd had a big trade show in a little bigger venue to hold a trade show, and this year, we had a little more of, we called it a vendor showcase, and a little bit more of an intimate setting, but boy. It didn't cut down on the fellowship and the great hallway discussions, and it was, I think, a really fun first evening of seeing everybody get together.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yeah. I was just so impressed with the attendance and the engagement of everybody. I mean, there was a certain level of enthusiasm throughout the building. And membership request was a big part of us shifting to this new format, shortening it, cheapening it up, time away from home, and we heard both good and bad responses from it. I mean, some people prefer the old versus this, and so we're trying to balance this to accommodate as many people as we can.
Mark McCully:
Yeah. Good deal. Yeah. I'm glad you pointed that out. There was a reason we changed, right? It was about that continued, one, to try to manage costs a little better on some of these big venues to try to give us a little more flexibility of where we go to take a day out.
When you have a big trade show, you need to have some dedicated trade show hours, so this allowed us to compress that schedule a little bit more and fit more members' schedules potentially, if they needed, to get back on a Monday and get back to maybe an off-the-farm job. So trying some different things, and continue to try some different alternatives and to fit different people's preferences.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yeah. Give us feedback. We want to know what everybody's saying.
Jim Brinkley:
Exactly. As always, we'd love to hear your feedback on this.
Mark McCully:
Saturday morning, we got up, and first thing was that there was a theme throughout this convention of Angus advantages, and so we were talking about the market advantages with Randy, and then we started there on Saturday morning with the genetics symposium or the genetics advantage session that Kelli Retallick-Riley led and had a panel talking about largely looking down, and some of you've heard us talk about the Imagine Conference that we had last summer and then a white paper that came out of that conference, thinking about potentially new kinds of data that could be collected down the road, new phenotypes, new pieces of data that could be collected and entered into a genetic evaluation.
So some good discussion there, some speakers talking about what might be coming down the pike, and some things we might be able to measure. Were there any of those that jumped out to you as you guys listened to that panel and those speakers?
Jim Brinkley:
Well, I think commercial data. I mean, tapping into the commercial herd and recognizing some of the good data that we can utilize in different aspects. I mean, whether it's congestive heart failure, whether it's heifer preg or wherever, there's a lot of good commercial data out there that we probably need to access.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yeah. We're at a point in time in terms of collecting that data that a lot of the easy stuff we've already gathered up-
Jim Brinkley:
Correct.
Darrell Stevenson:
... and these more complicated traits are just going to get more complicated to be able to collect within our membership. And therefore commercially, well, specifically on the terminal traits, the bovine congestive heart failure, the red meat yield, I mean, we've got to expand out into some more commercial collection. But even more meaningful, I think we can strengthen a lot of things maternally for fertility longevity. There's just so many other traits that give us more access that way.
So that was a big open discussion that we got a lot of feedback on, and it was really the first time that we had talked about it on a main stage. People had heard about it, but the responses were enlightening for a lot of people, and I was thrilled to see that.
Ron Hinrichsen:
Yeah. Collecting that data is always the challenge for a lot of operations, and especially if they're short on labor, to get that phenotypic data in. And one of the photos I saw in the presentation Dr. Rowan showed is using webcams in the alleyways for looking at feed scores and other scores, and I just think that combining things like that perhaps with artificial intelligence in the future may help collect some of that data.
Darrell Stevenson:
Yeah. Well, it really is revolutionary. I mean, as this technology evolves, we don't use machine learning or AI today, but I mean, this isn't science fiction. It's in the works, and there are private entities all around the world that are trying to incorporate it, so I think it's our responsibility actually to be aware of what's available if it's a benefit to our membership.
Mark McCully:
One of the speakers was a geneticist that had worked largely on the swine genetic side of things, and I thought he brought a really interesting perspective, and to what they've done in the swine industry to get that feedback from the commercial side of things back to their nucleus herds or their genetic providers, because he pointed out some of the downfalls when you're not careful when you're selecting. For these traits, you have maybe some give and take with some other traits and some things around litter size and sow mortality and things.
So I think it was just a really great reminder of, as he pointed out, some of these genetics work great in the purebred setting, you get them out in the commercial setting, and they maybe don't express those genetics the same way. So I thought that was just kind of a good, kind of a, "Hey, here's some of the mistakes that we've seen, if there's some things that we can avoid or think about as beef producers that maybe ought to put on our radar screen as well."
Then we moved over to Saturday afternoon, where we got into the research advantages session, and that was really a time where we unpacked. Obviously, through this past summer, we've had the methane research which has been a very commonly discussed topic, and so we really wanted to spend some time to really walk that project through from head to tail.
We walked through the complete timeline, all the things that are out on the website, things that largely have been all kind of covered in the past with podcasts and articles and such, but kind of put it together in one piece up there with, we had Jonathan Perry and John Dickinson and Smitty Lamb all joined for representing some different perspectives, one from AGI, one from breed improvement.
But before we did that, we kind of backed up and talked about just research in general and highlighted I think all of the different research projects that AGI is a part of, kind of how that association and AGI relationship works. Again, we, I think got a lot of really great feedback from that session and maybe answered some questions or maybe put some things in context or clarified some questions for those in the audience.
Darrell Stevenson:
Truly, if you want to find this information, it is available. It's not lack of transparency, but I think this is a motivation on better understanding and communicating this.
And I think that you had a slide up at one point where we've got 16 current research projects going on. I had so many compliments on that with people just unaware of how far and wide the AGI outreach is, and some of them are domestic and some of them are international, and it covers everything from maternal to terminal traits. And so I think it was a real eye-opener for a lot of people and a good learning exercise.
Mark McCully:
You've heard us reference our membership survey a lot, and the number-two thing our members told us in that survey of priority was research, right? So really, I think it stimulated some great conversation. I think it was a great session and probably one we need to do more of. I think I've said it before, research tends to be you start a project, and then three years later, you report out a result, right?
So we're going to do a better job of giving some updates and status reports and just probably doing a better job of highlighting all the different things we're doing and collaborations we're doing, because we know it's important to our breeders and members.
Darrell Stevenson:
I think we're optimistic because the feedback was tremendous. On both sides of the aisle, controversy or not, just that exposure was very well appreciated by everyone in attendance.
Mark McCully:
Yeah. And then that night, we celebrated with the annual banquet, and it was really, I mean, one of my favorite things is the Heritage Awards that we get to present, and we had some really, really outstanding candidates this year and folks that we were able to recognize, and just a great night of celebration from start to finish.
Ron Hinrichsen:
Yeah. I think that Heritage Award is something that's just really good to get to see Angus breeders and the history that they bring to the association and to the breed. The Perrier family in Kansas, I told Tom today that I just liked hearing the story of their ranch and coming from England to Kansas and how many generations that they've been there in Eureka, Kansas. So it was great to hear that heritage story. I enjoy that so much.
And then of course, one that's kind of close to me and my family is Dr. David Hawkins. My wife went to Michigan State and Dr. Hawkins was her advisor, and Lisa and I showed together for a brief while my family lived in Michigan, and it'd be Dr. Hawkins' daughter, and then her husband, Dr. Moser and I, were fraternity brothers at K-State, and those two actually met at our wedding. So it was-
Mark McCully:
You had lots of connections on that one.
Ron Hinrichsen:
... nice to see Dr. Hawkins get awarded for that.
Mark McCully:
Yeah, we got to, of course, many know I spent some time at Michigan State too and Dr. Hawkins, one of my heroes, and we also recognized Mike McGuire from Alabama and Dr. Totusek posthumously through at Oklahoma State University. And his legacy and impact is incredible. And so it was a fun night of celebrating those folks. We also handed out some Roll of Victory show awards from some of the year-end awards. One of the new things that we got to do this year was our Data Driven herd recognition where we brought all of those that were in attendance that had reached the gold standard up on the gold level, brought them up on stage to recognize them. And that was nice to kind of kick off, and maybe for some folks hear about that program for the first time.
Darrell Stevenson:
Got a lot of recognition and a lot of interest in that moving forward. And I'm a fan of that because I think it's going to stimulate even that much more data submissions. Also had the Angus Ambassador as well as Young Breeder awards. And I just believe in growing up in this business, I remember in my teenage years in Louisville sitting there for three or four hours listening to these presentations. And I just respect and I cherish that history so much. But I will give full credit to Angus Media today that it's such a grand stage event with those videos. And you hear and you can see the emotion, that you mentioned earlier, that this is about bringing family together. That, to me, is the point of family on why we're all aiming towards the same direction.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely. So, the Angus Journal will be covering those great stories and honorees. Also, those videos are live now on our webpage and out on our social channels and I'd encourage everybody to go check them out. They're so well done and really showcase all those award winners so well. The end of the evening was the recognition and crowning of the new Miss American Angus, and I'm looking at a few of you guys because I know all you guys have some connections to Miss American Angus, but this was a first this year that the state of Montana...
Darrell Stevenson:
I am so proud I'm beaming right now. If the audience members could see me. Claire Murnin is the first actually from the state of Montana, we could not be more proud. What a stand-up young girl. She just works so hard and achieves at so many different levels. What was not mentioned one time is she is currently the state FFA president for the state of Montana as well. Very well deserved, very proud. And it's going to be just such an honor to watch her progress through the year.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely.
Ron Hinrichsen:
The auxiliary does such a wonderful job sponsoring Miss American Angus and those young ladies are very intelligent, they win a scholarship and they go through a rigorous process once they get here before they become crowned as Miss American Angus. So, there was four really bright, intelligent young women that went through that experience this year. And congratulations to Claire.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely. And yes, and shout out to the Auxiliary. They put so much work into that event. They have their annual meeting here, had a great breakfast this morning and I know this is an important event for them to all come together as well. And Tonya Theis, she finished her term as Auxiliary president. I failed to mention, that's how we started the board meeting on Thursday with her coming in to the board and sharing all the highlights and the great work that they've done over the past year. So, let's switch now to Sunday and the day where we started off with a session... We tried something a little different that we hadn't done before. In an era where we've got this technology, everybody's got a phone in their hands and we gather up 800 people in a room, we ought to ask their opinion of things. And that's kind of what we did.
So, Darrell and Jim joined me along with Jonathan Perry, and we sat up on stage and really kind of walked through the long-range planning, a little bit of some of the assumptions that had been made in our long-range planning process. And then we kind of got some temperature checks and tested some of the assumptions and got some feedback. And it was kind of fun. We threw some questions out, like how long they've been a member and that's one of those topics that we've been kind of talking a lot about here lately.
Darrell Stevenson:
On our membership survey that came back, that information came back to us in September, I can say that we were quite surprised that of the respondents, 20% at that point, had indicated that they were members for five years or less. Where consequently, on the other end of it, 45% of the respondents had been members for over 25 years. And we wanted to take that same measurement in this room and it was probably what we expected. It was not representative of that. And to me this was a very engaging exercise, not just for the audience participants, but for us as well. There was a lot to learn. We covered, we try to cover as many topics as possible. And I think what was the greatest display, not a surprise, but was the greatness of our diversity. The diversity in the type of cattle, the long-term objectives, mating decisions, where they want to receive their information. There was a lot of take-home-
Mark McCully:
Research priorities, improvement priorities.
Darrell Stevenson:
Absolutely. There's a lot of take-home from this and I was very pleased to be part of that. And I think there's a lot of take-home on our part as well. So, I encourage, moving forward, to probably look into something like that and get as much feedback as we can. What did you guys think?
Ron Hinrichsen:
Yeah, Darrell, I thought it was very interesting and you mentioned the diversity of our cattle, but the diversity of our membership as well. The people that have been members for less than five years to the folks that have been members for over 25 years. And just the input that we saw in those assumptions today was pretty progressive and it was really interesting. I thought the answers on some of those questions would come out a little different than they did. So, I was very surprised, quite frankly, in how some of those assumptions came out. So, it was very interesting process we did this morning.
Darrell Stevenson:
Well, there truly is some big picture importance for us as a board because as we move forward and have any structured long-term strategic planning or visions down the road on a per-entity basis or research basis, we need to know where our membership is, if we're aligned with those concepts or not. And so these are good lessons for us as well.
Jim Brinkley:
I felt that the questions that we asked kind of mimic this-
Darrell Stevenson:
The survey?
Jim Brinkley:
The survey. Yes, the membership survey. So, I was happy that we had touched, I mean, in our survey we had touched some younger members because it showed up in our survey and it really didn't show up that they was really present at the convention, which I totally understand. Whenever I was young and into breed, I didn't have enough money to get out of town, let alone come to a convention and trying to start a herd and do all that. But I mean, I was really happy that it pretty much mimicked the membership survey that we'd done. It aligned with it.
Mark McCully:
Yeah. And I think, to me, it's an opportunity for us as an association to, how can we do more for folks that are just getting into the membership, realizing that we tend to go, Oh, well, we'll see them at the convention. Well, the folks that are at the convention are the folks that one, in many ways that have figured out and been around a while, they're plugged in, there are parts of their state associations, which I always encourage. That's one of the first things I think new members ought to be doing, is getting plugged in locally into their state associations. We had this discussion, I got to visit with the Auxiliary at their meeting as well. And I think they see it's an opportunity for them as well, of how do we plug into new folks coming into the breed.
The exciting thing is we have a lot of new folks coming into the breed. We have a lot of new folks excited about registered Angus cattle and being in the Angus seedstock business. And so I think it's something you're going to hear more from us on how we can be more intentional at recognizing who those folks are and maybe putting some programs to give them a little easier on ramp to get plugged in and get engaged.
Darrell Stevenson:
Absolutely.
Jim Brinkley:
Yeah.
Mark McCully:
So, we wrap that session up, we've flipped the room really quick and we got into the annual meeting. And so we brought the annual meeting together, called to order, Jonathan Perry. We're kind of missing Jonathan. I haven't done one of these in a while without JP.
Darrell Stevenson:
It's a lot quieter without him.
Mark McCully:
Jonathan so ably led the organization here the past year, and I know we celebrated that in several different occasions and got a standing ovation at the annual meeting after
Jim Brinkley:
Well deserved.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely.
Darrell Stevenson:
And just a quick comment, I just would like to extend thanks for myself and everybody here. I mean he showed up every day and what a leader he actually was. And he left with some very, very promising positive points in his final presentation and couldn't have been more proud to serve with him in his time. So, his influence will last around this place for quite a while.
Jim Brinkley:
I would totally agree with that. I mean, what a leader. He stood, thick and thin, he was there. He led with purpose. What a true, true leader.
Darrell Stevenson:
Thanks, JP. If you do listen.
Mark McCully:
He may be checked out. He may be like, "I'm not listening to any more podcasts."
Jim Brinkley:
I'm not listening to any more of them.
Mark McCully:
Yeah, no. So, obviously probably the most important thing that happens at our annual meeting is the election of board members. And this year we had 10 candidates that were running for the five open spots and report that the five incumbents were all reelected to serve a second term. So, we have Rob Adams from Alabama, Art Butler from Idaho, Alan Mead from Missouri, Henry Smith from Kentucky, and Roger Wann from Oklahoma, were all reelected to a second term and so, excited to have those gentlemen back in the boardroom when we get back in session next time.
Darrell Stevenson:
You know, I do want to make a quick comment that I was very pleased through the summer, I mean, quite a few people are aware that there was a lot more engagement. There were write-in candidates. And to me I thought it was critically important with that interest level, that more people were willing to participate. And I commend everybody for stepping up to the plate and trying to serve. And there's a big part of the process and we had great attendance and great involvement. There was absolutely some controversy, but we met in a healthy manner, and the debates were helpful and this is how our democratic system was meant to evolve to be. So I was very pleased with how everything worked throughout the week. So thank you everyone for your attendance and participation.
Mark McCully:
No, it was a really good event. Of course, Jim was elected, as I mentioned earlier, into the president and chairman role and Darrell into the vice president, vice chairman role. And so we're reestablished as a full board. Some may know we also get together right after the annual meeting and go through a series of meetings with the board to reestablish committees and to also get leadership positions established within each of those entity boards as well. So again, kind of a behind-the-scenes thing that you guys do as board members that we typically don't even really talk about. And I got to report, and I will point you out to the website, our annual report that's out that the team did a great job really trying to compile all of the stats and the figures for this past year. I was really proud to be able to stand up there and say we had almost 310,000 registrations. So we saw growth in registrations this year.
Darrell Stevenson:
What about the month of October so far? How about that?
Mark McCully:
I did say, I shouldn't jinx things like this, because we're a month into a fiscal year, but October was just, it's the best October we've had back since the early seventies. And it's a lot of bulls, a lot of females getting registered. I think breeders are pretty optimistic about where this market is and what the demand's going to be here moving forward. So things are really good. We ended the year, we actually had, I think about 26 or 2,800. I don't have my numbers in front of me now, new members that joined the association either through an adult membership or a junior membership. So we're still sitting at that. We're somewhere around that just shy of 22,000 number strong of breed associations. Some other stats, we ended up, one of the, of course it's hard not to talk about the markets and the demand and these bull sales and these female sales. They're pretty good, pretty good.
Jim Brinkley:
Real good.
Darrell Stevenson:
Optimism is just swelling at this point. And there's no place that I'd rather be than in the Angus breed, both on the female prospects for rebuild and where the value of these bulls and their predictability moving forward. So just so pleased with our position in the industry right now.
Mark McCully:
Awesome.
Jim Brinkley:
Certainly the bull sales, I mean, prices continue to climb and it's an excellent time to be in the bull business. But I think equally important that our commercial customers has done their homework. They do their homework, they know what brings top dollar, and it's an Angus sired calf and kudos to our purebred guys, but even more kudos to the commercial guys that's buying these bulls.
Darrell Stevenson:
Great times, but we got a lot of work in front of us.
Mark McCully:
One of the things I did get to share, because Kurt Kangas did some great work of putting these bull prices in perspective, and I shared his work, that he put, if you look at the value of a six-weight steer and how many six-weight steers does it take to buy an Angus bull? And kind of looked at that trend over time, and we know these bull prices are high, but we also know these six-weight steers are worth a lot of money too. And that ratio has actually gone down. It's almost at four and likely will go under a four. So thinking about four six-weight steers to buy an Angus bull where it wasn't that many years ago, that was up around six or seven if I remember the numbers. So still of value, right?
Darrell Stevenson:
I mean, it's not new-fangled data. My granddad taught my dad that average price of a bull where a bull sale is typically about five steer calves, and we are well under that with projections of actually being under four this year for those values. So believe it or not, the seedstock cattle might be under-priced for where the feeder cattle actually are. So a lot of opportunity there.
Mark McCully:
Absolutely.
Ron Hinrichsen:
And the data that Kurt showed from the video auctions for the AngusLink cattle, just the premiums-
Darrell Stevenson:
Staggering.
Ron Hinrichsen:
... that that brought, just unbelievable.
Mark McCully:
Yeah.
Darrell Stevenson:
I'd seriously encourage, if you're a member on either side, on the registered or commercial side, if you don't know enough about AngusLink, then talk to your RM, talk to your seedstock producer, because that program is absolutely exploding with demand on the feeder interest. And the more data that's validating it, the stronger it actually gets. So there is opportunity in creating value with that program.
Mark McCully:
Awesome. Well guys, I grabbed you and said, "Let's do a quick podcast." This one's going to be pretty short and you got planes to catch and you need to get on down the road here. But so I want to go ahead and get us wrapped up. I will point you all towards the Angus Journal, towards the website. So many of these sessions we talked about, you can really dive into them and read about them, some great speakers, some great information presented, the annual report, all the details, the financials, all those things are out on the website if you want to go dig into them. But I know you guys are also just a phone call away or an email away as folks have input, feedback, and want to reach us. So guys, thanks for a great weekend. Thanks for all the work you do, and thanks for coming on and joining us here.
Darrell Stevenson:
Well, I'm not going to let you wrap it up quite yet.
Mark McCully:
Okay.
Darrell Stevenson:
Because an absolute final, I do want to extend, not only personally, from everybody, for everything that you do and the staff does. I mean, this is a big effort to get through and it's kind of a year-end conclusion, and we're so proud and pleased with the talent, you at the top, and it trickles all the way down of you guys working on our behalf every day. So thank you very much.
Mark McCully:
Well, I appreciate that.
Jim Brinkley:
Great team.
Mark McCully:
That's where I was going. They make me look good. I mean, this thing has a bazillion moving pieces and parts and it came off without a hitch. So I'm so fortunate. Thanks to all the team that made this happen and that get up every day and work to serve our membership and advance this great breed. So gentlemen, thanks for joining us.
Darrell Stevenson:
Excellent.
Jim Brinkley:
Thank you.
Darrell Stevenson:
Thank you.
Mark McCully:
Thank you.
Miranda Reiman:
And that's a wrap on another fun episode. To see what the Angus Journal team has been seeing, be sure to follow us on your favorite social platform, Angus Journal on Facebook, Instagram, and X, and now Angus Media on TikTok. You'll see special behind-the-scenes coverage and never seen anywhere else video clips and photos. Until next time, this has been The Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.
