Safe to Fail vs. Jumping in with Both Feet — Barb Downey Shares Approach to Business, Breeding and Life

The balance between applying the gas pedal and the brake — that’s what Barb Downey has spent her career as an Angus breeder perfecting. She and her family ranch near Manhattan, Kan., where they work hard each year to make their “built for the long haul” tagline true. The cattle they breed have to last, and their business plans ensure their ranch will, too. Downey talks about her “safe to fail” approach to innovation, why being replaceable is a good thing and the key to being a good business partner.  

HOSTS: Miranda Reiman and Mark McCully

GUEST: Barb Downey

Barb Downey and her husband, Joe Carpenter, manage a family Angus seedstock operation near Manhattan, Kan. A graduate of Kansas State University, Barb has served as president of the Kansas Livestock Association and president of the Kansas Angus Association.

At Downey Ranch Inc., they focus on using science-based tools, conserving their resources and leading their customers toward meeting the beef demand of the future. They are founding members of U.S. Premium Beef, 2025 Environmental Stewardship Award Winners and were named Beef Improvement Federation’s Commercial Producer of the Year in 2010.

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Transcript

Miranda Reiman (00:00:02):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Reiman with my co-host CEO of the American Angus Association, Mark McCully, and winter has arrived, Mark.

Mark McCully (00:00:14):
It's very pretty. If you like snow on trees here in St. Joe today. So yeah, we've got kind our first significant snowfall in St. Joe. I was back in Ohio for Thanksgiving and got to see a little more snow back that direction, but I know a lot of our folks up to the north Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota got some pretty significant snowfall here over the last couple of days.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:37):
That's right. We got a foot up in Minnesota when I was back visiting family and my kids were thrilled about it as kids always are at the first time.

Mark McCully (00:00:45):
They always are.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:46):
Yeah. My dad always says because they weren't out working in the snow,

Mark McCully (00:00:50):
Just go get to play in it.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:51):
That's right. Well, we've only have a few episodes left in the season, which I can't believe this fall has completely flown by, but we had to get this one scheduled in between guests that you're hosting at the office this week. Why don't you tell me who's in the office and what this Herdsman Bootcamp was sort of developed this whole time while I was on maternity leave. So you're going to tell me about it firsthand?

Mark McCully (00:01:14):
Well, it's kind of a new idea. Yeah. The Herdsman Bootcamp is something that we've talked about a little bit here over the last few years and around, we know we've got folks new to the business and specifically those folks that are managing or herdsman for a registered outfit that there's a lot of the understanding how login works, understanding how do you do registrations, transfers, all the DNA samples and all of the paperwork and administration side of things that goes into submitting data, all those things. And so this is our first time in offering this up. It's a program sponsored by Angus Foundation. We have about 20 breeders from across the country that are in today for a couple of days, really, crash course. They brought their laptops with them. We're going to be rolling up our sleeves, working with the member service teams and the AGI customer service teams and in actually on their accounts and showing 'em how to do things and set up animal groups, all sorts of different things. So it's the inaugural voyage, and we've got a great group to get us started and something I suspect we'll be doing more of down the road.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:30):
Absolutely, it is. Of course there's lots of videos and you can call into the office to get help anytime, but sometimes it's just nice to see people face to face.

Mark McCully (00:02:39):
Absolutely, absolutely. So we are thankful that we had members that were willing to, in some cases brave, some kind of cumbersome travel with the weather and such to get here, but it's a great group and hopefully they'll leave here even more confident and equipped to do the things, but we're always just a phone call away if they hit a stumbling block.

Miranda Reiman (00:03:02):
Also, thinking of the calendar being December 1 as we're recording this, we're just a couple months into the fiscal year and how are we looking as far as, you've got to catch me back up to speed here.

Mark McCully (00:03:13):
Yeah, yeah. Well, October we came out of the blocks registration wise, it was like one of the best October months we'd had since the early seventies, we were way up and so we came off a little of that in November. We're still up over 10% in registrations for the first two months, so knowing that we had a really strong year last year. That's been great to see. Again, a lot of that is in, well, it's in bulls and female registrations as we kind of look at those numbers, the sales, we do roll up our sale reports from the first two months as well, and I think everyone's aware of the demand that's out there in these sales that have been so strong. So for the first two months, so October and November, we're seeing bull sale averages are up a little over $2,650. Female averages are up over $1,300. When you look at the gross sale totals from year to year, just in two months we are up over $54 million in gross sale receipts. So again, excited about where we're at and the dollars going back into our members' pockets to reward the great work and the high demand that they're putting together.

Miranda Reiman (00:04:39):
That really makes my heart happy because as I think about what news I hear out in the countryside, you've had a lot of up and down in our feeders and our fats market, and it's nice to know that the underlying tone is still, that demand is there, strong.

Mark McCully (00:04:56):
Absolutely, and I'm glad you point that out because obviously in the last here in the month of November, there's been a lot in the news and the market has been

Miranda Reiman (00:05:07):
And social media.

Mark McCully (00:05:08):
And social media. There's been a lot of, highly volatile market and obviously things are at a different, we've taken quite a bit off the feeder cattle and fat cattle boards, but the demand for the long haul and with registered seedstock doesn't seem like it's really in some of these commercial bred heifer sales we've seen have really, really been strong. So yeah, definitely not. There are some negative headlines out there, but in the registered Angus business, an awful lot of positive.

Miranda Reiman (00:05:40):
I think I heard you in that last response, say something about in it for the long haul, which actually transitions really nice if you follow the market.

Mark McCully (00:05:48):
I don't do segues well, but I actually caught myself saying that. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:05:52):
If you follow our guests today at all in any of her marketing efforts and their ranch, we have Barb Downey on the show today and I think that listeners are really going to enjoy hearing her long outlook on the cattle business and how they've grown their program and what she's learned along the way.

Mark McCully (00:06:10):
Yeah, she tells, really gets some great insights, some great wisdom things she's learned, things she's thinking about, kind of how they approach their business and definitely a conversation that was a lot of fun.

Miranda Reiman (00:06:25):
Well, we are here today with Barb Downey headed down to Kansas. We understand Barb. It is cold today.

Barb Downey (00:06:32):
It is cold, it is snowy. It's a classic winter day and an abrupt change from the fall weather we've been having.

Mark McCully (00:06:40):
Welcome to December.

Miranda Reiman (00:06:43):
We should not be surprised, but it still doesn't make it any more pleasant to go out and work in it, does it?

Barb Downey (00:06:49):
Yes, every year it surprises me, but so I'm sitting inside though for the next hour visiting with you guys, so this is, official excuse note for work.

Mark McCully (00:06:59):
Good.

Miranda Reiman (00:07:00):
Well, we're glad we can give you that. We're also glad to have you on. You've got a wealth of experience. Of course. You were one of the very first stories I got to do when I started with Certified Angus Beef and got to meet you and go out and do a story on your ranch. So I've always enjoyed following you ever since, but in that time you've won the Environmental Stewardship Award. You guys I guess have amassed a lot of recognition in that amount of time, but then also some background that I think our guests would like to know, you're a founding member of US Premium Beef and

Barb Downey (00:07:34):
Yes ma'am.

Miranda Reiman (00:07:35):
Got your start in the commercial business and then turned it into an Angus seedstock operation.

Barb Downey (00:07:42):
Right. Coming out of college, my dad's family is historically a ranching family, but dad never got to do, the depression kind of took my dad's branch out of production agriculture and then my dad, we've always been an ag family and when I headed off to college at K State studying animal science, dad and I, the whole way were hatching the plan to start this iteration of the ranch, which we did after I got my degree in animal science at K State and started with some land within a half hour of Manhattan, started a commercial cow-calf operation. Joe and I got married, this was 1987 that we started this. Joe and I got married in 1990. Then he came to the ranch full-time in 1995, but we started with those commercial cows and with an idea to always get closer and closer to the producer.

(00:08:44):
So we were participants in the CAB value discovery project way back when. Miranda is remembering that because again, we did that interview, but that was our way that we could finish small numbers of cattle, gather carcass data. I think we got up to 50 some head in that carcass data project and then I started when CAB dropped that, Kansas had an interest in starting a very similar project. So I did that for gosh, probably another five or six years after that again as modeled off of CAB's value discovery project, but letting producers like myself get their feet wet, figure out where their herd was on a carcass basis, get some experience with commercial cattle feeding without having to put together a hundred steers for a pen. So always been end-product focused and commercial focused. So when we started in the seedstock, it was from a perspective of, we knew what we needed out there.

(00:09:55):
We were already looking at our cattle hard every day. The leap to seedstock was a pretty easy one from a management standpoint. Having said that, there was a lot to learn from the logistics of seedstock as a lot of your listeners are going to recognize, but we knew very much what we wanted and our approach has always been with an end to the carcass, but calling carcass icing on the cake and knowing from our commercial background that those calves produced every year that pounds weaned per cow exposed is the single largest driving factor for a commercial cow-calf operator and always has been very much, always will be. So our herd is very balanced, production oriented, range oriented. Our cows run like our commercial cows. We always, our registered herd runs like commercials and we always try to be selecting probably a little bit harder for range-based fertility then our customers do, and we think that serves us and them well for the long run.

(00:11:11):
Whether or not a cow, if we challenge for body condition scores at weaning, which we're turning all that MaternalPlus data in, it's going to average five and a half, sometimes a little lighter depending on where we are, but so we're letting, I remember reading an article years ago about a guy who wanted to put enough pressure on his cows that he ran 10 to 12% open, meaning he was identifying those cows that could do it no matter what the conditions were. And I've always, that's stuck in my mind. That's maybe a little extreme for us, but we definitely want to challenge our cows to produce under those conditions that our commercial cow-calf customers are facing. So that's where we've always been.

Mark McCully (00:11:58):
Barb, when you were getting your start or maybe when you went to Manhattan, was the registered outfit, was that always the goal or was that kind of a transition into the registered business

Barb Downey (00:12:10):
That was a transition into the registered business, the commercial cow-calf was always the goal. The seedstock business was a logical progression into having a very clear vision of what we wanted to do and then wanting the seedstock that we could do that with, Mark.

Miranda Reiman (00:12:30):
So talk about your timeline in there. I know you've got two daughters that are now grown and flown I guess you would say, but also been very integral on the ranch. Where'd the daughters come into that and when did you guys switch to having Angus seedstock or bring that enterprise in?

Barb Downey (00:12:49):
Seedstock started in the early nineties. We bought a small group of cows from Mill Brae Ranch, neighbors and friends to this day. Bought a small group of cows from Finks. We've always admired their program and way of doing things. So we started with groups from herds that

Mark McCully (00:13:10):
Lori, not Galen though, right?

Barb Downey (00:13:11):
Yeah, not Galen.

Mark McCully (00:13:12):
Okay. I just wanted to get that on record. Thank you.

Barb Downey (00:13:18):
Yeah. The best way is everyone that knows Galen to get along with Galen is flip it back just as fast as you're getting it from him. So a really good foundation for our seedstock operations here and the girls came along you said grown and flown, but one has flown back in a way. The youngest daughter is a third year vet med student at K State and her intention has always been, the family talks regularly and has kind of our visioning meetings where we're just taking the pulse of everybody, what plans are, where the operation is going and how they wish to be involved. And the youngest one has always maintained that she at some point would like to run the ranch. So that is where we are going at this point. She got married in August. Our son-in-law, Joshua Dugan came to the ranch shortly thereafter. So he's with us full-time now, learning the ropes and figuring all this out. Then when she's out of vet school, they will be on the ranch, she will be practicing some, well full-time for a while here, but very much involved in the operations. She sits the block during our sale and makes sure everything keeps running smoothly from there. The oldest daughter is a firefighter paramedic out at Garden City and recently updated us that it's time to start thinking about getting closer to home. She's very much involved in the operation but has never wanted that to be her full-time job in running it. But they're a good combination. One is, executes and plans and strategize. That's the one that's the vet student. The older one, Anna, is very much the dreamer and the visionary and very good with people. So very complementary skillsets and things that you need on a ranch. And Joshua is wonderful with people, and that is not my forte.

Mark McCully (00:15:36):
I don't know about that.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:37):
Yeah, I was just going to say, I'd strike you as a people person.

Barb Downey (00:15:42):
I can function as a people person, but I'm actually more of an introvert and at the end of the day if I've had to be on all day, man, it just takes it out of me.

Mark McCully (00:15:54):
It's exhausting.

Barb Downey (00:15:55):
I was going to say, I suspect I'm talking to one and maybe two that operate the same way.

Miranda Reiman (00:16:02):
I'm actually complete extrovert all night,

Mark McCully (00:16:05):
100% extrovert right there. She has more energy at 11:00 PM than most of us have at 8:00 AM

Miranda Reiman (00:16:14):
It's a good thing I can people all day and still want more peopling given all of them that live under my roof. Yeah, Mark on the other hand, I think,

Mark McCully (00:16:24):
Yeah, I'm more like you Barb. I can do it and I enjoy it, but by the end of the day I know I've been peopling all day. Yeah,

Barb Downey (00:16:33):
I've been peopling all day. Yeah

Miranda Reiman (00:16:35):
Well, I was just thinking that's one way to solve the vet shortage problem. If you just grow your own, that's excellent that she's interested in staying close to home and yeah,

Barb Downey (00:16:45):
This is going to work out for us.

Miranda Reiman (00:16:47):
Yeah, that's right. Absolutely.

Mark McCully (00:16:50):
Talk about your journey a little bit. I mean getting going in the eighties, and I'm always fascinated by programs that really kind of got a foothold in the eighties because someone that was so impressionable for me coming out of and thinking about coming out of agriculture at that point in time, figuring out a career when the farm economy was not very good. I mean we're in some very prosperous times today, but looking back, I know there was lean years and a tough path. So maybe talk about that journey a little bit and maybe where that, were there ever opportunities to or ever days where you're like, have we picked the right path? There's got to be an easier way. Right.

Barb Downey (00:17:28):
Well Mark, that's super important, super relevant to the times we are in and you asked a really good question. That was, we started in the late eighties and our ability to get our foot in the door came at a time when others were exiting for a whole host of reasons, a lot of them interest-rate related, some of the folks were generational related. A transition just wasn't going to happen. But that was kind of an early lesson of distress and tough times can work to your advantage if you've positioned well or been, and obviously started out very fortunate, but times like this are equity building times. There are no new trucks on the ranch this fall, even though times are very good, but this is equity and debt reduction time and that's what I always try to keep in mind. We plan our capital expenditures very carefully and very strategically, but we are also taking in mind the old biblical story, the dream interpretation story that I remember from Joseph, interpreted dreams for Pharaoh

(00:18:47):
And the seven years of fat and the seven years of famine. And that's a really good story for all of us in agriculture that we do ride seven years of feast, seven years of famine and the times of feast are times to celebrate and enjoy, but also be considering what happens when this whole cycle turns. And we are a cyclical business. I mean we've known that, sometimes the cycles get longer or shorter, but we're very much cyclical. So if you position yourself in times of fat, then the times of famine can also be times of opportunity and preservation too. So

Mark McCully (00:19:26):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think maybe even for, I always think about a lot of our new members and new folks getting started in the business at a time like today, it's wonderful, but not having that perspective of the lean years and the hard years and how things will change and there will be cycles to this business is just always a good reminder that to plan ahead and to be frugal and to be diligent and to plan your capital and not regardless of what maybe the tax guy might be saying this year of what you need to do. But yeah,

Barb Downey (00:20:04):
And that was another one that I took from my dad is pay your taxes and go on. And I've certainly taken that to heart. We never try to spend ourself down to zero because, I wish the tax laws would change.

Mark McCully (00:20:19):
Farmers and ranchers hate paying taxes.

Barb Downey (00:20:22):
We just got to make friends with these like pay your taxes, you made money, be happy, go on. And his point was, yeah, build some capital reserves, some retained earnings and unfortunately we have to pay taxes on those, but retained earnings are a big deal when we get to those seven years of lean.

Miranda Reiman (00:20:42):
Thinking about your dad imparting wisdom, I'm your transition plan wasn't the same because you were actually building it together. It wasn't like dad had all of this experience in the business that then he was passing on to you. You guys were kind of getting experience at the same time, weren't you?

Barb Downey (00:21:00):
Right. And this was never dad's day to day until he retired from the workday world, but I had the freedom to run this business basically as I saw fit, which was actually almost paralyzing at times Miranda as a young person, because you don't have a roadmap and you don't have the model and you don't have someone saying that. So somewhere in the middle is the happy medium. Obviously handing responsibility and decision making over to that next generation is super important. I've watched, we've seen so many failed transitions in agriculture that we are not doing that, everything is laid out, everything is known. We're trying to build on the strengths of our kids and hand over responsibility accordingly. But there also has to be some, that mentoring and teaching. My husband and I have tremendous amounts of what I would call institutional knowledge, things that we know about the ranch, things that we know about cow lines that, gosh, you've just got to have that time to transfer some of that to the next generation without saying this is absolutely how we have to do A, B and C. But they do need to know that knowledge that we've built over the years, that's a valuable asset that has to be transferred in addition to the land and the cows and the financials.

Mark McCully (00:22:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Barb, thinking about that knowledge, you also had to build a market literally from scratch and build a marketing plan. So talk about how that's evolved to where you are today and what your marketing strategy is today.

Barb Downey (00:22:56):
So we're very heavily into the seedstock and as we transitioned, seedstock became a bigger part of the operation. We bought out siblings, so we had to cow-calf operation is, commercial. cow-calf operation is no longer an option to make the payments that we have to make. So seedstock, bigger every year is our business model going forward and we're on track and where we need to be. But that marketing plan has always been based on the commercial cow-calf operator. That's who we know, that's who know how to service. That's who we are at heart is just commercial cow-calf guys. And the tough thing and where we have to balance between the customer is always right and then we call it in it for the long haul is how is our tagline

Mark McCully (00:23:56):
Your slogan?

Barb Downey (00:23:58):
And so trying to position our guys so that there aren't unpleasant surprises five, 10 years down the road.

(00:24:08):
And I feel the current dance that we do in the Angus business is that demand for continued more growth, more weaning weight, more yearling weight, more carcass. Sometimes it's easier to equate maximum with optimum. And what we feel like we really have to do is keep in mind optimum for our customers and keep them between the ditches so that real, that balanced approach, we're adding more growth to our herd right now, but there's a cautionary tale that needs to go along with it. We personally are seeing, and I know our customers are seeing as we are demanding more and more growth out of these cattle, we're asking that that happens to the cow too. The genetic base of the cow and that bull are the same. And if a cow has a longer extended growth curve, which is oftentimes going to come with that 150 yearling weight, then she's trying to not only rebreed as a 2-year-old, milking with a milk EPD in the forties for God's sake, we're asking a lot from that animal and can she physically take in enough energy in a range cow situation to meet all these needs?

(00:25:28):
We all know reproduction or fertility is the first to leave. So maybe she doesn't fall out as that 2-year-old. Maybe she gets rebred later, if she's still growing as that 3-year-old calving and milking like a son of a gun, that might get a little later and then she falls out of bed at 4 or 5. And we experience that as we ask more and more and I know our customers are, too. And if you go back to pounds weaned per cow exposed, if you're running 15% open cows, especially your younger most, the ones where your future hopes and dreams are pinned on, then that's not a recipe for the long haul. So trying to balance those is tough.

Miranda Reiman (00:26:15):
And we're going to pause right there to take a quick 30 seconds from our sponsor.

(00:26:20):
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Mark McCully (00:27:01):
So Barb, when you talk about optimum versus maximum and your commercial customers, how do you get that feedback from your commercial customers? We know a lot of times it's so tempting to go in and to go after maybe more of the maximum and how do you get that feedback from your commercial customers and maybe how do you even coach 'em through the realities of those getting those 2 and 3-year-olds bred back like you were talking about?

Barb Downey (00:27:29):
We, soapbox a little bit, and we've expanded our sale catalog, which does a lot of storytelling with that idea in mind. Trying to talk about the things that we see that are really important. A lot of your cow-calf herds still are smaller herds that this is not a full-time job for them. 50, 50 to a hundred cow herds around us. We have several larger producers also, but we just try to communicate what we're doing and why. This is a relationship business, so whether it's in our social media posts or whether it's some of the material in our sale book, we're talking about that same thing, that

Mark McCully (00:28:16):
That philosophy

Barb Downey (00:28:17):
Right? Every choice you make has a cost to it, whether or not that's a reasonable cost that helps you for the long-term or whether it's a short-term goal, whatever, everything is going to have a cost to it. So it's that storytelling and then that relationship. And this was our 23rd sale and we sold private treaty ahead of that and we've had folks that have been here with us since the private treaty days. And that is really where you get to talk about those long-term goals, what factors we see that are coming and how do you take advantage of some of this improved carcass that we're all after. But keep in mind that you've got to have, the base of your cow herd has to be functional in your situation. For bigger operators, they might be running replacements, kind of a herd that they're drawing replacements from and then their production herd for a smaller operator that they're asking that the genetics they're bringing in to kind of do everything, then that's a different selection also. But as we get that relationship developed, you can have those conversations and they've seen what our seedstock does for them day in, day out, five years ago, 10 years ago, and where we're going in the future. And then they have more faith in how you are trying to make sure that we say that our kids are doing business with their kids 20 years from now. You want that next generation to be set up super well, and it's a relationship business as you guys well know.

Mark McCully (00:30:05):
Sure. Well, and I love your slogan that, built for the long haul. I mean really I think that embodies what you're talking about. It's not just about some short-term gains possibly. It is really understanding what this thing looks like down the road.

Barb Downey (00:30:19):
I think, and one where we're going that I think is going to be a departure, we put stars in our catalog so that a guy can look through there and say, OK, well replacement females are important to me. Look for the four stars, or carcass is really important to me. Look for four stars. Next year I believe is going to appear in the females column a T for some bulls, meaning that we consider them a terminal bull. Obviously you can use the bull wherever you want, but for us in our operation personally, a 150 yearling weight EPD with a 40-some milk is a terminal cross bull for us.

(00:31:02):
So we will label them, use this one with caution. Or use this one with, not with caution, that's the wrong word,

Mark McCully (00:31:10):
Right?

Barb Downey (00:31:11):
... plan, with a plan. A plan in mind.

Mark McCully (00:31:13):
The plan. Absolutely.

(00:31:15):
Yep.

Barb Downey (00:31:15):
There you go.

Mark McCully (00:31:17):
Barb, talk a little about, you do a joint production sale with Kniebel family,

Barb Downey (00:31:21):
Correct? Yes,

Mark McCully (00:31:22):
Yes. Maybe talk a little about that because I think that's a really unique scenario that you have when you're talking about multiple families, maybe shared customers, different breeds, all sorts of things that make that partnership potentially challenging.

Barb Downey (00:31:39):
You are absolutely right and we have gotten in business with, have always been our best friends. We travel together, we do some business together. We've raised our kids kind of as functionally as cousins. So the reason we always tell when, that is a common question to be asked, how have you made sure that this operation works and that no one gets sideways? Well, number one, we're doing business with spectacular human beings. And when Kevin and Mary Ann Kniebel of Kniebel Cattle Company are making decisions at their operation that will affect all of us, I guarantee they make that decision in our favor every time.

(00:32:23):
And in turn, that is how we look at things. This sale is hosted at our place, but there is a KC hanging on our gate over coming into the bull pens. We want to present as one front. We want to make those decisions with them in mind first and like any good relationship. If you're thinking about how this affects the other person first, you're probably going to do the right thing. And that's been absolutely the foundation for doing business together. Very similar operations, very similar philosophies in terms of commercial cattle and end product. They have their own feedyard license for 999 head that we finished our cattle in. We finished customer cattle there in addition to obviously commercial feedlots, but it's been mutually beneficial. The best kind.

Mark McCully (00:33:20):
Did the partnership forge because you were so like-minded, or did you guys kind of adjust to one another's philosophy, or how did that come to be?

Barb Downey (00:33:32):
Very similar philosophies to begin with and very similar philosophies now, they raise red Angus, we have the black Angus, and then we both make some Sim-Angus of each color, but we think about cows the same way. Functional female is the foundation of everything. And the only difference I would say in the operation, sometimes you're dealing with different EPD sets, so communicating that to customers, even the percentiles of our Angus are different because theirs are red. So even though the EPDs are directly comparable, they're both Sim-Angus, the percentile ranking within is very different. And so that's another thing you've got to kind communicate. The only difference I would say is, their cow herd as on the average is probably a half a frame score larger, just a little bit bigger cow. But boy, I think they have one of the best cow herds I've ever seen in the nation. Tremendous cows. Tremendous.

Miranda Reiman (00:34:37):
So I love that it almost felt like a golden rule of doing business together. If you think about the other person first, do you guys find that you are kind of like iron sharpens iron? Are you pushing each other to try new things, or is one bringing the other along sometimes and then

Barb Downey (00:34:53):
Yes

Miranda Reiman (00:34:54):
Back the other way?

Barb Downey (00:34:55):
Yeah, that's really funny. So we call it gas pedal and brakes. A car's got to have both to get from point A to point B safely. The Kniebels laugh at me, I see shiny things everywhere I go. I am the gas pedal, and if I can convince Mary Ann and Kevin, their job is to shoot holes and you need both on that, right? If everyone's a Pollyanna says that's great, Mary Ann is a reproductive physiologist and a nutritionist. So she is constantly challenging that cow herd function and keeping us in between the rails or in between the ditches and on the rails. And I am a great lover of change in technology and forward motion, but I darn sure better bring the plan to the table, ask myself the questions because I know Kniebels will have some hard questions for me too. So gas pedal and brakes

Mark McCully (00:35:59):
Gas pedal and brakes, I like that.

Miranda Reiman (00:35:59):
I like that.

Mark McCully (00:36:02):
Working Genius is a concept of Patrick Lencioni. We use it a lot here, but it's how work gets done and it starts with wonder and then invention, but then the next very important step is discernment. And boy, if you don't have all of those steps together, I'm wondering, invention, and I can stay up there for a long time, but man, that discernment step is a super important.

Barb Downey (00:36:26):
And then I would add execution to that.

Miranda Reiman (00:36:27):
That is the last part of the Working Genius.

Mark McCully (00:36:28):
Oh yeah. Well it keeps going, then you got to galvanize it, then you have to enable it, and then you have tenacity and get it finished. Right? It's the six steps. Yeah.

Barb Downey (00:36:36):
Yeah. And I mentioned that the daughters have very complementary skill sets,

(00:36:42):
Joe and I, who we haven't talked about because the poor man is out there executing right now and it's cold, and without, I'm a dreamer and a schemer. It sounds like you are too, Mark. And Joe is the title in the operation is he is COO. He absolutely. This is OK, here is the plan now here is how we are going to execute it, and here are the problems that I see in your plan. Let's figure out a strategy to handle this and all of that having, and that's another thing that Kniebels bring. This is not just about doing business together. We are all better as this team. We all bring a skillset to the table and we've laughed. We used to run the bulls together, developed the bulls together, and then we got to the stage where there were just too many bulls. And to this day we miss that, weighing bulls on tests, weighing bulls off tests, BSE day. We would just, and we still try to work together. It's BSE day at one place or the other. You need an extra hand, I'll be there. And that's just the stuff that reminds us how much fun and how much enjoyment and how productive it is when we're working together because it's just like a dinner table conversation, right, Mark?

(00:37:59):
That time with your kids needs to just sometimes accidentally happen. Those most important conversations happen because of opportunity and when you're working together, there is opportunity to have some really important strategic conversations and discussions or brainstorming or dreaming and scheming and all of that.

Mark McCully (00:38:22):
So Barb, you self-proclaimed gas pedal. I've always been and always admired your adoption of technology. You seem to always be looking at things and trying things. I believe you were doing at least at one time, some virtual collars, some virtual fencing, maybe some other things.

Barb Downey (00:38:40):
We are.

Mark McCully (00:38:40):
So talk about what some of the gas pedal stuff that you're dreaming and scheming on today.

Barb Downey (00:38:46):
So where I see technology really serving all of us in the ag industry is enabling us to do, A, more with less, and then B, work at a higher level and take some of the, here I'm going to quote my dad again. He was always pushing me to focus on what he called the $200-an-hour jobs and not the $20-an-hour jobs. So you needed to have that plan and that dream and the higher level analysis done so that you could enable the $20-an-hour jobs to continue. But where I see, so virtual fence, we are indeed using virtual fence. We're working with a company called Halter, and the long range goal for our operations with halter is to increase the carrying capacity of our fixed asset base, our land, while doing a better job at the same time of managing that grass and enabling it to produce.

(00:39:48):
We have done everything that we could with the existing infrastructure, the hard fence and electric fence, we're out here in the Flint Hills and part of the analysis as we were looking at virtual fencing was could we carry 25% more cows, which I knew we could do with more intensive grazing, but the limiting factor was the physical fencing. I looked at just taking all the existing permanently fenced pastures and dividing them into two so that we could rotate more effectively, easily somewhere around $600,000 worth of fencing. We have demonstrated very well to ourselves that we can increase the securing capacity with good grass management. So this is where we're going next with the fencing. I mentioned we couldn't pay for the payments. We had to make, commercial cows can't do it, seedstock can, and if we, but a commercial cow in our environment in the Flint Hills of Kansas can no longer buy grass, that is a fundamental change.

(00:40:53):
So now if you can carry a few more cows, if you can increase the pounds of beef that you produce off of that acre, that changes the calculus a bit. So we're coming at that. There's obviously implications for that for a commercial cow-calf. There's obviously implications for that for a seedstock. So there's an example of doing more with less. Some of the other technology that we're doing also enables including Halter, but some of our data management and tag tracking capabilities is enabling our folks, all of our folks to work at a higher level. So when we went move cows before, that's a couple guys on horses out riding, gathering, hoping you got them all because there are some great places for cows and especially calves to hide in a lot of our pastures, but that would be four hours to go move a herd.

(00:41:53):
Now we can do that with morning coffee at the breakfast table, and then you've got two guys in four hours that can work a little higher. That doesn't mean you never look at your cows, but now instead of just riding and making sure you've got the stragglers, you can be looking at those cows going, oh man, oh, that cow has a poor rear attachment on her udder. So we need to make a decision about her and how we manage her. That one, that cross did not work. We need to have a better plan for that cow with the breeding chute next year. That sort of thing. That's what I mean about working at a higher level. We can start influencing things that dictate whether or not we're going to be a viable operation in 5, 10, 20 years. So work smarter.

Miranda Reiman (00:42:43):
So when you were thinking about some of that new technology, I mean you hear about it at a conference or you see it at a trade show and then you come home and say, Hey, I've got a big idea, or how does that, I want to know how the process works that you go from, here's something I might want to try

Mark McCully (00:43:00):
Something shiny you found.

Miranda Reiman (00:43:01):
Right? Exactly. And how do you decide what's the shiny thing that sticks?

Barb Downey (00:43:07):
So that's a really good question because I can chase down all sorts of shiny things that have no practical applications.

Miranda Reiman (00:43:15):
Me too.

Barb Downey (00:43:17):
But I always, or I've known for, not always. I've known for as long as virtual fencing has existed that that was a key and that's part of the $200-an-hour jobs that my dad talked about. How can you expand this operation? How can you make this function better? And I knew intensive grazing from every experience, reading all of that is a way to increase carrying capacity to make sure that plant gets grazed once during a season and then gets to rest and recover and all of that. So we had done what we could with our existing infrastructure. So I knew virtual fencing would let us fence in ways that I couldn't physically fence. So I've had my eye on it. Some of the companies that run battery-powered virtual fencing, I just knew wasn't going to work for us.

(00:44:13):
You can't run 550 cows and be changing a battery at two-month intervals. Our cows come through the chute in the spring and they come through at weaning and data collection time in the fall and in between, they're out on some pretty wild range. So virtual fencing was on the radar. I made a false start and a safe-to-fail experiment with a virtual fencing company two summers ago that had solar powered units that they could fence with. I knew it was a smaller company, it was a startup company. So we made the decision to safe to fail.

(00:44:55):
How can I test this technology out without putting the ranch at risk? And so we did one group of cows, our first-calvers, so we contracted for 60 collars. The technology was not good, but there was enough there that we saw the potential and being out there is how I got hooked in with Halter early. So your network works and people, Hey, if you are interested in solar power virtual fencing, here comes this other company from out of the country that is getting a toehold here. So that's how I got hooked up with them, being at meetings, being with like-minded individuals and putting myself out there that virtual fencing is on my radar. So that fall we got hooked up with Halter and I had a friend with a Red Angus operation down further south that was also working in virtual fencing and had some experience with the battery ones.

(00:45:59):
They then took this wonderful exchange of ideas and information. They took that and they got on with fall cows with Halter. So they're sharing information with us, we're watching what they're doing with it and going, oh yeah, this is no longer a safe to fail. This is a jump with both feet. So when we got to the spring of this year, we were set and ready to go and made the decision to collar everything on the ranch because my friend had done the safe-to-fail experiment with this company for me. Thank you very much. And so we jumped with both feet and collared everything on the ranch. So it was a calculated decision, but it was, like I said, someone had done the safe to fail for me and we saw what happened. So everything's collared this year, replacement, the weaned heifer calves are not collared right now. We will collar them as yearlings as they start coming through the chute and we start setting 'em up next spring. But every cow in the place is collared. So I can open the phone right now and tell you where those cows are and working smarter when you do go to gather them when they're coming to the chute, we know where every single cow is. You don't have to worry

Miranda Reiman (00:47:16):
It's like Life 360 for your cows.

Barb Downey (00:47:18):
Yes, it's wonderful. And as someone pointed out to my husband, every parent of teenage boys needs a collar like this.

Mark McCully (00:47:28):
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

Barb Downey (00:47:30):
Yeah, right. Maybe some things you don't want to know. Yeah,

Miranda Reiman (00:47:36):
That's a good place to pause as we hear from today's podcast sponsor.

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Mark McCully (00:48:21):
I love that safe-to-fail concept and stages. Are there some other technologies that are in your safe-to-fail, R and D lab right now at your place?

Barb Downey (00:48:32):
There are, coincidentally on some donor cows, we're setting up for our fall embryo transfer project. They have some ear tags from a company called 701X and they have their pro tag in them right now. So I was in Garden City this weekend and able to watch every one of those reference heats come in. I got heat alerts on them that they were in standing estrus, then on the ground, eyes confirmed. Yep, she is standing now. She was just riding before. But this is a good standing heat. So those pro tags are also satellite based. The collars right now are tower based that are hooked into a cellular network. At some point it is not hard to imagine those collars will be satellite. But these tags, these pro tags are also satellite based. So I've got them in the cows. I've worked with this company for five years now.

(00:49:36):
Inventory management had been my initial contact with them. We were moving big groups of cows, cows running in 200 groups of pairs, rotationally, grazing them through fences and kind of woolly country for a number of years and we wouldn't see, we'd be missing calves every fall. You'd break that bond. One calf was laying somewhere or had a little bit of foot rot and you didn't get 'em moved. And Lord knows where he ended up. You didn't know he was missing until the end of the year. Because I would challenge anyone to count 200 pairs through a gate and better yet, tell me who's missing

(00:50:16):
It just, we could not do it. So their technology and their, I've got Bluetooth tags that I now can take a phone. A phone can't quite function fast enough to get those calves through the gate, but I can Bluetooth and if I'm looking, I can get most of them. And then, OK, more importantly, I know who's missing, can go back through the herd, roll calling for 'em and I might find those calves, but at least I've got a list of at the end when we're done, five calves that are missing. And now with those Bluetooth tags, I can put what they call an amber alert on 'em. So any one of the guys out there that I'm missing, M204, M308 and M100, those all have amber alerts, ping. Someone goes out there the next day and happens to get within Bluetooth range of that animal. Oh, that one goes off. OK, that one's accounted for. That one's accounted for. We're still missing M100.

(00:51:18):
So inventory management has driven me nuts for a number of years and these guys are my first glimpse that I might be able to do that with cows and calves. So pro tag, light tag, light tags, Bluetooth protag is satellite based, but if you had a pro tag in all your cows that would be checking heat and all of that and a light tag in every calf, you'd know when that calf came upside that cow every time. Always nursing. There's some really fascinating data collection opportunities and selection opportunities for seedstock. If you could describe the grazing behavior of that cow, this would be our first real opportunity to get feed intake and feed efficiency on grazing animals. If you know that that calf is nursing 5, 6, 7, I don't know how many times a calf takes a drink in a day.

Mark McCully (00:52:18):
Exactly.

Barb Downey (00:52:19):
Right.

Mark McCully (00:52:19):
How many times mom wants them to make sure they take a drink. Yeah,

Barb Downey (00:52:22):
Right, right. Does she go

Mark McCully (00:52:24):
Maternal instinct, right.

Barb Downey (00:52:25):
There you go. I mean there is all sorts of things that we could monitor and describe. So I see that as having

(00:52:33):
Huge potential going forward. I see these two technologies that we've talked about as overlapping quite a bit, and they really need to be one. I love everything those pro tags can do. In fact, we made the commitment, we sent out every bull that sold over $6,000 this year with a pro tag and a year's worth of free monitoring. So what that means for that customer, we delivered a slew of bulls out to Canadian, Texas, and they got dumped in with a large bull battery. There were, I don't know, 40 to 50 bulls out there. I can see where those bulls are. I can see that their location, when they get turned into a breeding pasture, the new owner can see that the daily mounting report from that bull, they will get an alert if that bull goes offline. So if that bull quits mounting, that's super important information for a commercial cow calf operator to have, did that bull quit mounting?

(00:53:36):
Is he hurt? Is he, got foot rot and he is no longer, his activity level is dropped way down. Is he sick and his activity level has dropped way down? All of that has huge economic ramifications for our customers. So we made that commitment to send those out with a cooperation of the company, a year's worth of free monitoring. But gosh, you check your bull pasture on Monday and then you go to another one on Tuesday and a third pasture on Wednesday and you don't make it back to that pasture 1 until the next Monday. What if he got hurt on Monday night and quit breeding? How many open cows do you have come preg check?

Miranda Reiman (00:54:17):
I was just going to say what good data to have before, it's when you still have the opportunity to effect change and not just have it retrospectively sort of.

Barb Downey (00:54:26):
Right, right. The interesting part and the part that worries me a little as these multisire groups start coming back in, and we all know that bulls figure out dominance and the classic story, I remember I had a guy tell me, he turned out, he goes, you want to know what happened? It turned out your bull and a Charolais bull with 50 cows. You know what I got? And I went, oh God, what? And he said, I got 49 black calves and a set of dead smoky twins. And I went, oh, thank God. But

Miranda Reiman (00:54:56):
Because it could have went the other way.

Barb Downey (00:54:59):
Exactly. It was just which bull in that day when they first headed out to pasture together won the war for dominance. And it might've been the Charolais bull, and next year it might've been the Charolais bull, right? He learned a thing or two about or, who knows. But anyway, the challenge I think is going to be in these multisire groups. I've turned out two bulls with 50 cows. Well, this bull is not breeding anything. Well, he

Miranda Reiman (00:55:28):
Might not be his fault, exactly.

Barb Downey (00:55:31):
It might not be his fault.

Mark McCully (00:55:32):
Or that might be, I mean, we don't know a lot about libido differences genetically, and heritability. I know there's some heritability there. And so as that data you start thinking about, again, I start always heading down this path of with that, if it's heritable and we can collect some of that data, we can make improvements and it's economically important, which it is

Barb Downey (00:55:56):
You could make huge improvements. My caution as a supplier of bulls is let's not misread this information or jump to conclusions that might take a very good bull out of it. He just wasn't the dominant bull in that pasture.

(00:56:13):
And when you talk about libido, there's a friend of mine and a very progressive breeder that tried to do serving capacity years ago. And we found out from that that wasn't really tied maybe to libido or the overall results at the end of the breeding season, because we all know you turn out a yearling bull he falls in love, and as anytime you go out to that pasture, it might drive you nuts because there's a group of five cows over there with no bulls and they're riding each other and then there's this group of two over here and they've got all of your yearling bulls gathered round and that there's a lot of learned behavior as a bull matures to managing his breeding behavior. And you may not see him out there exerting much effort until everything is right. But he comes in with everything bred and they're up front of the season and all of that. But the learning opportunities, this is where it gets my shiny brain going, Mark. And as a breed association, obviously you guys are thinking about and going, what data can we gather? How can we use that to drive improvement in a breed and possibly selection?

Mark McCully (00:57:29):
Your toolbox, right? Yeah. As you look down the road, what's the future hold for Downey Ranch and maybe what things are you most excited about? You talk about virtual fence and some of these technology of just being able to make you a better operator, but kind of what's on the horizon?

Barb Downey (00:57:47):
What's on the horizon for me and looming very big is transition

(00:57:53):
And is making myself unnecessary. You as a CEO, you guys get all sorts of business leadership training and development that those of us out here in the fields sometimes don't avail ourselves of or don't have the opportunity of. But anytime you are absolutely essential to an operation and things stop. If you're gone, you have made your organization vulnerable and that includes us as ranchers. So I talk about all the fun, shiny stuff, but the thing that I'm looking for and transitioning into the future is trying to make sure that I am irrelevant and not irrelevant, but that if and when I'm gone, that this operation has all of the tools, that I did not remove an entire cog in the wheel. And the whole thing comes to a grinding halt, that there's redundancy and transfer of knowledge and transfer of assets and transfer of all of that to the next generation so that this whole thing can continue on. But I see huge opportunity. But the cautionary tale, just kind of what we're seeing with AI right now is, man, we can't get too far out ahead of our skis. And as much as I love new and shiny, we got to make sure we got the plans in place to use it wisely. And you need the brakes here, right? You need someone going, wait a minute, what if? And that is every bit is important if not more than the gas pedal.

(00:59:43):
You got to get there safely.

Mark McCully (00:59:44):
Great counsel.

Miranda Reiman (00:59:45):
I think the fact that you guys have regular talks about it is kind of the first step in that. And I love to hear you talk about how you've approached that with your kids. And gosh, I feel like we could just keep going on this Mark, but I know we promised you to not take more than an hour. Is there anything you were hoping we would talk about that we haven't covered yet before I ask a random question of the week?

Barb Downey (01:00:08):
What you got, Mark?

Miranda Reiman (01:00:10):
Anything I haven't asked yet, Mark? Or you ready for my random question?

Mark McCully (01:00:13):
Oh, I've got a list, but we're just going to have to do another episode. Barb, if you're OK, you'll come back sometime. How about that?

Barb Downey (01:00:20):
I would be honored. This has really been actually a thrill for me. I've listened to the podcast for quite a while, heard some really amazing folks on your podcast and great conversation. So when I got the call, it was a thrill.

Miranda Reiman (01:00:36):
Well, I hope I'm not going to deflate what's been a super optimistic podcast. But Barb, my random question of the week. As I was thinking about all of your experience in the business and kind of your life experience, I know that you were very open about your health struggles that you went through. Probably has it been a decade ago now, Barb?

Barb Downey (01:00:56):
Yes. Actually, yeah, 2014. So a little longer.

Miranda Reiman (01:01:00):
So my question is, what did you learn while you were going through your cancer treatments that made you better on the other side of it, as a producer, as a wife and mother? What did you learn during that period of your life?

Barb Downey (01:01:15):
You can't see me smiling and kind of laughing right now, but it hearkens back to a bit of the conversation we had earlier of if you open your eyes and look around every problem, every challenge is some sort of opportunity. Presents also an opportunity. So in the immediate of it, one of the opportunity and the promise, I mean, we had so many people step in and help us out during AI season. AI season came and went while I was stuck down in Houston, in the hospital. And Esther McCabe, yeah, she sat there and ran semen thawing on a giant AI day. So she'd just hand loaded guns to my husband and the other folks who volunteered to AI for us. So that knowledge that you're never in it by yourself, that in agriculture especially people come out of the woodwork when the chips are down, that you've always got a network.

(01:02:25):
The other thing was, I think the importance of knowing that you do have to make yourself almost irrelevant. You cannot do any of what we do on your own. That if you have fond hopes of the next generation taking over your operation someday, you better step aside and make room for them at the table and you better let them have some say in what's happening. You better let them know what your plans are for the future. You better find out what their plans are for the future and how if the opportunity is there, how you make it all come together so that everybody is there at that one table. So I think that those were the two big things out of it. And then always make your plans for the worst and hope for the best and know what's going to happen. I had all my, I really shouldn't be here, I really shouldn't. And I was always able to coldly, analyze and think about that kind of stuff. So I had, what if, I had all of those plans, but always, and one of the options was I'd come out the other side and be just fine. So plan for the worst and hope for the best is how I have lived my life.

Miranda Reiman (01:03:57):
Well, I know that that was a terribly difficult chapter for you, obviously, but one thing that I always appreciated was that you shared that journey so that so many people who have gone through similar hard times or just some really tough stuff can look at the attitude with which you approached it and your family and the community around you. So I thank you for sharing that and now being on this side,

Barb Downey (01:04:22):
Will you indulge me in one more thought?

Miranda Reiman (01:04:24):
Yes, absolutely.

Barb Downey (01:04:26):
I never stopped moving forward either. I was in the middle of some treatment and so, rectal cancer, then it metastasized to the lungs, then it metastasized to the liver. In the interim, I said yes to KLA leadership opportunities. So I thought, well, where do you want to be in five years and what do you want to do? That engagement and that opportunity, you just keep moving forward. None of us knows when our numbers up, so you just keep moving forward and if your number gets called, well off you go. But if it doesn't, I'd said no to all of that stuff, man. I would've missed a wonderful opportunity at leading an organization that I just have huge admiration for. This is the Kansas Livestock Association and who has benefited my business greatly. So that opportunity to lead alongside all of my fellow KLA members, God, I would've missed that if I'd said no.

Miranda Reiman (01:05:38):
I think that is such a great testament to your optimism that you've obviously shown over this last hour when we've gotten to visit with you. So thank you for sharing that with us, and thank you for your contribution to the Angus breed, helping us continue to move forward as well.

Barb Downey (01:05:54):
Also, appreciate the best breed in the world and the leadership at the Association, the staff, all of that. We all have our problems and nothing is ever perfect, but whenever I pick up the phone and have to talk to somebody at the Angus Association, man, I get the best team in the world.

Mark McCully (01:06:13):
Well, we appreciate that. And I know Barb it wasn't just but a few weeks ago you sent me a nice note of a staff member that had went above and beyond and getting a problem solved for you, and I shared that along in our internal newsletter. I know we're so coming through the Thanksgiving season, we're thankful for the incredible team we have here, the breed we serve, and most certainly members like yourself that we get to get up every day and hopefully empower all the things that you've got going and help maybe, I'm totally inspired by this gas pedal brake and safe to fail. I love that whole area, and I'm sure that we'll have breeders that this will stimulate some thoughts and some ideas in their head, and the idea about empowering, making sure we're enabling those around us. I hear it too many times from folks, I can't go to that conference, the place wouldn't run if I'm not here. It's like, well, there's your sign. That may be because I know you've invested a lot in being out, being a leader, being visible, and we just show, appreciate you coming on here this morning and sharing your journey and story. So thank you.

Barb Downey (01:07:25):
Well, the number's on the website if anyone wants to follow up on something that I've said, so that's how I learn is talking to other folks, so give me a call.

Mark McCully (01:07:34):
Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:36):
Now we're going to give you your pass to go back out in the cold, I guess, Barb?

Mark McCully (01:07:42):
No. If you want to tell 'em that maybe we needed to rerecord it or something.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:47):
That's right.

Mark McCully (01:07:47):
We'll back your story if you need us to.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:49):
That's right.

Barb Downey (01:07:50):
Thanks guys.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:51):
Yep, thank you.

Mark McCully (01:07:52):
Alright,

Barb Downey (01:07:53):
Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:56):
Our Angus breeders are always full of so much good wisdom. I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. And before we go, I wanted to mention a special advertising opportunity we have coming up this spring. The Angus Bull Book, the 2026 Angus Sire Directory is going to mail with the March Angus Journal and is a chance for you to feature some of your top sires. If you want to secure an ad spot, talk to your regional manager today or call Rachel Hunter in the Angus Media office at 816-383-5226. I don't want you to miss out on this chance to spotlight your genetics. With that, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and are well on your way to enjoying this Christmas season. This has been The Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.