ORANGE CITY, Iowa — Twenty students from Iowa State University’s Beef Cattle Systems Management class toured three Northwest Iowa beef industries on April 10.
“The Animal Science 426 [Beef Cattle Systems Management] class at Iowa State University focuses basically on feedlot management,” said Dan Loy, professor and director of the Iowa Beef Center. “An important part of the curriculum is the tours where students visit directly with producers and agribusiness professionals and see the industry in action.”
On April 10, the class began their tour at Tyson Foods in Dakota City, Neb., viewing the harvest line and questioning the tour guides. Tyson is the world’s largest beef processor, and their daily routine involves ten critical steps to ensure the consumer that the beef they eat is safe and high quality.
In a follow-up questionnaire, one student commented, “I had never seen the harvest process at a packing plant before. It was cool to see how fast and efficient it was, even with all of the food safety measures that were used.”
Next stop on the itinerary was the Rick Hansen feedlot near Hinton. While strolling through the open feedyard, Hansen explained how he buys cattle, tracks animal health and cares for them daily.
“One of the marketing techniques that works best for me is to buy and sell cattle weekly,” Hansen told students. “I’ve found this helps me reduce price volatility.”
In the afternoon, the students visited with Brett Friedrichsen, feedlot producer at Holstein, Iowa. Friedrichsen led the class on a tour of his two monoslope barns.
“Normally you would build these barns oriented east to west, but we oriented one north to south in order to use the existing concrete and to help reduce the construction cost,” Friedrichsen said.
The students also toured a new concrete, open feedlot that Friedrichsen recently constructed.
Two students summed up the feedlot visits well in saying, “We learned that just because a producer spends a lot of money on facilities or high quality cattle, it doesn’t guarantee the feedlot will be successful. It’s all about management.”
— Iowa State University Extension and Outreach
For more news from Iowa, click here.