NH News - "Beef, Not Cattle, Runs This Ranch"

MAY/JUNE 2002

Beef, Not Cattle, Runs This Ranch

Article by Raylene Nickel
Photos by Mike Boyatt

Quality beef is the family business, and cattle support the production goals.

Through four generations, the Beery family has been raising big, red-bodied, white-faced purebred Hereford cattle on the family ranch near Vida, Montana. But ask Eddy and Joanne Beery what business they’re really in, and they’ll tell you it’s beef, not cattle.

That subtle shift in focus gives the Beerys and their son, Matt, along with his wife, Krista, the edge they need to remain profitable in spite of the ups and downs of the live cattle market. The beef business, to this family, means they produce a top-quality meat product and market much of it directly to consumers.

Eddy and Joanne Beery display some of their home-grown beef products.

The Beerys sell 40 bull carcasses each year as lean, ground beef to local bars, cafes, and grocery stores. They also sell 60 to 70 grain-finished steers each year in quarter, half, and whole carcasses to people nearby.

On their eastern Montana ranch, they run 200 head of purebred Hereford cows, and 200 head of commercial Hereford-Angus beef cows. Purebred breeding stock is sold at an annual production sale held at the ranch in April. They sell 60 to 70 yearlings and two-year-old bulls at the sale, in addition to some females.

The Beerys got into the direct-sale bull beef market because of poor prices for cull bulls. “Four years ago the bull market was terrible,” said Eddy. “Bulls were worth only 32 to 34 cents a pound on the conventional market. We thought we’d experiment with marketing ground beef from bulls directly to stores in the region. One store tried the beef, and it sold very well. Our ground beef business just grew from there.”

Trade-A-Bull

The Beerys now take older bulls “in on trade” from customers who buy younger purebred Hereford bulls from them. They feed these mature bulls grain in the ranch feedlot for six weeks before harvesting the carcasses. The brief grain-feeding period adds moisture to the beef, says Eddy.

Hereford cows and calves on Eddy and Joanne Berry's Montana ranch.

“We believe our bull beef makes some of the finest ground beef there is,” he said. “It’s straight ground beef, with nothing added. It has no more than 10 percent fat, so it doesn’t shrink during cooking. Six patties cooked in a skillet don’t produce more than about a tablespoon of fat.”

While the Beerys sell most of their ground beef to bars, cafes, and grocery stores in the region, much of their Choice steer beef is sold to local individuals looking for an alternative to the boxed-beef products shipped into the area from distant processing plants. They also ship frozen beef bundles to customers in Rapid City, South Dakota, as well as to Billings and Kalispell, Montana, several hundred miles away from the ranch.

Word-Of-Mouth Sells

Their direct market beef is produced without drugs or hormones. “Several of our customers are cancer patients who want to eat only beef that has not been treated with drugs or hormones,” says Eddy. They have relied mainly on word-of-mouth advertising to draw new customers.

Hauling, storage, and insurance account for their greatest expenses in the direct-marketing business. The closest USDA-inspected processing facility is 190 miles away. Eddy hauls several animals to the facility every other week. The plant delivers some of the beef to the ranch after processing and freezing, and Eddy hauls some of it back on return trips. Much of their beef is delivered personally to customers. They have a walk-in freezer on the ranch that can store as much as 3,800 pounds of beef.

To shield themselves from the liability of marketing a perishable food product directly to customers, they have found it prudent to double their liability insurance.

Packing Plants Closed

The family’s practice of selling Choice steer carcasses to local consumers is nearly as old as the ranch itself. It was a natural offshoot of the full-scale feedlot the family once operated on the ranch, before all the small, regional meat-packing plants went out of business.

With the absence of regional commercial markets for fed cattle, the Beerys now sell most of their coming-yearling cross-bred calves to big feedlots at backgrounded weights of 800 pounds in February.

In their ranch feedlot they finish only the 60 head that can be marketed directly to consumers. This number includes coming yearlings from the purebred herd that were born late in the spring or that “don’t measure up” as breeding stock. Most of the purebred calves, about 75 to 80 percent, are sold as herd sires and replacement females to other Hereford breeders as well as to commercial ranchers.

The Beery family

Haybet Barley Forage

On 1,500 acres of cropland they grow all the forages and most of the grains their cattle need. Besides harvesting some grass and alfalfa, they depend heavily on Haybet forage barley for hay. The Haybet barley is a beardless, annual forage that is particularly well suited to northeastern Montana’s cool springs and dry summers. They grow 500 acres of this barley every year. They put up 250 acres for hay and silage and harvest 250 acres for commercial seed.

“Haybet barley makes an outstanding hay crop because it produces so many leaves,” said Joanne. “The cattle just love it.” They often overwinter replacement heifers on forage barley alone, with no grain. It’s not uncommon for their forage-barley hay to have 16 percent crude protein, while barley silage will run about 10 percent.

Quick Growing Crop

“The best time to cut Haybet barley for hay is just as soon as it heads out, when it comes out of the boot stage,” said Eddy. “You don’t want it to make grain.” They seed the crop in April, and it’s ready to harvest for hay and silage by late June or early July.

A potential problem with harvesting the forage barley as hay is its lush growth. In humid or wet weather, the crop can be difficult to dry down sufficiently for baling.

Moving beef cattle through the pens at the Beery ranch.

In an average year the forage barley will yield a ton to a ton and a half of dry hay per acre, and up to two and a half tons in an unusually good year. As silage, the crop will yield, on average, five to seven tons per acre.

The Haybet barley they grow for seed to sell commercially is a cash crop that typically earns more than a wheat crop. The family sells as much as 7,000 bushels of Haybet barley seed each year to local farmers and ranchers. Some years they have requests for double that amount of seed.

Allowed to mature, the forage barley may yield 50 to 60 bushels of seed per acre, with a 45-pound bushel weight. The seed is cleaned by a custom cleaner who comes to the ranch to do the job. “It isn’t the easiest crop to harvest with a combine,” said Eddy. “Some years, just after it blooms, the barley will start to lie down in the field.”

They also grow 150 to 200 acres of feed barley. This is harvested for the grain and ground into a ration for cattle in their own feedlot.

The number of cattle in the family’s feedlot is likely to grow larger as their direct sales of beef are driven higher by the grapevine news that “Beerys’ Beef is tender and tastes great.”

“The more people talk about our beef, the more of it we sell,” said Eddy. “Somebody will go to somebody else’s house for dinner and have an excellent piece of roast beef. Pretty soon, those dinner guests will be our customers.”

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