Feedlot Dollars and Cents

Abstract

When I was growing up on a small family operation in Minnesota, we fed some cattle along with a lot of other kinds of livestock and even though there were four boys in the family that did a lot of the work, my father had the attitude that he had to be there every day to supervise everything. Those cattle just would not perform without him making every single decision. He kind of imparted the philosophy into us children that the eye of the master fattens the calf, and as I approached my professional career and went through college and continued on to graduate school, it was with that impression that with the more technical knowledge one could gain about the feed of cattle the better cattle feeder you could be. Consequently, I attempted to learn as much as I could about animal science and nutrition and animal health with the idea that I could be a better cattle feeder from it.