In any feedlot, keeping cattle healthy and gaining weight is the goal. This means vaccinations and sometimes implants and treatments, which must be administered in the least stressful manner, following Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) protocols.

Sherri Armstrong and her husband, Fred, send crews to feedlots to do these jobs through their custom processing business.

“Feedyards contract us to process incoming cattle, and do revaccinations and implants,” she explains. “Most feedyards are sorting cattle by weight, and we help with that and also preg-check and band bull calves.”

In business since 1993, Armstrong Custom Cattle Services of southeast Kansas employs about 50 people, depending on cattle numbers.

“We must be flexible, and if things get too slow we find other jobs for our crews,” she says. When you have good crews, you don’t want to lose them, so you find employment for them during slow times. Many of their employees have been with them 20 years or more and are good at what they do.

“They work well together,” she says. “We view ourselves not as teaching people how to process cattle, but how to live life — with honesty, dependability, integrity and character.”

Lessons are learned through processing cattle with a system Fred set up, she explains. “We use systems everywhere we go. Everyone knows their job and what to do.”

The approach makes the crews very efficient.

Staying up-to-date

“We have monthly safety meetings for employees and BQA training,” she says. “Today most feedyards are doing Progressive Beef, so we keep updated on that.”

The verified cattle-quality management system provides transparency in how cattle are raised in terms of animal welfare, food safety and sustainability. It combines internal and third-party audits to evaluate how well production practices comply with the program’s standards, providing a recordkeeping tool that helps cattle feeders develop good habits and greater accountability in cattle care. A mobile app provides a transparent and efficient platform for the feedyard during audits.

Crews are certified annually for preg-checking and use of Micotil^®.

“This antibiotic should only be handled after completion of the Micotil Safety Course to ensure the lowest risk of self-injection,” Sherri says. “We do various certifications annually, and some of our crews get certified two or three times each year for some things, depending on the yards they work at; certification is by the yard — and what they require — not by our processing crew.”

A feedyard might need certification for BQA and for Progressive Beef, and if a crew does two different yards, they must be certified for each.