EPISODE NAME:  

When Opportunity Meets Ambition: The Sankey’s 6N Ranch Story 

A judging team romance led to a lifetime of breeding cattle together. That’s Chris and Sharee Sankey’s story in a nutshell. The pair came with cattle roots, but made their own way when a lease opportunity came up outside of Council Grove, Kan. There’s no way to put a price tag on the memories made during all the miles traveled to cattle shows, but the couple says that helped them grow their kids and their cow herd both. They’re now meeting their adult children and their families at the same locations. This episode covers their history, how they’ve seen the industry evolve and a nod to the future — with more than a few stories sprinkled throughout.  

HOSTS: Miranda Reiman and Mark McCully  

GUESTS: Chris and Sharee Sankey  

In the early 1990s Chris and Sharee Sankey purchased the headquarters and part of 6N Ranch near Council Grove, Kan., after leasing the ranch from the Norquists since 1983. With the blessings of the original owners, the ranch was able to stay Sankey's 6N Ranch in the Flint Hills. 

The Sankey family's roots in agriculture and the Angus breed span a century. They have been building their Angus herd off of intense artificial insemination (AI), producing cattle that will survive primarily on grass in the Flint Hills, but also be successful in the showring. They Sankeys have produced three national Roll of Victory Show Bull of the Year honorees, and many females that have been successful showing on a national level. 

Miranda Reiman (00:00:03):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Reiman with my co-host, CEO of the American Angus Association, Mark McCully. I am glad we found a time to visit. We've been pretty busy in the office and a lot of events happening and I've been taking off some time. My kids are in cross country, so that's dominated a few days to block out on the calendar, but we just got done with a great conversation with a couple Angus breeders.

Mark McCully (00:00:28):
Yeah, calendars are full on everyone's calendar. I know this time of year with so many of the, I love fall. The fall events are extra special. I got to travel a little bit this week in Tennessee and it was a beautiful, beautiful country and got to visit with some Angus breeders there getting to head to the American Royal here shortly and go down for, which was where our guests were at. They were camped out in the parking lot of the American Royal getting ready for the Angus show down there. Chris and Sharee Sankey of Council Grove, Kansas.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:03):
Yeah, something that really came out in their interview and I think is a common theme of a lot of interviews that we do about the cattle business is really the people business, but they talked about a lot of those memories either made as a family, spending a lot of miles going down the road or when they're with their Angus family, so that's something we're really looking forward to here in the next couple of weeks.

Mark McCully (00:01:25):
As we go to the Angus Convention. I always say it's a big family reunion and I feel that especially that first night, it feels like everyone's just friendships that maybe have started years and years ago maybe at a cattle show or maybe at an Angus sale or maybe at an Angus Convention, and it is always fun to get everybody together and yeah, Chris and Sharee talked about how for them now today with their kids at the stage of life with now their grandkids showing, they use cattle shows as their times where they probably see each other most, and so I know that feeling because we're sure excited when we get everybody together in Fort Worth.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:09):
I think in this episode there will be people at all different stages of their lives and Angus careers that will nod their head along with some part of it. So whether you're raising young kids in the cattle business or whether you're at the stage of life where you're watching your grandkids be involved in the business, I think there's going to be something for everyone to learn from this one. Today we are headed to Kansas. On the podcast we have Chris and Sharee Sankey from Council Grove Sankey 6N Ranch, and they're actually coming to us live from the parking lot at the American Royal, so thanks for joining us today guys.

Chris Sankey (00:02:50):
Looking forward to it.

Sharee Sankey (00:02:50):
Excited to have the conversation.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:53):
Very good. Well, we'll jump a little bit into your, you kind of got Angus in your pedigree, I think you're well known in the breed, but past member of the American Angus Association Board there, Chris, and Sharee, you've served in leadership roles there on the American Angus Auxiliary up to president. Both have served long time in the Kansas Angus Association and been involved in the National Junior Angus Association, but

Mark McCully (00:03:16):
Junior advisors, I understand. Yeah.

Chris Sankey (00:03:19):
Yep.

Sharee Sankey (00:03:20):
Did our turn there

Mark McCully (00:03:21):
What I think is really neat in your pedigree, the recognition, some of the recognitions you've both gotten have been as couples, I know you were herdsman of the year for the American Angus Association back in 2015, and then also the industry livestock industry leader of the year, I think in 2018 out at the National Western Stock Show and recognizing you both as a couple. I thought that's really, really cool and I think says a lot about how you guys operate as a team and so thanks for joining us.

Chris Sankey (00:03:50):
Well, we appreciate being asked. That's kind of been the thing about this business is it's allowed us to do it together. We got married a long time ago and this was our passion, so it was kind of like, we can do this together. We're just going to stay with it and continue to do it as we have been able to.

Miranda Reiman (00:04:11):
Why don't you give us just a little bit of your background or your paths into Angus, each of you separately.

Chris Sankey (00:04:16):
I probably, I'll let Sharee start. She's got the family that's got the most Angus history, so I'll let her start the first side of the family.

Sharee Sankey (00:04:24):
Well, it's pretty exciting to have the second oldest Angus herd in the nation. My maiden name was Laflin, and we've been in the Angus business since 1900. Fourth generation Angus breeder. Cody and Jeana are fifth and now our grandkids are the sixth. So it's pretty exciting to have that kind of heritage be involved and probably more involved now than even my grandpa and great-grandpa were,

Chris Sankey (00:04:52):
Yeah, and my family, my grandfather, he got us in the Angus business back in the forties on my family's ranch out in south central Kansas, and so it's just, it was just coming out of college. That was kind of our thing. We just, passionate about doing this. The Angus breed had been really part of our lives, so we're like, we didn't know any better. We're like, this is what we want to do. We don't know how we're going to do it, but this is what we're going to do.

Mark McCully (00:05:20):
I had some conversations with your son, Cody before this because I wanted to get some dirt and he said the dirt would be ask Chris if he in fact served, were you the first junior Simmental Association president? Is that correct?

Chris Sankey (00:05:37):
Yeah, and that was, I mean, in the early seventies my family did get into the Simmental business. My dad was a really good friend of Ansel Armstrong at the time, at NBI, new Breed Industries in Manhattan and they were importing all those bulls and Ansel convinced my dad, we ran a lot of commercial black cows along our registered cows and he convinced him to, let's breed those cows to some of them Simmi bulls and I dunno, one thing led to another, and I do have to admit it's an embarrassing picture to find, if you ever find the picture. It was 1970, I don't know what it was, 75. I was a freshman in college, we're in Houston. They formed this and I was the first president, so that was a short-lived moment.

Mark McCully (00:06:23):
Well, Sharee, you brought him back around, so good job,

Sharee Sankey (00:06:27):
Saw the light.

Chris Sankey (00:06:30):
It's a good thing. Sharee's dad, Bob didn't really fully comprehend. I might not have been able to. He was slow accepting me anyway, but that might have ...

Mark McCully (00:06:42):
Now you guys both went to K State and met there?

Chris Sankey (00:06:45):
Yes,

Sharee Sankey (00:06:45):
Yes.

(00:06:46):
We were on the livestock judging team together.

Chris Sankey (00:06:48):
Yep. We spent time traveling together and so

Sharee Sankey (00:06:52):
Yeah, we kind of have a funny story. At the very end of our senior year, you end up in Louisville. We were dating and we got to Louisville and I ended up drawing cards and Chris didn't and I said, oh my gosh, he's probably never going to marry me now I have your cards. And he didn't, so

Chris Sankey (00:07:08):
It was a moment of real, I kind of had to take a big deep breath there because I was getting left out, but it turned out fine.

Miranda Reiman (00:07:16):
I was just going to ask who was the better judger?

Sharee Sankey (00:07:20):
Actually, Chris, he was doing really well. I thought for sure he'd draw cards and you never know until they hand the cards out.

Chris Sankey (00:07:29):
But nowadays in our family, both of our kids were on national championship teams at Oklahoma State, so what we think doesn't matter, it's like

Sharee Sankey (00:07:39):
It gets pretty critical at our house when everybody starts giving their opinion.

Miranda Reiman (00:07:45):
No shortage of 'em.

Mark McCully (00:07:46):
So my wife and I met on a livestock judging team. We actually got married while we were still on the team. You guys didn't get, which was actually a really neat deal because we would get our own hotel room, which was really cool.

Sharee Sankey (00:07:59):
I can tell you with Bill Abel as our coach, we could have been married and whatever and he probably still wouldn't have given us that

Mark McCully (00:08:05):
that wasn't going to happen.

Chris Sankey (00:08:07):
Plus if we wanted to share it with three or four other guys. It'd been fun.

Miranda Reiman (00:08:12):
That's funny. So you guys were married in 1978, and then did you go right there to Council Grove when you got married?

Chris Sankey (00:08:18):
No, I went to work at a place in Missouri called Southern Star Land and Cattle Company. It used to be an Angus operation run by an investor group, and we stayed there from that summer and then I went there and then we got married in August. Then we went to my family's ranch for a couple of years and it was a great learning experience that we probably wanted to do our own thing. And so we went from there and went to an operation, an opportunity to lease the ranch in Council Grove, and we did that in '81, I think '82. Cody was two years old. We leased it and then ended up buying the headquarters and part of it and a really good family that were big Angus enthusiasts that owned the ranch. It's called Sankey 6N Ranch at the time. It was owned by the Norquist family.

(00:09:11):
He was an attorney out of Kansas City and Mrs. Norquist was, his wife was very passionate about the Angus breed and he bought her land around Council Grove, let her put together an operation and they called it the 6N and that's who when we leased it, and actually it was here at the American Royal in the fall of '81 or whatever we ran into Mrs. Norquist, Sharee's mom did. We were here showing and she said, Hey, we're going to retire. We want to lease our ranch. Anybody that's be interested. And we were right over at Topeka working for an operation and Barb's like, yeah, I know just the people. And Mrs. Norquist was like, well, it'll probably be 12 months or so before we get this wound down, then we'll lease it. We talked to her in November and they called us in December and said, Hey, we've moved everything out. If you want it, you got to be here by the end of December. So we

Sharee Sankey (00:10:06):
Went pretty fast,

Chris Sankey (00:10:06):
Went real fast, so we just backed up and really didn't know where we were headed into other than that, it was a 2000 acre ranch that we could lease and they were really good people to work with. And then when they eventually decided to sell it, we bought the headquarters and what we could afford and out to kind of respect to them, we continued the 6N part of it and just called it Sanky 6N. So they were really good to us, good people, really good Kansas City family. They had a lot of resources and they were good people to do business with.

Miranda Reiman (00:10:42):
First Christmas in your place was out of suitcases and boxes then, or?

Sharee Sankey (00:10:46):
Yeah, it really was.

Chris Sankey (00:10:47):
Actually the deal was we moved in December and the ranch manager that had been on the ranch, they had a fairly new home set up on top up at the headquarters. Well, they allowed him, he got to stay until the 1st of May, and so the ranch actually had another home that was far from ideal sitting off on the corner somewhere and they said, well, you're welcome to have at that. Of course, we were 22 years old, we didn't care. And we're like, yeah, that looks great. We shut the whole home down, lived on the first floor, heated it with wood, just anything to survive until that guy finally moved out of the ranch house. And so Cody fortunately was young enough, he probably doesn't have memories of that otherwise it'd probably be some kind of nightmare for him. And it started when you do a lot of things that when you don't know any better, that's just the way you do it.

Mark McCully (00:11:43):
Now, did you have cows at the time you were bringing with you or did you had to start building from scratch?

Chris Sankey (00:11:48):
Yeah, we did. We didn't have many cows because where we were, we were working with a guy in Topeka Mission Valley Ranch and Bill Hogue, and he was great. He allowed us, when we left my family's ranch, we brought some cows with us and he let us run those cows as part of our deal with him. And then when we got the ranch leased and we leased the ranch, we bought everything they had on it, machinery wise, feed set up and everything, and it was good enough to get us through that winter, so we bought their hay supply and everything, and so we moved those cows and it was a bit of a primitive operation. Fortunately, our Angus cows survived and we got through it and once we got to spring, it got to be a whole lot better.

Miranda Reiman (00:12:37):
Did you ever wonder what you got yourself into in those first couple months?

Chris Sankey (00:12:40):
Yeah, but we were like, this is our only opportunity that, I mean, Sharee's ranch, my family's ranch, neither one of us. It wasn't going to be a good situation to think we were going back there and we wanted to do what we wanted to do, and so they offered us this opportunity. So it's like, yeah, all we could think was this is our chance,

Sharee Sankey (00:13:06):
This is our chance, our opportunity.

Chris Sankey (00:13:08):
It probably wasn't the best living situation for a while. Probably wasn't the easiest thing to do, but we didn't know any better. We were like, Hey, we lived,

Sharee Sankey (00:13:18):
You have to have an opportunity to lease a 2000 acre ranch that was all grass and you could sublease what you didn't use, and it was all contiguous, so it wasn't fragmented at all. And it laid upon the federal reservoir there at Council Grove. It was actually kind of mirrored off of Garney Cattle Company in Afton, Oklahoma. I mean, you compare those two to what they look like. It had a really great, just lots of opportunity

Chris Sankey (00:13:49):
And at our age, coming out of college, we lived in some pretty seedy spots in college, so it didn't seem like too big a deal. We didn't have the nightlife we had in college, but we still were able to survive it.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:02):
The house that Mark and I lived at, my husband, Mark and I lived in college when we were married. They tore down when we left, so that tells you what kind of a place it was. They made it into a parking lot. Yeah,

Mark McCully (00:14:14):
My wife and I lived in a renovated garage for a year or so.

Chris Sankey (00:14:18):
I mean all those, those things that you look back at now and say, man, what were we doing at the time? You know what, it was great. It was an opportunity and we were going to do it.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:29):
Yeah, absolutely. So was this always the goal when you guys went off to college? Was that the plan that you were going to eventually raise cattle?

Sharee Sankey (00:14:37):
Yeah, absolutely was for me, I loved the life that I lived on the ranch in Olsburg, saw my parents. My mom was very horse orientated and we were horseback a lot and it was a great place to raise kids, and so that was kind of a passion of mine. I had an opportunity to go corporate and decided that really wasn't probably for me. I was willing to take all the bumps and bruises and the good and the bad and everything to just ranch and raise cattle.

Chris Sankey (00:15:11):
Honestly, I don't want to say I didn't know any better, but that's what I enjoyed doing. And just like Sharee coming out of school, we had some opportunities. We had an opportunity to go to work for a livestock publication. I was going to work the road, Sharee was going to work for the magazine and we were going to do that and I don't know, we really thought

Sharee Sankey (00:15:31):
We decided that really wasn't us.

Chris Sankey (00:15:32):
This is what we wanted to do. We wanted to raise cows and we weren't smart enough to know that probably wasn't the right way to go. We just did it.

Mark McCully (00:15:40):
So talk about that time a little bit. Married in 78, I mean, I know we think about 78 around here as the time Certified Angus Beef was started because it was a time when Angus demand wasn't very good. The whole continental influence was... So what gave you the optimism at that stage of the timeline in our industry to dive in with both feet like you guys did?

Chris Sankey (00:16:03):
Honestly, mark, I think it's more like blissful ignorance. We're just like, this is what we want to do. And honestly, I remember Fred Johnson and all of the CAB, all the buildup and it sounded good. I thought, I don't know how this is going to work out, but it sounds great. And I mean we survived some times of selling Angus cow-calf pairs for not a lot of money and just struggling. Fortunately, we were able to survive the eighties when

Sharee Sankey (00:16:36):
Interest rates were at 21%,

Chris Sankey (00:16:38):
But we had a lot of money borrowed and it went from 8, 9% to 20% and the market wasn't really helping us much unlike maybe now where we've at least got a little better market. But I don't know, be real honest with you, it probably helped build our faith more than anything. When you get to a certain point and you're like, I don't know how this is going to work out. I sure can't figure it out.

Sharee Sankey (00:17:01):
Yeah, God was good,

Chris Sankey (00:17:02):
So you got to figure out how to do it, and we just kept stumbling along as we went. And honestly, I look back now, I think, I don't know if economics today would allow us to do what we did in 1978 when we started out on this.

Mark McCully (00:17:17):
As you look back at your timeline there, as you're starting, were there some maybe milestones you hit that it's like, Hey, this is going to work. Were there some things you kind of think about that really were confidence boosters and just knew you were on the right track?

Chris Sankey (00:17:35):
Well, having access to that land made it happen for us. I mean, even when the nor was sold that ranch, we bought the headquarters part, the part that we own, the other part of the ranch that sits kind of set up on the north end of the lake that was bought by Steve Simmons and Omega out of Michigan and Steve, then we ran it for him and that allowed us to continue to do what we were doing. We were able to operate, run his cows for him, lease house, lease some acres, manage that thing. And that helped us get through some of those times when we were kind of doing both, but we were running cattle for them and that family and he was a good person. That sure allowed us lots of opportunities to continue to do that. No, I think we gone there and we just kind of were able to do enough to keep going, so we just kept going,

Mark McCully (00:18:33):
Kept going.

Miranda Reiman (00:18:34):
That makes double the work though too, if you were helping run cows for somebody else.

Chris Sankey (00:18:40):
But it did allow us the opportunity to just continue to do what we were doing. We ran his cows, ran our cows. We'd been filling a lot of those pastures with lease cattle, and so then we filled them with his cattle and so then it worked out good. It was just, continued to be more opportunity for us.

Mark McCully (00:19:04):
Talk about the program. When you got started, what were your goals? What was the kind of cow you were trying to run? What was the market you were shooting for?

Chris Sankey (00:19:15):
That was such a different time. I mean, we didn't really have all the tools available at the time, and so it was more about just phenotypically finding those cattle that would do what we wanted to do. And our thought process was we wanted to raise Angus bulls. We could sell, we were trying to sell them as yearlings because we weren't in the position... We want to keep feeding them as older bulls, so we wanted to sell 'em as yearlings. First thing we ran into and we started selling yearling Angus bulls was a lot of these guys would come and say, I like your bulls, but I'm not sure they're big enough. And so we had to rethink our yearling Angus bulls to make sure we had enough growth in them. And they were big enough framed that these guys that had a set of Simmental cross or whatever kind of crossbred cows they had, when they came and looked at those bulls, they knew they were framey enough and big enough to breed those cows.

(00:20:12):
And that was the biggest eye-opener to me was realizing that. So that changed our breeding programs from the standpoint of we weren't trying to raise the biggest ones in the world, but we sure had to get 'em big enough to sell as yearlings. So that became the focus. And honestly, we both enjoyed, we enjoyed showing cattle. We enjoy, everybody's got a competition streak in 'em doing something, whether it's baseball or football or racing, doing whatever. This is what we enjoy. We enjoy the social aspect of it and we enjoy the competition. And so we're like, well, we kind of like doing that. So we're going to do a little of that too

Miranda Reiman (00:20:59):
Ahead of this interview. I went and reread your guys' story in the Sheltering Generations, the CAB Barn book, and I think that was a line in there that Sharee said that the best way to raise cattle was I think in the show ring, or there was some quote like that. And then the next thing said, and Chris agreed. So you guys have always done that as a pair too and brought the kids along?

Chris Sankey (00:21:21):
Yeah, it really, our kids, honestly, probably boy for the majority of their lifetime, we spent a lot of miles in the truck crossing the country. We had certain shows we loved to go to. We'd love to go to Phoenix between Christmas and Denver. Denver, you come home, you turn around, you go to Denver, you go to Junior Nationals, you go to, I mean, it was stupid. Now looking back at it, how many miles we put on, how many trucks we wore out and honestly being in our position of not, we probably didn't have the biggest advertising budget. We didn't have a big corporate income to put a lot of advertising, but we always felt like our cattle would speak for ourselves if we'd get 'em out where people could see 'em. And so we tried to keep 'em out where people could see 'em and we could pick up customers. And so that was part of the program as far as trying to sell cattle was be out on the road and get 'em in front of people and people still like to see 'em. We still can sell some out of the stalls to people on the road.

Sharee Sankey (00:22:30):
We kind of laugh now because our kids are still kind of road warriors. They're racing their kids up and down the road now and showing, and it's fun to watch 'em raise our grandkids and see 'em show in Louisville and see 'em show at the Royal or see 'em show at the spotlight in South Dakota. It's fun to, raising them. They're raising their kids kind of the same way.

Mark McCully (00:22:57):
Maybe talk about your family just a little bit. We skipped over that in the background, but talk about the two kids and where they're at now and what the grandkids are up to.

Sharee Sankey (00:23:07):
Well, Jeana married Dustin Hurlbut and Dustin's great uncle was Dean Hurlbut who worked for the American Angus Association for a lot of years. Actually, he was my junior activities director, so known the Hurlbut family. And so I think it's kind of funny that that's gone full circle. They have two girls, Bayler and Mattie, Bayler's 10 and Mattie's five and live in Raymond, South Dakota. And Jeana's a graphics design artist and has her own company, J. Marie Hurlbut Designs, and Cody and his wife Lindsay live in economy, Indiana. Cody is with Genex, and Lindsay is a PR person for Harvest Land.

Chris Sankey (00:23:51):
Used to be Harvest Land.

Sharee Sankey (00:23:52):
Used to be Harvest Land. I think it's a merge now that kind of left me. But anyway, they have two kids, Caroline and Cyrus and Caroline is eight and Cyrus is six, and they enjoy the cattle. And Caroline's kind of a horse buff too, so

Chris Sankey (00:24:11):
It's really great. When Cody married Lindsay, she's got Shorthorn ties, so she pulled in her Shorthorn ties and Dustin, Jeana's husband, they kind of had some Simmi ties background, so it kind of expanded the family. We were able to have a few more breeds now to, and

Sharee Sankey (00:24:29):
Dustin is CEO of?

Chris Sankey (00:24:31):
Yeah, now Dustin is

Sharee Sankey (00:24:32):
American Chianina Association. I forgot to put that in there.

Chris Sankey (00:24:36):
So it's kind of expanded our horizon some, but it's been great, man. We are so blessed that Cody married Lindsay

Sharee Sankey (00:24:45):
Cattlewoman.

Chris Sankey (00:24:47):
She's a cattle woman that just does everything that needs to be done for Cody. He does have to travel a lot for Genex, and he's really blessed. We're all blessed. Lindsay will do what she does, and Jeana and Dustin get along good together doing what they do. So we've been really fortunate from a standpoint as a family that everybody, we've just expanded our horizons quite a bit.

Miranda Reiman (00:25:11):
It was a few years ago, I did a story on trying to raise kids and raise cattle at the same time and interviewed Lindsay for that story. And I think probably the one description that makes me think of a lot of farm moms out there is her talking about having the kid in the front carrier, little legs dangling while she is feeding cattle and all of that. So I mean, if you can survive that stage of raising cattle in kids, you can probably make it through, right?

Sharee Sankey (00:25:37):
Yeah, that's exactly right. We're all getting to the point now. These kids are getting old enough. You don't have to carry 'em, you just got to keep an eye on 'em. But man,

Miranda Reiman (00:25:45):
And then they become good help. It's not long and they'll just...

Chris Sankey (00:25:49):
Right. That is right. The older ones, Bayler and Caroline, when they go with us or they're at shows with us, they're good help. They're not afraid to do whatever needs to be done. So we're kind of liking that now. We just give 'em a few more years, they'll be ready to take over and we can kind of

Miranda Reiman (00:26:07):
Really, they can just drive you to the shows.

Mark McCully (00:26:09):
 You can show up when the show starts and set up in the stands.

Chris Sankey (00:26:12):
We're kind of looking forward to those days, whenever that gets.

Mark McCully (00:26:19):
So you guys have used the show ring highly successfully to market, campaign cattle over the years. You've had three roll of Victory Show Bull of the Years. I'm not sure many others can say that. Congratulations.

Chris Sankey (00:26:34):
Thank you.

Mark McCully (00:26:35):
Talk about how the show ring has maybe changed over the years and some of the things it obviously it's evolved to where we used to have a lot of the big open strings to maybe some of the, it's more junior focused today. So talk about how you use it today maybe differently than you did before.

Chris Sankey (00:26:54):
Well, it has changed. I mean, the cattle have changed a lot of, and I mean it's evolved I think. And our biggest issue that we deal with just ourselves is trying to make sure that we're not embracing the changes or the ways trying to keep up if we want to continue to do this. The cattle have changed, the types have changed and we've seen it over the years from everything. It's like it's evolving, constantly changing. But I guess from our standpoint, we just go along and when we raise the ones we like that we think we like, we'll take 'em out. We'll see if we can find somebody else to like them. We are probably a little more selective now than we used to be. We used to be. We're just going to load up and go,

Sharee Sankey (00:27:42):
Well, it costs so much anymore too.

Chris Sankey (00:27:44):
And now the expenses make us be a little bit more realistic about, everybody that's judging does a good job. It's just whether we have the kind of cattle they like or whether or not we feel like it's worth making that effort to go

Sharee Sankey (00:28:00):
Well. And you always have your favorite shows. Everybody kind of varies on that. Some are maybe more recognizable than others, but yet you just kind of go where you like to go. And

Chris Sankey (00:28:14):
We've really embraced Oklahoma City since it started. I mean, we were raised going to Denver and Denver. We were so blessed to have two Denver champion bulls and feel like we've accomplished a world of things out there. But this Oklahoma City thing has been really good for us. And it's been, I feel like it's good for the industry just from the standpoint of knowing we sell in that Angus Bull sale down there and we feel like we get a really good group of people that'll come to that where maybe we had got to the point at some in Denver, it was getting harder to get those guys to come to Denver to just come buy bulls and we use it hoping to reach new customers and to get out and just exposure. So Oklahoma City has opened that up for us. So it has been really a positive move I think for us and the Angus Breed and for all the other breeds, I think it's been a good thing not to be negative about some of the other shows going on. It's just this one has a really good feel to it.

Miranda Reiman (00:29:22):
We're going to pause right there for a quick word from today's sponsor.

Jonathan Perry (00:29:28):
This is Jonathan Perry, and I'd like to invite you to make a visit to Deer Valley Farms to see our fall production sale offering. We're selling 124 bulls and 139 female lots on Saturday, November the ninth, starting at 10:00 AM at the farm near Fayetteville, Tennessee. We believe in data. We believe in genetics, but more than anything, we believe in functional, sound, balanced cattle. Come see the most powerful consistent set we've ever produced. Saturday, November the ninth, at Deer Valley Farms. Hope to see you there. Thank you.

Miranda Reiman (00:30:04):
And now back to our conversation.

Mark McCully (00:30:08):
Now, Cody says you've got some really good state fair stories and maybe there was a story about Jeana running off at the Kansas State Fair and a carny had to bring her back or something.

Miranda Reiman (00:30:21):
Is he airing dirty laundry?

Chris Sankey (00:30:23):
I swear. We look back sometimes and I don't know how our kids survived what we did or I don't know how we got through it. And it is true. Cody was awesome because he enjoyed,

Sharee Sankey (00:30:33):
As long as he had trucks and track at the Showbox, he loved it.

Chris Sankey (00:30:38):
We'd have two boxes, three boxes for the cattle, and we'd have one showbox full of toys, trucks and tractors for Cody, and he'd stay wherever we were at. And the story that Cody didn't tell you is

Sharee Sankey (00:30:51):
Colorado State Fair.

Chris Sankey (00:30:52):
We went to the Colorado State Fair and Cody took, at that time, there's big, big trucks.

Sharee Sankey (00:30:57):
Big toys and Matchbox,

Chris Sankey (00:30:59):
And he took all of his big toys

Sharee Sankey (00:31:01):
And he wouldn't have anything less than that. He wanted his big toys

Chris Sankey (00:31:05):
And took them to the show ring and sat and dug and all around the show ring while we were showing and when it was over and we walked, took cattle back to the stalls. Cody got up and went with us and left his toys and we went back. Cody didn't have gone any more toys.

Sharee Sankey (00:31:18):
They were all gone.

Chris Sankey (00:31:18):
And so they were all gone. His learning lesson was

Sharee Sankey (00:31:21):
Take the matchbox and not the big toys

Chris Sankey (00:31:24):
And don't leave them.

Miranda Reiman (00:31:25):
So you never got 'em back? I'm heartbroken for little Cody.

Chris Sankey (00:31:31):
You learned that he

Sharee Sankey (00:31:32):
He wasn't going to take the little ones

Chris Sankey (00:31:35):
There's lots of other kids that like those toys too, and maybe they didn't get an opportunity to have them, but they found some. So they took what they found. And Jeana, Jeana was the wanderer in the family.

Sharee Sankey (00:31:45):
She knew no stranger.

Chris Sankey (00:31:46):
She just, and it is true, we're at the Kansas State Fair tearing down on a Sunday, which is the worst day to be at a fair because all the people, the old cattle barn sat right next to the midway and we were kind of all, we had some guy walked in and said, hey, you guys missing a little blond girl?

Sharee Sankey (00:32:05):
And we're like, Cody, where's your sister? I don't know. And then the next, we look out there, it's a mass of people and I just thought, it's over. She's gone forever. And then this Black security guard was bringing her back in off the midway.

Chris Sankey (00:32:20):
He was just walking back towards the cattle barn, had no idea

Sharee Sankey (00:32:23):
That's where she belonged.

Chris Sankey (00:32:25):
He said, I caught her. She was running down the midway just going, and he said, I asked her where she was going, and she was just going. So he brought her back. And so after that,

Sharee Sankey (00:32:36):
But then the next year she went out there and she got on the fence with the merry ... go around,

Chris Sankey (00:32:42):
She was hanging out. So we finally had to either chain her up or leave her home.

Miranda Reiman (00:32:47):
They didn't have air tags back then. You should have just put a eID tag on her or something.

Chris Sankey (00:32:51):
No, it was kind of one of those moments when you think doggone it. Now how'd that happen?

Sharee Sankey (00:32:59):
It's pretty interesting to watch Lindsay and Jeana now with the kids because of the electronics they can put on 'em that you can,

Chris Sankey (00:33:08):
Cody and Lindsay and Jeana and Dustin each have one that are very capable of doing the same thing.

Sharee Sankey (00:33:15):
Yeah

Chris Sankey (00:33:17):
And Cyrus and Mattie, I'm glad it's their... We'll help all we can, but they better tag them because them kids are going

Miranda Reiman (00:33:26):
Well. I was kind of thinking that doesn't know a stranger and a little bit motivated. They're probably, they got some genetics that make them prone to that. Right?

Chris Sankey (00:33:37):
Well, they got it from their grandmother. It's like, we'll stop and have a conversation anywhere, anytime.

Mark McCully (00:33:46):
It's those Laflin genetics, huh?

Chris Sankey (00:33:47):
It's exactly. You don't know what I deal with, Mark.

Mark McCully (00:33:53):
Well, yeah, Cody told me the story about Jeana, but he didn't tell me his toy stories. So maybe for all our listeners, maybe we can take up a collection and buy some new toys for Cody.

Chris Sankey (00:34:05):
See, this is the part that he's probably really going to be unhappy with us. He'll be like, what were you talking about? It's like things you don't need to be talking about. So it was actually, I got an opportunity, just went here a month ago, a couple months ago to judge back at the Colorado State Fair. I hadn't been there since that time, and I had to kind of rewalk the ground stuff, kind of find my way around out there and remember those moments when we were out there. It was like, I do remember that. It was kind of one of those times kind of makes for a good memory.

Miranda Reiman (00:34:37):
So how often are you guys now all in the same place at the same time? Or are you just going up to

Chris Sankey (00:34:44):
At the family?

Miranda Reiman (00:34:45):
Yeah. And at cattle shows, are you going to the same shows?

Chris Sankey (00:34:48):
Yeah, we are. And we tell everybody, we're probably a dysfunctional family because we spend more time together at cattle shows than we do at holidays. I mean, we try to make it work for everybody to get together. Usually the week before Christmas, we'll all get together in Council Grove for a couple days, but everybody's headed home because we're all going to Oklahoma City. Used to be we're all going to Denver. We are fortunate because everybody will get together. Junior Nationals we'll get together at, they're all going to be here at the American Royal tomorrow, all come for a couple days. Both families, all the grandkids. So it is where we spend probably as much quality time together as anywhere. We just, fortunately for us,

Sharee Sankey (00:35:38):
We're blessed

Chris Sankey (00:35:39):
Everybody likes to do it and the grandkids like to do it. And so we spent last week in Billings at the NILE with Jeana and Dustin and their kids. We'll go to Louisville, all be here, and then we'll go to Louisville, Cody and Lindsay. Caroline's showing down in Louisville. So we'll go spend time down there with them. And there are times that we think, man, we don't get enough done at home, but we do get enough time with our kids that it's it worth doing it.

Mark McCully (00:36:09):
That's really neat. So I want to back up a little before we move on past the show Ring. You campaigned three ROV Show Bulls of the Year. Is there one of those that is a favorite or that's extra special?

Chris Sankey (00:36:24):
They all kind of have a little bit of a unique story. And the first bull that we had, the Laser, Sankeys' Laser, he was, I'll give Cody credit here on this bull, because Cody was in school at Oklahoma State. He called up one day and he said, hey, there's a cow coming in from South Dakota. And I was like, okay. I said, what's the story? He said, well, John McCreary was up at a sale and we were talking about this cow. And he said, I really thought she's something we could use. So I bought her, which I thought, well, that's interesting. And his mother is like, well, what did you pay for with? He said, oh, don't worry about it. I had my student loan money, so I used it to pay for. And we're like, well, his mom, she freaked out. I was like, it'll be all right. We'll work through it. And so then that female showed up. We bred her and her first natural calf then was Laser. We bred her to Lutton at the time. And then she had Laser, which was our first show bull of the Year, and Denver Champion and National Champion. And so then Laser, we thought, well, if he's as good as we'd like to think he is, we will turn around, we'll use him on some cows. And then Justified, the next bull that was in Laser one, Denver in 2008, Justified we won in 2013. He was a son of Laser. We named him Justified because we felt like we wanted to, it was a little bit of a dig of just justifying the fact that Laser was good enough to do what he did. And so we raised the son of him. And so we named him Justified.

(00:38:03):
And then he was 2013, he was Show Bull of the Year and won Denver and won, had a lot of fun with him. And then the story on the last one, and this is how things go at our house. It's like we're getting ready to go to Denver and Sharee is, we're all in on everything we do. We both have our opinions and our family's opinions. And Sharee told me, she said, I am not happy with what we're getting right now. I said, I don't like the calves. I don't like what we're doing. We need to find a different bull or I'm going to... And we raised some other breeds. She said, I'm going to turn one of these other breed bulls out on these Angus cows. And I told her, I said, well, tell you what I said, we're going to Denver. You find me a bull in Denver that we can afford that you think is what we need and we will see if we can buy him. And I said, I don't need a yearling bull. You find it, but you just find one. And I'll give credit to our regional fieldman,

Sharee Sankey (00:39:08):
Radale Tiner.

Chris Sankey (00:39:08):
Radale Tiner because Sharee went to Radale after check-in and said, Radale, what have you seen in the barn that you, because he knows that, we've known Radale since he was a kid. We showed Brangus cattle with his family and he says, what have you seen you think that we could use? And he kind of gave her a couple bulls in the barn and he said, there's a bull over in Silveira's string that I think you'd really like.

Sharee Sankey (00:39:32):
I said, I want a 2-year-old. I don't want a calf. I want a 2-year-old. I want something with a little gas left to go to the show ring with and then we can turn him out. And so we went over there and I was super impressed. I was like, okay, so what am I here is just, Forbes down kind of on the end. They had Primal on the other end and I was like, what am I missing here? And I go watch him go to tie outs and from the stalls, I was super impressed. I told Chris, I said, well, I found him. It was kind of a joke between us. I don't think he thought it would come like it did. So anyway,

Chris Sankey (00:40:18):
Yeah, I didn't think she'd find him.

Sharee Sankey (00:40:19):
No. And so I said, well, there's two things. You don't get to look at his EPDs and you don't get to look at his pedigree because he is a Style Blue Chip Lutton. And if you'd have told me we're coming home from Denver with the Style Blue Chip, Lutton, all those famous show bulls, but not quite maybe in the mainstream of genetics as far as EPD wise, I would've said we weren't. And he just fell in love with him. So we bought him out of Denver and they said, yeah, we're taking him to Fort Worth. You want to go? I said, well, sure we can dress up and look nice and not have the battle of show day. So anyway, and then he won Fort Worth. We took him to Houston and he won Houston and then COVID hit and I was like, oh my gosh, here we are. We have this really good bull that we think is a really good bull and COVID hit and now what are we going to do? And so we said, well, when this thing opens up, we're just going to run him like Seabiscuit. And the first show that opened up was the South Dakota State Fair with Kristi Noem as their governor. And so we went up there and he went Supreme and then we came to Kansas City and he won there

Chris Sankey (00:41:34):
No, it was Kansas State Fair.

Sharee Sankey (00:41:35):
Oh yeah. I'm sorry, Kansas after, was it South Dakota then? It was Kansas State Fair. Then it was Kansas City, and then we got COVID real bad, and so we didn't make it to Louisville, but we went on to Congress and he won Congress and he won Reno and he won Atlantic National. So it was a real fun ride with him. He loved showing. I mean, the trailer gates, when the trailer come in, when the barn fans go on, that COVID thing was, made life pretty interesting all through that year. Yeah.

Chris Sankey (00:42:07):
Yeah. I got to give Sharee credit, she found him and Silveiras were really good people to us. They worked with us and allowed us to get him bought and take possession of him. And so we had a lot of fun with him. He was a lot of fun to just, he enjoyed

Sharee Sankey (00:42:23):
And we've been truly blessed with him being a breeding bull. I mean, he's gone into a lot of the other breeds. You name it, he's being used there and you can win everywhere, but if you don't have a bull, that's a good breeding bull. It's not worth it.

Miranda Reiman (00:42:39):
That's kind of the point. Yeah, exactly. You guys talk about your success, but you've also been the part of a lot of other people's success. Why don't you talk a little bit about your program there with the juniors and your incentive program for those that are buying and investing in your genetics?

Chris Sankey (00:43:00):
Actually, when our kids got out of the junior program and because all along we had some juniors that would go with us and buy heifers from us. And then when our kids got out, we were like, man, we'd like to continue to help kids. And I guess from our standpoint, we've tried to make this available to, we make it available to kids. We sell junior heifers and the opportunities that what we try to do is give them the same opportunities our kids had. And if we're going and we go to our customers, we're more than happy to take 'em with us. We had a young girl, we've had a couple of young girls that traveled with us for the last couple of years, I guess. One's a freshman in college now and the other one's a sophomore in high school and they've bought heifers from us and we load them and we've shown them they've had an opportunity to go from Reno to Houston to Billings to experience the things that their families just probably they weren't going to get to go do.

(00:44:03):
And it's really opened up a lot for them. And we do that with all these kids. We've hauled kids from Phoenix to every show we go to if they want to go and help, we're really happy. We want 'em to go and help because we can use all the help we can get and we try to make room. We try to make it available because we do realize that not everybody does what we do. And not that that's right or wrong. This is where we spend our life. And if we can give young exhibitors an opportunity to go experience some of these things, man, if you want to go show in Reno or you want to go show in Houston or you want to go show NILE in Billings is a good one, some of these, American Royal and we're more than happy to have you go with us, but we do kind of want you to buy cattle from us. If you're going to go, we're not going to haul somebody else's. So that's the only caveat to the whole deal. You're more than welcome to go, but we'd like to haul our own.

Miranda Reiman (00:45:05):
Yeah, that's not a bad caveat.

Chris Sankey (00:45:09):
Well, I mean we want to just make this opportunity available for a lot for anybody that we can, and it's just evolved into that because we always, we are used to going and used to having kids going in the junior shows, so we just try to, while we're still going, if we got kids that want to go young, junior exhibitors kids, I mean juniors, exhibitors want to go. They're more than welcome to go with us.

Mark McCully (00:45:37):
You raised your kids in the show ring and now you're watching your kids raise your grandkids with the show ring. How's it different?

Chris Sankey (00:45:46):
It is so much more fun. I mean, Sharee's dad, I still remember him. He said, I didn't realize having grandkids was so much fun. And I thought, how can this possibly be? But now that we're experiencing it, I know what he's talking about because we show up and do anything we can do to help, but the pressure sits on the parents and doesn't sit on us. We can do the stuff. We'll be like, yeah, man, I think the grandkids want to go do something that their parents think is crazy. We'll be like, yeah, let's go for it. We'll go. We'll go with you. Let's go do it.

Mark McCully (00:46:23):
Let's go get some ice cream.

Chris Sankey (00:46:25):
It is, yeah. I tell you what, we are blessed that our grandchildren have embraced the same thing that we do and nobody got forced into it. I mean, they all have their other avenues. Caroline is an avid horse person. She's got a great horse that she rides and they love doing that.

Miranda Reiman (00:46:44):
A baseball player I think?

Chris Sankey (00:46:46):
Yeah, Cyrus and Caroline play Ball. Bayler, she loves ball. She plays any sports she can in school, but when it gets down to it, they want to go do this, they want to go. I mean, Bayler and Caroline, and the thing that I appreciate the most nowadays is school is so different than it was when our kids were in school. They can do so much online and it's just like the girls that go with us that are in high school or whatever, they're doing everything online while we're traveling and I'm like, you got homework? No, they're all caught up and everything. So it does allow it to probably be a little bit more accessible for 'em. But I don't know, Sharee enjoys, it's just fun to have 'em go, have 'em enjoy doing what we do.

Mark McCully (00:47:36):
Very neat. So as you guys look at where things are at just in the breed today in the Angus breed, what do you most optimistic about? What do you think some of our strengths are? What's the future look like as kind of big picture as you think about the Angus breed and where we're going?

Chris Sankey (00:47:55):
Well, I still think that as a breed, we still have one of the best junior programs going, and we are involved because of our grandkids. We've been to more junior nationals than we've ever been to in the past, but the Angus Junior program still offers as much opportunity as any. And so I do think as long as we remember that our industry, we've got to continue to attract young people that will grow into leaders, that'll grow into board members that'll help you do what you do. As long as we embrace that and continue to work that direction, I'm really optimistic about what we have going. We struggle a little bit just because sometimes you can go down a path. The biggest thing that I think trying to work through this is our breed has become, and it's not just our breed, it's every breed, but they become a little more fragmented on where you're going, what are you breeding cattle for?

(00:48:58):
And so trying to be able to cover a lot of bases gets to be a little more difficult than it used to be 30 years ago where we're all using the same genetics. So you kind of have to have a little more focus. We feel like we have to be better at mating cattle than we used to be. I mean, we just got to be a lot more precise about matching up pedigrees and EPDs and what we're trying to do. But the reward I think goes with what we're trying to do. So it's a shrinking industry where there isn't as many of us, but I still think the opportunities are endless and I think there's lots of opportunities in the future to do a lot of good with,

Sharee Sankey (00:49:42):
Just like being here at the American Royal, there's so many people that have several breeds, and it's still a showcase for the Angus breed to be at shows. I mean, to have a good show, whether it's Houston Livestock Show, which should be really small as compared to Oklahoma City or Denver, you're still showcasing the breed and being a visual point for people, whether it's for juniors, for commercial cattlemen.

Chris Sankey (00:50:15):
We had a good customer from Arizona that showed in New Mexico, there was 20 head of Angus cattle there, and he sold his two bulls that he had tied in the stalls. He sold for $7,500 apiece out of his stalls to guys that just came in to see whatever was there. And so I'm like, man, how can you not just take advantage of these opportunities that they still bring to you just by being there, just going out there and being there

Sharee Sankey (00:50:45):
With the shows and not just thinking they're going to come to your ranch or look for you on a website or it's still when they come to town, it's good to have a really good representation of the breed there

Miranda Reiman (00:50:58):
And a good chance to meet you in person.

Sharee Sankey (00:51:01):
Yeah,

Chris Sankey (00:51:02):
Yeah. That's right. That's right. Face to face with people that are...

Sharee Sankey (00:51:07):
Whether you've got juniors, you're looking for a show heifer or 4-H project, or you're looking for a bull or even replacement females,

Chris Sankey (00:51:16):
And I mean this breed's blessed because has been, there are cattle that do sell for a lot of money that are really good for the breeders, good for the people that are buying 'em, but there is still lots of kids that want to buy heifers and want to show Angus heifers, but their budget's probably not extremely high, but they're willing to get involved and take advantage if you can provide 'em with something that they can afford to buy. It's like lots of opportunities are here, partly because we do raise, there are so many Angus cattle in the country that we register enough cattle that there's lots of opportunities for kids to get involved or breeders to find what they're looking for.

Miranda Reiman (00:52:04):
Sure. Well, as we talk about that people part and that it's fun to see the people, we've kept you away from your people, now that you're sitting out in the parking lot for about an hour here, is there anything else that you guys want to cover or talk about before we get to the random question of the week?

Chris Sankey (00:52:21):
I appreciate you thinking of us and asking us to be involved beyond... We've kind of feel like we've just lived our life doing what we do, and we've been really blessed to have some opportunities that have come our way and with our cattle that just for whatever reason, we've sure been fortunate, so appreciate you inviting us on. You kind of get to a certain point, we're getting old enough. People keep asking us, are you going to keep doing this? And we're like, I don't know what else we're going to do. I mean, if we're not doing this, I don't know what we're going to do because we're not going to sit at home and look at each other. So we're going to just continue to, we may cut down. We took six to Billings, we brought one to Kansas City. We're like, okay, we've had enough fun with six. Let's take one and make it easy. So we may adjust, but we'll still do it just because we enjoy the people, enjoy doing it.

Miranda Reiman (00:53:17):
Love that.

Mark McCully (00:53:18):
I think they call that wisdom.

Chris Sankey (00:53:22):
Well, wisdom, 40 years ago, we might've decided to do something different if we had a lot of wisdom, but since we went down this path, this is where we're at

Miranda Reiman (00:53:33):
Instead they have passion.

Chris Sankey (00:53:36):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:53:39):
What were you going to say, Sharee? I cut you off.

Sharee Sankey (00:53:41):
God's blessed us through it all and we've had a lot of ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Chris Sankey (00:53:48):
Probably we're enjoying it as much now as anything just because of our families with our kids, and now with our grandkids. It probably means as much to us now as it ever has. I can guarantee you back in 1978, we were never thinking about where we're at now. We were just thinking about how do we get through spring? Get to Spring and get onto, yeah, get through this.

Miranda Reiman (00:54:13):
I love that. Well, I guess to move to the random question of the week, since you guys spend so much time on the road, I want to know if you're bringing somebody on a road trip with you, where are you stopping? Do you got a favorite truck stop, favorite stops along the way? You check out historical markers. Where are we stopping on a road trip with the Sankeys?

Chris Sankey (00:54:34):
When we go to Billings and we go up through Wyoming and then up into Montana, we go by the little Big Horn. And we have stopped there before at the Little Big Horn and experienced that. And what amazed me is the first time we took these girls with us that are high school aged girls and we're going up through there and I'm like, you can see it from the highway. You see all the grave markers, everything from where the little Big Horn was, where Custer got massacred and all that. And we were talking about it and they got no idea what we're talking about. And I'm like, what is wrong with this? And I mean, they embraced it once we encouraged it, but the travel and the seeing historical markers, we went going west. We would go by Chimney Rock, which is a historical marker that's on the Oregon Trail there out by Scottsbluff. When we go to Reno, we go I 80, and you go through

Sharee Sankey (00:55:37):
Salt Flat, Salt Lake City

Chris Sankey (00:55:38):
Go through the Salt Flats just west of Salt Lake City. We get to see the country that, it's amazing where we go and what we see when we go into Houston and we go down into that country, sometimes it gets to be a little bit more people than we want. But it is still amazing to see all the different aspects of the United States that you come home and you watch the news and you see this event and that event and you say, yeah, I've been there. I've seen that. Or we went by that, or we know about it. And allowing these younger kids to see some of these things that maybe they'd never see. When you're driving a truck and trailer up and down the interstate and going by these places, you kind of gather that up. And so our favorite stop, we have a routine because we get into this routine. The biggest difference is back when COVID came, we added a hundred gallon tank into our trucks. So now we go a thousand miles of without stopping, so we don't get to stop as much, but we do have our favorite stops just depending on which direction we're going.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:43):
And does Chris always drive or do you get to determine the stops? Sharee?

Sharee Sankey (00:56:48):
No, we kind of team tag.

Chris Sankey (00:56:51):
We've gotta team tag

Sharee Sankey (00:56:52):
Actually when we came home from Billings on Sunday, it's 17 hours. And so when we go to Houston or to Reno, we've actually done the whole drive between two of us all the way out or all the way back.

Chris Sankey (00:57:08):
Going to Reno, it's always a three day trip out. We stopped three times going out, layover, coming home. It's just load up and drive. We know in 24 hours we'll be home. Fortunately for me, Sharee can drive as well as I can, and so we just take turns and everybody and we have enough fuel capacity, we just keep going and limit our coffee intake. So we don't have to stop

Mark McCully (00:57:32):
Limit the liquid intake.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:33):
Yeah, that's right.

Sharee Sankey (00:57:35):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. And the older I harder that gets Mark, I guarantee you,

Miranda Reiman (00:57:40):
Because I travel a lot of miles with a lot of kids. And just because I'm curious, I'm going to ask another random question for you. When Jeana and Cody were little, did they get along in the backseat of the truck?

Chris Sankey (00:57:51):
When they were sleeping. Yeah, that's the reason we'd travel all night because it's amazing how good they get along.

Sharee Sankey (00:57:59):
Easier just to put a couple blankets on the floor and blankets on the seat and they'd be out.

Chris Sankey (00:58:06):
They'd get a little owey at times when I get woke up and we're not there and we still got some hours to go, but it'd be like, okay, up at seven o'clock in the evening and be there by seven o'clock next morning. They'd do pretty good because they'd sleep through most of it. But it had times we were like, man, we can't get there soon enough to open the doors and let 'em out. We did our share of that load up and go and just try to get there so they could enjoy it. Which reminds me, just, Jeana will really not appreciate this, but when Jeana turned 18, she and her best friend Katie Marson, and we were going to Phoenix, Jeana's birthday's the day after Christmas. So we left Christmas Day

Sharee Sankey (00:58:52):
21.

Chris Sankey (00:58:52):
Yeah, when she turned 21

Sharee Sankey (00:58:54):
21, not 18

Chris Sankey (00:58:54):
And so we had to get into Phoenix before the bars closed so we could all have margaritas to celebrate Jeana's 21st birthday. So we drove hard just so we could get there for that. So that's a microcosm of our life right there.

Miranda Reiman (00:59:15):
Well, a lot of miles, a lot of memories. You guys have shared a lot of wisdom too in thinking about parenting that next generation. So appreciated having you guys on the podcast and you guys taking time out of your schedule there this weekend to visit with us.

Mark McCully (00:59:30):
We appreciate your story.

Chris Sankey (00:59:33):
Well, I appreciate you.

Sharee Sankey (00:59:35):
Thanks for asking us.

Chris Sankey (00:59:38):
It's just special to get asked and we really do appreciate it.

Mark McCully (00:59:43):
Well, and thank you for identifying the need of Cody and his toys that got lost. We'll set up a GoFundMe or something to make sure that he's taken care of.

Sharee Sankey (00:59:54):
Think about it now, Mark, back in those days, those steel toys, they weren't too expensive. Nowadays you go to replace those,

Miranda Reiman (01:00:01):
You just got to buy a tractor to make it for free

Mark McCully (01:00:04):
We're going to get him plastic replacements. Those metal ones. Those are too expensive now.

Sharee Sankey (01:00:09):
We've gathered up every toy wed of his left at our house and sent 'em to Cyrus, which I know Lindsay really did not appreciate, but they're all sitting at his house now, so he got whatever was left, is now there

Mark McCully (01:00:23):
No. No. Guys, thanks for being on and appreciate your story. I think it is a great example of following your passion, being and persevering and having a clear vision of what you want to do and not wavering from that. And you guys have had so much success and thanks for coming on and sharing that story and that path with us. I know that'll be a lot of fun for a lot of our listeners and a lot of young Chris and Sharees out there that I know we'll be motivated by it. So thank you.

Chris Sankey (01:00:54):
I appreciate you asking. I'm sure a lot of people hear this and think those are some blind, ignorant people that just didn't know when to quit, but we didn't know any better. So that's what we do. That's awesome. I do know if you enjoy it this breed, you can make it happen. No matter what you're doing, you just got to stay with it.

Miranda Reiman (01:01:13):
If you enjoyed the stories shared in this podcast, be sure to subscribe to our monthly Angus journal where the magazine is full of news and stories of people in the Angus breed. Visit angus journal.net and hit subscribe to learn more. This has been the Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.