EPISODE NAME: Hard Work Makes Luck: McCurry and Quam on Taking a Chance and Returning Home 

It’s not always glamorous but if there’s a will to return home to the ranch, there’s a way. In this episode, the American Angus Association’s two Young Breeder of the Year honorees share their path back to generational Angus operations.  

They suggest there’s more opportunity for young people than ever before and share the opportunities they’ve capitalized on as they’ve come.  

“There are people looking for somebody to step up. It’s going to be work and it could be very dirty work, but there will be a reward at the end,” says John McCurry, Burrton, Kan., who joins Cody Quam, Lodi, Wis., for an authentic discussion on how they're making their ways in the Angus business.  

HOSTS: Miranda Reiman and Mark McCully  

GUESTS:  

John McCurry, McCurry Angus, Burrton, Kan., says he is “double bred Angus.” His parents Mary and Andy McCurry were two third-generation Angus breeders who met at Kansas State University and started their own operation. Today the ranch operates on 2,000 acres of sandhill pastures near Hutchinson, Kan. Also a graduate of Kansas State, John was an energetic National Junior Angus Association member, actively participating in the show ring and attending national conferences. He capped off his junior career in 2003 as he hung up his green coat for the last time. Today he and his wife, Melody, have three children who compete at the National Junior Angus Show every summer and are capable hired hands during school breaks and weekends.  

Cody Quam, Marda Angus Farms, Lodi, Wis., is a fourth-generation Angus breeder working side-by-side with his family. Cody leads genetic selection and the donor/embryo transfer program as well as sales and marketing. Under his stewardship, the business has earned multiple top honors at the Midland Bull Test. Off the farm, the young breeder stays involved in the cattle industry, as a long-time delegate to the national convention, a graduate of the Beef Leaders Institute and president of the World Beef Expo board. Cody and his wife, Tracy, are raising their two kids, Levi and Paisley, as the fifth generation in the Angus business. Cody was recently awarded the 2024 Young Angus Breeder of the Year award, and he accepted the award at the Angus Convention in Fort Worth, Texas. 


RELATED READING:  
Double Bred Angus 
A Tradition of Proficiency  

Miranda Reiman (00:00:03):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Reiman with my co-host, Mark McCully, CEO of the American Angus Association. And Mark, we are about 48 hours off of Angus Convention. It took me a lion's share of that 48 hours to get home from Fort Worth.

Mark McCully (00:00:21):
Yeah, you were kind of planes, trains and automobiles kind of thing to get home. Yeah, a little weather disruption. Unfortunately, some storms moved through Dallas Fort Worth area and messed up a bunch of flights including yours. Sorry about that.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:34):
Oh, that's all right. I just hope everybody else made it home. Maybe in quicker fashion. They had probably cattle to get back to. I got home here and the kids had everything taken care of, so it was all right.

Mark McCully (00:00:46):
I had a video sent to me of one of our breeders. I will leave them unnamed at this point in time, being pushed around an airport in a cart trying to use up some of their delayed time. So I do hope everybody made it back, but I know some folks had to spend a little extra time in an airport. That's never fun.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:05):
No, it's not. Well, I will say that we decided to record this opening now instead of right after the event because I had talked to so many good people. I had completely lost my voice at that point, so also glad to have that back.

Mark McCully (00:01:21):
Yeah, there was a lot of, just a fun several days and inspiring several days. I think for us as staff, I know those, it's exhausting when we get done with it and yet it's definitely recharging all at the same time. Kind of that weird mix of things, but you're reminded of why we do what we do and get to interact with so many breeders and talk, update on what's going on here, what's going on in their operations, celebrate successes. It was really a full several days, but certainly some good ones.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:58):
Absolutely. And we started off with, you talked about updates and their operation. We'll give you an update on what's going on with your association as we do have a very short board meeting as part of the get together there at Angus Convention and Mark, I unfortunately missed that, so I'm going to let you carry the lion's share of that update, but we had a special presentation from the Angus Auxiliary, I understand.

Mark McCully (00:02:21):
Yeah. Karla Knapp was there who served so ably this past year as the American Angus Auxiliary president, and she gave us an update on all the great stuff that they've got going on or, accomplished in the past year. I mean, it's just such a great group. They do so many things. I know a lot of times kind of run under the radar, but she gave an update, $20,000 in scholarships they gave away last year, and of course some of the great activities we do at junior show that they do so much of the heavy lifting around the Certified Angus Beef Cookoff and showmanship competition and of course Miss American Angus. And so got a lot of great updates from Karla and then we moved into a few other items. Of course, it was kind of the first time that we were together as a board since the officially closed the fiscal year, and so we did some of that year end wrap up stuff and the audited financials and went through all that fiduciary duty things. John Stika from Certified Angus Beef did an update on a red meat task force that he chairs, and that's been a topic of interest for the breeders as the industry I think has struggled for some time with the yield grade equation and how good of a job does that do describing true red meat yield and there's some really good stuff going on in that regard and John's leading an industry task force on that. So we got a great update on that. Those were some of the highlights of the Friday board meeting

Miranda Reiman (00:03:51):
And then that just kind of led into, we pick back up that board meeting after of course we have the annual Convention of Delegates. Always great to see our process work and work well and efficiently there on Monday morning,

Mark McCully (00:04:07):
Get our convention together. Of course, those were delegates elected by the states to represent their state and came together and always, of course, the number one job responsibility that they have typically is to elect the new board of directors. And we had five gentlemen that were elected to the board. We had Paul Bennett, John Dickinson, Mark Johnson, Danny Poss and Ron Hinrichsen were elected to the board, of course Paul and John to a second term and the other three gentlemen to their first term on the board. And then of course in that same meeting, they elected Jonathan Perry to serve next year, this coming year as chairman and president of the board. And Jim Brinkley was elected as vice chairman, vice president of the board of directors. Then of course, Darrell Stevenson was elected by the board back in September to serve as treasurer for the coming year.

(00:05:03):
So we got through all of that business and in good order. And then kind of an interesting thing in our process that really at that time, we need to reestablish all of our entity boards and our committees. So we get some pictures real quick on stage, and then we rush our new board off into a series of board meetings where we run through and reestablish the entities and there's a nominating committee that has all of our different guiding committees, events and junior activities and communications, and we get all that reestablished in our time together after the annual convention of delegates is over.

Miranda Reiman (00:05:42):
It's probably a record number of motions made for the, per length of the meeting of anything we do in the entire year.

Mark McCully (00:05:51):
Again, it is a bit of a procedural meeting I call it. There's a number of things that we need to again, establish entities and do our due diligence in that, but it is a pretty quick process with where we're in and out of meetings and making motions, but it's all good. So we have our entity boards established and chairmen of those boards now established and our committees set for the coming year.

Miranda Reiman (00:06:14):
And then in between those two kind of items of business between Friday and Monday, we had a really good convention with a lot of speakers, a lot of interaction, a lot of learning going on. So you kicked it off there with the opening session on the main stage, and we'll have coverage of those and many of those main stage sessions in the Angus Journal that you're welcome to go check out. But any highlights there you wanted to pull out, Mark? Other than that, maybe the first speaker has caused a lot of chit chat among our teams because we're of various different generations and we've understood that if you use a period at the end of your text message, that may be interpreted differently depending by the age of the receiver. So if you don't know what we're talking about, find somebody at Angus Convention who can explain it to you.

Mark McCully (00:07:01):
There you go. Yeah, it has been Scott Stratten. He's the president of a company called UnMarketing, and again, I thought of really great, had a really great message, one, he is very funny and it was very entertaining, but I talked about, again, some communication across different generations. He also just talked about marketing and his idea of UnMarketing. But yes, in that some of us are now questioning, I had to go back and check in with my kids like, Hey, when I put good punctuation in my text messages, that's just the

Miranda Reiman (00:07:30):
You know I'm not ticked off, right?

Mark McCully (00:07:32):
Yeah. You'll know if I'm mad, I promise, but good punctuation is just how I was raised.

Miranda Reiman (00:07:38):
Yeah, that's right. I also appreciated one quote that he had that was something to the effect of, you don't know what it's like to work for you. And I heard a lot readers talking about that. Oh wait, that was not a dig Mark, just so you know, you're great to work for. But there was a lot of Angus breeders who said, yeah, that's really good food for thought as we're inviting the next generation to come be a part of our operations. So I do think it got people visiting and talking, and that's kind of the point of some of those sessions.

Mark McCully (00:08:08):
Absolutely. That was absolutely the point of that session is to get folks, Scott's not from our industry, he really appreciates our industry, but he definitely got people thinking and talking and that was the whole point. And I had a really good session that afternoon. The other general session that day was one really talking about innovations in the genetics area around health and disease resistance, and that was, I think a really important one. That tends to be a topic that gets talked a lot about. We had folks from some other species talking about genetic selection and some of the trait measurement that they're doing on the dairy side and on the pork side

Miranda Reiman (00:08:54):
I heard one of the breeders say there was a pie chart that had all of the traits combined for the dairy industry, and they said, wow, it must be really complicated to breed Holsteins. They had a lot of traits included there.

Mark McCully (00:09:08):
There were, they talked about some of what they're doing on the resilience and different things. Did have a speaker talk about gene editing. I know that's been a topic of interest with our membership and definitely our board as it will continue to look at that technology and is it going to come to market and how's a breed association, a breed registry deal with an animal that's been gene edited. But on the pork side, the PIC company, I had a representative from their company talk about the gene edit they're doing on PRRS resistance. So it was again, just in the spirit of keeping everybody up to speed with the technology and what's going on in some of the other species. I think it was a really good session that created really some excellent dialogue with breeders afterwards. And again, I know those will be covered very well in the Angus Journal for folks that want to go check that out.

Miranda Reiman (00:10:01):
Absolutely. We also had a lot of learning sessions at Angus University the following morning. I'll have a chance to catch up on everything from Angus Media team was doing our Angus Media Marketing Summit and talking about a lot of the marketing opportunities, but then just down the hall we had generational transfer succession planning and various different tracks that folks can get a lot out of. In addition, we had a lot of fun stuff, Mark, with the BQA bash, live music, good band.

Mark McCully (00:10:30):
Yeah, great food. My gosh. The hotel did a really, and the convention center, did a great job with food. Something. I had someone that was actually from another breed that is now getting into Angus, and they were there taking in their first Angus convention, they pulled me aside and they said something I've noticed. They said, people come here to learn. He said at maybe some of the other events

Miranda Reiman (00:10:55):
You were about to name a breed,

Mark McCully (00:10:57):
No, I'm not naming, but they said Angus producers come to learn. He said there was folks here sitting there with their notebook and he said it just had a very different, asking questions, he said things that they wouldn't have necessarily seen at their other events. They were very impressed. And at the end of he said, I see why Angus breeders are where they are because they come at this with a very much a learner mindset and come to get better each and every day. And this particular attendee was very impressed by that.

Miranda Reiman (00:11:29):
Excellent. Well, I guess if we could sum it up, you would say, we come there to learn, we come there to do business, we come there to network, and the last part would be, come there to celebrate.

Mark McCully (00:11:40):
And that's Sunday night with our awards banquet and recognition dinner. And there's several special awards given away and recognitions given away that night. Of course at the end is the crowning of Miss American Angus Rosalind Kidwell from Indiana was named Miss American Angus. And leading up to that, there was just some great recognitions. The Angus Heritage Foundation, inductees, those are always I think, super special. We also had a historic herd recognition and the videos that we put together, the team put together recognize those award winners and then the Angus Ambassador and then the Angus Young Breeder Award.

Miranda Reiman (00:12:24):
And that actually leads right into the, good segue Mark, that leads into our podcast

Mark McCully (00:12:29):
You're teaching me how to do this,. Miranda

Miranda Reiman (00:12:31):
That leads into our podcast for today in which we grabbed, of course, last year was the inaugural year for that Young Breeder of the Year award. And so we have John McCury who received the award last year, and then Cody Quam from Wisconsin receiving it this year. And they both sat down to talk a little bit about their history and the breed, but then of course, the future, what better group to ask about the future. Right?

Mark McCully (00:12:53):
Absolutely. And I think as I let off my comments on Saturday morning about talking about opportunities and the opportunities that I think are quite abundant in this breed, that was interesting to sit and listen to a couple young breeders talk about the opportunities that they see and the opportunities that have come to them because I think they've positioned themselves to be in a good spot, and it was a fun discussion we had with them.

Miranda Reiman (00:13:19):
I think you're going to enjoy this one. So today we're live and in person from the Angus Convention here in Fort Worth, and glad to have our two guests join us. In fact, fresh off the runway is Cody Quam from Marda Angus Farms at Lodi, Wisconsin, correct?

Cody Quam (00:13:37):
Yes.

Miranda Reiman (00:13:38):
Excellent. And you were honored or will be honored, I guess by the time that this airs, you will have been honored, but you're going to be honored as the 2024 Young Breeder of the year, so congratulations on that honor.

Cody Quam (00:13:50):
Thank you. I was really surprised when I got Mark's phone call that day.

Mark McCully (00:13:55):
It was a fun phone call to make, very well deserved. It's a relatively new honor, and we gave it to for the first time last year, to Mr. John McCurry. John?

John McCurry (00:14:05):
Yes, sir. It was a pleasure to be here and had the whole family there in Florida last year to receive that as a family, and so we appreciate you guys creating that award.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:14):
And that whole family came back this year. We've already gotten to see the kids around.

John McCurry (00:14:17):
They are going to miss it. I think now they're annual attendees at the convention.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:21):
That's good. We like to hook him young. Don't we, Mark?

Mark McCully (00:14:23):
Yep. Yep.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:24):
So why don't you guys just, we'll kind give a little bit of a lay of the land of your operation and get to know you just a little bit more. So maybe Cody, we'll start with you. I know you're in a generational operation started by great-grandpa.

Cody Quam (00:14:35):
Yeah, my great-grandfather purchased the first Angus heifers and there was two Angus heifers, two Hereford heifers for my grandfather and his sister, and shortly thereafter, the Hereford heifers didn't stick around and the Angus business was born in Lodi, Wisconsin.

Miranda Reiman (00:14:55):
So a 4-H project on steroids. We've talked about quite a few of those.

Mark McCully (00:14:58):
There's been a lot of those.

Cody Quam (00:15:00):
It tends to be a trend in the industry. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:03):
And you were also very involved in the junior association, also involved in FFA? I happened to unearth an article from 2000 I think it was.

Cody Quam (00:15:11):
Yes, yes.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:13):
Does it sound familiar? Yep. In the Angus Journal you'd won the FFA beef proficiency and also Star Farmer same year?

Cody Quam (00:15:22):
Yes. I won the Wisconsin State Star Farmer and state beef proficiency and national beef proficiency.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:29):
Excellent. I understand Mark's a little sore. He didn't win the year that he competed.

Mark McCully (00:15:36):
I am on a 10 step process to get over it, but no, that's awesome. What an honor.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:42):
So you got your start early on then there.

Cody Quam (00:15:44):
Yeah, like any farm or ranch kid in the country when you're around, you're helping do something and you get that itch to be there every day and do more.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:56):
Absolutely. And then you went away and came back.

Cody Quam (00:15:59):
Yeah. My siblings and I, we've all left the farm for brief periods. We all felt we needed to go out and do something to experience working for other people. I've done a host of different things. I graduated high school on a Friday and I was learning how to drive semi on a Monday. Did a lot of years behind the wheel. I've worked for a Red Angus and Angus outfit for a year in northern Wisconsin. Worked in the local sale barns. Yeah. And then after that I came back to the farm full time, about 12...

Mark McCully (00:16:36):
Was that your idea or was that the family's idea?

Cody Quam (00:16:39):
A little bit of both. It was timing. It was just kind of an easy timing, the transition.

Miranda Reiman (00:16:46):
So to maybe kind of shift over to Kansas then a little bit, John. Of course. I would say you've probably spent a little bit of your life trying to sort through family lineage as far as which McCurry you are, which McCurry you belong to. So maybe start with that.

John McCurry (00:16:58):
Okay. So that's a typical conversation. So synonymous with Angus that McCurry brothers would've been established in 1928. So the brothers, the oldest of those would've been my grandpa AJ. Most Angus people know the youngest of the five would've been Cecil and his sons, Brad, Greg and Jeff.

Miranda Reiman (00:17:18):
Sure.

John McCurry (00:17:19):
So dad worked there until he was 25 and had had enough of five bosses that were pretty hard on him I think at times, and wanted something of his own left there in 1975, went back to K-State, finished his degree, met mom was there also in Angus lineage. She was Miss American Angus in 1971. Grandpa was on the board from 72 to 78, my grandpa Smith, and then they met, Mom was there getting her master's.

Miranda Reiman (00:17:50):
The rest is history.

Mark McCully (00:17:50):
You're double bred.

John McCurry (00:17:51):
Yes. Yeah. Tom Burke always says I'm double bred Angus. Homozygous Angus. Right.

Miranda Reiman (00:17:56):
So you're McCurry Angus Ranch.

John McCurry (00:17:58):
Yes.

Miranda Reiman (00:17:58):
At Burrton, Kansas.

John McCurry (00:18:00):
They operated as Marands just took the wife or the Y off of Mary and Andy till I come home would be 20 years ago. Nobody could pronounce it. Nobody knew who it was

Miranda Reiman (00:18:10):
Your name wasn't Mary or Andy?

John McCurry (00:18:12):
No. Yeah, so kind of a rebranding. We called it Home of Marands Angus McCurry Angus Ranch for quite a while on the logos and advertising to make that transition.

Miranda Reiman (00:18:22):
Very good. So talk about your time at K State.

John McCurry (00:18:26):
Didn't really know what I wanted to do in life except, probably like Cody, I mean this is all I ever wanted to do was raise Angus cattle and be around this industry. Chris Mullinix was the livestock judging coach at Butler Community College. Cody Sankey would've been a sophomore there when I was a senior in high school. Went over to see him with only an hour from home, had already been accepted to K State, had no intentions of going anywhere but there. Loved the environment and went there and probably a forever life-changing event. Met my college roommate, Shane Bedwell, would now be the COO of the Hereford Association. Shane worked was another teammate roommate as well as the herdsman at Kansas State University. He was with us for almost 18 years for taking that position. The year behind us would've been Kyle Conley, Kyle Perez, another Hereford breeder. It was a great, and those are the guys that I talk to every day still to this day. And then went to K State from there.

Miranda Reiman (00:19:18):
And you're kind of forgetting an important part. I don't know where she came into the equation, but you were competing against Melody, your wife.

John McCurry (00:19:23):
She was a year behind me. She'd been, so I would've judged in at the North American in 2003. Then in January of '04, she was on OSU'S team with Kyle Conley. Cody Sankey was actually the kind of coaching that team because Mark, who's a candidate here for the board, was having kids right there. They were expecting their first or second one. She would know better than I. And yes, we met there at the National Western.

Miranda Reiman (00:19:50):
Very good. So then your three kids would represent the, is that fourth or fifth generation? I should have

John McCurry (00:19:55):
Fifth. Yeah, fifth at least.

Miranda Reiman (00:19:58):
Excellent. Very good.

Mark McCully (00:19:58):
That's very cool. So Cody, tell us a little bit about Marda Angus today. Just a little bit about what your program is, what your marketing strategy is, your breeding philosophy, a little bit of just kind of the elevator speech.

Cody Quam (00:20:10):
Well, Marda Angus as it sits today, we are 280 cows balanced between AI and embryo transplant, recips. We market our bulls through various bull tests and then we've done in the last few or the last, I think we're pushing 15 years in Montana with Midland Bull tests. Midland. Yeah, I got asked to be part of the Western Illinois University Bull test a few years ago. I had the top two bulls there two or three years ago.

Mark McCully (00:20:43):
Excellent

Cody Quam (00:20:45):
We market them. We started a bull sale at the ranch at the farm. We're going into our third year. It's Marda Angus, Johnson Family Cattle and Horning Red Angus. So we do a couple different breeds, just a group of us friends that just and family that we make it work. We feed the bulls together, we sell 'em together on the same day, try to do all the work ourselves other than we have 'em fed somewhere. We have a female sale every November with some of the same families. So yeah, we primarily focus on the growth and carcass traits, phenotype. I mean we had the wonderful year this year with the heifer that was reserved in the P&G show. I mean they still got, I still want 'em to look good. The rest of it can come and go as trends, but if you don't like the cattle you're raising, it's no fun out there. It really isn't. It's a simple part of it. I mean they got to grow, pounds still pay the bills in my opinion. So I mean we're 280 cows. We took on another venture of a different breed in the last year or a couple years. So we've added, my grandmother's family was, about 1908 is the farthest I can trace it back. Started with registered shorthorns. So we took that farm over and the herd cows and so I'm learning a whole new,

(00:22:18):
But I don't want that lineage to die either. So we have some shorthorn bulls in the bull sale also

Mark McCully (00:22:27):
Talk about Lodi, Wisconsin, just a little bit. Just help us geography wise.

Cody Quam (00:22:31):
Lodi is right on the northern kind of edge of where the glacier or the southern edge of where the glacier stopped. So it dumped everything where we live. We got

Miranda Reiman (00:22:47):
A long, long time ago.

Cody Quam (00:22:48):
Yeah. But our soil is very, you can within a mile, you can have some of the best black dirt you'll ever find in the country and you'll have some of the harshest sand and gravel all within in the same fields. It's the craziest, but we have a lot of rolling hills. We're fortunate enough to have plenty of pasture. It's very scenic. We're just 20 minutes north of Madison, so we have lots of tourism and so we've got a lot of lakes and streams and that kind of stuff.

Mark McCully (00:23:24):
I heard you earlier say ranch and then you change to farm. So you must be right there on the line.

Cody Quam (00:23:29):
Yeah, we kind of are. Land rent has gotten very competitive in our neighborhood. The farm has morphed over the years. The eighties were tough. Early nineties we had to transition. We were close to 300 cows were bigger in the eighties. The center pivot got dropped into central Wisconsin and all the sand ground that was pastures got turned into

Mark McCully (00:23:58):
Vegetive crop,

Cody Quam (00:23:59):
Got turned into vegetable and potato ground. So all the cow herds disappeared and everybody bought tractors. So our markets, we had to learn and shift and do some things and that again, before I'm hearing the stories, I mean I was just a few years old when all that transpired, but so we've had to transition some things. My dad got a little deeper into the row crops. That was what was the easiest and what got us through, we raised a lot of tobacco to pay a lot of bills

Mark McCully (00:24:31):
That far north. I didn't realize you could grow tobacco that far north.

Cody Quam (00:24:36):
At our peak we had 14 acres. We did it with all friends and family. So that was, if we weren't showing cows, we were in the tobacco fields most of the summer.

Miranda Reiman (00:24:46):
We learned from the Elliotts a couple of episodes ago that that is an intensive process.

Cody Quam (00:24:51):
It's a very intensive process and their tobacco and our tobacco is a little different and there's a few steps in there that are a little different. But yeah, it's the same. There's no mechanism to help do that. It's all hand labor. There's very few left in our area that do it. The dairies are all expanding around us. The land rents are going through the roof, crop prices are down and I like the cows more than the crops. So we're going that route.

Mark McCully (00:25:17):
There you go.

Miranda Reiman (00:25:18):
I see you. Right. Nodding your head to that point, John,

John McCurry (00:25:21):
Right? Oh absolutely. I mean we don't row crop anything like you guys do, but we put up quite a bit of hay and have kind of a side custom hay in business. Just if we can

Miranda Reiman (00:25:33):
Cash flow,

John McCurry (00:25:33):
Right, cash flow, if we can put up hay on shares on other people's ground, it opens up more acres that we own to do rotational grazing, stockpile feed, something like that that we'd like to do. But it's a necessary evil I guess, if you will.

Miranda Reiman (00:25:48):
Sure.

John McCurry (00:25:49):
Especially with equipment, prices, labor, you got to have somebody in the seat

Miranda Reiman (00:25:54):
And that's the equipment that always breaks on our farm. I don't know if that's true everywhere, but it

John McCurry (00:25:58):
Seemed like that was the common denominator this year

Miranda Reiman (00:26:00):
Yeah

Mark McCully (00:26:02):
So John, talk a little bit about your outfit and what you guys are up to

John McCurry (00:26:05):
Probably a little bit of the same. I mean it was an overgrown 4-H project. Mom and Dad started with seven cow families that were all half sisters by Ankonian Dynamo. Those seven cow families still exist today in different populations by natural selection, but they're all still there. There were 70 cows when I got home from school. Dad had a, late in life, probably the eighties, forced his hand there as well. Went back to be a pharmacist and graduated when he was 40. Mom was always in the meat science industry. Worked for a local pizza topping company that was locally owned and then went to Cargill, did Mary Kay for a little while and then ended up with human pharmaceuticals. They were adamant about me not coming home, struggling. There wasn't enough here. So I actually, between Thanksgiving break and the week prior when I was a senior in college, I skipped a week of school, come home, synchronized all the fall-calving cows, AI'd, so that when I come home there'd be at least a set of AI sired, more AI sired calves than there were typically. And then bought a hundred commercial cows when I was a senior in college that had embryos, our embryos in them that were spring calving cows. Kind of was my contribution to do that.

Miranda Reiman (00:27:27):
Did you use your student loans to buy those?

John McCurry (00:27:29):
No

Miranda Reiman (00:27:29):
We hear Cody used his student loans.

John McCurry (00:27:30):
I had a very trusting banker and I still to this day thank him and I just put my head down. I still have kids that we host lots and lots of judging teams through, how do you afford to come home? And I said, I'm 20 years into this, I haven't taken a paycheck yet, so you just got to live where you can live and just plow forward. I guess it was my MO and we were selling some private treaty bulls at the time, maybe 20, 30 a year, come home, my sister had had some success at the junior national with heifers we'd raised, a bull at one junior national that we raised and so I was going to sell some show heifers for cashflow. Did that for five or eight years and realized that the good ones were leaving the driveway that we needed to have as donor cows. Kansas is not the place to draw show heifer enthusiasts like Illinois or the corn belt, had a bull trade going on all along and we just closed. We haven't sold females maybe 10 years for sure. Quit having a female sale and just focused probably on the commercial bull trade market annually. Right at 200 a year, we'll have 125 in our March sale and then private treaty both spring and fall to balance.

Miranda Reiman (00:28:46):
So I want to know how the conversation went. Did you tell your folks you were coming home, or did you came home and did the work and they assumed it

John McCurry (00:28:55):
Right. It just kind of didn't go away I guess. I got pesky fly. We had an opportunity to buy a house that was just a mile away from them, bought that, dad had bought some farm ground and where we live is row crop country right there where the house is. But the ground that we have is very marginal to say the least, lots of oil field damage, alkali, sand. So we were putting together some acres and none of it was fenced. So I just started diving in fencing and

Miranda Reiman (00:29:29):
You literally staked your claim.

John McCurry (00:29:30):
Right, right.

Miranda Reiman (00:29:31):
That's right. And how about you? I mean was it, Cody, was it just,

Cody Quam (00:29:35):
Well, I mean all through my ventures of off-farm jobs, I was still doing the recordkeeping. I was still doing the registrations, doing all the breeding records, I was still doing all that. I was there weekends, night, whenever was needed or could be there and then it just kind of came to a transition. It was now or never. And

Miranda Reiman (00:30:00):
You jumped.

Cody Quam (00:30:01):
We jumped and we figured it out and every day we try and make sure we make the right choice. Like you said, John, it's just get the work done and take what's left if there is any.

John McCurry (00:30:18):
Right.

Miranda Reiman (00:30:19):
Was it ever hard to come back to an established program to have your own influence or make your own mark on it?

John McCurry (00:30:26):
I remember making breeding decisions when we were 14. Dad would ask questions and I had my nose in an AI catalog all the time. So I guess at that point I was probably already doing most of that. I took AI school when I was 14, took a refresher course when I was, I believe 19. It was after my freshman year in college and was always timid about getting going. Dad was awesome. He bred, actually him and Chris Sankey bred thousands of heifers in Minatare Nebraska, three summers in a row until he was so good at it. It was always easy to just let him do it, but got home, started flushing cows, you knew seven days later whether you got everything where it needed to go. And so that built my confidence and so we do lots and lot. We don't AI very long, but we try to get everything through.

Miranda Reiman (00:31:16):
Were you ever worried about, like,

John McCurry (00:31:19):
Mean I don't know if that worry ever goes away,

Cody Quam (00:31:22):
That's just it.

John McCurry (00:31:22):
Whether I'm using the right bulls.

Cody Quam (00:31:25):
 I mean there's just tough decisions that we, you got to make and hope you're right and work through when you're not, work through it when you're not right. That's the biggest thing is because we're not always right.

John McCurry (00:31:40):
No, absolutely not. We were AIing and last winter we'd breed over Christmas breaks. So the kids are our main labor force and trying to explain to them that two and a half years from now we'll see if this worked or not. Exactly. Whether the customers agree with your decisions, the bulls turn out right.

Cody Quam (00:31:57):
Yeah. So yeah, I came home and I came home before getting married. I journeyed into that side of life a little later than a lot of my contemporaries. So

Mark McCully (00:32:12):
Was that truck driving?

Cody Quam (00:32:15):
Yeah, we weren't home much, but I found a good one and she tolerates this. She grew up on a dairy farm and was working for,

Miranda Reiman (00:32:25):
Well this is a picnic compared to a dairy farm. I know, my sister's a dairy farmer,

Cody Quam (00:32:31):
So yeah, so now I'm just in the middle of the little kids and all that fun stuff. So it's been great.

Mark McCully (00:32:40):
Can you think back on maybe some big changes that you made or wanted to make and big ideas you came back to the place with that you wanted to get implemented?

John McCurry (00:32:51):
I think big ideas are everybody comes home with those, but reality strikes hard I think.

Cody Quam (00:32:56):
Well, I mean for us it was just if we're going to do this, we had to get a little bit bigger. We had to secure a little more pasture. It was just doubling down on what we were already doing. And I was fortunate enough we had an established herd. I mean like John's herd, I mean there's still one of our cow families that goes back to the beginning. It goes back to not on file. And so I'm trying to keep that together too. That's difficult some days too

John McCurry (00:33:28):
Pressure is related there.

Cody Quam (00:33:29):
Well, and when they lay down and have four bulls in a row on you, it's kind of hard to keep the lineage going. So I was fortunate. It was just little tweaks is more than I can think of. I mean there wasn't nothing major that, I mean I couldn't think of. We just doubled down on more ET and just more of them bought some recips and stuff like that.

Miranda Reiman (00:33:55):
Was it hard to find that extra pasture ground? I mean you have to work relationships you had from

Cody Quam (00:34:01):
Well sometimes they find you,

Miranda Reiman (00:34:05):
Those are the best kind.

Cody Quam (00:34:06):
So my grandma's home farm on my dad's side, it's just three miles west of our home farm and that's where the shorthorn cows were. Well my great aunt, my grandma's sister, they're in their nineties. She finally got small enough that she didn't need the pasture. So we started taking over there. But when I was working in the sale barn, I had this gentleman as I was in the ring spinning the cows and the calves and this guy all day heckling me from the top row. Never seen this guy before in my life. So after the sale went up, I says, can I help you? You need to rent my pasture. I didn't know who this guy was, but he knew my grandfather. He lived not far away from us dairy farmed, but when he retired from dairy farming, he moved to his wife's home farm, which is 60 miles northwest of me in even rougher ground. And he says, you need to come rent my pasture. So now for the last 15 years, I haul semi loads of cows away, bring them back. We summer the fall calving cows there, midsummer bring them back, take the December calving cows up, no calves, no bulls is the only rules and it's the nicest group of, so again,

Miranda Reiman (00:35:24):
Just got to get creative

Cody Quam (00:35:25):
And sometimes they find you, I mean my brother had a gentleman when he was working in the implement dealer, I want you to rent my pasture. It's 40 minutes away and it's hard to get to that. He goes, don't worry, I'll take care of it. The old guy, we'll take care of them. I supply the mineral, he calls when there's a problem.

John McCurry (00:35:46):
Wow. That's a blessing.

Cody Quam (00:35:47):
Yeah, it is. It completely, it takes so much off of my plate when you can find the right landowner and he's going to be 80 this year, so I'm starting to get a little nervous on how much he's going to want to keep fencing.

John McCurry (00:36:01):
Yeah,

Miranda Reiman (00:36:01):
You're right.

John McCurry (00:36:02):
We're a lot in the same boat. We got cows an hour and a half purebred fall calving cows are an hour and a half straight east. And the commercial spring, calving cows are two hours southeast and we're the same way. Old acquaintance or I say old acquaintances, they're my age as well, reached out. One of 'em is a large stocker operator and with Sericea lespedeza as an issue and an invasion, he wanted cows to be a third of his stocking rate. And so it worked out great for both of us and both those guys. He helps, he can help AI, he pulls heats as well. They tag and weigh everything at birth, but we're very hands on, I mean it's easy to get there. We're there for all the big days and stuff, but same thing, without them, and land and capital, we'd be up a creek. Yep.

Mark McCully (00:36:53):
So you guys both talked about kind of a network that allowed you guys to grow and expand. I guess as you think about, and I always think about our listeners and think one of the neat things about having you both on, we've got a lot of listeners I'm sure of your generation or maybe a little younger, trying to look at how they get going in this business and trying to look for that roadmap. And both of you guys kind of had a bit of a roadmap around a network and things that came to you. So what's your advice to a young person that has their eyes and their hearts set on being in the Angus business? How do they get there today?

Cody Quam (00:37:30):
I guess you got to find your niche, find the people you want to be around. This is, we're in the cow business, but this is a people business as much as anything, whether it's your customers or the people you're sourcing stuff from or people you work with. I think you got to find your group of people and nobody's going to tell you no. Or if you find, I mean this building is full of quality people that are willing to help and if you ask questions and be honest, they will be too. And I think that's, and you got to do what you want to do, raise what you want. Don't let anybody else tell you what to do because geographically, this country does so many things differently. We live fortunately in the upper Midwest, I can put just about any type of cow on our ground and if she don't work in Lodi, she's not working many other places because we have, well you guys witnessed it for the junior nationals this summer.

(00:38:30):
We get rain once in a while and so we grow grass, we grow feed. Some days I can grow feed cheaper than I can grow grass. And you got to be willing to look at things differently, get there a different way sometimes there's no exact roadmap I don't think. I mean I got a call the other day from a potato company, says, we need to dump potatoes, you want to start feeding? No, but OK, bring them, five semi loads of potatoes rolled in, find a spot to put them. But again,

Mark McCully (00:39:06):
Opportunity just finds you,

Miranda Reiman (00:39:07):
You better buy a lottery ticket.

Cody Quam (00:39:10):
But it's the quality of people. I mean, my wife works in the feed industry. This is a feed customer of hers.

(00:39:16):
But again, these potato guys, they always seem to have a feedlot too, and it's more than he can feed with a thousand head. So we only live eight miles from the packing facility for the plant potatoes they came, we didn't get 'em all. I guarantee you that. But you got to get creative. We feed so many different things, distillers'. I mean we live in a very interesting part of the world. We feed a lot of sweet corn silage. I got a sweet corn factory a mile from the driveway. Wow. It's a mess. It's not fun. It's a different product, but it feeds cattle and it feeds cattle cheaply. So again, I don't know if there's one exact roadmap to this thing and

Mark McCully (00:40:02):
I think to your point, play to your resources, play to your strengths, find your own path. Not try to copy somebody else's necessarily.

Cody Quam (00:40:09):
Exactly. I mean you see the success of the publications and the advertisements and you think that's a great cow, but it might not work for you in your home. I mean this is just the way we can't put 'em all in a building like they do the dairy cows next to me,

John McCurry (00:40:29):
Chickens, turkeys, all that.

Cody Quam (00:40:31):
Yeah. I mean we are not there yet and I hope we don't get there.

John McCurry (00:40:34):
Same thing. And I would argue that if a younger, I'm 42, Cody, you're

Cody Quam (00:40:41):
42.

John McCurry (00:40:42):
Okay, so I would argue that there is more opportunity presented to a graduating college kid today than Cody and I were ever presented with strictly because of the average age of the producer that I sell bulls to. They're all shorthanded. And I'd say economics was a driving factor there. The eighties, we've mentioned that here already. Those people my dad's age, to even say from 60 to 75, that was a challenge. Not very many of 'em survived that era. So there's a hole in the market there. So the ones that they're either older than that or they're Cody and I's age was probably the first opportunity. There's some young fifties around. So I would say that there are people looking for somebody to step up Now, it might not be fun, glorious, clean... You

Miranda Reiman (00:41:32):
Might have five bosses,

John McCurry (00:41:33):
Right? It's going to be work. Yes, yes, it's going to be work and it could be very dirty work, but there will be a reward at the end. I would argue that if somebody wants to get their hands and be boots on the ground and want to raise Angus cattle in any form or fashion, there's opportunity. There are. That's one of the most common calls that I get visiting is where can I find help? Who can you send? We are even helping middle seventies age customers that don't have family work and process their calves, help 'em ship their steers. Or he said, for instance, one of our customers, he said, you either come help me or I got to haul 'em all to the vet clinic and pay them to do it. Well we'll get a couple of kids and we'll go help him.

Miranda Reiman (00:42:21):
Now you guys have both been involved in the junior program growing up and had been involved as youth. How many of your connections from I guess your early days and early involvement in the breed is carried on through your professional careers now or

John McCurry (00:42:36):
I'd say just walking this convention and the halls here, half of them probably from that era and the other half you've met since, I mean

Cody Quam (00:42:44):
Exactly a hundred percent truth on that. I mean the most fun I've had this summer was running into people that you showed against. Now kids are there and

John McCurry (00:42:58):
There's a huge resurgence of that. It seems like we all got kids just getting going again and that's, it's

Cody Quam (00:43:05):
Fun. I had to talk Tracy into let me have Levi for the week to not go to daycare. I said, just trust me, this'll work. And that kid disappeared, but I'd get a Snapchat or a text message. We got him, we got him, we got, he just changed hands and keep moving to a different family in a different state and the kid's hooked. I mean, he's hooked and it's great.

John McCurry (00:43:28):
That's what we got to have too. I mean as an industry or breed, whatever, we've got to do what it takes to keep these kids here with us. They're the ones that know they're the ones that are capable and that's the wheels to do it is our youth programs, LEAD conference. I attended every one of 'em. James let us, I was a 13-year-old. It was in Amarillo and I was only 13. He let me come before I was probably eligible to go

Miranda Reiman (00:43:55):
Not a McCurry, breaking the rules

John McCurry (00:43:58):
That trip. I wasn't the worst McCurry breaking the trip, I guarantee you that. But I went to every LEAD conference from there until I was off the junior board, say 22 years old. So wouldn't miss it.

Mark McCully (00:44:12):
Well it put something in both of you guys. You said earlier you wanted it, right? I mean at the end of the day there is no easy path to what you guys have built and done, but that want to started probably pretty early and pretty young to the point where some of the obstacles got thrown in front of you. You said that's fine, we'll just get through that speed bump.

Cody Quam (00:44:32):
Well, and I don't think there's very many of us that are doing this that were forced to do it. I mean, you either want to do it or it doesn't work because you got to make

John McCurry (00:44:43):
You see other people that probably have had the opportunity given to 'em and didn't take advantage of it. And you hate to see those operations age out if you will, but their life's pulled 'em a different way.

Miranda Reiman (00:44:58):
Has it been hard as you've transitioned to show dad to leave the, yes, that's a yes.

John McCurry (00:45:05):
A little bit. A little bit. I've got two daughters and a son and obviously different styles when they say every kid's different. My oldest, it's the same trip every time in and out. My middle one, we have no idea who's showing up.

Miranda Reiman (00:45:19):
That's a middle child thing, sorry.

John McCurry (00:45:21):
Right. Walking in with a stick of dynamite and who's coming out. But it's good. I probably try to parent like I was parented and that doesn't always work. Butt chewings, in your face. And so I've had to adapt to how to

Miranda Reiman (00:45:36):
It's called emotional intelligence. It's a new buzzword.

John McCurry (00:45:39):
I need to figure out how to get my point across without being right up in their face.

Miranda Reiman (00:45:45):
And your kids aren't quite old enough yet.

Cody Quam (00:45:46):
My kids aren't quite old enough, but I've been, I feel in our family it's kind of repeated itself, the history because my aunt, my dad's younger sister was I believe 11 or 13 years younger than him and the oldest brother in the family. So my dad always took her around to all the junior nationals after he was done. And so she had a son late in life, Morgan, who's now 16. So the last eight years I've been the one taking them everywhere either to all the shows and stuff. So I guess my sister aged out a few eight years ago and then we had a two year gap and then we were back in it again. So we haven't had that complete shutdown and it was just we

Miranda Reiman (00:46:41):
That's that's actually the way to do it, I think. And you don't get too much dust on the show box

John McCurry (00:46:46):
It sounds like Morgan would be great help with your kids, right? Save your knees a little.

Cody Quam (00:46:50):
But the stuff that changed in those couple years we were off is light years.

John McCurry (00:46:56):
It's just like everything else in this world, it's a fast paced industry.

Cody Quam (00:46:59):
Oh yeah. I mean the stuff I'm learning now, it's like man, but then when you reclaim an old farm and you find the showbox that hasn't been open since 1984, you find some treasures,

Mark McCully (00:47:15):
Some glycerin bars

Cody Quam (00:47:16):
A whole case.

Mark McCully (00:47:17):
Oh yeah,

Cody Quam (00:47:18):
Unopened.

Miranda Reiman (00:47:19):
Still good.

Mark McCully (00:47:20):
You need to show up at the next National Junior Show ... Silent Auction

Cody Quam (00:47:26):
Consignments. Here you, there you go. So yeah, we've been finding all sorts of stuff like I bet.

Miranda Reiman (00:47:32):
So moving from the show ring, I guess a little bit to talk about the things that have changed. What about the technology or the tools that you guys are using today that maybe either your dads and grandpas didn't have or maybe you didn't even have when you started? What kind of things come to mind that have made your job, I guess, easier or easier or harder in some ways?

Cody Quam (00:47:52):
Well, I mean before when we were just taking weights, turning them in, now there's a lot more measurables, which are great, but it's just that much more time at the computer. I mean, before I got on the airplane today I registered some calves. I mean it just never seems to end, which is good because that data shows us way more than it did. I'm not complaining about it at all. I mean, I enjoy reading that. I enjoy seeing the reports from the packing house on the few steers we do send in and doing some different examination of what we're producing. I try and help as many of our customers, bull wise, market their things. Either feeder cattle or fat cattle, those that want help. Not near as many probably as John, just based on location.

John McCurry (00:48:44):
You said, key point there. The ones that want help, or will accept it. I don't want to be a roadblock with something they've been doing, but you try to open as many doors for 'em as you can

Cody Quam (00:48:54):
Yeah, so I mean it's, I mean the RFID technology, I mean we were in it deep 10 years ago and then we kind of got lazy and got away from it. Now we're getting kind of pushed back that direction again. So it's like, well if we're going to do it, we might as well get the wands back out, get the reader, make it faster, easier. I mean the DNA, I mean now it's just everything. You just do it.

John McCurry (00:49:27):
I'm lucky our kids, Aubree's 13, Molly's 10, they completely embrace technology and we've tried to, we've been completely eID at least since for 10 years I'd say, been completely DNA'd to every calf that's born for that long as well. So with that becomes more data, you got more data collected, you need more to turn in. We just got done remodeling our barn, put in a new lab to start. We got wifi at the chute this week. All that was new install so that we can collect data every time they're through. We know inventories, we know we got weights every pass. We want to keep gathering more. Like Cody's saying, you want to be able to check mark every box, every opportunity to get that data. And the kids, it's like, Hey, I need this done with my phone. Oh yeah, same thing here. We were just talking to the Merck and Allflex. The girls are the one that do all the TSUs. I think that's been another, we used to bleed everything at weaning. Well now we TSU 'em all at maybe 60 days here when we vaccinate and they use the reader, they coordinate the eID to the DNA to the tattoo. The girls do all of that and I want them to grab a hold of that and take it and I'll keep doing what I do.

Miranda Reiman (00:50:50):
We were just talking about you were wishing they had a four-day school week. I'm seeing why now line up. Maybe you ought to run for school board or something

John McCurry (00:51:00):
Someday.

Mark McCully (00:51:01):
What do you think as you look down the road, are there some things five years down the road, technology wise, you anticipate doing more of or incorporating? What are some of the big changes maybe just in general that you see coming?

John McCurry (00:51:16):
Age of the producer, again, that's going to be an interesting one to see how that plays out. Who takes over these? The 50 to 250, 300 head operations in our country. Anyway. Technology. I wish I had a better crystal ball or a more forward thinker than I am. I'm always having to live in the moment. It seems like taking care of whatever you need to do. But there are some of these, there's some incredible inventions out there, whether it be geofencing with cattle. Think about the investment it takes to build a mile of fence.

Cody Quam (00:51:50):
Oh yeah.

John McCurry (00:51:51):
I'm not saying perimeter fences will ever go away, but as that develops and becomes more reliable, there's certain companies out there that can keep track of every break, even an input in terms of a set of feeder cattle on your phone as the scale head. And it keeps track of every ingredient you're putting in that feed truck every day. There's more out there than we're probably utilizing, even though we're probably ahead of the bell curve for sure

Cody Quam (00:52:17):
But I mean we're actually, I'm in the middle of working with our vet clinic to implement some, we had a pretty rough winter and spring calving. It was bad. So we're implementing some changes. But one of the neat things that my vet clinic is large, and it's a mile and a half away. I'm fortunate, but they also service a lot of cows, dairy cows. And we are doing, I'm not big on spreadsheets. I kind of wasn't doing them for a lot. I relearning, my wife and my sister are teaching me a lot, but we're doing a shareable Google sheet with the vet and when I treat a newborn and if I do something, they can see it and they can send recommendations back or they know who to, if I got problems, they know who to come find and all the records are there and it's just something a little different. Used to be a notebook paper, it used to be just memory. Now back to

Mark McCully (00:53:19):
The Skoal can, or your hand.

Cody Quam (00:53:21):
Now there's a laptop sitting in the barn and it's talking to the vet clinic to tell 'em, Hey, we just seen an uptick in treatments. You better get out of here. And we're just trying to maybe get ahead of it. I mean something new that we're going to do, and we're going to do some at seven days of age, we're going to do lung ultrasounds on every calf at seven days of age and then at 14 days to get ahead of pneumonia. They're doing it in the dairy industry. We're in January, outside of last year. We're normally fairly cold and miserable. So I got to have buildings, and that leads to other problems, respiratory problems. So we're going to get ahead of it and we're going to try it. If we can treat two days earlier before any symptoms show up, that's only one treatment versus multiples. And then longer or

John McCurry (00:54:20):
Coming from behind is never good.

Cody Quam (00:54:21):
Yeah. So we're going to try it. What the heck? I mean, just different things. I mean, I'm willing to learn from other industries what they're finding.

John McCurry (00:54:31):
There are resources. You said earlier, if you just ask, there's resources out there, but this technology is moving fast. I mean, I hope the girls will fully embrace it and I'll keep being the grunt guy now. I'll take the back seat and take my role.

Mark McCully (00:54:46):
Well, you just walk around this trade show. I mean, some of the things that are on, and again, some of 'em are in some of the pretty early stages, but whether it's virtual fencing kind of technology, whether it's, again, just some of the tracking kind of things, whether it's data input, it's animal health, analytic tools, things like that. You just think about the things that are commercially available right here today. And then you start thinking about what's in the pipeline of these companies that are here. And it gets pretty interesting as you look at the pace of change.

Cody Quam (00:55:18):
Well, the whole thing, everybody's operations just got to become more efficient and sometimes more stuff, more data, more things to tell you where you're spending more time or better time is spent here. I mean, our operation mean we made a lot of changes this year implementing more infrastructure, changing how we feed cattle because it needs to be a one person job, not a two and a half person job all growing up. I got a 92-year-old grandmother that's, beats me to the farm every day. Well part, I mean I got to help get kids to school, but she's at the farm between six

Mark McCully (00:55:56):
Excuses, excuses

Cody Quam (00:55:57):
Six 30 and 6 45 every day. You hear the Kubota go to the pasture and she wants to do something. Well, I want her to be here forever, but she's outside helping every day do something and I got to figure out how to replace her. So it's trying to figure out the efficiencies of just turning these chores that used to be two people into one person. So the second person you have can be doing other things that are more valuable than standing there watching a gate.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:33):
I've heard that a lot with working facilities too, where people need to have, they're the only one there. They need to be able to get a cow in by themselves and yeah,

John McCurry (00:56:42):
I agree. It's just you try to do more with less. We've installed cattle guards for that end. Like you say, just even you think it's, I told I don't want to be lazy by doing that, but it is if you don't have to get out and stop, go through, stop close, then when you come back out of that pasture, little things like that. I remember dragging hoses when I was a kid and I hope I never see one again. Just that automatic waters in every pasture, trap, whatever it is. Yep.

Cody Quam (00:57:13):
Yeah, you're spending capital today, but you're saving if you save 10 minutes here on this job every day, what's that time worth? And then you multiply that by how many jobs you just did all day long. You might actually get to go home an hour earlier to see your kids before they go to bed,

Miranda Reiman (00:57:31):
Which is worth an awful lot. Exactly.

Mark McCully (00:57:33):
And what other things could you be doing with that time that may a little higher return on investment of your time.

John McCurry (00:57:40):
All you're doing then is keeping up. You're not getting ahead again.

Mark McCully (00:57:43):
Exactly right. Maybe it's a couple customer calls, maybe it's some research, maybe it's putting some data, some things that probably have a little better return than dragging a hose.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:54):
So as we look to the future, and you guys have talked about your operations a little bit, but let's talk about the beef industry in general. What do you think is the future of the breed associations? What do you think is our value 20, 30, 40 years down the road? What do you hope we're still doing for you or what do you hope we're doing for you that we're not today?

Cody Quam (00:58:15):
Well, I think you got to be the gatekeepers of all the data that we're inputting for sure. I mean, you're still doing, can't complain about anything anybody in the association's doing. I mean, you're providing all the data tabulation for us. You're kicking back the registrations. Everything's timely. What Angus Media does, what Angus Genetics does. There's just so much information that makes our lives easier at home. And for me, that's monumental. I mean, when you do have a problem and you call, it's boom, it's done. You get somebody on the phone right now it's handled and it's done, and tomorrow it's not a problem anymore. And that makes life a lot easier for, I know it does for me,

John McCurry (00:59:09):
I don't know. Again, I wish I was a

Mark McCully (00:59:12):
Futurist.

John McCurry (00:59:12):
Yeah,

Cody Quam (00:59:14):
I struggle with it too.

John McCurry (00:59:16):
 Just in our lifetime, Cody and I are young, I would assume by the hopefully, well, maybe not as we were obviously, but compared to maybe the average age of the attendee here, you just think about where we have come as a breed, maybe the desperation in 1978 to establish CAB thinking we got to do something to drive that mission. I'm not going to say accomplish, because that challenge is never over, but don't rest on our laurels. Keep pushing forward.

Cody Quam (00:59:46):
Hundred percent

John McCurry (00:59:47):
We've done, mission is on target. Let's use that phrase if we will. I think keep pushing and keep going and making the cattle better. And I think as an industry, I mean we've got new packing plants on the cuff of being opened up. The demand. If the economy is where they say it is, the demand has not slowed up at all. We have an incredible product to offer and sell as a beef industry contributor. I think just keep pushing the envelope forward. It takes the top 1% to pull the bottom one to keep pulling. I think you go, I've spent some time at some of these larger commercial yards. It's incredible the data that they capture. They know exactly what cattle they want to buy the next year. They know they look at spreadsheets all day and you and I maybe get to gander at 'em once or twice a year.

Miranda Reiman (01:00:38):
Get to, have to,

John McCurry (01:00:39):
Yes. Yeah. But the bull sale catalog... You're like, you've learned a lot of things in a hurry. But again, I wish I was better at that area. But I think if you spend some time around some key industry leaders and some doers if you will, those, it is amazing what is out there and what is going on, you learn the contributions of CAB from a cattle feeders perspective when they're going against the plant average, that pen's got to start with so many black in it if they're going to keep up. So that's a driving force in the market. Had a neighbor complaining this morning of another breed, what his cattle brought this week at the sale barn and I said, well, you wouldn't have that problem if they released half this. Right, half Angus.

Miranda Reiman (01:01:22):
He's smiling when he says that, just so you know.

Mark McCully (01:01:27):
So as you guys, we recognize you both here as our outstanding young breeders. And I also kind of chuckle that you're both 40, early forties and that's

Miranda Reiman (01:01:40):
We're still young, Mark.

Mark McCully (01:01:40):
Well I know. Hey, I'm early fifties or early-ish, fifties and I still consider myself young. So I think one that speaks to a little bit to our industry of what young, how we define young, but as you think about how as an association, I think about this a lot, right? Miranda's looking at me like, where are you going with this question? It's late, but I have a point. As an association, how do we make more Johns? How do we make more Codys — you got a fire lid in you at some point in your life and you had opportunities that came to you and opportunities you created yourself. But are there things that you think about as an association that we can be investing in or putting efforts toward to make more John and Codys?

Cody Quam (01:02:28):
Well, I think, I didn't go to as many LEAD conferences as John, but I went to a few of them

Miranda Reiman (01:02:32):
You followed the rules,

Cody Quam (01:02:35):
But I didn't go to as many. But that program was phenomenal. I mean, for me, both my siblings went a lot, quite a few years because it happened to overlap our state fair every year. So it got a little dicey on where when you had to be there,

John McCurry (01:02:51):
Where it fell on the calendar.

Cody Quam (01:02:53):
But the junior association, I mean you keep, and the Foundation, you keep lighting that fire. I mean this summer in Madison, that tailgate night on Thursday night, I'd never seen so many happy kids. I mean, that made my week. I mean, just watching all those kids and the families and the whole environment was just, I thought it was special. I think that's how we light that fire and not every kid has to go to college and all that, but the foundation to do what they're doing, providing scholarships and opportunities and research. I mean that stuff's got to be there for those people to grab onto in my opinion.

John McCurry (01:03:40):
Yeah, I think had the LEAD conference, I don't know when they would've started, I mean early nineties I'm guessing ish.

Cody Quam (01:03:46):
Sounds about right.

John McCurry (01:03:47):
The addition of those raising the bars I think is incredible. Not only are you exposing kids to a university, I think for the most part you've focused around land-grant universities. I think that's awesome. Getting them exposed in say high school age, giving 'em that opportunity to get on campus. But maybe those kids that were too, couldn't make it work calendar wise, like Cody or weren't exposed to it on a national level, get it on a regional level. I think those are great. I think like you say, the Foundation does more than their part in terms of moving kids forward, but obviously junior nationals, LEAD, Raising the Bar. I think you and I talked maybe a year or two ago about some other opportunities. I think we took our kids to that this spring and just expose 'em to packing plant. We're going to need cattle feeders, we're going to need feed science majors, all those. If the light comes on and says, man, I want to do that to somebody that had to in that room, 60, 80 kids in there. If they want to become a feed yard manager or a fat cattle buyer or a nutritionist, they're all, we got to have 'em all

(01:05:01):
Just giving exposure, exposure, giving 'em, showing 'em different facets of the industry. It doesn't all need to be leading in a ring. It doesn't necessarily have to be at a LEAD, just different avenues because we got to keep everybody, obviously we're not going to keep every kid that was born in ag in ag, but there is going to be a place for all of them here in the next decade. We're going to need as many of them because they know so much at 7, 8, 10 years old, secondhand, that then other people are going animal science 105, trying to learn what these kids already know. They're ahead for life. So I think things that they pick up on, see things they see. I mean our kids, they can see a cow in heat half a mile away or little things like that that a non-trained eye would drive right on by.

Mark McCully (01:05:57):
When you think about it, you think exposure and I think that's so important. I take my personal situation, I didn't know what I didn't know. It wasn't until probably I got on a judging van that I started seeing. It was like I'd never been to a big large scale commercial feed drive. I didn't know such a thing. I guess I kind of knew they existed. So exposure and just what career opportunities. I think sometimes our kids don't understand and yeah, we need kids going back on their farms and ranches, but all of, again, I look around this trade show, the amount of it contributors. I mean, we need some really smart kids that understand this business and understand the practical application of some of these technologies. So we need them. We need them.

Miranda Reiman (01:06:36):
So you guys are great examples of people who've taken the opportunities put in front of you and really latching onto that. Do you have anything else that you want to add before I ask the random question of the week? We cover everything? It's late, so I'm going to, yeah, I'll just move right on to the random question of the week. So if you are going on a cross country road trip and you could pick anybody famous or otherwise maybe just ordinary person to jump in with you, who's riding in the passenger seat? Mark you look like you know. Do you have one?

Mark McCully (01:07:10):
Oh, I've got a lot of people popping into my head. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (01:07:13):
He's like, you're all my favorites. I can't pick one of you. I haven't seen that.

Mark McCully (01:07:17):
Of course, I'd want my wife next to me. In case she's listening to this podcast.

John McCurry (01:07:22):
Right. That's the first person that come to my mind. My dad has been gone year and a half now. It'd be good, but I would probably narrow it down to somebody that's an elder. I don't want to call 'em old. I don't want to call 'em an elder because of their knowledge. I mean, just sitting around talking Gary Dameron, we were at Bill Conley's memorial there last Saturday and just the things he's seen in his lifetime, the people that he has seen come and go in this industry, I would say is a very well-rounded agriculturalist. Not just an Angus breeder. I mean, they farm. He's spent quite a bit of time in the... There would be somebody that has just crazy in-depth of knowledge. Tom Burke would be another one when he can talk about who bought what animal when in the sixties, long before I was born,

Cody Quam (01:08:13):
I did many a state, Wisconsin state. I was sale chairman for many years and drove 'em all over and it was so-and-so had a sheep farm. Suffolk here, they had Durocs here and these are housing develops now. I mean, he's pointing it out. I mean, I've done many miles with Tom. That is an enjoyable,

Miranda Reiman (01:08:31):
So you've already done that one. That can't be your answer now.

John McCurry (01:08:36):
Yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, just the right one's fresh in my mind, Gary, last week we were just talking about this and that and to know you would be able to know, I mean, he was one of the youngest presidents of the American Angus Association. Correct. And you just think about what people, he's 84 ish, I'm going to guess,

Miranda Reiman (01:08:57):
Don't make us try to guess that on air.

John McCurry (01:08:59):
You think about what they've seen

Miranda Reiman (01:09:00):
In their life lifetime. Gary, if you're listening, you look 52

John McCurry (01:09:02):
And you act 22, but you've seen what he's seen in this breed in his lifetime. The different fads and chases of type and kind. We went from six or seven EPDs to crowding 30. I would choose somebody of an elder, I guess a breed statesman.

Cody Quam (01:09:25):
I would echo that. I mean, and if you were going to just thinking, I grew up traveling the country with my grandfather. I'd just love to have that back one time. That first come to mind. Going to twice a year we'd go to PAYS in the semi up to Billings, sell bulls.

Miranda Reiman (01:09:48):
That's a long road trip from Lodi

Cody Quam (01:09:50):
And especially in the old cabover semi-tractor. I mean, it was a rough ride too. But we did that all through the nineties. I mean, I did that from I think third grade on. I went to one bull sale, if not two with him. Those are the memories you that you hope you can pass on.

John McCurry (01:10:10):
Be another one, be Joe Goggins. You just think about what he's seen coast to coast. He is one of your futurists. I would say, people that can see forward and it'd be another one that would learn a lot. Short amount of time.

Miranda Reiman (01:10:26):
Well, you might get a couple of phone calls after this where people want to ride across the country. I

John McCurry (01:10:29):
Left them out.

Miranda Reiman (01:10:31):
No, I'm thinking the other way around. They might need a lift

Mark McCully (01:10:33):
Going from somewhere. Miranda, did you have somebody? You got to write the questions?

Miranda Reiman (01:10:38):
Oh gosh, no. This somebody, I thought of that question on the fly. I would probably, it's a cop out, but I'd say my grandpa that we farmed with, I think that would be easy. Or I had actually thought in the Goggins family, Babe Goggins, I would like to know absolutely from a mom standpoint, raising those kids and doing all that she's done to keep that family

John McCurry (01:10:57):
Together and everybody on board.

Miranda Reiman (01:10:59):
As a mom of six, I think I could learn some things from her

Mark McCully (01:11:03):
Or the Pat Goggins or the Henry Gardiners. I think about some of the folks we've had on our podcast talking

(01:11:11):
Their fathers or grandfathers, right.

Cody Quam (01:11:13):
Leo McDonald,

Miranda Reiman (01:11:15):
All kinds of good options.

Mark McCully (01:11:17):
So many of these we've had on the Angus Conversation Podcast, so you can go back and listen to back episodes and

Miranda Reiman (01:11:24):
If you would like to have them in the car with you, just pop on the,

John McCurry (01:11:27):
There'd be a little taste

Miranda Reiman (01:11:28):
Look if we're turning him into a marketer. Right.

Mark McCully (01:11:31):
Little at a time. Little at a time.

Miranda Reiman (01:11:33):
Well, thank you guys so much for taking the time out of the

Cody Quam (01:11:35):
My pleasure.

John McCurry (01:11:36):
My pleasure.

Miranda Reiman (01:11:36):
This trade show is a chance to get to visit with friends and I'm glad that we've gotten to sit down and visit with you guys and

Mark McCully (01:11:43):
congratulations

John McCurry (01:11:44):
Incredible crowd here tonight for the first night.

Mark McCully (01:11:45):
Yes.

Miranda Reiman (01:11:46):
It was an incredible crowd and congratulations on your honors and look forward to the rest of the weekend.

Mark McCully (01:11:51):
Yep. It's great to have you guys in the breed. Thank you for all you do and it's been fun to recognize you both here on different years and thanks for coming and sharing your story and your journey.

John McCurry (01:12:01):
Thank you. Appreciate you guys and all your work you do.

Cody Quam (01:12:04):
Yeah, we couldn't do this without you guys.

Miranda Reiman (01:12:07):
And that's a wrap on our first conversation live from Fort Worth. But hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and you'll get additional episodes recorded right there in person in the trade show. And for in-depth coverage. On everything from main stage presentations to Angus University Sessions, pick up your January edition of your Angus Journal journal. Not a subscriber? Visit angusjournal.net to learn more. This has been the Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.