CALF_News_Feb_March_2019

41 CALF News • February | March 2019 • www.calfnews.net R ecollections BY BETTY JO GIGOT PUBLISHER WE TEND TO FORGET THAT THEREWAS ATIME, LONG AGO , when cattle feeding was not the norm. Pioneer feeders were searching for a way to make their cattle profitable and launching into the confined feed- ing business was purely experimental. They made it up as they went along. The advent of the feeding industry was a true overhaul of the cattle business. To quote Dale Lasater, noted Foundation Beefmaster breeder,“Feedyards changed the industry overnight. They were prob- ably the biggest change on the American cattle business, ever.” “It was just a lead pipe cinch and everybody knew we were on a one-way trip to heaven and all you needed was a feedlot.” – Ladd Hitch “We didn’t have a sick pen as such because we never had that much sickness in our range cattle. We had 100-volt electricity and single-phase electricity. We could only put in small motors so we couldn’t properly mix feed and we didn’t have the proper mixers that we have today.” “The first mixer I got was from an outfit out of Kansas City. They adver- tised a mixer so I ordered it. It was a power take off and the first time that I put silage in there, it promptly went ‘thunk’ and stopped. It had been built for dry feed, not for wet silage. “The first feeder mixer box that we used had a rattle in the bottom that carried the feed back. It did very little mixing. I talked to different people that should have known, the professors of Oklahoma State, about the need to have a properly mixed ration. They indicated that it wasn’t all that important to have it well mixed and every bite just the same. The animal would probably do a pretty good job of selecting the ingredients. Well, of course, now we know that it must be very properly mixed down to the smallest degree. We did work on a balanced ration insofar as we were able. I balanced it myself ". Hitch went on to talk about the innovations that came from the need for mixing rations and treating cattle in the feedlots that were developed out of necessity right in the Panhandle area. “Everything that’s been needed in this area has been invented in this area. Nobody came to help us.” The Hitch family built three feed- lots in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma in the ‘60s.“It was a lead pipe cinch and everybody knew we were on a one way trip to heaven and all you needed was a feedlot. And then ’73 and ’74 hit and a lot of feedlots changed hands. And then ’79 and ’80 and 81’ hit and more feedlots changed hands.’ Many of the tools we have today came from those early innovators both in the feeding and the equipment businesses, and nothing has changed as far as the risk we take every day in a volatile and even more complicated world. Look- ing back, one can only marvel at the perseverance and the stubbornness our founding fathers showed to further the business we continue to embrace.  NEXT TIME: LOUIE DINKLAGE Ladd Hitch In a series about the Hitch Dynasty published in Calf News in 1991, Ladd Hitch described the process. “Our first attempt at cattle feeding came about 1952 or 1953," Hitch said. “The ranch and farm as a business lost money con- sistently from ‘52 through ’57. The main reason was that it was a time of very severe drought and cattle prices were low. When we started feeding there was no reservoir of knowledge on how to build a feedlot and that wasn’t all. “There were no veterinarians in the area and no packers. It was hard to sell grain-fed cattle, anywhere. You had to ship them to Kansas City by rail or to Oklahoma City by truck and we did that. We sold many cattle to the South- east on a grade and yield basis and even sent cattle to Florida.