2015 Professional Beef Conference proves successful!
Posted: February 10, 2015 | Written By: Heidi Doering-Resch, M.S. Form-A-Feed Beef Technical Services
The 2015 Professional Beef Conference welcomed a few new items to this year’s agenda helping make it one of the most successfully attended conferences to date. Arming our producers with ideas and technologies to help them in their goals of ‘Achieving the Grade’ was a lineup of speakers from differing regions and expertise.
From an invited panel helping discuss ideas to help work successfully as a family operation to cattle handling and a great visual bunk management presentation, this two day event was one of the most well attended to date. In talking with both clients, sponsors and students, no one left without an idea or spark to help make their operation more successful.
New this year, was the first ever Outstanding Cattleman Award and Ron Noren Award. In remembrance of the late Ron Noren, our Outstanding Cattlemen was able to ‘pay it forward’ by choosing a recipient in Ron’s name who exemplified the support and value for life that Ron worked to maintain. Wednesday nights keynote speaker ‘Andy’ Junkin thoughtfully provoked attendees with highlights from his experiences and book ‘Farming with Family, Ain’t always easy’. A realistic view point that family operations may not always succeed and how best to mentor these relationships to get everyone moving in the same direction. Always a highlight, the hospitality event of the evening provided more opportunity for speakers, sponsors and attendees to further their interest over fellowship.
Thursday morning launched right into some candid discussion with Dr. Reinhardt’s presentation on liver abscess and the changes which have been hitting our industry over the past years and how this relates to performance and grade at times of harvest. A crowd favorite, Dr. Noffsinger kept everyone involved in ways to effectively work with cattle to reduce stress and improve both performance and health as well as safety when working cattle on their operation. With plenty of questions aimed at our panelist ranging from Carolyn Thompson, attorney at law, to Don Scheifelbein of Scheifelbein Farms, our Farm family Estate Panel allowed guests to ask those steamy questions on legality and family relationships in dealing with estate transition.
The room was full once again as Carl Babler of Atten Babler Commodities talked market risks and future potentials in regards to the cattle market and ways to protect our cattle investments. Rounding out our invited speakers was a shared presentation from two of Form-A-Feeds best Beef Technical Services Representatives as they took a visual approach to help producers learn about bunk management and the do’s and don’ts of this every day, yet highly impactful topic. Taking us back to the basics with visuals and explaining it through science, these two allowed producers a chance to re-evaluate their bunk systems, being one of the most impactful choices one makes every day.
Overall, attendees indicated this seminar was one of the most informational and inspiring conferences to date. On behalf of Form-A-Feeds beef team we hope to see you next year as we continue to bring our clients some of the timeliest information and networking opportunities in the Midwest.