Every once in a while, we experience moments in our lives that seem to etch themselves forever into our memory. An event or conversation so impactful that without any effort on our part we remember exactly what happened, where we were and what we were doing for the rest of our lives. 

Even though I was just a kid in grade school, I can remember exactly where I was when I found out the Berlin Wall had fallen. I can vividly remember watching real-time footage as a preteen of the opening salvos of the first Gulf War. I was sitting in a Tuesday morning college class when my professor put up a video of a passenger jet slamming into the second tower, a moment that has replayed itself in my mind countless times. 

While maybe not as impactful globally, I can also clearly remember just finishing up a preg check when I read the news that tulathromycin had finally come off patent. Relative to this month’s theme of being “Driven by Demand,” there is one conversation related to this last memory in particular that has stuck in my mind.

It was the summer of 2019, and I was brainstorming ways to increase my summer revenue as an ambulatory cow-calf veterinarian. At the time I was practicing in Alberta, though I had previous experience in Idaho and Montana. It seemed strange to me that even though my clients in Montana, a mere 15-mile drive to the south, marketed most of their preconditioned calves on video auctions for direct-to-feedlot-delivery, nearly all of my clients in Alberta marketed bawling calves through a livestock auction. 

This juxtaposition made me wonder if I could possibly market a service where I would purchase a mobile squeeze chute with panels and an alleyway, and drive it around to my various clients’ summer pastures to process their calves and preg-check their cows 30-45 days prior to weaning. The intent being this would add value to the calves in the form of greater disease resistance, and also allow me to spread out my preg-check season a little so it wasn’t so concentrated in the two months around weaning time.

I kicked this idea around for a while, then one day at the local feed store I spotted a client who owned a large feedlot and purchased a fair number of calves in my practice area. I had always viewed this producer as being particularly progressive and innovative, so I asked him what he thought of the idea and whether he’d be interested in purchasing calves that were vaccinated 30-45 days prior to weaning. His response was polite and friendly, but greatly surprised me and provided an ah-ha moment that forever changed the way I understood the beef supply chain. 

He said, “I would love to feed calves like that, but I can’t afford to pay for them. It’s cheaper and easier to buy them still wet at the sale barn and just give them all a shot of Draxxin^®.”

Interpreting signals

I realized in that moment, and in many moments since, that how we manage cattle throughout all aspects of the beef supply chain is driven largely by the demand signals we receive from the segments downstream. Because the beef supply chain is highly segmented and the various segments often experience limited transfer of information between them, these signals can be highly distorted, amplified and delayed. This results in a variety of outcomes; some better than others. 

However, it’s been my impression in the years since my feedstore conversation that many of the problems we seek to address in the beef industry are the direct result of how we transmit and interpret signals from the various segments we interact with. 

Case in point, I can also distinctly recall a conversation at a hardware store in Idaho (it was in the plumbing section) with a client who raised and sold purebred Angus bulls. I was new to the area, but had already ascertained that this client was a good operator and a square-dealer. 

So, I was more than mildly surprised when he told me he didn’t hire a veterinarian to perform breeding soundness evaluations on his yearling sale bulls anymore; in fact, he performed them all himself. 

His rationale was that, despite the fact that his previous veterinarian performed thorough and comprehensive breeding soundness exams for him, he saw no difference in the number of bulls he had to replace every year after his veterinarian retired and he had purchased an electroejaculator to test them himself. To be clear, I don’t recommend this approach, and I was — and am to this day — highly suspicious of the accuracy of this client’s breeding soundness exam results (though they probably aren’t any less accurate than the tests of some veterinarians). Notwithstanding, I can understand and empathize with his rationale. 

How do we know if a bull we purchase actually does the job he’s supposed to? If he were in a single-sire pasture, it would be relatively easy. But I don’t know too many producers who buy a yearling bull then immediately put him out into a pasture by himself with 30 cows (also something I don’t recommend). 

Without verifying parentage on every calf born to a multisire breeding group, one seldom knows which bulls are getting the job done as long as the cows breed up all right. As a result, the signals that come back to the breeder regarding a yearling bull’s breeding soundness likely have little to do with the bull’s semen quality at the time of the test, and more to do with problems that are more obvious.

W. Edwards Deming once said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” I share these examples not to promote cynicism, but to seek and promote understanding of the systems we inhabit. As a veterinarian, too often I have approached animal health problems with a linear mindset, chasing a bug, so that I can treat it with a drug. Sometimes this approach is effective, but usually only on the low-hanging fruit. 

The wicked problems that seem to persist require a more nuanced, systems-based approach. We should ask ourselves how we generate, process, transmit and receive signals related to the demands of our clientele. If our management decisions are not producing the intended results, it’s likely that somewhere in the mix, we are sending or receiving signals that differ from what we had supposed. 

Editor’s note: Todd Gunderson is a clinical assistant professor, beef production medicine, at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.