By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

HAMILTON, Ohio — Bill and Bev Roe’s Angus cattle business is flourishing in the midst of $4 corn prices.

“Cattle need to be good in all areas when the margins are this tight,” Bev said, who is also the first female on the Ohio Cattlemen’s Assoc. (OCA) board. “The cow that has consistent calving problems, her calves grow below average, the carcass quality is substandard, and that really drags your operation down.”

“The cattle market is good ... and the forecast is still good even with the higher price of corn but some people let that opportunity slip away by not reacting as they should for their business,” added Bill.

Pedro’s Angus
Bill and Bev were in the restaurant business - they owned the popular “Pedro’s” restaurants - when they bought their farm in 1994.

“As our passion for the cattle grew we had much less time for the restaurants,” Bev said.

They eventually sold six restaurants to concentrate on cattle full-time. They currently have a herd of about 100 cows and 100 yearlings. They sell breeding animals, specializing in bulls. They sell about 50 yearling bulls a year, Bill said.

Their customers attest to the quality of their bulls: Bob Burger of Oxford said he now sends steers to market at 11.5 months.

Ten years ago (before using Pedro Angus bulls) it took 15-16 months to do the same things. Frank House recently won the Ohio Cattlemen’s Regional Steak Challenge with Prime steaks. His
freezer beef business has a waiting list.

The Roes say there are successful for several reasons. One reason, they keep bull calves until 12-16 months and heifers until 18-20 months (they are sold as bred).

This allows them to collect data:
•Birth weight for easy calving
•Calving ease
•Weaning weight, which measures the milking ability of the mothers and growth weight.
•Yearling weight which measures growth weight.
•Cow weight to measure efficiency of cows
•Ultrasound at one year to collect: marbling score, ribeye size, backfat and rump fat.

Another reason for their success is because the herd is closed and their animals never come in contact with other animals. They don’t go to fairs or shows; because they sell breeding animals they don’t want to sell disease, Bev said.

Ultrasound data
“Ten years ago we closed the herd and started collecting ultrasound data,” Bev said.

“Those were expensive things for us to do. Very few of our buyers cared about that, but we knew they would some day. And we needed to be ahead of the game. Five years later it made a difference to our buyers that we did that. If had waited five years, we wouldn’t have had any progress.”

The Angus Assoc. brings an ultrasound machine to the farm.

“The more years you do this the more meaningful the data becomes because it becomes more statistically accurate,” Bev said.
“You have to have a certain pool of data for it to really be meaningful and to be accurate.”

They measure the marbling give an actual score which helps to rate the animals and they give an expected progeny difference (EPD).

Ohio Cattlemen’s Assoc.
The Roes can show charts and graphs and on each of their animals which is a mathematical projection of how it will perform.

They believe in the value of those charts and graphs.

It naturally followed that when Bev and Bill planned the OCA regional meeting they decided to focus on carcass quality.

“We invited cattlemen to bring their own steak and we would have a tasting test,” Bev said. “People outside of our district came because they were interested in this meeting.”

A chef from Texas Roadhouse cooked the steaks so they would all be uniform. The difference in steaks took many by surprise.

“One man, a cattleman for many years, who has a feedlot, said he had no idea that there was that much difference in steaks,” Bev said.

“That’s what we were trying to get across and I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes that there is a difference.

“It makes a difference on what bull you use and how you feed that animal as to the quality.”

That type of information-sharing is one value that the Roes see to the Ohio Cattlemen’s Assoc.

They believe in the value of the OCA’s very active role in helping cattlemen to be more profitable, Bev said. “One thing that I know and that is that cattlemen cannot survive alone,” she said.

“They really do need an organization in order to help them. Labor has unions. Farm people have organizations. So the Ohio Cattlemen’s, that’s their purpose, to represent
cattlemen.”