Episode 24 Part 2
Happy Birthday Dad – Part 2
Scott McKenzie
In continuation of celebrating Dr. Bradley’s father, in part 2 we will be visiting with Scott McKenzie from Cass County, Michigan. The Bradleys started in the swine industry working for Scott’s Father Don McKenzie and then his brother Raymond McKenzie. Scott will discuss his passion for his system and the challenges his family faces today and in the future.
Happy 70th Birthday, Dad
Episode 24_ Part 2 – Scott McKenzie
Hello there. This is Dr. Casey Bradley and you’re listening to The Real P3 podcast, a podcast dedicated to the real pork producers around the world. I hope you enjoy.
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Happy Birthday, Dad! I’m so excited to get to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday with everyone. As you all know, he is why I’m a swine nutritionist today. So, we’re gonna go back to Cass County and not only visit with my father, but some of his friends and some of the multi-generational swine producers in Cass County, Michigan. In part 2, we’re gonna go back to where it all began for me. We’re gonna be visiting the McKenzie family. We’re gonna be catching up with Scott McKenzie. He’s gonna be talking about his operation in SW Michigan and he’s gonna be talking about hedging corn, the changes he’s had to make, and what it’s going to be like for his sons in the future. You’re never gonna meet a harder working pork producer out there, and in this interview, things get a little raw for me. You’re gonna find out how I lost my compassion, but how producers like Scott McKenzie have inspired me to have that compassion again, and hopefully why we all have to keep fighting for the small producers. So, stay tuned.
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[01:28]
Scott: So, I introduce myself as Scott McKenzie, farmer from Michigan. My wife and I own and run a 900-head farrow-to-finish operation, farm about 550 acres of corn and soybeans. 4 Sons, uh 2 of ‘em which help on the farm. Other than that, we’re just a normal farm, I guess.
Casey: So, Scott, this episode’s kinda to be nostalgic and talk about my father and how I grew up in the industry. We are not related by the way, but I call you as part of my swine tribe. I think we’re kinda intertwined, our families, for a long time. and kinda wanted to talk about the history of Cass County and the McKenzie family a little bit, and your operation. Would you mind kinda talking about how your dad got started, or your family?
S: Well, well before my time, but Grandfather I know raised livestock, had cattle, had a few hogs. I don’t… he was passed well before my time. My dad started out with, I believe he milked cows when he first started. As it went, he had one year bred too many gilts, didn’t have a place to farrow ‘em and he had a wooded lot that wasn’t being used and turned ‘em out into there, and they farrowed out in the open and did well, and I believe that’s how he really took off in hog production.
C: So, on a oops!
S: Yeah, it was a oops I believe that really really got him rollin’, and he figured it was a very low cost way to produce, and, you know, didn’t have any maintenance or handling. And that would have been, oh, late 40s early 50s, so the labor part of it is what really piqued his interest, you know, in outdoor swine production. He continued that the rest of his life before he started dabbling in confinement, you know.
C: Mmmhmm.
S: But, he went on with the outdoor operations, compiling shelters used from old brock bins, which he’d kinda gotten the idea of… he traveled to Europe, and saw that they were using, I think they were leftover [04:00] bomb shelters cut in half. He got the idea that was about the same thing as half of a grain bin, a small grain bin. So, he purchased quite a few of them to get started, and kept utilizing them. I mean, I’ve taken some to the scrap yard over the years, because we’ve transitioned out of outdoor production, but… yeah, it was a very cheap, effective way to get started.
C: And so, what took your family indoors?
S: My dad was really kind of, he was dabbling with confinement. He’d read into the operation, and basically as retirement. He thought he could handle that. It was a smaller indoor operation. He liked to be around the pigs, and you know that’s where I kinda got in on the confinement, because he kinda put me in charge of doing that. I like the benefits of having a controlled climate vs farrowing, ‘cause we could only farrow outside from, you know, March through October was good, and after that in Michigan it was kinda hit or miss or even not at all.
C: I was gonna say… March and April aren’t always the best, Scott.
S: No, March, you know, even in my, when I started on my own, March 15th, March 1st was very sketchy. You could have 20 degrees and a foot of snow, you know, you had to be careful. And it was very labor intensive when it was like that ‘cause you were out there 2 or 3 times a day, midnight, didn’t matter. Checkin’ on the babies and the momma’s to make sure they were warm and comfortable, lock ‘em in and make sure there were no drafts. My dad, you know, that’s… he kinda got me goin’. [06:00] That was my first impression of it; that it was more controlled, more manageable. As far as how I got into it, I did the outdoor production for probably 8 or 10 years, and it had its ups and downs, you know, and it was good, it was really good, and it was my favorite thing to do, ‘cause there was nothin’ better than to see a litter of baby pigs chase their mother in a 20-acre field, you know, and have cars lined up alongside the road on a sunny May afternoon watchin’ the babies run around. But, uh, in our county, many of the people that were producing outside either retired, give it up, or whatever; it left the predators and critters kinda all congregate into the ones that were left and it was very challenging to keep doing that. [07:00] So, that’s… and then, you know, with all the other regulations that have come along, I mean, packers were demanding, uh, a leaner cut of meat, so that didn’t leave as much back fat on a hog. They had a harder time surviving in the colder elements. Along with regulations on manure usage and different things along that line. I mean, you needed to have containment for manure and it’s just one thing you couldn’t do on a barn that might be 80 or 100 years old that you can’t contain the manure. You can, but then you’ve just gotta keep upgrading everything to the point where you’ve got a barn like we know ‘em today, and might as well build it new if you’re gonna do all that, and have it go correctly.
C: Yeah, I remember coming back after [08:00] workin’ for New Fashion Pork, and I had a couple months before I went to the University of Arkansas. Terry Davis, right, he used to have all his gestation sows in groups, and open fronts that we used to use for finishing, right? The EPA basically came in and shut him down. It was gonna cost him a lot more money to build that manure storage, and so he went confinement, and now look at hindsight with your 2020 regulations in Michigan and you’re back to group housing. So, kinda talk through… you went indoors for a lot of reasons, and now, we talked earlier about how it seems to be coming full circle.
S: Yeah, it really does, and, you know, I think I mentioned, I may see it go full circle in my career. And I don’t know, I guess I don’t know which is best. I don’t know if there is anything that is best. It’s what you can manage. The group housing, that’s what we did outside, and I don’t think you’d wanna call it group housing, cause that was more of a shelter, cause they had the choice of going into that shelter. I mean, it wasn’t a good choice. l I mean you either lay outside in the elements or you chose to go in the shelter. The group housing we have now, it’s housing because you are housing; they don’t have the choice to go outside. Is it better? When we transitioned from the outside production to the inside production, we had, all of our sows had farrowed outside, they were born outside, and so they didn’t know about a controlled environment. We did that, we moved sows from an open front lot, or lots, into a gestation barn about the first week of January, and the only thing these sows had ever seen as far as a crate, [10:00] was a ringing crate and you know that’s something they don’t really like. And we thought we’d have a hell of a time in there. We didn’t know how they would act, how they would respond to being confined… And it was, I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like, you know, they had found their perfect spot because it was no longer 20 degrees out, it was 70 degrees, they didn’t have to fight for a space to sleep like they did in the open front building, because, you know, even though they had the option to sleep anywhere they wanted, nobody wanted to sleep at the front of the barn, cause that’s where it’s coldest, you know, and you’ve always gotta fight for that position in the barn to stay warm. So, I don’t think they minded it, you know. I’m not… I don’t know how to explain it, but you could just tell by their comfort level, their lack of anxiety, that they really did like, you know, their confined space, you know, their housing.
C: Well, I definitely agree with you, and I could say the same for the layers. You give these chickens outdoor access and you maybe see a couple that go outside, but mostly they stay indoors, right? They like that controlled environment. We make a lot of welfare decisions because we think we understand animals, and a lot of times, too, we don’t even make human welfare. My dad spoke on, he can’t stand confinement barns because of the air quality, you know, things like that, but at the same time, when we did transition, like you said, you could provide that individual care better, I think.
S: Yeah. Well, as far as air quality concerns, I don’t know how much you’ve got into it, but I can tell you from my memories of the old [12:00] buildings that we used to house sows and even finished pigs, the dust and the bedding that had broken down into small particles, it really got into your lungs and, you know the mold issues. For as far as me, I’ve been in a confined situation almost as long as I’d been in a outdoor situation and I really think that I’ve had less health problems because of the confinement, because, you know, I had allergies to mold and didn’t realize that your bedding will contain a lot of that in the small particles in the straw; it bothered my sinuses and lungs, you know, everything else.
C: I think we’ve also made a big improvement on ventilation since my dad’s been in confinement, so.
S: Oh, yeah, I would agree.
C: So, I mean, it’s like anything, learning how to do it better.
S: Yep.
C: Talk about some of the challenge you have. I noticed on Twitter and stuff, you’re really watching the corn markets. Talk about your operation. Do you grow most of your corn? How much are you having to hedge, and things like that?
S: We raise, maybe, depending on the year, I don’t know how this year’s gonna turn out because it’s very dry here in Michigan, we can produce at least 50% of it on a normal year, or a little more. The grain market is somethin’ I watch pretty well. You know, it has its advantages sometimes in growing only half of it, because there are times that you’re able to buy it cheaper than what you can actually produce it. But the times that it runs away from ya is the worry that you always have, because you never know when you plant, you know as you know, that you don’t know what you’re gonna get at harvest. So, you’ve got kind of a worry for 4 months to see [14:00] what you’re gonna get. I guess, what was the other part of that question?
C: Just watching hedging and how do you know when to buy and that kinda stuff for your operation.
S: That is a tough call. We work with a company that, uh, we work off margin. When the price of your pork and the price of the grain – all that stuff – gives you a decent margin, that’s when you try to pull the trigger on uh, maybe not a huge percentage of it, but you layer into it. So, you don’t really watch the price per se of either commodity of corn or bean meal or the hogs, but the margin that you have, you know, at the sale. So, that… and I started workin’ this company about 3 years ago, and it’s really helped me to improve my skills. You know, some of the times you wouldn’t think it would be the best to hedge things, like in the fall, is some of the better margin opportunities. You know. Until I started workin’ with them, I was always looking at prices of, you know, the hogs and the corn and just trying to buy one, then the other, or buy one, sell the… it’s really hard to do that. It’s really hard to do that.
C: So, are you growing much wheat anymore? Or is that something that’s kinda gone away because we don’t need the bedding in that area.
S: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. We don’t even use it in the rotation anymore. I haven’t since probably… 2014 may have been the last time I had a little dab of wheat, and you know the toxins and stuff that can be in wheat can be troublesome at times. You know, and if the local buyer doesn’t take it, you don’t have much of a way to utilize it. At least, we don’t in this area. I mean, there are people that grind and put it in feed rations, but my experience always has been it’s tough to utilize, so we just quit usin’ it and focus more on corn and soybeans. Mainly on corn. It helps with manure management and things like that. Utilizes more of the phosphorus.
[16:25]
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We wanna take this break to thank our sponsors, The Sunswine Group, NutraSign, Swine Nutrition Management and Pig Progress. But we also wanted to remind you of our new Facebook group, the Global Swine Professionals. We’re gonna be doing something fun; some live interviews, some Q&A and we just wanna hear from our audience, so that’s a great place for you to take the time, leave us a comment, tell us what you wanna hear, or volunteer to be on our show, because we’re always looking for those awesome pork producers around the world. Well, that’s all I had, so let’s get back to that appisode now.
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[17:05]
C: So, with Kellogg’s there, we used to get a lot of cereal. I remember one day we got a candy-bar load or somethin’ for the sows.
S: Oh, yeah…
C: Do you use any more by-products? Or what’s kind of your experience using alternatives throughout your career?
S: Yeah, I… them bring back old memories, Casey, I to this day cannot eat – and I probably shouldn’t say this on being recorded – but I cannot eat a Milky Way or a Three Musketeers bar. I just can’t do it. You know, I… I… you probably got in on that and uh…
C: I was very young.
S: Yeah, you probably ate yourself silly on the things like I did. And even the cereal, we haven’t gotten in on anything like that since the 80s. We do use some by-products to mill as far as distiller’s grain, but not too much cereals.
C: So, what else has changed in your operation? It sounds like your brothers are kinda phasin’ out, both of ‘em, or the one for sure.
S: Yeah, both brothers are at the age of transitioning; one’s got a son, the other one’s got a son-in-law, and they’re taking it a little bit easier in life. They still stay active in the farming operation, but they’ve kinda turned the reins over to the next generation, trying to enjoy life a little bit, so… I’ve got a few years to go, but I’m tryin’ to coach my sons well and get them going in it.
C: So, what kind of advice or concerns do you have for your sons in the next generation taking over?
S: That’s the biggest thing is, you know, I mean, I remember being young and trying to think of what it would be like taking on all the responsibilities, and as a parent, a lot of times, you can’t lay down a whole list of things for them to look out later for in life. You can try your best, but most of them are teaching them good foundations, good work ethics > The marketing, in my opinion, is one of the higher things that they need to focus on, you know. The production: you’ve gotta know that, so they do work in the operation daily, 50-60 hours a week. And it’s just somethin’ that they need to learn, just gettin’ a good grasp of what needs to go on.
C: Let’s talk about labor issues. You got two sons taking over, but you say, you know we’ve talked about this in the past, labor is hard. I mean, what’s changed in the labor force that makes farming difficult today compared to 30-40-50 [20:00] years ago?
S: You kinda wanna draw your dad into this a little bit. He lived down the road from the family farm. I’m sure he got drafted into helping, you know, bail hay, move… you know, it’s the typical, “See if Craig can come down and help, we’re gonna do this or that.” They just don’t have that today. I mean, there’s not the… the young kids are pretty involved in sports, uh, next up in their career’s gonna be college. Farm’s kind of a, I don’t know, it’s kind of a 4-letter word, so not many people interested in it. There’s not many people with farm background to get their kids interested in it. You know? So, I think that’s part of it… big part of it.
C: So, what do we do? How do we get kids back interested?
S: You know, I don’t know. A lot of the younger people I’ve had come through my operation are basically looking at the dollars and cents, which they should be because they’re… they’ve got a future. As an industry, I think if we wanna stay viable and not be beaten out by lab-grown meat, we need to be able to pay good people well, because there is a lot of technical aspects to the farming operation. It isn’t the 50s anymore. We’re not usin’ a pitchfork and a, you know, a manure spreader, we are a lot of times making good informed decisions based on the knowledge we’ve obtained. I don’t know… a lot of people don’t understand that, and so they shy away from it. They don’t wanna just stink and smell and sweat, and you know get paid for it. They don’t really realize how much they could use what they’ve learned [22:00] to help ‘em, you know, in their career, in a part of the farm and agriculture industry.
C: That’s very insightful. Because I would say, working in large operations, dairy silo employees, you find somebody good in farrowing, you find somebody good in finishing, somebody good in breeding; that’s where they work if we don’t teach ‘em up, maybe eventually they can become department heads and maybe sow farm managers, right, for the really good ones. But they still…
S: Right.
C: Unlike what we grew up with, they don’t understand the whole integration.
S: Right. Oh yeah, I understand that. In my operation, we’re so tight, that we don’t have just one job. No one has just one job. They have to multi=-task and be able to cover multiple maybe both farrowing and nursery. Maybe breeding and finishing. You know, maybe all of the above plus crap-work. Some of the people that I’ve had in here really like that, because they don’t get stuck doing the same thing day in and day out for an eight-hour day. Because they may be doing multiple things in a day, and it keeps it pretty interesting, you know, really. I don’t know if that appeals to everyone, or if more people… I don’t know how people feel anymore. If they want the, just the “gimme eight hours and let me get done my job so I can go home,” or if they like the multiple jobs, the being kinda tossed around. You know…
C: I think it’s a tough discussion, and I think, you know, something we haven’t done good with, and my dad touched on, is work-life balance.
S: Yeah. No.
C: But you have to kinda be born into it, and I think, I tell everybody, I was born a farmer, I’m still a farmer, I just don’t get to go play with the pigs [24:00] and dirt everyday, but I do different things for farmers than I used to, but there’s somethin’ said, I think. You know, my husband and I talk about raising Arthur, you know, we can’t raise him like I was raised. You can raise your sons a little bit like how you were raised, but that opportunity for my son is not there anymore. And so… which is unfortunate, right? And he doesn’t even like animals, I don’t think, half the time, but… But then you look at my nephew, though, and he loves agriculture, crops, he’s not goin’ to college, but he can tell you more probably than most PhD’s can on crop rotations, GPS systems… you know, everything it takes to run a farm, and so, I think… Yeah, I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s definitely gonna be a problem for your sons.
S: Yeah, I think the experience is a big thing. You know, it’s like eating spinach for the first time. You don’t know if you’ll really like it until you try it. Some people just hate it, you know, and then some people think, you know that’s not too bad. I think it’s kinda that way on the farm until they really get their self involved in it, and they’ve gotta stick with it more than just a couple weeks, because you can’t get the whole feel for the thing. There’s a break-in period, usually, where, you know, where it takes a couple weeks just to get the understanding of your basic job, but all of the things that you could know and do, it may take you a full year on a farm, because you have all the seasons, all the different changes, and everything varies and it always changes. So, I think that’s part of it, just stickin’ at it long enough to get the feel for things.
C: So, can you train stockmanship, or is that [26:00] a trait that people have or they don’t have?
S: That’s a good question. There are people that definitely have the better grasp of it from the get-go. They understand it. There are other people that are more mechanically inclined and don’t understand animal, you know, movement and everything else. And you can see it with my sons, they uh… you know I’ve got the youngest son is, uh, he wants to be a farmer. And I’ve got two that are gonna be engineers – or are engineers – and they just have a different mindset. You know, their grasp of mechanical things just comes natural. The one that wants to be a farmer, his grasp of hog movement and everything on the farm comes a little bit more natural. It’s like taking a border collie; I mean, you can get one almost anywhere and bring it home and they’ve got that basic instinct to herd, from what I’ve seen. They wanna herd somethin’; even though they don’t have anyone to teach ‘em to do it, they’ll try to herd a cat or somethin’ else. They just…
C: Oh yeah, I’ve got my herdin’ dogs. They herd just about anything.
S: Yeah, so I think it’s like that in people. I mean, we all have our different interests, and, you know, stockmanship can be taught, but if it’s somebody that really doesn’t wanna learn, you’re probably gonna have a hard time with it. I mean it… anything’s teachable with the right teacher.
C: Yep. I think my dad was a great teacher.
S: Oh yeah. Yeah.
C: What do you think about robotics, automation, AI – you’ve got two engineering sons?
S: Ah. Yeah. Automation, it’s got its ups and downs; let’s put it that way. I [28:00] can see the plus sides to it, but anytime it comes in contact with a hog environment, it’s got the capacity to break down and not function, which scares me to death. You know, my main priority are my livestock. You know, lightning storm, you know, thunderstorm rolls through, you know, first thing I’m up wondering if power’s out, or if it did knock the power out someplace, I’m checkin on it. There’s some systems that I’ve heard that uh, you know, with the automated feedings on some things, they’ve had problems with it, and it just kinda scares me. I’m old school. I fed ‘em, I know I fed ‘em. You know, I’m good with that. I’d rather put in the effort, Casey.
C: I think it has a future, but I think your points are very valid, that as we develop these technologies, everybody thinks that’s the future. I would tell you, I’m the first person to say, I would love to replace the humans on the farms with robotics and then have my engineers and the drone pilots and all that in the offices and the computers tellin’ me where my good people need to be. Because I can’t get as many stockmen as I would want, or I see that’s gonna be lacking even more in the future. Yet, we have such a long ways to go to make, like you said, to make sure it doesn’t fail.
S: Oh yeah.
C: There’s a misconception that we don’t care about our animals, but I think when we were raised like we were, that’s the top priority.
S: I hate to say this, but it comes before family a lot of times. You know it and I know it; it just happens. I guess to say that we don’t care about our livestock, it’s [30:00] a double-edged sword, because you have to care about your livestock to make a living, I mean, really. I don’t know how else to put it, but you’ve got to take the best care of the animals that you can to be successful. You know, they’ve gotta live as good a lifestyle as they can live. Robotics? I, you know, with sensors and things to… I’ve never been a big fan of it, even in crop production, you know, they talked about automated tractors that will be planting the crops and what-not, and I’ve planted enough corn in my life to know that you’re gonna have to have a sensor over every inch of that planter in case something breaks, because it isn’t gonna know enough to stop and fix it, you know. We grew up in the rocks and hills of Michigan. I’ve picked some rocks. But you know, maybe the normal person has never caught a rock in their planter and drug it, you know a couple hundred yards leavin’ a trench, but I don’t know if a robotic tractor planter combination would catch that. Maybe it would, but you’re still gonna have to have somebody come back there and kick it out. You might as well leave ‘em in the tractor, so… That’s kinda the same way it is with hogs. I mean, you can have all the sensors and stuff that you could ever dream up, and I think you need the emotion of a human, you know the compassion, let’s go that far, of a human taking care of them, because there are people that are very compassionate about taking care of an animal and its well-being. Just like any doctor or nurse, they aren’t always there for the money – it does help, but – they still have that compassion to do that job, and that’s kind of the way livestock is.
C: Yeah, and I would say [32:00] going into the big systems, because I’ve worked on systems your size, right, and grew up that way, and I wanted to see big. The big systems killed my compassion. They didn’t allow you to have compassion and I think that is a big mistake.
S: Yeah, we’re not a big system; it’s just the family basically that runs it. There is that compassion there that’ll, you know, keep the wife there an extra hour or two at night, or the kids, or myself. And I’ve never worked in a big system, so maybe it is just another animal or whatever, and it says it’s 5:00, time to punch out, I’m goin’ home. I’ve never done it, but that’s always the way I’ve been, I’ve always just stayed for the animals and what-not.
C: So, my guest… I turn the table and you can ask me almost anything you would like.
S: Almost anything?
C: Almost anything, if you had any questions for me, so…
S: Well, I did not know – I’d heard you’d started your own business, but I did not know what it was for dead sure. If you could kinda give me an idea of what you do, and I’ve seen that picture behind you someplace before of the pig.
C: The pig one.
S: Yeah, the pig one right behind you.
C: I didn’t paint it. It’s uh, you can buy it at Hobby Lobby. I am an artist, I’m in my art studio. I don’t paint.
S: Oh, ok. Maybe that’s where I saw it. I was in Hobby Lobby one time, but…
C: [laughter] Oh, Andrielle takes ya – well, see ya have some time, you can go to Hobby Lobby.
S: Yeah, I did make it in there once. So yeah, if you could elaborate more on what your new business is and what you do, that could probably help me.
C: Yeah. As a lot of people try to coach me and tell me, I probably need to narrow my focus, but I’ve kind of been [34:00] dabbling in quite a lot of stuff to see… ultimately it’s my opportunity to serve, right, and change things. So, one of the main things I’ve been working on is mentoring younger animal scientists. I’m trying to mentor them, prepare them for their careers, um, give back, right? So, I’ve been doing that, more of a charity type of work, but very rewarding. The same thing, I’ve started this podcast, and been able to talk to producers all over the world, which has been a lot of fun, right? I’ve been trying to start a research business – I know we’ve talked about that in the past – of doing either contract research or now I’ve learned that, you know, there’s a lot of R&D tax credits you can take advantage of, for producers like you, that we can implement some simple trials and different things in the system and then use those for tax credits in the future. So, trying to explore that. And then ultimately nutritional consulting and business consulting. I’m working on an analytics project, so kind of like what you’re doing with hedging, of when to buy and stuff, developing tools that we can integrate our feed systems, our performance data, and our, you know, our county data to make better profitability decisions, like you said, to make smarter decisions.
S: Mmhmm…
C: So, as part of that and some employee solutions, I’ve been doin’ some training and different education things. So, I’m kinda feelin’ out where I wanna go and who I can bring value to. I’ve enjoyed gettin’ to work with producers again, where for a while I was staying more feed company related, and office, corner office, type work, and not so much working where probably my strengths are on the farm and in systems, so…
S: That sounds like a logical choice, going that way.
C: I hope so. But I also found out, you know, working in the feed additive world and global world, there’s not too many people like me, [36:00] or you, out there working in that, and definitely not too many PhD’s who still have those same experiences and understand why things just don’t work.
S: Right.
C: So, it gives me a different strength as well to help companies as they think about targeting swine producers, or livestock in general.
S: That makes sense. I mean you always need a different perspective on things and having that much experience surely does help.
C: Yep. But, you know, I wasn’t as fortunate to buy my own pig farm. Tried to this summer, and I didn’t want to face the lawsuits, so that’s why we’re still in Arkansas and didn’t make it back home.
S: Ohh… Darn it. Well, it’s one of them things that once you have a hog farm, you’re pretty much married to it. You may have dodged a bullet, there, Casey.
C: Yeah, it is that, you know, catch 22, like you said you love it, it’s part of you. But at the same time, I think it’s different when you own it versus working for somebody, right? Sometimes?
S: Yeah. It is definitely different. There’s more of a drive. There’s definitely more of a drive. And it always isn’t a monetary drive. It’s the pride and willingness to succeed. Cause you’re the only one that’s gonna do it. Nobody’s gonna do it for ya.
C: Yeah, and I think that’s what’s been pretty fun about starting my own business, so it’s up to me to make it work.
S: Mmmhmm.
C: If I’m successful, I’m hopefully makin’ producers like you successful.
S: Right. Yep.
C: Well, I appreciate your time. I appreciate everything you’ve done; your family has done, for my family, for me. You are the reason why I am a swine nutritionist and still in the industry today, for that compassion that you talked about, not just for your hogs, but your family has always had that compassion for their employees and for their community, and I’d like to thank you guys for that.
S: Well, you’re very welcome. We’ve loved and enjoyed having you around, Casey, and your family.
C: Thank you, and I hope to see you soon.
S: Yep. See you, Casey.
C: Yep. Bye.
S: Bye.
[38:21]
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Before we go, we wanna thank our sponsors again. Swine Nutrition Management, NutraSign, Pig Progress and The Sunswine Group. Don’t forget to join our Facebook: The Global Swine Professionals. And as always, if you get a chance, hug a pig for me today.