Women in Ag

Earned Trust in the Feedlot: How One Veterinarian Is Building a Career in Cattle Consulting

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:15:30 GMT

A uterine prolapse is one of the more physically demanding emergencies a cattle veterinarian can face. The organ is heavy and awkward to handle, and replacing it often requires both strength and patience.

Paige Schmidt, DVM, MS, had to reschedule our chat in favor of an emergency call from a client due to a prolapsed uterus. The producer and another rancher had already tried to push the prolapsed uterus back into place themselves, but it wasn’t working.

Instead of trying to wrestle the organ back into place alone, Schmidt used a strategy she had learned from other veterinarians.

“You take a giant garbage bag and tie it to one side of the fence,” she says. “Then I put it underneath the uterus and have the producer hold it on the other side. So they’re holding the heavy uterus, and I’m pushing it in.”

The setup makes the job easier in more ways than one.

“One, it saves me from holding it and pushing at the same time,” Schmidt says. “And two, it makes them realize how heavy it is because they’re the one holding it. Sometimes, that changes their perspective a little.”

When the procedure was finished, the rancher was surprised by how quickly it had gone.

“He told me, ‘You did that so fast. Me and my buddy were trying earlier and we couldn’t,’” Schmidt recalls. “I told him you’ve got to work smarter, not harder.”

Moments like that can shift how producers see a veterinarian.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

The Quiet Tests

That kind of credibility is not always automatic for new veterinarians entering the cattle industry. Schmidt, a 2024 grad, is often challenged for perceived youth.

“Usually the first question I get is, ‘How old are you?’” Schmidt says.

It is rarely meant as an insult, but it signals producers and feedlot crews are paying close attention to her knowledge and abilities. Schmidt says she frequently experiences small tests before her clients choose to follow her guidelines. They want to know she knows how to do what she’s telling them to do.

One simple test Schmidt has experienced is identifying and pulling a sick animal from a pen while cowboys watch from horseback or along the fence line. Once she proves she can handle the work herself, the dynamic often changes quickly.

“Once they see that you can do it, they gain respect for you pretty quickly,” she says. “After that, they’ll listen to what you have to say.”

Ranch Roots & Veterinary Medicine

Long before she was earning the trust of feedlot crews, Schmidt was learning about cattle health on her family’s ranch in south-central North Dakota. Her family operates a commercial cow-calf and backgrounding operation where she developed an early curiosity about animal health.

“I wanted to know why we treated something a certain way or why a disease occurred,” she says. “The veterinarian coming to our ranch was always a big day and an important day. Looking back now, that probably had a bigger influence on me than I realized at the time.”

Even so, veterinary medicine was not always the obvious next step.

During college, Schmidt played basketball while completing her undergraduate degree. Balancing athletics and academics meant long days and late nights. As graduation approached, she was unsure whether she wanted to commit to four more years of school.

It took a nudge from the person who knew her potential best — her family’s herd veterinarian — to tip the scales.

“He really pushed me toward vet school,” Schmidt recalls. “I needed that push.”

That carried her to Kansas State University, where the academic rigors of veterinary medicine didn’t just challenge her — they fueled her. But it was a concurrent master’s degree that truly shifted her horizon. Diving into respiratory disease research, Schmidt stepped out of the familiar world of her youth and into the high-stakes environment of the feedyard.

“That experience helped immerse me into a part of the industry I hadn’t been in before,” she says. “I got to see how feedyards operate day to day and how that sector connects to cow-calf production.”

It wasn’t just about the science anymore; it was about bridging the gap between research and the field, turning complex data into tools producers could actually use.

(Photos Provided By Dr. Paige Schmidt)

Teaching the Feedlot

Today, Schmidt is building a consulting-focused veterinary career in Kansas, working with feedlots and cow-calf operations while also assisting a local veterinarian with ambulatory work. A central part of that work involves collaborating with the people responsible for daily cattle care and helping them implement effective health protocols.

“I can leave all the recommendations in the world, but it has to happen on the days I’m not there,” Schmidt says. “If I can teach them how to do it correctly when I’m gone, that’s a win for both of us.”

Often, that means explaining the reasoning behind common management practices.

“Sometimes people have worked in the industry their entire lives and no one has ever explained why something is done a certain way,” she says. “I love seeing the light bulb go off when someone realizes why something works the way it does. It can give them a new sense of purpose.”

Building a Career — and a Life

For Schmidt, the ultimate “dream job” isn’t a destination — it’s a rhythm. She is focused on scaling her consulting practice, moving toward a model built on consistency and long-term client relationships. That being said, as she expands her footprint in the beef industry, she remains protective of her time.

“I want to build a career where I take care of my clients, but also have time for family and personal things,” she explains.

It’s a practical approach to a demanding profession. Just as she managed that prolapse call with efficiency and precision, she’s applying that same logic to her career trajectory. Success, she’s realized, doesn’t come from burnout; it comes from the cattleman’s oldest rule: Work smarter, not harder.

A Veterinarian Finds Her Place: From Burnout to Starting Her Own Practice

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:07:48 GMT

By the time Rachel Loppe, DVM, realized something had to change, the problem was no longer confined to the clinic. Even on days she made it home at a reasonable hour, she found she had nothing left to give, and the exhaustion followed her into the quieter parts of the day.

“I remember feeling like I couldn’t even do normal household chores,” Loppe says. “I couldn’t make dinner. I felt so mentally exhausted.”

At first, she tried to explain it away as a lack of motivation.

“I kept telling myself I was just being lazy,” she says.

But the feeling persisted, and when she brought it up with her therapist, the response reframed what she was experiencing.

“My therapist said, ‘It’s not that you’re lazy. Your nervous system is shot. You’re in burnout.’”

Even then, accepting that reality was difficult.

“When my therapist first suggested medical leave I thought, ‘Absolutely not, I can’t do that,’” Loppe says. “But about a month later, I realized she was right.”

Stepping away from practice gave Loppe the space to confront something many veterinarians eventually encounter: the realization that the way they are practicing may not be sustainable.

A Pivot to Veterinary Medicine

Long before she was navigating burnout, Loppe was trying to figure out what kind of career would fit her in the first place.

She entered university thinking law might be her calling, but early science courses began to change that perspective. She also realized that she couldn’t see herself sitting behind a desk all day. The shift in thinking eventually led her toward veterinary medicine.

“I was talking with a friend at university, and she mentioned offhand that she was trying to get into vet school,” Loppe says. “I thought about it, and realized I could actually see myself really liking that. So, I started volunteering in clinics and working more with animals, and I was like, ‘Yep, this is what I want to do.’”

This set Loppe on a new trajectory.

But reaching veterinary school — and eventually building her own practice — would require persistence, resilience and a willingness to rethink what a sustainable veterinary career can look like.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

Admissions Challenges

The next step proved to be one of the first major tests of that persistence. Veterinary school admissions are highly competitive, and at the time Loppe was applying, the number of available seats for applicants from British Columbia was limited and she was unable to secure an interview.

Rather than abandoning the goal after an initial setback, she felt strongly enough and chose to adapt. She relocated to Alberta, where she worked while establishing residency and prepared to apply to the University of Calgary, which had much larger class sizes.

“I worked for a year, applied, didn’t get in, kept working, applied the second year, and finally got in,” Loppe says.

Although the delay was frustrating at the time, Loppe now sees those years as an important part of her professional development.

“Looking back now, I would never trade those two years before vet school,” she said. “Working and living on my own helped me feel a little more grounded when I started the program.”

That grounding proved valuable once veterinary school began. Having already spent time working and living independently, Loppe entered the program with a clearer sense of purpose and a stronger understanding of why she wanted to pursue the profession.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

Finding Her Niche

While Loppe entered veterinary school with a broad interest in animal health, exposure to cattle work gradually shaped the direction her career would take.

Large animal medicine appealed to her for several reasons. The work was hands-on and varied, often requiring quick thinking in unpredictable situations. It also offered opportunities to work closely with producers and contribute directly to the health and productivity of their herds.

By the time Loppe graduated from veterinary school, she knew cattle practice would play a central role in her career.

What Early Career Veterinary Practice Really Looks Like

Like many new graduates entering practice, Loppe quickly discovered the transition from veterinary school to the field can be abrupt. Responsibility arrives quickly, and the learning curve can be steep.

“Looking back, I have a lot of respect for that environment, but I definitely got thrown into it” she says of her early work experience. “I was a new grad and on call within the first couple of weeks. There was another veterinarian as backup, but a lot of the time I was figuring things out on my own.”

Situations like that are not uncommon for veterinarians entering rural or mixed animal practice, where staffing limitations can require new graduates to take on significant responsibility early in their careers. While the experience can be stressful, it can also accelerate professional growth.

“When you’re in that situation, sometimes you haven’t done something before by yourself,” Loppe says. “But you know the basic principles. You know tissue handling, you know the textbook information and you figure it out.”

Those early months forced her to rely heavily on the foundational skills she had developed during training.

Over time, however, the demands of practice began to accumulate.

(Photos Provided By Rachel Loppe, DVM)

The Signs of Veterinary Burnout

For a while, the workload felt manageable. Then it didn’t. The demands of practice began to show up outside of work, gradually affecting Loppe’s ability to recharge.

“Work was just taking all the energy from me,” she says. “Even if I got home at a reasonable time, I couldn’t do anything else.”

What she was experiencing was not a lack of motivation, but a signal that something needed to change. Burnout developed gradually, building until it became impossible to ignore, and stepping away from practice ultimately gave her the opportunity to reassess both her workload and her direction.

A Veterinary Practice That Supports Long-Term Career Sustainability

The time away from practice gave Loppe the opportunity to figure out what she wanted from veterinary medicine. Rather than leaving the profession entirely, she began thinking about how she could shape a work environment that aligned with the parts of the job she valued most.

Starting her own practice offered the chance to do exactly that. Practice ownership allowed Loppe to build a professional environment that reflected her priorities while continuing to focus on the cattle work she enjoyed.

But the confidence to take that step did not appear overnight. Instead, it grew from the experiences she accumulated earlier in her career. Reflecting on those years, Loppe says they ultimately helped her trust her own abilities as a veterinarian.

“It did give me a lot of confidence in myself,” she says. “I realized I was able to do these things, even when I hadn’t done them before. You know the basic principles, and you figure it out.”

For Loppe, starting her own practice became a way to reconnect with the aspects of veterinary medicine that first drew her to the profession: hands-on work, problem solving and meaningful relationships with the producers and animals she serves.

Lessons for Veterinarians: Find a Sustainable Path in the Profession

Loppe’s journey reflects a reality many veterinarians encounter during their careers. The path into the profession is often clear and well defined, but the path through it can be far less predictable. From navigating competitive admissions to managing the realities of early practice, her career was shaped by persistence, with burnout ultimately serving as a turning point rather than an endpoint.

Stepping away from practice gave Loppe the space to determine what she needed from her career and how she wanted to practice medicine moving forward. Instead of leaving the profession entirely, she chose to reshape her role within it.

Support from the individuals in her life also played an important role in that process. As Loppe reflects on that period, she emphasizes the importance of surrounding herself with a strong community.

“It really helps having a support system,” she said. “Even one or two people makes a big difference.”

Today, her practice reflects the lessons learned along the way. The road that led there was not linear, but it reinforced something many veterinarians eventually discover: finding a place in the profession sometimes means redefining what success looks like.

For Loppe, that process ultimately led to the place she had been searching for all along — a veterinary practice built to support both the animals she treats and the veterinarian behind the work.

Never Say Never: A Veterinarian’s Career Beyond the Clinic

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:45:51 GMT

When Dr. Julia Herman speaks with veterinary students, she often begins with a phrase that has become something of a personal mantra.

“I always tell the vet students ‘never say never’,” she says.

It is advice that reflects the path her own career has taken. Herman has worked in wildlife research, cattle practice, veterinary teaching and now industry leadership. Today she serves as beef cattle specialist veterinarian with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) , where her work centers on preventive medicine, biosecurity and producer and veterinary education across the beef industry.

Rather than focusing on individual animals, Herman now works at the level of the entire production system.

“The cattle industry is my client, so that adjusts how I work with folks,” she says.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Her days might involve lecturing veterinary students, collaborating with researchers on biosecurity plans or coordinating with state and federal agencies involved in animal health. Much of the work revolves around Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) programs and broader preventive medicine efforts designed to strengthen animal welfare, food safety and industry sustainability.

“The BQA is essentially preventive medicine,” Herman says. “We’re trying to teach all these preventive medicine topics.”

It is a role that operates far beyond the exam chute or treatment pen. But it is also not the career Herman originally envisioned when she first decided to become a veterinarian.

The Zoo Vet Dream

Herman grew up in a small town in eastern Colorado, where agriculture was present but not necessarily the center of her early career ambitions. As a kid, she raised rabbits and pigs for 4-H and FFA projects, but her imagination was often focused somewhere else entirely.

“Initially, I wanted to be a zoo vet,” she says.

Her fascination with animals started early, fueled in part by the books she devoured growing up.

“My parents had this entire collection of National Geographic books that I just read all the time,” she says. “I went to the Denver Zoo for my birthday parties and learned as much as I could about a variety of animal species.”

Those interests led her to pursue a zoology degree at Colorado State University, where she focused heavily on wildlife management and genetics with her undergraduate research. One of the most memorable experiences during that time was a research internship at the Smithsonian National Zoo studying cheetah reproductive biology.

“Which sounds cool,” Herman says, “but mostly I just pounded poop and extracted hormones out of said poop to evaluate cyclicity.”

The experience was still meaningful, but it also helped clarify something about the direction she wanted her career to take.

“I realized that I didn’t want to just do research and knew that veterinary school needed to be the next step.”

Like many of the turning points in her career, it was a moment where plans shifted slightly rather than dramatically.

(Photo Provided By Julia Herman)

When Wildlife Met Livestock

Herman’s graduate research would bring her closer to livestock agriculture in an unexpected way. Her master’s project focused on genetic resistance to brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park bison, a topic that bridged wildlife conservation and cattle health.

“It incorporated my wildlife genetics interest, that I had already been working in the lab with, and conservation biology,” she says. “But it also put me back into the livestock realm because brucellosis is a regulated disease.”

The project highlighted how closely connected different areas of animal health can be. Wildlife disease, livestock production and public health were not separate fields, but overlapping systems that influence one another.

That systems-level, One Health perspective would eventually become central to Herman’s career.

Her Way Into Agriculture

Herman’s path into food animal medicine did not follow the traditional script. She describes herself as a first-generation student navigating much of the veterinary pipeline independently.

“I’m a first generation student,” she says. “There’s a lot that I feel like I had to learn on my own.”

Without established connections in the profession, she relied heavily on persistence. She emailed dozens of professors looking for research opportunities and contacted veterinary clinics across northern Colorado in search of experience. Those efforts eventually led her to work for several years at a small-town veterinary clinic while applying to veterinary school.

Once enrolled in the DVM program at Colorado State University, Herman intentionally sought out as many different experiences as possible.

“I really tried to have this huge breadth of experience,” she says.

During veterinary school, she pursued opportunities ranging from a public health internship in Chile to dairy medicine training at Cornell University and feedlot health work at Feedlot Health Management Services by TELUS Agriculture Canada. The goal was not to specialize early, but to learn broadly.

She holds the position that making students choose a track in veterinary school might be short-sighted.

“I think everybody should have to learn about all species because you don’t know where your path is going to go,” Herman says.

The Realities of Practice

After graduating, Herman accepted a mixed animal practice job in Stockton, Kan. But even then, she was deliberate about making sure the position would provide meaningful experience with cattle.

“A lot of times when mixed animal practice jobs are posted, they say mixed animal practice, but it’s mostly small animal plus or minus a little bit of horses,” she says.

The Kansas clinic delivered exactly what she had hoped for. Located in one of the state’s leading cow-calf counties, the practice provided extensive hands-on cattle work and strong mentorship from veterinarians with different backgrounds and levels of experience.

“Practicing in Kansas was a memorable start to my career,” she says. “The people were fantastic. I had a really great team to work with and learn from.”

Still, life outside the clinic soon influenced the next step in her career. When her husband’s job brought the couple back to Colorado, Herman once again found herself looking for new opportunities.

The Pivot She Never Expected

Her next move came through a familiar strategy: sending emails to professional contacts asking if anyone knew of openings in the area. One of her former professors came back with a suggestion she had not anticipated. He was leaving his position and asked if Herman wanted to take his place.

“I never thought I would be in academia,” Herman says. “It was an opportunity that fell into my lap.”

She accepted the role and became a clinical instructor in livestock ambulatory medicine at Colorado State University. The position allowed her to continue working with cattle while also mentoring veterinary students.

Teaching quickly became one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.

“The veterinary and graduate students are so excited to just learn and try new things,” she says. “And being a part of setting that foundation of what they’re going to do in the rest of their career — I love that piece.”

Looking back, Herman now sees teaching as one of the threads that has run through every stage of her career:

“If anything has been consistent, other than preventive medicine and public health themes, it’s the teaching piece.”

A Career Turning Point to a Job that Didn’t Exist

Eventually, several factors pushed Herman toward another career transition. Team dynamics within the department changed, and she was managing tendinitis in both hands — a repetitive strain injury common in physically demanding veterinary work.

“I realized that I couldn’t be doing physical work for the rest of my veterinary career,” she says.

At the same time, she noticed her interests shifting toward larger-scale challenges within animal health systems.

“Figuring out how I could impact veterinary medicine and the cattle industry beyond clinical practice was an interesting step,” she says.

That desire prompted her to begin searching for roles that would allow her to work at that broader level.

(Photo: Jared Kennedy)

Eventually Herman came across a job posting for a newly created position with NCBA that would reshape her career entirely.

“I’m the first veterinarian in this position, which was exciting and has been a learning curve,” she says.

As NCBA’s beef cattle specialist veterinarian, Herman was given broad flexibility to shape the position. She quickly focused on preventive medicine, animal welfare, biosecurity, and producer and veterinary education across the cattle industry.

Her work often involves helping producers recognize how everyday management decisions influence disease risk and how veterinarians can better collaborate with those producers.

During a training program in Uganda focused on foot-and-mouth disease response, Herman visited farms managing outbreaks in endemic areas. One example from that trip now appears frequently in her presentations.

They overviewed a situation involving three farms.

“Farm A has sick cattle. So farm C and B are like, well, we’re going to come help you because that’s what we do as cattle producers,” Herman explains. “Then they end up taking foot-and-mouth disease back to their herd.”

Without biosecurity measures, their good intentions spread the disease.

“I give that example,” Herman says. “And then I ask the audience: how many of your neighbors did you invite over for the branding?”

Then comes the follow-up question that reframes the situation: “And did you ask them to wear clean clothes, clean boots and to clean out the hooves of their horses so that they’re not bringing anything to your operation?”

More Paths than Students Realize

Herman spends a significant amount of time speaking with veterinary students about the many directions their careers can take. Too often, she says, students believe the profession offers only a narrow set of options.

“I don’t think the veterinary industry does a good job at showing all those different avenues of what veterinarians can do,” she says.

Veterinary medicine today includes roles in research, industry, public health, education and policy, many of which operate far beyond the clinic setting.

“You can do whatever the heck you want in veterinary medicine,” Herman says. “There are all these career paths where you don’t have to stay in a particular lane. There are so many ways you can impact the veterinary industry and animal health.”

Her own career serves as a reminder that those paths are rarely predictable. What began with childhood dreams of zoo medicine eventually evolved into work shaping preventive health strategies for an entire industry.

And that, Herman says, is exactly why she tells students the same thing every time.

Never say never.

A Wisconsin DVM’s Path: Injury, Motherhood and an Evolving Field

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:49:09 GMT

“Watch out, little girl.” The first time someone hollered that across a dairy alley, she wasn’t entirely sure how to take it.

Valerie Baumgart, large-animal veterinarian with United Veterinary Service in Wisconsin, was still a student then, following her mentor through herd checks, trying to stay out of the way while cows shifted and shuffled past. At 5' 2" and blond, she was easy to spot. Easy to underestimate, too.

“Initially I was offended,” Baumgart says. “Then I kind of thought it was funny, and then I was like, ‘Watch out, little boy.’”

The farmer who said it, Scott, is still one of her favorites. Years later, he wasn’t just telling her to move. He was calling her first. Running management decisions past her. Asking for her perspective. That shift — from the little girl who needed to step aside to the trusted veterinarian — has become one of the defining arcs of her career.

In many ways, though, she was headed here long before that alleyway.

The Rabbit That Started It All

Apparently, her mother saw it coming first. When Baumgart’s childhood pet rabbit died, her mom braced for tears and heartbreak. Instead, her daughter looked up and asked, “Can I take its fur off and see what’s underneath?” Her mother likes to joke that she realized then her child would either become a serial killer or a veterinarian — and strongly encouraged the veterinary route.

“I’ve wanted to do this forever and ever,” Baumgart says.

She grew up in Wisconsin agriculture, surrounded by beef cows, show pigs, lambs and long days at her grandparents’ and aunt and uncle’s dairy farm. She and her cousin once begged to take over the tie-stall barn someday. Her uncle refused.

“He, with 100% of his soul, said, ‘I will never let you do that. I don’t wish that upon anyone.’”

At the time, she was devastated. Dairy farming felt like destiny. Now, she sees it differently.

“The industry is just, it’s brutal,” Baumgart says. “And these dairymen and women that I work with are extraordinarily talented.”

She’s grateful she wasn’t handed 60 cows and a tie-stall barn to manage. Instead, she gets to support the families who are making those enormous, life-shaping business decisions.

Leaving, Learning and Coming Back Home

At the University of Minnesota, where she completed her undergraduate studies, Baumgart joined the livestock judging team and traveled widely, seeing production systems across the U.S. She spent a semester in Montana doing beef nutrition research with USDA and was struck by how dramatically cattle production differs region to region. The differences in mentality, management style and medicine fascinated her.

She recalls her vet school experience at the University of Wisconsin consisting of caffeine and chaos.

“A lot of coffee, a lot of late-night studying,” she says. “Vet school is a blur.”

At one point, she swore she would never return to her hometown. Today, she lives about 30 miles from where she grew up and has been with United Veterinary Service since graduation. The place she once dismissed became the place she built her career.

A First — and the Will to Prove the Critics Wrong

Baumgart was the first woman the practice hired. To her, it felt less like a headline and more about showing up to do a job and do it well.

“It doesn’t really matter who you are and where you’re from, as long as you’re gritty, determined, motivated and not willing to put up with anybody’s baloney,” she says.

There were comments early on, being the “short blond girl” sent for physically demanding calvings. She isn’t sure whether it was about her height, her gender or because she was a rookie. Most criticism, she’s careful to point out, had little to do with being female at all.

“To be really honest with you, the criticism just made me want to do more, just do better, work harder, prove them wrong,” Baumgart says.

Today, the clinic is split evenly between men and women. She sees the broader shift in veterinary medicine — classes heavily female — as a strength.

“It’s a true blessing to be able to have different personalities, different skills and different ways to approach clients and challenges,” she says.

Diversity isn’t a talking point to her. It’s a practical advantage.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Baumgart’s height does come up frequently, usually in good humor. In displaced abomasum surgeries, her incision placement is lower than most.

“My surgical incision is really low because my arm is really short,” she explains. “I have to reach all the way over to the other side, so I just give myself an advantage by starting lower.”

Producers tease her about it. She teases back. What she learned early on is that large-animal medicine isn’t about brute strength.

“It’s not about gusto strength,” she says. “Oftentimes I just have to position things a little differently … just working smarter instead of harder and asking for help.”

In the beginning, Baumgart felt she had something to prove; her size and inexperience loomed larger in her mind than in reality. Over time, wins built confidence.

“Once you get a couple of wins under your belt, people really just start to trust you and rely on you,” she says.

And once trust is established, the work becomes collaborative rather than performative.

The Day the Alley Went Quiet

(Photos Provided By Valerie Baumgart)

In August 2024, everything came to a halt. Baumgart was sorting heifers before a herd check. The alleyways were slick. A heifer slipped, caught her leg and fell over it. Baumgart’s foot stopped against the scraper.

“My foot stopped, but my leg kept going,” she says.

Both bones in her lower leg snapped.

“I grabbed my thigh and picked up my leg, and I saw my lower leg flop the opposite direction,” she recalls.

The herdsman looked pale enough to faint. The dairyman dragged her to safety. The heifer stood up and ran off. She didn’t.

Baumgart was off work for four months. Healing was physical and emotional.

Even now, scrambling heifers make her step aside faster. But what lingered most was perspective.

“Tomorrow’s not guaranteed,” she says. “I’m going to do the best that I can do for the time that I’m helping them, and then I’m going to go be a mom and a wife.”

On her broken-bone anniversary, she brings doughnuts into work — small celebrations marking survival and gratitude.

Priortizing Faith, Family and Farming

For someone who once declared she didn’t want children, motherhood has reshaped everything. Baumgart and her husband have two daughters, ages 5 and 3.

“Being their mom is what God made me to be,” she says without hesitation.

About a year ago, her oldest faced serious challenges that forced her to recalibrate priorities. Baumgart doesn’t elaborate, but she doesn’t need to.

“Family is No. 1. Faith, family and then farming,” she says.

Agriculture, she says, is the best possible classroom for raising children: “Agriculture teaches so much about empathy and perseverance.”

Her daughters sometimes accompany her on calls, though they’re quick to inform her that she smells like cows when she gets home.

“It’s OK,” she tells them. “We love cows, cows are really cool and we can take a shower.”

Barn alleys and cookie decorating happen in the same afternoon. Baumgart will assist with a calving in bitter weather while her daughter sits safely in a farmhouse kitchen watching old Westerns. Both worlds matter; neither cancels the other out.

(Valerie Baumgart)

From ‘Little Girl’ to Trusted Resource

Years after that first “watch out,” the same producer began calling Baumgart directly for input.

“It was just really cool to go from the little girl that needed to get out of the way to his first phone call and his resource for decision-making,” she says.

That transformation, more than anything, is the story. Not being the first woman hired. Not enduring criticism. Not even surviving a broken leg. It’s about earning trust through consistency, humility and hard work.

“We will become the veterinarians that our clients want us to be,” she says. “If our clients trust us … we will grow and we will evolve and we will learn.”

Advice for the Next Generation of Veterinarians

Baumgart’s advice to young women entering veterinary medicine is direct and unsentimental.

“Follow your passion and know that it’s not going to be sunshine and daisies all the time,” she says. “You’re going to fail, and you’re going to learn from it. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Figure out what really matters. Don’t make it complicated, and stay humble.”

In her world, simple systems, smart positioning and steady humility go a long way.

Love For Lexi: A Wisconsin Dairy Farm Kid's Big Battle For a New Heart

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 15:45:06 GMT

Lexi Anderson looks like a typical 12-year-old kid. The sixth grader is full of life and so much spunk.

“How long have you been coming to World Dairy Expo,” I asked.

“12 years,” said Lexi.

Her entire life, she’s been traveling to World dairy Expo with her family to show cows. An annual trip that’s always packed with family fun. But Lexi’s life took a dramatic turn nearly 10 months ago, just two months after she showed during the 2023 World Dairy Expo.

“In December of 2023, she [Lexi] started feeling dizzy on the basketball court. And at first, we weren’t really sure what was going on, whether it was dehydration or what it was,” said Tamala Anderson, who is Lexi’s mom.

Unsure how serious it was, it wasn’t until Lexi blacked out on the court that they knew something wasn’t right.

“They decided to bring me in to the doctor. And then we figured out that I had this heart problem,” Lexi said.

The Diagnosis

It wasn’t just a minor problem. The diagnosis? Restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM).

“It’s a hardening of the heart, the lining of the heart. So, the walls of the heart are eventually going to harden and stop pumping” Tamala explained.

“It’s really rare,” Lexi said. “Only like 2% of the world has it.”

Lexi Anderson

(Tamala Anderson)

Restrictive cardiomyopathy is a less common type of cardiomyopathy. According to the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry, the average age of diagnosis is 5 to 6 years.

Lexi’s diagnosis meant her only cure would be a heart transplant

“When we first got the news, it was extremely hard to get that news,” said Tamala. “To hear that your daughter…. sometimes kids only have a year and a half after they’re diagnosed with this. It’s such a hard thing to hear that your daughter could die,” she said.

A heartbreaking diagnosis that shocked the family, but Tamala says they were sent to specialists at the children’s hospital in Milwaukee and got connected with an amazing team of doctors that immediately planted seeds of hope.

“We’ve got a great team. They don’t even let us look at the negative. They told us that we didn’t need to worry about it. They said they we’re going to find it [a heart] and fix it,” Tamala said.

Her New Normal

At 12 years old, Lexi’s life quickly turned to anything but normal. She has doctor visits at least every six weeks with strict orders to cut out physical activity that could stress her heart.

“I got banned from playing all sports, to stop it from growing,” Lexi said.

Lexi’s favorite sport is softball, a sport she can’t play until she receives her heart transplant.

(Tamala Anderson)

Lexi was extremely active before, playing basketball, riding horses and playing softball, which she says is her favorite sport.

“I really miss playing softball,” said Lexi.

“It’s hard,” said Tamala. “I kind of do have her wrapped up in a bubble as she has strict orders at school. All of her teachers know the strict orders. She’s not allowed to run, and she’s not allowed to do any of that stuff that might affect her. So she’s kind of limited in every aspect.”

Lexi loves all things outdoors, which includes riding horses and going fishing.

(Tamala Anderson)

Helpless in so many ways, Tamela did the only thing she could and that was to protect her little girl, all while waiting on the call that could save her life.

“Her timeline went from living 60 years, 80 years, down to we don’t know what,” said Tamala. “We could get a phone call at any time.”

Waiting on the Life-Saving Call

It’s that phone call that Tamala, Lexi and her entire family are anxiously awaiting.

“Honestly, my bags are packed in the car,” said Tamala. “I’ve got Lexi’s bags packed in the car. We’re waiting, and we’re ready.”

“Are you scared at all or are you nervous at all,” I asked Lexi.

“I’m a little nervous. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get back home. And I don’t know if they’re going to hold me for the three months recovery, but hopefully they let me go home and just recover at my house.”

Love for Lexi

At 12 years old, Lexi’s courage is contagious and her support is inspiring. She has an army of family and friends who are rooting her on, with a group called “Love for Lexi.”

“A couple of her friends at home decided to do a website, it’s called Love for Lexi, where we have Caring Bridge connected,” said Tamala “Some of it’s to raise money. Some of it’s just to let people know how she’s doing.”

Whether it’s at the County Fair or World Dairy Expo, you’ll find Lexi shining in the show ring.

(Tamala Anderson)

That love was put on center stage this summer, when Lexi’s friends Hattie and Holly Hargrave gave the ultimate gift of generosity with a lamb for Lexi.

“We went to a county fair, and I was showing sheep, and I didn’t make the sale, and one of my friends did and that raised over $27,000 and she gave it to me for the benefit,” said Lexi.

“It was amazing,” Tama said. “It was absolutely amazing. Honestly, the first buyer, when the first buyer bought the lamb, I was in tears . Then, he’s like, ‘Nope, I want to sell it again.’ And he so he gave it back and they sold it again. And I mean, it sold four times.

That sale raised $27,000 from four business who all came together to show Lexi love and support.

“We live in a really, really great community,” Tamala said.

“I feel really, really loved,” said Lexi.

Lexi looks happy and normal, but as her heart works in overdrive, the reality is Lexi’s body is tired and worn down.

“Some days it takes her breath away just to walk across the parking lot. Some days she is jumping around saying, ‘I’m ready to go,’” Tamala said.

Success at World Dairy Expo

This week during the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisc, Lexi was determined to go in the ring, and she brought home hardware, as well as memories she won’t forget. One of the best memories was when her cousin won Junior Champion of the World Dairy Expo Junior Show.

“I was super happy, because it’s like a victory for the farm,” said Lexi. “We just cheered each other on and we started supporting each other and stuff.”

That’s who Lexi is; a spirited kid who’s always supporting those around her.

“She’s a great kid, honestly,” said Tamala. “She’s got such a big heart. If she sees someone down or if she sees someone even getting bullied, she’s more of a protector. So she’s just a great kid.”

Lexi’s big heart is now what’s needing saved, but it’s a constant showing of love and support that’s getting this family through.

This Vermont Dairy Farmer Turned into an Epic Track Star - Now She's Heading to the Olympics Again!

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 16:34:13 GMT

Elle Purrier St. Pierre, a Vermont dairy farmer turned track star, has booked her ticket to the summer Olympics once again.

Setting a meet-record performance, the Montgomery, Ver., native won the 5,000-meter race at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore., with a time of 14:40.34, a new Trials record. This seals Purrier St. Pierre’s spot on Team U.S.A., allowing her to compete at 2024 Olympic Games in Paris later this summer.

A former Olympian, Purrier St. Pierre finished 10th in the women’s 1,500-meter race at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021. The Olympian has been training to compete in the 2024 season ever since she gave birth to her son, Ivan, just one year ago.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a bit. The 5k always hurts and I just dug a little deeper at the end there,” St. Pierre said on the NBC telecast after being asked about having her 1-year-old son, Ivan, in the stands. “It’s just so emotional to have Ivan here and I’m really proud to be his mom.”

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Purrier St. Pierre grew up on a 40-cow operation in Vermont, but never left the farm, as she and her husband still live on a dairy farm today. The runner married her high-school sweetheart, Jamie St. Pierre, and would compete against him at 4-H events growing up. Jamie studied dairy management at Cornell, is a dairy farmer, and works on his family’s dairy farm also located in Vermont.

In 2021, St. Pierre’s family made the tough decision to exit the dairy industry, selling the cows on her home farm. Though St. Pierre is still able to get some cow time in on the farm her husband manages, she reflects on how she still misses not seeing dairy cows on the farm she grew up on.

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Purrier’s competition at this year’s Trials is far from over. She’ll begin her bid in the 1,500-meters with a first-round heat on Thursday night in Eugene.

Watch the entire 5,000-meter race below:

We can’t stop thinking about that EPIC FINISH to the women’s 5000m final at #TrackFieldTrials24. pic.twitter.com/yv2PqedFQa
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) June 25, 2024

This 87-Year-Old's Powerful Business Sense Helped Create a Booming Meat Processing Business in Iowa

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:44:10 GMT

Cut by cut. Slice by slice. Every detail counts for Edgewood Locker , a northeast Iowa-based business that’s been spliced together for nearly 60 years in 1966.

With no master plan, it started when Tom, a farmer, and Joan, a nurse at the time, were forced to find a new place to live.

(Farm Journal)

“We were on his dad’s farm for five years when his dad announced he was going to sell the farm. He wanted us to buy it, but we could not afford to buy a huge farm back then,” Joan explains.

So, they found a farm to rent three miles outside of Edgewood, until an accidental fire on that farm sparked another change.

“Talk about an act of fate. We knew the lady who owned that farm was going to make us move, because she believed those stories that we started the fire,” Joan remembers. “Tom came home one day and said, ‘The locker in town is for sale.’ So, we bought it.”

It was that decision that changed the course for the Kerns family. Neither Joan nor Tom knew anything about running a meat locker, but they had the tenacity to make it work.

“Tom wanted to do the actual meat cutting and that sort of thing, and I was going to do all the books and the book work,” says Joan.

The business started out with minimal equipment: only a saw and a grinder at the locker. That didn’t stop the Kerns from seeing phenomenal growth.

“And every year we were in business, we grew. Every year we got bigger. And so, finally, we outgrew our plant,” she says.

The growth wasn’t always easy, and it didn’t come without financial hardships. Joan says the couple borrowed money to expand and grow six different times.

“But I remember, maybe the second or third time Tom said, ‘I’m going to go up to the bank tomorrow and borrow some money for the next addition,’ and I went up to do our daily banking that day. And the girl said, ‘Oh, we can give you the money.’ So, I borrowed the money, got back home and I told him. I said, ‘Well, I got the money borrowed for our new addition.’ Tom said, ‘They let a woman do that?’ That’s the way it was back then,” says Joan.

A Force of Nature

Joan’s son Terry will be the first to tell you how much his mom was a driving force behind the scenes, if she didn’t always get the credit she deserved.

“She’s kind of a force of nature, there’s no doubt about it, and probably even more so than anybody realizes,” says Terry, who’s one of two second-generation owners of Edgewood Locker.

What makes Joan’s role so essential to their growth is the fact Joan’s husband, Tom, was dyslexic. So behind the scenes, Joan handled the paperwork and books, all while raising four kids at home.

Bringing in the Second Generation Straight Out of High School

Joan is still a true trailblazer today, as the Kerns’ unconventional ways and business decisions also helped fuel the family operation.

“The boys had come into the locker business as they graduated from high school, which really let us dream bigger,” says Joan.

That was in the early 1980s. Tom and Joan didn’t just see their sons Terry and Jim as employees, they allowed the boys to buy into the business fresh out of high school.

(Farm Journal)

“It wasn’t popular with their peers that they allowed Jim and me to buy in at such a young age, you know. They gave us a huge opportunity,” remembers Terry.

“And I think that’s why we grew as we did, because they were partners. They were going to be in this, and it made a big difference,” Joan says.

The growth has been impressive over the past 60 years, including building a new facility in the late 1990s that has seen even more expansion since.

“We built this business because she paid attention to detail. And she wanted to make sure it was done right. She still keeps us on our toes,” says Terry.

At 87-years-old, Joan is sharp, and attention to detail may still be one of her greatest strengths.

“She is not afraid to tell us when she thinks we’ve done something wrong,” says Terry.

Bringing in the Third Generation

While Joan doesn’t overlook the small things, she’s also the first to celebrate how much the family business has grown. It now includes four grandkids who have become part-owners.

“Oh my gosh, I did not see that coming. And they each bring their own experience, knowledge, their forte to the business,” says Joan.

“All of us in the third generation, all I feel have a very unique skill set, which allows all of us to bring something different to the table,” says Baili Maurer, one of Joan’s grandchildren who bought in as a third-generation owner.

“None of us really overlap much. We all have our own thing that we do, and it just works,” adds Katie, who’s also one of four grandchildren who are partners.

(Farm Journal)

Katie and Bailli, along with Luke Kerns and Payson Kerns, are the third-generation owners of Edgewood Locker.

“They’ve got experience, they’ve got education in meat science in business. So, as fun as it was to grow with Mom and Dad adding Jim and me, this next generation really has the potential to do amazing things,” says Terry.

Third-Generation Growth

“We’re just doing what we can to take the business to a new level,” says Baili.

“We really expanded into wholesale stores and retail stores carrying our products. And we just keep going with what the second generation and first generation have been doing, as well,” adds Katie.

The growth is evident everywhere you turn. Construction in their retail and lobby area is a clear sign of even more progress.

“We had a major expansion of 19,000-square-feet that we’ve been in now a little over a year and a half, and I think it’s running well,” says Terry. “We remodeled our old processing facility and updated that, and it looks like brand new.”

The decision to expand and remodel their retail and lobby area was propelled by the busiest season for Edgewood Locker: deer season.

“I think last year, we did 3,700 whole-carcass deer, and then over 3,500 batches of boned-out deer that came in, so well over 7,000 different batches to jerky,” Terry says.

With that type of volume, Edgewood Locker has also been able to invest in bigger and better equipment.

“I’d like to say we had this great master plan, but we never had a real plan to say, ‘Well, next year, we’re going to get into wholesaling, or next year, we’re going to do this.’ We just kind of took it as it came. Something presented itself, we ran with it, and ran hard with a lot of it,” says Terry.

A Legacy Worth Sharing

With 130 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees, Edgewood Locker also offers other custom processing, and has products for sale, in more than 100 retail stores across Iowa. And it’s that side of the business the third generation has already helped expand.

“I hope we can just continue the legacy,” says Baili.

“I’m hopeful that we can just keep doing like we’re doing, keep growing where we can and keep expanding things and have it all set up for the fourth generation if they would like to join in someday,” Katie says.

Walls of awards are a product of what Joan and Tom started in 1966, but that isn’t what Joan is most proud of today. The greatest gift just may be the fourth generation and the chance to carry on a business that started on hopes and dreams.

How Social Media Sensation NY Farm Girls Defied Odds to Expose the Truth About Farming

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 20:28:05 GMT

The NY Farm Girls have become a social media sensation. With nearly 645,000 followers on TikTok , along with more than 171,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook , the NY Farm Girls are taking all of social media by storm.

“Social media can reach millions of people by the touch of a button,” says Claudia Leubner. “It’s been really cool we’re able to reach this many eyes in the world to try to share dairy farmers are not evil people.”

NY Farm Girls consists of three sisters: Evelyn and Claudia Leubner, who are both in their early 20s, and their sister Jojo Leubner, who’s still in high school. In addition to the social media piece of the business, the girls are seeing significant growth on YouTube with 87,000 subscribers. Their goal is to simply share life on the farm.

“We are a fourth-generation dairy farm. It’s a partnership between my dad, his sister, his brother and our two cousins, and we’re over 100 years old now, says Evelyn.

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With a mix of dairy cattle, row crops, hay and an agritourism pumpkin farm, life on this New York farm is in constant motion. The busy schedule creates long hours of work, but it’s also allowed each of the girls to uncover their niche.

“I’ve always loved working with animals,” says Evelyn. “I actually went to SUNY Cobleskill for animal science, because of my love for animals, and I honestly thought I would never come back to the farm.”

While Evelyn didn’t plan on returning home, she lived in Georgia after college. That’s until she realized home is exactly where she wanted to be.

“I’m pretty much doing her checks, vaccinations help with the preg checks on Mondays,” says Evelyn. “Pretty much everything cows and some calves stuff, I’m your girl.”

Being born into the Leubner family means you’re also born into life on the farm. Each of the girls started on calf feeding duty since elementary school. From an early age, those farm chores also gave them a taste for what they did and did not want to do.

“After I fed calves for that long, I realized it’s not really something that I was too passionate about,” says Claudia.

Instead, Claudia found a better fit on the row crop side of the family business. After attending the University of Nebraska, Claudia came back with an even deeper love for grains.

‘I’m helping with planting season harvest season, everything in between. It’s been really fun to start to learn about our crop operation” she adds.

And Jojo? Well, as a high schooler, she still works on the farm part-time.

“She goes to school during the day, comes home and does chores every night,” says Evelyn. “She doesn’t really know what she wants to do yet, with her future, but she doesn’t have to yet.”

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While the sisters work together on the farm, it’s their collaboration on social media that’s helping plant new seeds of opportunity for their business.

“When you come up to upstate New York, you’re going to see a lot of lakes and hills,” says Evelyn. “All of our fields are full of rocks, but it’s just really beautiful up here. We’re definitely a lot more than New York City.”

Do you want to read more stories of inspiration? Find the entire list of “Grit with Grace” stories that showcase the heart of rural America.

The three sisters are working daily to showcase New York agriculture, with a focus on dairy. Each of the girls will be the first to tell you that they couldn’t do it alone, and social media has actually drawn them even closer.

“Having this relationship together and doing things like this, and we’ve always just become much bigger, stronger bonds together,” says Claudia.

“And we’re really good at holding each other accountable. Like if Claudia is slacking on something or I’m slacking on something, we let each other know and we don’t get offended anymore,” says Evelyn, with a smile.

“Not anymore,” Claudia jokes back.

The bond the NY Farm Girls trio has built came despite the harsh reality of social media.

“Sometimes it’s not even the extremists. It’s also other farmers or people you know in real life that are the ones that are sending negative comments to you,” Claudia says. “You kind of just have to brush it off, because we have an end goal in mind,”

“You kind of have to learn to ignore it,” adds Evelyn. “In the beginning when we started, we really took the comments to heart and impacted our mental health and kind of almost made us not want to do social media anymore.”

Even as they battled the comments and negativity that comes with social media, the sisters refused to quit, as their motivation was seeing constant social media posts plagued with misinformation.

“It’s a huge passion of ours to teach consumers about agriculture, because they’re the ones buying our products; we want them to trust us,” says Claudia.

“All those touchy subjects people don’t really want to talk about, we dive into all of that,” Evelyn adds.

Reaching the “Moveable Middle”

With a variety of skills and personalities, the girls no longer focus reaching those who are anti-dairy. Instead, they target what they call the “moveable middle.”

“We know these people don’t know where their food is coming from. They think it’s coming from the grocery store,” says Claudia. “So we want to be able to target them and share exactly where their milk is coming from that they’re buying.”

What they’re doing is working.

“I just did a post the other day on Facebook about how there’s no antibiotics in milk, ever. And it reached almost 500,000 people because of how many people shared that post,” says Evelyn.

Her post was part of an ongoing effort during the entire month of June, which is also known as June Dairy Month. To play off the dairy theme, the girls decided to do a series of videos busting dairy myths.

“When you hop online and you see the negative connotations with artificial insemination or antibiotics, you’re obviously going to believe that because at the surface level, it might seem bad to you. But once you go to the source and see how it’s actually done, you can feel a lot better about where your food is coming,” says Claudia.

While the NY Farm Girls brand has grown since they started on social media, the motivation hasn’t wavered.

“We just want to reach as many people as we can and teach them about agriculture,” says Evelyn. “It just really comes down to that.”

Meet NY Farm Girls’ Dad

Each one of the NY Farm Girls is very visible on social media, but a less familiar face on the farm is one that has been a constant stream of support behind the scenes.

“My dad is a great teacher and very patient. You need a lot of patience with me,” jokes Claudia. “He’s always been very supportive of what we want to do on the farm, in our business and everything.”

Maybe the reason their dad has been such a great teacher over the years is because farming is what Tim Leubner knew he was meant to do.

“I never left. I just loved it ever since I was a little kid,” says Tim. “I couldn’t wait to get out of school and go farm.”

While Tim was hesitant when the girls first launched into social media, his tone has evolved over the years. He has seen the power of social media, and the benefits of showing real life on the farm. But in the beginning, that hesitation was rooted in concern. As for a father, his biggest worry is always the safety of his three girls.

In years past, they were getting threats constantly [on social media],” says Tim. “It was like that for about a year or so, and there people were really going after them. That was kind of scary.”

From animal activists to other social media users, the threats have calmed down and the situation has improved.

Tim’s concerns have also subsided and now his addiction to the farm could be turning into a new addiction for social media.

“I constantly am making little videos here and there, and then I’ll send it to Claudia or Evelyn, and they’ll make a video. We’ll come up with different ideas that might work, and I have mostly good ideas,” Tim shares, with a smile.

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How NY Farm Girls Brand Continues to Grow

NY Farm Girls is a business that continues to grow. The girls even launched their own clothing line recently, adding another chapter to the story of the brand.

As Tim watched the NY Farm Girls business grow, he’s proud of the fact his daughters are strong and independent. The girls’ drive and determination didn’t happen by chance, they’re traits that are a product of how Evelyn, Claudia and Jojo were raised.

“Don’t ever tell like a kid they can’t do something,” says Tim. “Always tell them it’s possible and just give them confidence and let them go.”

In their 20s and late teens, the determination and confidence is paying off as the NY Farm Girls continue to gain followers and fans. The side business is also helping these fourth-generation farmers secure a future for their dairy farm.

“We had no idea it would take off like this,” says Evelyn. “We started it just to share pictures of cows and calves and maybe teach a little bit about farming. And it took us a while to grow.”

“We obviously didn’t think that it was going to get this big,” adds Claudia. “We are so thankful we’re able to reach the amount of people we do, because at the end of the day, it’s not really about your follower count or how many likes you get. It’s that you are getting that information out there.”

Closing in on 1 million followers and fans across all sites is no easy feat, it’s the product of hard work that’s required constant grit and grace.

Leading With Kindness and Courage, Annette Ostrom's Dairy Legacy Will Now Live On at World Dairy Expo

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 19:35:53 GMT

Over the next decade the Ostrom family will dedicate more than $120,000 to World Dairy Expo’s Youth Showmanship Contest classes to honor the late Annette Ostrom.

Annette, 49, of De Pere, Wisconsin, passed away on October 19, 2022, following a courageous battle with cancer, shortly after she completed one of her final wishes. She was determined to be ringside at WDE in 2022 to watch her son Tristen show, to see her industry friends, and to champion her family’s Milk Source Genetics’ show campaign.

Annette was a beloved figure at every level. There wasn’t a part of the industry she didn’t touch or influence in all the best ways.

(Farm Journal)

The tangible legacy of this quiet overachiever is that everyone can affect change…simply by taking the first step with the right people.

Her husband, Jim Ostrom, of Milk Source Genetics, says it is time to pause and to celebrate one of Annette’s enduring passions – young people.

This year’s cash prizes will peak at $3500 for the Supreme Champion Showmanship award. Jim says the decision is a deliberate nod to the significance of encouraging youth, the foundation the movement lays for life, and acknowledging Annette’s commitment to both.

“The most important thing about showmanship and youth programs is that it brings our future leaders back to our industry,” he says. “It might be the most important thing we do in a given year – to give young people the chance to fall in love with this industry that we all love.”

“Anything we can do to build some excitement around youth and youth programs is worthy.”

Giving Back

Outside of Milk Source Genetics juggernaut commercial operation and compelling show herd, Annette was a long-time business manager for Zoetis, and a co-founder of “Dairy Cares of Wisconsin”, a non-profit organization that raised $2.3 million within 12 years for Children’s Wisconsin (formerly Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin).

It included “The Dairy Cares of Wisconsin Simulation Lab”, named after its benefactor. The lab uses computerized patients so the hospital can replay traumas for training purposes. In 2017, Annette and Jim were acknowledged with a “Wisconsin Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser Award” on behalf of Dairy Cares during National Philanthropy Day.

Dairy Cares of Wisconsin started with a simple garden party of 35 people who collectively had momentous aspirations to give back.

Today, that event welcomes more than 500 people to the Ostrom’s family home each year.

Flawless on the Halter

(Farm Journal)

Annette was an exceptional cowwoman in her own right. Few will forget the iconic images of her gliding out of the darkness in 2016 and into the spotlight in unison with Milk Source’s five-year-old Jersey Grand Champion, Musqie Iatola Martha-ET. Martha would go on to win WDE Supreme Champion.

Annette’s close friend and Milk Source’s young stock manager Mandi Bue – a force in the ring herself – remembers Annette’s connection with Martha like it was yesterday.

“I remember asking Annette if she got nervous when she was headed into the ring with a cow that carried a lot of prestige like Martha,” Mandi said. “She would smile so lovingly at Martha and say that ‘Martha led her’. They were like watching a perfectly choreographed dance, they paraded so elegantly and flawlessly together. I believe it’s because she respected and adored any and every animal, so the second she took the show halter she put that animal at ease.

(Farm Journal)

“Her personality was so graceful and calm – never arrogant – and it allowed any animal to show itself because they completely trusted her.”

Annette and Mandi initiated the five-woman cattle syndicate, La Femme Fatale, which notably owned half of the 2019 Intermediate WDE Holstein Champion, Floydholm Mc Emoji-ET. That buy happened because of Annette’s faith in Mandi’s eye for a potential great one.

The Power of True Friendship

Mandi says outside of the ring, her lasting memories of Annette circle around the power of true friendship.

“She would remind me that as much as we love the cows, it is the genuine and sincere friendships we make along the way that withstand the test of time. Those friendships are what carry us through the tough times, and they are what make the good times sweeter.”

Sara Harbaugh, a Territory Business Manager at Zoetis, also describes Annette as a steady constant in her life.

“She was so much more than a co-worker. She was an amazing friend,” Sara said. “Our lives overlapped through work, kids, and showing and she could always make me smile even when life was crazy.

“It seemed like she never had a bad day, and her continuous optimism through the most difficult times will always inspire me. I think of her often and try to use her example as a guide.

“The world needs more people like Annette, and this program is a perfect way to honor her.”

Everyone Starts Somewhere

(Farm Journal)

Annette’s love of the dairy industry was ignited by her parents, Gladys, and the late Hans Palm. And, when she decided she needed better heifers to be more competitive in 4-H competitions, Hans approached Sherry Siemers-Peterman, of Siemers Holsteins.

Sherry remembers that Annette was a stand-out young person, and she was happy to allow her the pick of the “better heifers at their farm.”

“Annette was quite a human,” Sherry said. “She gained a lot of confidence in herself throughout her 4-H career. Showmanship sets you up for life and it carries many lessons, including presenting your animals, presenting yourself, and learning how to be a gracious winner…and a gracious loser. Annette could do anything she set her mind to.”

At The Heart of it All

(Farm Journal)

Behind all the obvious accolades and achievements, Annette was a woman, a daughter, a wife, a mother, a sibling, a friend, and a colleague who continues to be sorely missed every day. To preserve her memory in perpetuity within the industry is important for her family.

Jim said, “She could tell you the pedigree of a 10-year-old kid running around the show barn at a show more than she could tell you the pedigree of a famous cow. She knew their ages, what animals they showed, and where they placed.

“I might know a young kid who’s 10, but the next time I see them they are a foot-and-a-half taller and they are looking like a young adult, but Annette always instantly knew who they were…because she truly knew that person.

“That is the essence of why we are doing this. Before Annette was diagnosed, she would never have allowed me to name something after her. I did tell her I was going to, and as time wore on, she did come to accept it, because she cared so much for the young people.

“So, while we have signed up for 10 years, I do see this as a permanent thing. We want to make it meaningful, and we’ve deliberately put forward some sizeable prizes.”

Call for Entries

Sisters Nicole Pralle and Jessica Pralle-Trimmer serve as superintendents of the World Dairy Expo Youth Showmanship Contest. Open to all youth, ages 9 to 21, more than 460 youth competed in three age divisions in the 2022 contest.

Participants in 2023 and in future contests will vie for the cash awards listed below. The Supreme Champion will also receive a crystal trophy. Replicas of the Annette Ostrom Memorial Supreme Showmanship Award will also be displayed by the Ostrom family and at World Dairy Expo’s headquarters. Visit the Contests tab on www.worlddairyexpo.com for contest rules and to enter online. Entries will be accepted starting July 1, 2023.

Word Dairy Expo 2023 Showmanship Awards

Champion Junior Showmanship (cash award) – $1500
Reserve Champion Junior Showmanship (cash award) – $750
Champion Intermediate Showmanship (cash award) – 1500
Reserve Champion Intermediate Showmanship (cash award) – $750
Champion Senior Showmanship (cash award) – 1500
Reserve Champion Senior Showmanship (cash award) – $750
Supreme Champion Showmanship (cash award) – $3500
Reserve Supreme Champion Showmanship (cash award) – $1500

For more World Dairy Expo coverage, click here.

Are Women on Track to Become the Majority in Agriculture?

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 14:47:43 GMT

A thoughtful observation from Larry Irion, in Congerville, Illinois:

“The better question is ‘where are the boys or men in agriculture today’? Being a former agriculture teacher who taught in the late 60’s and early 70s I have noticed in the last decade a big trend in men backing off in the agriculture and leadership field. I also taught at two major universities that young men didn’t seem to have the drive to succeed [compared to] girls. Being retired now I substitute at a local high school and find that half of the class is girls, and that the agriculture teacher is a woman. Nothing wrong with a woman as an agriculture teacher who is doing a great job but the subjects being taught are not down on the farm directly. Question then is do we need men on the farm with the technology available that work can be done with less physical activity due to hydraulics and GPS? I visited the Fair Oaks Farm last weekend and was amazed to see young 15-year-old females talking about swine breeding, gestation, rations, etc. and had no formal education in the field and they did an amazing job like a college graduate. What I am getting at is, ‘Is farming a man’s field? Do we need men in agriculture anymore?’

It has been a continuing adjustment in my career as agriculture finally has begun to utilize the talent of the other half of our population. Certainly, industries who serve basic ag have been increasingly inclusive.

New veterinarians are overwhelmingly women, for example. Technology increasingly makes the upper-body-strength issue less important.

My own view is women would occupy even more roles in ag, except in the now standard two-earner household, they are far more likely to have high-paying skills to provide steady outside income and all-important health insurance coverage.

Our career as a husband-wife operation was already disappearing, and now borders on impractical. Agriculture needs capable people today and puts less value on gender, but too many men have few other professional skills or education. This funnels them toward production ag.

I think we are continuing an occupational specialization with more female farmers, while operators are still predominantly male.

Pasture to Plate: A Culture-Driven Beef Business

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 17:09:52 GMT

The Ducheneaux family reconnects consumers with their food source

Kelsey Ducheneaux-Scott sat on her front porch, stared out across rolling pastures and thought, “What the hell did I do?” She had just heaved box after box into freezers in the living room, kitchen and laundry room — carefully dispensing 1,700 lb. of ground beef.

Exhausted from the haul (and hoping the circuits wouldn’t blow due to strategically placed freezers) Ducheneaux-Scott couldn’t believe the sheer amount of work before her. How was she going to sell so much grass-fed burger in three months, before her next butcher appointment? Anxiety and stress seeped in during that cold March night in 2020. Little did she know how quickly that product would move.

“COVID hit and there was no beef in any of our stores,” Ducheneaux-Scott recalls. “We sold out of that 1,700 lb. in a matter of three weeks. People realized how easily local grocery stores can be disrupted here in rural South Dakota.”

(Farm Journal)

PASTURE TO PLATE

With a focus on feeding those around her, Ducheneaux-Scott is leading a transformation of her family’s operation. DX Ranch was established in the 1930s near Eagle Butte, S.D., on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. It began with beef cattle and draft horses.

Today, Ducheneaux-Scott and her husband, Monte Scott, work alongside her family raising quarter horses and 280 head of cow-calf pairs in a regenerative production system.

“I am a fourth-generation rancher on DX Ranch, and I’m the 125th generation to steward this landscape,” Ducheneaux-Scott says. “We’ve focused on ensuring we’re not just thinking about the livestock above ground but also thinking about the livestock below ground.”

(Farm Journal)

FATHER-DAUGHTER DUO

For her entire life, Ducheneaux-Scott has worked alongside her father, Zach Ducheneaux. That was until early 2021, when Ducheneaux was selected by the Biden administration to serve as the Farm Service Agency administrator (he received the call for the position while they were at the sale barn).

Luckily, Ducheneaux had prepared his daughter to be a leader on the ranch and in life. They are members of the Lakota tribe, which is a matriarchal society.

“My dad never let me think I couldn’t do something because I was a girl,” Ducheneaux-Scott says. “He empowered me to believe I could do things better because I was a girl and had a different perspective.”

After college, Ducheneaux-Scott wanted to be a rancher and bought into the family’s cowherd in 2016.

“I was obsessive in watching those calves grow that year,” she says. “I might as well have had names and birth certificates for every calf.”

After selling that calf crop, Ducheneaux-Scott headed back to the ranch and pondered the future.

“I drove through two counties that face food insecurity,” she says. “I thought, golly, the system is so broken. We have up to 80,000 head of cattle grazing on 3.2 million acres here on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation, and there isn’t any local beef being packaged and made available for purchase. The beef grown here is phenomenal, but none of us get to actually eat it.”

At home, she scribbled down a bunch of ideas and started a business plan. That plan morphed into DX Beef , which has a simple mission: Provide nutritious and local beef that improves its communities.

The direct-to-consumer business featuring their 100% grass-fed beef has expanded in the past two years and is helping the family move away from the commodity market model.

“For the first 90 years of our existence, we’d largely been victim to the commodity markets just like everyone else,” Ducheneaux says. “Behind the effort of Kelsey, in 2020, for the first time, we sold more beef in the box than we did on the hoof. A tremendous advocate for buying, selling and serving

locally, she’s found a way to provide healthier, grass-finished beef to our fellow reservation residents at a price they can afford.”

In 2019, the family sold 12 head of cattle through their business. In 2020, they sold close to 80. This year the total will top 110.

All beef is processed and mostly sold through their online store. To meet local needs, it is sold by the pound or portion of the whole beef. They even do wholesale orders for nearby restaurants.

(Farm Journal)

CULTURE AND TRADITION

The hurdles of small-scale direct marketing are difficult to overcome. Yet Ducheneaux-Scott is seeing great success thanks to her marketing and organizational skills. Through storytelling, which is rooted in their Lakota culture, the family uses technology to share the story of their ranch and products.

“Family comes before the dollar in this operation,” Ducheneaux says. “We’re not solely about monetizing the value of that product, and we realize there are other values to our beef.”

(Farm Journal)

Their story is shaped by their love and respect for the 7,000 acres of tribal land they manage through a tribal lease.

“I’m a grass and soil nerd,” Ducheneaux-Scott says. “Soil health is so critical to a resilient ecosystem. Our grazing system is focused on mimicking nature. This ecosystem evolved from having cloven-hoofed bison and other wildlife graze at a pace that allowed for a robust rest period, so we practice rotational grazing.”

The DX Ranch herd is an Angus base, influenced with breeds that will help the cattle handle the sometimes-brutal central South Dakota climate, Ducheneaux-Scott says. From changing their calving season to May to decrease cattle stress to steadily increasing soil health, the Ducheneaux family aims to work with Mother Nature.

“We have flexibility in our management so we can listen to what the landscape is telling us because she knows better than we do,” Ducheneaux-Scott says. “We

are simply another biological species that’s a part of this greater ecosystem.”

Listen as Kelsey Ducheneaux-Scott discusses her operation with Andrew McCrea on the “Farming the Countryside” podcast:

OTHERS BEFORE ONESELF

As a producer, business owner and member of her nation, Ducheneaux-Scott says she is driven by the opportunity and honor to feed others.

“I’ve come to appreciate having someone tell say your beef tasted good or how they brought their family together around our product,” she says. “Those are the experiences that make feeding cows in a blizzard, slopping through the mud to check calves and sleepless nights all worth it.”

(Farm Journal)

Snapshot of DX Ranch

Operation: DX Ranch includes quarter horses and 280 head of cow-calf pairs in a regenerative production system on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation near Eagle Butte, S.D. The ranch is also home to DX Beef, a direct-to-consumer business featuring their 100% grass-fed beef.

Family: Following in the footsteps of her father, Zach Ducheneaux, Kelsey Ducheneaux-Scott is the fourth generation of her family to ranch. She and her husband, Monte Scott, work with several members of her family in the operation.

Leadership: Ducheneaux-Scott is the director of programs for the Intertribal Agriculture Council, which provides a voice for the Native American community on ag policy and programs. In 2021, Ducheneaux was selected to lead the Farm Service Agency, where he oversees 10,000 employees.

Travel to Gettysburg, S.D., and virtually visit DX Ranch.

Ring of Glory: Pennsylvania Teen Chases Dairy Dreams After Surviving House Fire

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 21:48:03 GMT

It takes a lot of days in the barn to be ready for the ring at places such as the 2022 All-American Dairy Show in Harrisburg, Pa.

(Farm Journal)

For Reese Burdette and her family, each precious step along the way is quite literally a miracle.

“Showing and going to shows are some of my favorite memories,” Reese says.

The Burdette family lives and farms just outside of Mercersburg, Pa., at a dairy that’s just the right size to keep two teenagers busy.

“Reese will water and I’ll feed grain and then she’ll get milk and I’ll feed milk and then she’ll do bottles,” explains sister Brinkley Burdette. “We’ll usually get done fast, and then we walk our show calves.”

It is a step-by-step process their parents, Justin and Claire, are only too happy to watch.

“Oftentimes, it can bring tears to your eyes, when you look back to where we were,” Claire says. “I just know how hard it has been and still how hard it is for Reese.”

“She has some grit and determination,” echoes Justin. “She likes to prove to people that that she’s capable of doing it.”

What Reese is doing in the showring is nothing special in her eyes.

“I mean, it’s difficult but everybody has difficulties in the ring,” she says.

The challenges for Reese started Memorial Day weekend in 2014 during a visit to her grandparents’ house.

“It was a Sunday evening and what we now know is an electrical fire started in the room Reese was in,” Claire recalls.

Her mother quickly rushed into the room among the flames to pull Reese to safety while Claire’s stepdad went after sister Brinkley.

“I do remember getting out, sitting on the porch and waiting,” Reese remembers.

(Farm Journal)

Badly burned, Reese was flown to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.

“I was in a lot of pain, I was scared, and they were telling me all these different things I didn’t know,” Reese says.

Justin and Claire arrived at this hospital as quickly as they could.

“First, they told us we’d be there one to two weeks and then it turned to one to two months,” Claire says. “We thought: How are we going to do this? How are we going to continue to farm both of us being away? Then it turned into 662 days.”

Reese was in the hospital for 662 days of recovery, of setbacks and unknowns.

“Through this journey Reese has had five cardiac arrests and she lost her leg in the hospital in that first couple of weeks due to blood flow issues,” Claire says.

Reese’s lungs needed rest, so doctors used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to pump blood outside of her body, remove carbon dioxide and send oxygen-filled blood back. However, there were complications and Reese’s parents were forced to make a call about amputation.

“Our surgeon looked us right in the face and said if it was my child, I’d do it,” Justin says. “You now have to be willing to have bad days to make good days.”

The good days were often overshadowed by the difficult ones. From the amputation, to learning to stand and eventually walk again, the days were long. Reese’s parents recognized she needed a goal.

That’s when a favorite dairy cow Pantene -- named after the haircare products -- came back into the picture.

“She was actually the first calf I showed at our county fair,” Reese says.

That’s why Pantene has a little extra hold on Reese’s heart. After weeks in the hospital her friend from home was the right incentive to keep stepping forward.

“One of her doctors was an off-the-wall thinker,” Justin says. “He said, ‘Well, bring Pantene down here.’”

(Farm Journal)

So, through the streets of Baltimore they went with a trailer, right to the main entrance of John Hopkins. Reese remembers that day clearly.

“She came to visit me in the hospital when I first learned to stand up,” Reese says. “That really made me want to get home.”

“It was definitely a moment,” Claire says. “It also gave the nurses and doctors who were fighting along with us perspective on where Reese came from and what she loved.”

Just about two months shy of two years, Reese came home to a hero’s welcome.

“There were a lot of people and one of the first things we did was come down here to the barn to see Pantene,” remembers Reese.

For Claire, the return home reunited her family of four.

“I felt like it was okay to laugh again,” she says. “It was OK to go out to dinner again. It was OK to go to the movies because we weren’t slighting her in any way. We were all included as one.”

A family and a farm were together again, and they were ready to restart the life they’d put on pause.

“We know she has something in store for her and she’s meant to be here,” Claire says. “We don’t know how her story is going to unfold, but it will.”

Reese returned to the showring. The first year she needed a wheelchair to back her up. This year she will be stepping through the sawdust on her own.

“I was actually just telling my friend that most of my favorite memories have been made at the Harrisburg show,” Reese says.

Now she’s setting her sights on Madison and World Dairy Expo, if she can get her parents on board.

“I’m working on it,” Reese laughs.

Along with showing, she’s taken up dance and recently joined FFA. Those extracurriculars happen between follow-up trips to the hospital.

(Farm Journal)

“She had a tracheotomy in 2014 and that was taken out this last year,” Claire says. “The progress she’s made from that has been amazing.”

She also had a leg revision in 2022, which has helped improve her mobility and reduce pain when walking.

“It’s easier for her to feed hay and stuff,” Brinkley says. “It’s easier for her to water, although I still have to hook up the water for her sometimes.”

It’s all helping Reese find a future without limits.

“She has visions of going to college and I’ve given her a three-hour radius,” Claire says.

“Our reality for Reese is that Reese is normal,” Justin says. “She needs to get the childhood she missed back.”

These steps along life’s path, may seem so small for most but for Reese they’re the road back to a future nearly lost. Her future now is stacked high with possibilities.

“You can get so caught up in the little things and at the end of the day, the little things don’t matter,” Claire says. “It’s the big picture and as long as you have your health and your family that’s all that matters.”

Last month at the Harrisburg All-American show, Reese stood fifth in showmanship out of 140 kids.

Enjoy Other Grit with Grace Stories:

The Power of Love and Faith: How a Journey to Help Foster Kids Heal On the Farm Led One to Their Forever Home

Couple Takes Off On Trip From Nebraska To Alaska In A 1977 IH Tractor To Raise Money For Kids

How Social Media Sensation NY Farm Girls Defied Odds to Expose the Truth About Farming

By Her Own Hand: A Farm Girl’s Miraculous Journey from Death to Hope

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 21:46:16 GMT

Maddison Caldwell woke up on Dec. 19, 2019, with a plan for the ultimate act of finality. Death by her own hand.

For those who know Maddison, it’s difficult to understand why she attempted suicide. But a young girl with limited vision could see no other options.

“Nobody else planted that seed,” Maddison says. “It’s an illness. It happened all within my head. I could probably read about it and do research on it all day long, and I’ll still never understand why I made that choice.”

The Anxiety Monster

As the oldest child in the Caldwell family, Maddison believed she needed to have it all together, work the hardest, earn straight As and make people proud. She grew up on a show cattle operation in Elmwood, Ill., and exhibited cattle and pigs at shows across the country. She learned many great life lessons from showing livestock, but admits she also felt tremendous pressure to win and succeed.

(Farm Journal)

Growing up, Maddison’s favorite place to be was in the barn working with her pigs. Photo by Taylor Gevelinger.

“Looking back, I see how I struggled with anxiety for a very long time and didn’t know it,” she says. “Maybe it’s an oldest child thing, but I felt like I was up on a pedestal at times. Things had to be a certain way. I had to be perfect. It was exhausting.”

The red flags began appearing during Maddison’s freshman year of college in the fall of 2016 when she took a mandatory psychology class. For the first time in her life, she started learning about mental health.

“A lot of the things my teacher talked about resonated with me and with things that were going on in my life,” she says. “One day I talked to my teacher after class and she told me it was normal to have feelings of anxiety, but that counseling may be helpful.”

Appointments and prescriptions followed. Maddison knew something was missing, though, and before she knew it, she was maxed out on medication.

“I remember leaving the doctor’s office thinking, ‘what if things get bad again?’ My doctor basically gave me no other options,” Maddison recalls after that appointment in August of 2019. “I didn’t know where I would turn next.”

In September, Maddison’s family celebrated the one-year anniversary of her grandma’s heart transplant. And that’s when the dominoes began to fall.

“I’ve always been really sensitive to death,” she says. “I don’t handle grief well. I remember thinking here we were, living our best lives with Grandma and her new heart. Meanwhile someone is grieving the loss of their daughter or mom today. We were celebrating a year of life and they were grieving a year of death. That was hard for me to grasp.”

(Farm Journal)

The one-year anniversary of her grandmother’s heart transplant brought out complicated emotions for Maddison to process. (L to R Maddison’s sister Olivia, Grandma Connie and Maddison) Photo by Kim Caldwell.

Depression set in for the first time in her life. Suicide crossed her mind, but she didn’t tell anyone. She just put a smile on her face and went on about life. But inside, the questions got bigger, and the hurt took up more space in her heart.

By Dec. 18, her meds weren’t enough. Her feelings were all-consuming.

A Paper Gown

The next morning Maddison grabbed a handful of pills collected from around the house, tossed out false claims of a migraine to her mother, Kim Caldwell, and crawled back into bed, determined to cross the darkest line of no return.

“I remember feeling so relieved in that moment, like, ‘Wow. It’s over,” she recalls. “At the same time, I remember thinking that was the last time I’ll see my mom and sit down to breakfast with my family. They had no idea what was going on in my mind that day. I hadn’t even discussed my depression.”

Maddison fell asleep and was subsequently found approximately four hours later—alive, but in a fading stupor. At the hospital, she was denied a stomach pump procedure due to her consecutive hours of sleep.

“I know from a medical standpoint, she should not be here,” says Kim, a registered nurse. “The number of pills she took, the four hours before we knew, she should have never woken up. I can tell you that with 25 years of nursing knowledge.”

Miraculously, Maddison lived.

She was committed to a psychiatric unit per Illinois law because she attempted suicide. It took three long days to be placed into a unit. During this time, Maddison’s anger grew.

“I was so mad I was still alive,” she says. “Looking back, I can’t even believe the way I behaved. I didn’t even tell my family goodbye when I finally left the hospital.”

They took her by police car to a psychiatric unit where she was only allowed to bring shampoo, conditioner and a toothbrush. She was stripped down and searched before being given paper scrubs to wear.

“It sure wasn’t like the movies where you are greeted and welcomed in,” she says. “I was on my own. About 90% of the people in this facility were there for drug abuse. I didn’t fit in, and it was not helpful for me to be there.”

She was released on Christmas morning after doing everything in her power to prove she was ready to go back home. During her stay in the facility, she was put on five or six medications morning, noon and night.

“That was it,” she says. “I wasn’t given any therapy while I was there.”

Maddison returned home feeling like she had nowhere else to turn, with full intentions of finishing what she started.

Dangerous Deception

The next three months went by quickly. Maddison didn’t return to college in person but chose to go virtual her final semester from home. For Todd Caldwell, Maddison’s father, it was hard to understand how his daughter was feeling.

“The first time it happened, I kept scratching my head thinking, ‘How?’ In the livestock industry, there are ups and downs. The ups are really, really good and the downs are really, really bad. But I can honestly say, no matter how bad things have gotten, that has never been an option to me.”

Although he can’t pinpoint anything that would make him think his daughter would attempt suicide again, he says he didn’t see anything in her that made him think she wouldn’t.

“She was so damn good at hiding how she was feeling. All I could think was, ‘How can you look like she looks? Have a brain like she’s got? Have the success she’s had in whatever she chose to at this point?” Todd says. “Then I am thinking, ‘Dang Maddie, don’t you have any backbone? You are going through a bad stage. Your life has not gone exactly as you planned it to this point. But that’s just life.”

He knows those thoughts won’t win him a popularity contest. But as a father, he admits those hard, conflicting feelings ran rampant in his mind as he tried to understand what his daughter was experiencing.

Perhaps it was fear and those conflicting feelings that never allowed him to feel at ease.

(Farm Journal)

The Caldwell farm located near Elmwood, Ill. Photo provided by Kim Caldwell.

On April 1, 2020, Maddison called Todd to see if he wanted her to grab lunch for him, her grandpa and her brother who were out working on the farm. Todd vividly remembers lots of laughing and joking while they ate lunch together.

“Never in a million years did I think she was in a bad place mentally that day,” Todd says.

A few hours later, his phone rang. It was a number he didn’t recognize, but he answered the phone. She had tried again.

No Going Back

Maddison did not want anyone to know what she was thinking. “I really thought everyone would be better off without me,” she says.

Determined to finish what she had started, Maddison went to the special drawer she was forbidden to open and took out a cattle drug she knew was dangerous for humans. She thought it would kill her quickly. After having lunch with her dad, she drove out to a hill at one of their farms and injected 2 ccs of this livestock antibiotic in each of her thighs.

“I thought it would be fairly instant,” Maddison recalls. “I sat in my car waiting and waiting.”

Time passed so slowly. She considered a few options of what to do next when the medication didn’t kill her. She ended up driving to her best friend’s house and called her friend’s mom to come outside and sit with her.

“She had no idea what I had done or how dangerous that medication was,” Maddison says. “She called my dad immediately.”

All Todd could think about on his drive was that there was no way his daughter was going to be alive when he got there. But she was clinging on.

It took the ambulance 25 minutes to arrive. As Maddison was being put into the ambulance, she remembers looking out the door and seeing her dad standing in the middle of the road.

“I remember thinking, ‘What have I done?’ as I saw my dad standing there so helpless and angry,” she says. “He kept yelling, ‘What did you do? Why have you done this?’”

Maddison heard her dad telling the paramedic about his 250-pound friend who got residue from that medication on his finger, put some chewing tobacco into his mouth, and minutes later, had to be rushed to the hospital.

“‘She’s gone,’ my dad said to the paramedics. ‘You guys can drive as fast as you want, but there’s no going back,’” Maddison recalls.

Todd was scared and furious. That’s not going to be popular either, he says, but it was his truth in that moment.

“I was so mad at her,” Todd says as he watched helplessly. “I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I said, ‘Why didn’t you talk to me? You just ate lunch with me.’ She was dozing in and out and wasn’t listening to me anyway. The town policeman was there, and he finally grabbed me and hugged me and said, ‘You have to stop.’”

Due to COVID-19, they wouldn’t let Todd ride in the ambulance. He called Kim, who was working that day, and told her Maddison wasn’t going to make it.

During the 30-minute drive to the hospital, Maddison had three seizures.

Read on to learn what happened next in Maddison’s journey.

Trapped by Raging Wildfires in December, Kansas Ranchers Share Staggering Story of Survival

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 21:45:39 GMT

The serene setting in western Kansas is one that serves as an escape from the hustle of city life. Desolate with more prairie than people, Paradise, Kan., provides the perfect destination for raising cattle. And it’s where Ken Stielow’s family, owner of Bar S Ranch, has called home since the late 1800s.

“This quarter right behind me was homesteaded in 1900 by my granddad,” says Stielow. “My great-granddad homesteaded a mile west in the late 1880s.”

(Farm Journal)

At night, the skies can be painted with picture-perfect sunsets, at times allowing you to forget about the challenges that come with life. And those challenges are prevalent, as ranching in Paradise isn’t for the faint of heart.

“We’ll have some little prairie fires that start, and you get them put out in maybe a mile. But nothing of this magnitude. I’ve never been anything like it,” says Stielow.

Stielow’s family witnessed destruction for miles upon miles in December. Wildfires that were fueled by uncontrollable winds made Paradise look far from a dream destination.

“It looks like a desert or moonscape now, as somebody described it,” he says. “It’s kind of hard look at, really.”

What can be lush landscape with the right conditions is now charred and scarred, after a wildfire raged across the fields just seven weeks ago.

“It was December 15. It was a Wednesday,” recalls Stephanie Dickerson, Ken’s daughter. “The night before, there had been a whole bunch of schools canceled, and we knew that there was going to be wind.”

Stephanie, along with her husband, David, live and ranch on the family homestead. Winds come with the territory in western Kansas, so wind warnings aren’t unusual. However, on December 15, she says the wind was of a different magnitude.

“It wasn’t tornado weather. It wasn’t hail weather. It was just, you could just sense that there was something different,” she explains.

Despite wind warnings, even those were not enough to prepare area residents for what was about to hit. What they believe were downed power lines sparked a fire that changed their lives .

(Farm Journal)

“About 2:30 in the afternoon, our neighbors to the north and west of us, Craig and Joleen Lawson, called us. They said, ‘Hey, there’s a fire.’ And they said, ‘It is headed towards our house. Could you guys bring a couple of trucks and trailers over and help us evacuate our horses?’”

With that, the Dickersons took off, not knowing exactly where the fire was or how fast it was moving. David and their son in one truck and trailer. Stephanie and their son’s college roommate were in another truck following closely behind.

“Literally, you could only maybe see 20 to 30 yards ahead of you. It was just blowing that bad, and the dust and everything was terrible,” Stephanie says. “We got over to their house, pull into their driveway, and Craig meets us there. He’s like, ‘The fire is already here.’”

Raging Wildfires

Seeing the fire on the horizon, the Dickersons jumped back in their trucks to head back to their ranch when one truck and trailer flipped over from the high winds with David and their son inside.

“The truck that I was driving did not blow over,” Stephanie says. “So at that point, they ran back and jumped in with me. And we couldn’t necessarily see the flames. But we can felt the heat, so you knew that it was close.”

Knowing they had to escape the path of the fire, they drove back north. But they didn’t get even 100 yards north, and the fire was already crossing the highway. So, they turned around.

“Craig called and said, ‘Hey, Joleen is still in the house,’” says Stephanie. “He said, ‘You guys go and grab her.’”

So they did, but when they got there, barns and other parts of the farm were up in flames.

“David and I go into the house, we grab Joleen, and of course she’s frantic. She’s trying to put stuff in a bag, and we grab her and tell her we have to go,” says Stephanie.

What they didn’t know at the time, is the wildfires were so furious, they tore through a 25-mile path in about 18 minutes.

“It was blowing so hard, the fire would have been jumping half a mile to a mile at a time,” says David.

Trapped

At that point, they were trapped.

“We go to leave, and the fire trucks meet us at the end of their driveway, and we said we were going to go west. They said, ‘You can’t go west, there’s another fire coming over the top of this fire.’”

The Dickersons then followed the tanker truck and two rural fire trucks into a green, winter wheat field that the firefighters knew would provide the least amount of fuel for the fire.

“And this is all volunteer firemen at this point,” Stephanie says. “It is our local neighbor, people that we have known our entire lives.”

A Plan to Survive

And with that, those volunteer firefighters came up with a plan to try to survive.

“They told us, ‘We’re going to sit here, and we’re going to wait it out. And the tankers are going to pour water over the top of us when the fire gets close,’” Stephanie recalls.

She says with a limited amount of water left in the tank, they didn’t turn the water on until the fire was closing in.

“We’re sitting in the middle of the wheat field. And when the fire came over, [my son] Grady’s best friend, Tyler, was on the back of the fire truck,” says Stephanie, as she cries remembering how it all transpired that day. “He was the one that was outside and sprayed all the trucks with water.”

Video Stephanie captured on her phone shows just how close they were to not surviving that day. A thin ring of brown and green around the trucks is the only thing that wasn’t black in the entire field.

(Farm Journal)

House on Fire

Thankful to be alive, the Dickersons didn’t know if their own ranch and livestock were caught in the flames . So, after the flames passed they headed toward home.

“We got about a mile and a half, two miles from our house and I could see that the house was on fire. Our show barn was on fire. Everything at our house was on fire,” she says.

“There were nine structures there, and I think there’s two left,” says David.

(Farm Journal)

They lost nearly all their personal belongings, except the clothes on their backs. And their family lost livestock, other structures on the ranch and 40-miles worth of fence. And 200 head of cattle, all gone.

“We had one group of cattle that we had brought into a pasture, a winter pasture with a lot of grass, and that had cows with embryo calves on it. And we were to put embryos in the next morning, we had an appointment. And I think there were about 50 pairs in that pasture, and none of them survived,” says Stielow.

After the Flames

But what happened hours after Bar S Ranch was devastated by the fires is where this story gets better.

“Well, in the next three days, we shipped most of our cows to other locations,” says Stielow. “You really don’t know what kind of friends you have until something like this happens.”

(Farm Journal)

Six hundred head of cattle that survived were immediately taken in by friends up to 450 miles away.

“We’ve had physical donations from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, the Dakotas and Colorado,” says Stephanie. “Not to mention monetary donations that I bet we’ve gotten from almost all 50 states. It’s pretty overwhelming.”

“It’s probably, as much as anything, letting you know that there’s still really good people left in the world,” says David.

Overcome with gratitude, the Stielows and Dickersons saw relief come from people they know personally, while other donations poured in from people they’ve never met.

“You see behind me the pile of hay? There was just a constant stream of hay trucks bringing hay people had donated. It was kind of overwhelming. It really was,” says Stielow, taken back by the generosity.

(Farm Journal)

A convoy of hay was trucked in from hundreds of miles away to help area ranchers who lost pastures and their own hay.

“I had a friend tell me this last weekend that we were so lucky, because the people that all showed up and people have sent donations. She said a lot of people don’t see how much you affect other people’s lives until your funeral. And they said, basically, you got to attend your funeral. But you’re still alive to tell about it. And for that, I will forever be grateful.”

While it’ll be at least three years before their ranch gets back to full capacity, this family is thankful that from the ashes rose relief that will continue to restore hope.

Here’s How You Can Help

As the Kanas Livestock Association continues to work to deploy resources, as LMA says there are four collection and distribution points for supply donations of hay, stockwater tanks, fencing supplies and more. Those designated collection points include:

Rooks County
Heartland Regional Stockyards
907 NW 3rd St, Plainville, KS
785-688-4080

Russell County
Russell Livestock
720 S. Fossil, Russell, KS
785-483-1455

Russell County Fairgrounds
702 Fairway Dr. Russell
Marcia Geir: 785-483-3157

Lane County
3 E Rd 120, Dighton, KS
Erik Steffens: 620-397-1687

The Strength of a Mom: How One Young Woman Battled Cancer Through COVID-19 Pandemic

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 21:34:01 GMT

A serene setting on this Missouri farm is where Kristen Clenney is living her dream.

“I was about 8 years old, and I declared, ‘Dad, I want to be a vet,’” she remembers.

Her dad, Tom Wright, says Kristen was even younger than that when he knew animals were her calling.

“Oh, it was probably when she was 3,” he says. “She always helped me in the turkeys. She was the one daughter who the animals didn’t bother her. She always liked the animals.”

Now a veterinarian in the neighboring town of Eldon, Mo., her career desires have been steadfast.

“I never changed my course at all; everything I did throughout high school and college directed me towards my goal of becoming a vet,” she adds.

A graduate of the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine, she thought a large animal practice was her calling. But that changed when Kristen and her husband John had a chance to move back to her family’s farm.

“And as we move back home, we had just started our family. We had a son, and definitely my role on the farm changed, as well as my career, where I was a smaller animal veterinarian and having more controlled hours worked a lot better for our family,” she says.

(Farm Journal)

Family first, Kristen is now a mom who just went through the fight of her life.

“In January 2020, I randomly felt a lump in my neck that I knew was something odd,” says Kristen. “As soon as I felt it, I knew it wasn’t right.”

The next few weeks, were a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, biopsies and ultrasounds.

“Unfortunately I found out that I did have thyroid cancer.”

Coping with the news, Kristen underwent surgery within five days.

“We were under the impression my tumor was small, they caught it early. I’d have one surgery, and that would be the end of it,” she says.

But it wasn’t so simple.

“We got the bad news that although my tumor was small, it was rather mighty so to speak, and it had spread. And I would be needing a second surgery as well as radiation therapy.”

(Farm Journal)

The radiation crippled her ability to be around anyone, or anything, including her husband, son and animals. And she said that battle is when she almost hit a breaking point.

“Initially, they said they were going to take your whole thyroid, and I was on board for that,” she says. “But then the doctor changed his mind and said, ‘We’re going to do half your thyroid, they’ve come out with new recommendations.’ I said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with this,’ because what I originally felt was a lymph node. So I knew it had spread. I just knew it had.”

The one surgery turned into two. Radiation to try to get it all happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To hear that news, it kind of knocked the wind out of my sails,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Why didn’t I fight harder?’”

“I think she’s always seen animals heal, and that was one of Kristen’s problems,” says Kristen’s dad. “She understood the medical part of it. Animals and humans aren’t a lot different. She knew what was happening.”

The medical battle came with a mountain of obstacles, as Kristen—the one who’s usually doing the healing—couldn’t do the healing herself.

(Farm Journal)

“That was the first time John broke down through it all, because he knew he was losing his job due to the pandemic and he felt he was letting me down. Our whole world just felt like it was crashing around us,” she says.

At a time when the country was shutting down, Kristen was shutting down too.

“There were days I wanted to give up,” says Kristen.

The battle to keep fighting was one that took place both mentally and physically.

“I found out I was reacting really badly to my medication and my kidneys were shutting down, and that’s why I felt so terrible,” says Kristen.

She was too weak to even do simple things on the farm, at the vet clinic and at home.

“I read something midway through my journey when I really struggling. It said, ‘It takes the same energy to be strong or to be miserable. It’s your choice.’ After reading that, I made a conscious decision that every day I was going to choose to be strong. Because I needed to be strong, not only for myself, but for my husband, for my son for my family.”

(Farm Journal)

She’s a wife and mom and now a cancer survivor.

“I feel very fortunate. Not everybody gets to see that after their journey,” she says.

And it was a yearlong journey that took grit and grace.

“I know that through the love of my family and my faith, I can get through anything,” she says. “And really, it is not giving up. it was a complete mindset.”

A scar on her neck that could symbolize pain is now something Kristen wears with pride.

“When I look at that scar, I remember all I’ve overcome,” she says. “I remember to be grateful for each day because life changes immediately sometimes and to just continue to be strong no matter what life throws at you. Just keep going.”

The Power of Love and Faith: How a Journey to Help Foster Kids Heal On the Farm Led One to Their Forever Home

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 21:30:45 GMT

Tyler and Amanda Radke’s story started in college.

“We met on the South Dakota State University (SDSU) Meat Judging team , judging ribeyes, so it only makes sense we kind of took ownership of that side of the beef industry, too,” says Amanda Radke, a mom and a fifth generation rancher from Mitchell, South Dakota.

Bonding over beef and cattle from the start, it’s only fitting that the cattle business is still their calling today.

“We sell bulls private treaty to area ranchers,” says Tyler Radke, of Nolz Limousin and Radke Cattle Company . “We sell about 35 to 40 limousine bulls, and we have a fall female sale, as well, with select show heifers and a couple of steers. We sell those private treaty, as well, to people that come and look and local families as well.

The Radkes also own and operate Radke Cattle Company. Life on the ranch is busy, but Amanda stays busy even off the ranch. Not only do they run a direct-to-consumer beef business, but Amanda is a motivational speaker , children’s book author and a boutique owner.

Listen as Radke shares her story with AgriTalk’s Chip Flory:

Struggles with Infertility

Growing businesses seems to come naturally for the Radkes, but where they struggled was trying to start a family.

“When we first got married, we actually went through a really hard time of infertility and not being able to start a family,” says Amanda. “I really struggled with just feeling like a failure.”

Struggling through the emotions of trying to have a child, the Radkes are now blessed with three.

“Scarlett was born June 3, 2014, Thorne was born June 4, 2016 and Croix was born May 22, 2018,” she says. “So, we had three kids born two years apart, exactly, and life was pretty busy.”

Tyler’s Calling

Tyler and Amanda’s hearts were opened to the idea of adoption as they initially waded through the uncertainty of whether they would be able to have children of their own. One day, after their third child was born, Tyler felt a calling.

“Apparently, I didn’t think we had enough going on,” says Tyler. “I honestly don’t know what I saw that made me think of it.”

“He just said, ‘We need to do foster care.’ And my reaction was very negative, because we were maxed out,” Amanda recalls.

Amanda was on the road constantly giving speeches and doing other travel for her job, all while juggling life with three kids and the family’s growing businesses.

“And so I instantly said, ‘No, you’re crazy. I’m drowning right now,’” remembers Amanda.

A Change of Heart

That day, Amanda headed to the airport for a work trip, and on the plane, her heart was changed.

“But again, God had a different plan, because I got on a plane, and the movie on the plane that day was ‘ Instant Family ’, which is a movie about foster care. And so I’m sitting on the plane bawling like a baby.”

She left on the work trip thinking Tyler’s idea was crazy, but that moment instantly changed her mind.

“He’s the steady, even keeled member of our relationship. I mean, he keeps the family going, and I have crazy, wild ideas that go take us off on other journeys and adventures,” Amanda says with a smile. “So for him to have that thought, I truly don’t think it even would have happened had it not been for god giving him that nudge to say, ‘Get this ball rolling.’”

So, that’s exactly what Tyler and Amanda did.

“We call the office and we just want information on how do we get involved and they said, ‘You’re in luck, the Mitchell training started last week, you guys can jump in,’” says Amanda.

The Start of their Journey to Foster

That happened in April, and by August, Amanda was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend when an unexpected call came.

“It was the state, and they had two kids and they needed them emergency placement for that weekend, “ she says. “And I said, ‘I don’t even have our license.’ And they said, ‘Yes, we just threw it in the mail.’”

(Farm Journal)

When Tyler and Amanda told their friends and families their wild idea and decision to foster, they admit not everyone was as receptive to the idea, especially her parents.

“They were scared,” says Amanda. “They were worried about our own kids and the effect that have on them. And just they knew we were a young couple, working full-time jobs, trying to build this farm, we’re trying to be in the seed stock business. We were very maxed out as far as time goes. So, I think in their minds, they’re like, ‘You don’t have time to do this.’”

She says the conversations that followed weren’t easy, as their strong system of support questioned the decision they had just made.

“At one point, I told my dad, ‘Take it up with Jesus, because this isn’t even us. We don’t even know what we’re doing either. So, we can’t even really fully explain it.’ But all it took was that meeting those first two kids, and they got it,” says Amanda.

She says in the last two years with the pandemic, they’ve welcomed a dozen children into their home to foster.

“I just truly believe that there can be a lot of healing done on the farm,” says Amanda.

From healing to growth, she’s even witnessed growth with their three children.

“They became like little agvocates, because they’re teaching these kids about the farm,” says Amanda. “And we just kind of step back and let them do their thing. So, they’re giving them the tour, and they’re teaching them how to pick grass and feed calves through the fence.”

Another Call–This Time, About a 7-Month-Old Baby

Fostering has been far from easy for the family, but as the Radkes can attest, life often reveals other plans. That was the case in 2020. As the world shut down and so did Amanda’s work travel, she was questioning what was next.

“And a week later, we got a call for a seven-month-old baby. And I was like, ‘Oh, now I see why my schedule is cleared, because we have a whole different adventure to go on,” she remembers.

That baby became part of the family during that time.

(Farm Journal)

“We had that baby all of 2020 and got to do all of her milestones with her and love on her,” says Amanda. “And on her first birthday, we found out she was leaving. My heart broke into a million pieces because that was my baby.”

The Radkes knew they’d only have her temporarily, but they were attached and the entire family was crushed.

(Farm Journal)

The Final Call for a Forever Home

Tyler and Amanda had to hold it together for their three children. So, that’s what they did, and life continued to go on, just as it did before. But a few weeks later, another call came.

“And that’s where Alex came in,” says Tyler. “He had been in some foster homes before, coming and going, and now he was available for adoption. Wherever he went was basically going to be his next home.”

They sent Amanda a picture of Alex. He had blond hair and blue eyes, just like their other three kids.

“And I about fell over because I said, ‘He looks like our son.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I called you.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I need to talk to Tyler.’”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Amanda Radke | Author, Speaker, Rancher (@amandaradke)

At that time, it was a very harsh calving season. Tyler was also busy with cattle shows and sales, so their businesses were extremely busy. The decision to adopt wasn’t taken lightly.

“We’d learned from the dozen kids that the dynamics changed significantly, if it’s a-seven-month-old, or we’ve had an 11-year-old, and it changes the family dynamic,” says Amanda.

The risks. The what ifs. The unknowns. The entire family had already experienced it with a dozen children, but temporarily. Yet, they agreed to meet Alex, and ultimately, become his forever home.

“Four days later, he had packed up his bags and moved to our house for good,” says Amanda.

Alex’s Adoption Day

Adoption day came October 5, 2021. The wild adventure and continuous chaos at the farm is where Alex seems to fit right in.

“Within that first year, he knew all the equipment in the field, he could rattle it off and had tons of farm knowledge. It was just crazy how he soaked it up like a sponge,” she says.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Amanda Radke | Author, Speaker, Rancher (@amandaradke)

Alex is a four-year old who has braved more in his little life than many will have to do in their entire lifetime.

“We always called him our superhero cowboy because when he came, he loved superheroes, but one night, very early on, I tucked him into bed, and he said, ‘Mama, can I be a cowboy?” And I said, ‘Cowboy? You already are buddy,’ and not because he lives on a farm now and we have cows, but because of how brave he is to change homes and to trust us,” says Amanda.

The trust has grown not only with Tyler and Amanda, but also their other three children. Scarlett, their oldest, stepped into the role of mama bear to not just Alex, but to all the kids the family has fostered the past few years.

“I taught them to be safe on the farm, not to go under the tractor. Don’t go into the pen, especially if there’s a crabby mama,” says Scarlett.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Amanda Radke | Author, Speaker, Rancher (@amandaradke)

And as they only girl, Scarlett can hold her own, especially when the boys become rowdy.

“I tell them I’m going to wrangle them up with my pink rope,” she says with a big smile.

Creating a Farm Sanctuary to Help Kids Heal

From fostering to now adoption, the Radke’s heart of service and selflessness have helped create a farm sanctuary that has helped children heal.

“Their lives have been pretty tumultuous, really,” says Tyler.

“I think giving them that space has helped,” adds Amanda.

“Well, depending on what you’re doing for that day, but for the most part, space,” adds Tyler as he smiles.

Tyler says he may never know what sparked his crazy idea to foster that day a few years back, but he just knew how lucky his kids were to grow up on a farm.

“I just wanted to share that with other kids that maybe had tougher luck than ours did, because they deserve the same,” Tyler says.

Fostering Because the Kids Are Worth Fighting For

Amanda says they’ve seen firsthand how the need for more foster parents across the U.S. is tremendous.

“There are more than 400,000 kids in the U.S. foster system today that are waiting for a forever mom and dad. And then there’s even more of them that are going to be temporarily in foster care before they can be reunified [with their family],” she says. “And so if there’s even a calling remotely on your heart to step into this really hard space, don’t ignore it, because the kids are worth fighting for.”

The Radkes have three goals: provide peace with a place to heal, experience a family full of love and introduce them to a household strong in faith. A recipe that’s filled with grit and grace.

“We always tell people, there’s always room for one more at the dinner table,” she says. “It’s been hard, but at the same time, we’ve been able to just roll with the punches and take on a little bit extra. When you think you’re maxed out, there’s always a little extra space to help someone.”

Amanda says even if you don’t want to start the process to become a foster parent , there are other ways you can support foster families who are in need of supplies and other donations as they continue their foster journey.

Grit with Grace

You can watch more touching and inspiring stories from across rural America in Grit with Grace.

From Raising Cattle to Now Reindeer, How One Family is Sharing the Magic Of Christmas On Their Farm

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 20:30:01 GMT

“Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer” is a song that captured kids’ hearts when it first topped the charts in 1949. It then became a television special hit 15 years later, and it’s still a Christmas-hit today.

Unlike the fictional characters in the movie and songs, reindeer at Prescott Family Reindeer Farm are actually real.

“We obviously have our real reindeer, Noel and Tinsel,” says Sara Prescott, owner of Prescott Family Reindeer Farm.

She says the fact reindeer do exist is one of the biggest misconceptions of reindeer today.

“We have people that come up all the time and say, okay, but what are these, and we tell them they are real reindeer,” she says.

Rooted in Family and a Desire to Spread Christmas Cheer

Prescott will tell you the story behind their reindeer farm is magical, but it all starts with family.

“Being on a family farm means a lot of different things,” she says. “To us, it means tradition, it means building something together as a family.”

That’s exactly what the Prescotts do each year as their farm of 240 acres in Vanzandt, Mo. is rooted in a deep desire to give everyone a full Christmas experience.

“They’re very stout, hearty animals,” says Prescott “So, we wanted it not to just be a petting zoo, but we wanted you to be able to fall in love with our animals, just the way that we do.”

The Journey South

It all started three years ago when the Prescotts moved to southern Missouri from central Illinois.

“While we were in central Illinois, we did a ton of educational opportunities for people to come out to the farm and share our story, visit with the animals,” she says. “And when we moved here, we wanted to expand on that.”

The Prescotts were well equipped for raising beef cattle. Afterall, that’s what their family had always done, but when they moved, they decided to venture into something new.

“We didn’t want to impose on other businesses here in our local area. So we really tried to find a different niche market. And honestly, reindeer were perfect,” she says.

The Prescotts love their reindeer. That passion for raising reindeer was a gift during a visit to another farm in Illinois.

“Our reindeer process actually started five years ago in Canton, Illinois when we visited our first reindeer farm, and that was the Snowman’s Reindeer Farm , and they are amazing people and they actually helped us to fall in love with reindeer just on our visit there.”

From Cattle to Reindeer

When the Prescotts moved to Missouri, Sara started researching how to raise reindeer, and she quickly discovered it was a natural fit for their family farm.

“We raise the reindeer very much like we raise the cattle,” she says. “I would say the biggest difference between cows and reindeer are the cattle don’t love it when it’s zero degrees. But the reindeer, that’s their happiest time.”

Cattle and reindeer are both ruminant animals, but reindeer just prefer to eat different treats.

“Our reindeer actually are not on grass. Reindeer actually don’t eat much grass,” she says. “Their main diet out in nature would be a lot more leaves and sticks, that kind of stuff that they’re looking for.”

Her Pampered Pets

Sara calls them her pampered pets, with big fans and pools to play in during the heat of the summer, but as you can imagine, it’s in the winter months that these reindeer really shine.

“We’re super excited that Santa and Mrs. Claus join us each weekend from the North Pole. They come down obviously to visit with the reindeer. We hope that Noel and Tinsel will make the flight team this year and be able to be flying around for Christmas Eve.”

Magical Christmas Experience on the Farm

With both Santa and Mrs. Claus on the farm, plus photo props and other fun activities around the farm, the Prescotts work each winter to bring others an enchanting experience.

“We also have crafts, a gift shop, you can write letters to Santa, hot cocoa, games; basically, all the things that you need to check off your Christmas tradition list,” she says.

This experience isn’t created overnight. The Prescotts and their three kids start decorating for Christmas in July, all in hopes of sharing their passion for raising reindeer and help others make memories in the most magical way.

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