Cattle Feedlot Tour offered July 19-20 – The Globe

BROOKINGS, S.D. — Warren Rusche, SDSU Extension Beef Feedlot Management Specialist, and the South Dakota Cattle Feeders Council, an affiliate of the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association, have coordinated a feedlot tour July 19-20.

The tour bus will leave from the Mitchell Technical Institute parking lot at 7:30 a.m. July 19 and return late in the afternoon on July 20.

There are two registration options, both including meals. Those who prefer to travel with the tour group on the bus can register for $100. Whereas those wishing to drive their own vehicle can register for the tour only for $50.

Group lodging with the tour is available for single or double occupancy for $130 at Lazy J Grand Lodge and the Antler Ridge Lodge, located near Ideal and Hamill, South Dakota. For participants traveling independently from the tour group, a block of rooms is available at the Holiday Inn Express in Winner, S.D.

Tour locations include:

Reisch Farms, Howard: Bedded-pack hoop barn with outside yards for backgrounding and finishing cattle. The Reisch’s were early adopters of vegetative treatment areas as a technique to mitigate environmental impacts.

Firesteel Ranch, Wessington Springs: A combination of open pens and a 600-head slatted floor barn are used to optimize labor and cattle performance.

Pazour Family Feeders, Pukwana: Open yard facility with an emphasis on controlling drainage and minimizing weather impacts on cattle performance.

Jorgensen Land and Cattle, Ideal: Bull development facilities and how cattle feeding integrates with farming and seedstock enterprises.

Winner Circle Feeders, Winner: Commercial feedlot that handles a mix of company and customer owned cattle. Features of this open-pen facility are steam-flake corn processing and micro-machine supplement delivery technologies.

Lakeview Colony, Lake Andes: Hutterite Colony focuses on Piedmontese genetics using confinement barn facilities for both the cow-calf and cattle feeding aspects of their business.

Registration is available at sdcattlemen.org/events-meetings/feeder-council-tour. For additional information, contact Warren Rusche, SDSU Extension Beef Feedlot Management Specialist, at (605) 688-5452 or [email protected].