OSU Master Cattleman program just what Mary Elliott Perigo needed

Monday, April 25, 2016

When tragedy struck, healthcare professional Mary Elliott Perigo was faced with the daunting prospect of gaining needed knowledge and expertise quickly to manage her family’s commercial cow-calf operation, located north of Wakita, Oklahoma.

“When I took the Oklahoma State University Master Cattleman class the first time during the fall of 2010 in Garfield County, my husband had been killed in a farming accident just a few months earlier,” she said. “With his passing, I lost not only my partner in every sense of the word and the father of my children, but also the brains, brawn and ‘tribal knowledge’ that is so much part of the daily function of a cow-calf operation.”

Needing to get up to speed quickly as the primary decision-maker of Elliott Farms and Perigo-Elliott Diversified, Perigo said the OSU Master Cattleman program proved to be just what she needed, when she needed it.

Introduced in 2004 by the OSU Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, the program uses a multidisciplinary approach – drawing on the expertise of faculty and staff in many different fields – to equip participants with vital information on all aspects of beef production, business planning, risk management and marketing.

“The Master Cattleman program includes an educational curriculum based on our internationally recognized Oklahoma Beef Cattle Manual and a producer-certification process,” said Dave Lalman, OSU Cooperative Extension beef cattle specialist and a member of the university’s Master Cattleman team.

OSU Cooperative Extension county based educators and area and district specialists help plan and organize ongoing Master Cattleman offerings. Producer participation and certification records are kept at local Extension county offices.

“For me, specific knowledge and implementation ranged from shifting feeding times to late afternoon for calving season, calculating the feed needs for our cattle, making marketing decisions for the sale of our animals and a host of other topics, all of which were covered in the Master Cattleman sessions,” Perigo said.

So valuable was the information to her that she chose to continue with the Master Cattleman experience, attending sessions in Payne County in 2014 and into 2015.

“My first round with Master Cattleman was akin to drinking from a fire hose, just survival” she said. “For my second round, I wanted to glean the next level of information from the speakers and class discussions, expanding and honing my knowledge, awareness and understanding to manage our family operation with a greater level of expertise.”

The Wakita cattle producer said the most interesting topic to her was the selection of herd sires, especially how to use Expected Progeny Difference tables and the physical evaluation of animals to make sound decisions relative to the long-term benefit of her herd.

“With the knowledge I gained from the class presentation and discussion, I was able to request the right test, ask the right questions and make an informed decision the first time I went to look at a bull,” she said. “That knowledge gave me power. I was able to avoid making a very expensive mistake. It built my confidence and even surprised an old curmudgeon who had been in the cattle business for years.”

Perigo added two things stood out as being “above and beyond” her expectations, though each was a welcome occurrence.

“The professors and Extension personnel were genuinely interested in providing solutions to problems and questions asked by Master Cattleman participants,” she said. “I had several encourage me to call and ask questions later, if necessary.”

The second item were the presentations, discussions and materials related to beef quality assurance and the Oklahoma Quality Beef Network.

“I had no idea going in how OQBN aligned with my ideas and desire for best-practices for my operation,” Perigo said. “It was an easy transition to utilize the beef assurance guidelines and take advantage of the value-added sales.”

Kellie Raper, Master Cattleman program team member and OSU Cooperative Extension beef economist, said Master Cattlemen graduates, on average, have adopted 1.3 more value-added practices than producers surveyed who had not participated in the program.

“This validates the importance of targeted educational programming that communicates the potential benefits of science-based management practices,” Raper said.

Approximately 1,016 participants have enrolled in the OSU Master Cattleman program since its inception and 815 have completed the program. In program evaluation surveys, graduates estimate annual improvement in their cattle operation’s profitability to be approximately $3,500.

“With an average of 81 producers graduating per year, the economic effect is approximately $280,000 each year for 10 years for a total impact of $2.8 million over the program’s history,” said Damona Doye, team member and OSU Cooperative Extension farm management specialist, “plus the $3,500 impact per producer could be in perpetuity for an individual operation.”

To be certified a Master Cattleman, a cattle producer must complete a minimum of 28 hours of instruction from the approved curriculum plus a final evaluation. The core curriculum consists of business planning and management, marketing and risk management, animal nutrition and management, quality assurance, animal health, natural resources management, cattle reproduction and genetics.

Perigo was not surprised that OSU Master Cattleman program presenters were highly credentialed in their fields. But there was a little something extra she found particularly reassuring.

“They were more than experts in the theoretical sense, they were boots-on-the-ground operators whose boots had had manure scraped off those boots,” she said. “They provided relevant and practical information that I could actually implement in my operation.”

Additional information about the OSU Master Cattleman program is available online at http://agecon.okstate.edu/cattleman/index.asp.