A Word from the CEO…Dustin Hurlbut

A WORD FROM THE CEO

by Dustin Hurlbut, CEO, American Chianina Association

Happy New Year to everyone! It has been a little while since I have written anything for news from the road and there has been a lot happen since my last article. We have had Louisville, Cattlemen’s Congress and Denver as well as our annual meeting and everything else in between. It sure seems like the last 60 days have flown by and there have been many miles traveled and lots of nights spent in hotel rooms to start the new year!

Let’s go back to November and start with Louisville. There was a great turnout for numbers in the junior and open shows held during the NAILE. We had a great crowd of members and other breeders in the barn on hand watching our show. It is so impressive when we fill the ring with our division winners to pick our champions! We always have people compliment us on how good the quality of the Chianina and Chiangus cattle are that make their way to the national show. And as always, we are highly competitive in the junior supreme champion selection. While in Louisville we held our annual membership meeting with a good turnout of members on hand to listen to staff reports and hear the numbers of registrations, transfers and memberships for the year. All are up across the board for the 2021 fiscal year! Dr. Rob Sheets also gave a presentation on moving from percentages to fractions. There was great discussion between the membership about their thoughts and concerns on this topic.

After Louisville it was full steam ahead preparing for Cattlemen’s Congress, the -C- The Difference National Sale and a sire directory. The sale catalog came along great and the consignors put their best in the sale. Once the catalog was done it was time to focus on the sire directory and the bulls included did not disappoint. The bulls in this sire directory will be promoted at any event where we have a booth. Louisville, OKC, Denver and Junior Nationals are our 4 major places we set a booth up and we will also take the sire directories to Ft. Worth, Black Hills Stock Show, Nebraska Cattlemen’s Classic & the Ohio Beef Expo. Future plans include attending some state cattlemen’s association conventions as well.

After Christmas it was off to Oklahoma City for the Cattlemen’s Congress and the -C- The Difference National Sale. We ended up with our biggest shows of the year in Oklahoma City. There was quite the buzz around the barns for how good the Chianina cattle were from top to bottom. There were many classes that the 5th place heifers could have won the class under a different judge. To me, that is a huge compliment to our breed that our classes are that deep in quality. Our champions were very well represented in the Junior and Open Supreme selection as they were all pulled in the top 8 or 9 for consideration of being named supreme. The sale saw a new excitement for us as we had the largest crowd we have had in a while. The buyers ranged from breeders to commercial cattleman from 11 different states. They averaged well with the bulls averaging $7,407, open heifers averaging $7,295 and half of a bred heifer bringing $21,000. The embryo lots averaged $5,295 per lot. A full report will be included in the Herd Reference issue of the ACJ.

I was then off to Denver to setup our booth in herd sire alley. The yards are brand new and state of the art so it was nice to finally see everything coming together in Denver. The crowd wasn’t the largest, the shows weren’t the biggest

but the cattle were really good and the weather was good while we were there. We had some good visitors through the booth while we were there with people asking questions on the bulls we had on the banners and everyone took a sire directory home with them. A highlight of Denver was that our very own Glen Klippenstein was honored by the Red Meat Club as the 2022 Friend of the National Western. He had a great cheering section on hand for this honor. It was good to see so many Chi breeders in attendance. I am sure Glen was very honored to receive this award with so many of his friends who flew or drove in for the dinner. Those in attendance were John Woodroof, Myron Danner, Don Esch, Dennis Clarahan, Roger Deiter, Dwight Hossle, Heather Counts and myself. I may have missed some as there were well over 150 people in attendance.

We are wrapping up our Sire Test and should be getting the data back anytime from the University of Illinois and will pass that info on as soon as we can.

As we wrap up this issue of the journal we are preparing to head to the Ft Worth Stock Show and then off to the Black Hills Stock Show and Nebraska Cattlemen’s Classic in February. I will see a lot of high quality bulls in the next 60 days and there are some excellent sales coming up so if you are looking for Chianina genetics to use on your cow herd be sure to let me know if I can help in any way.

I will wrap up with saying it is an honor and privilege to be selected as the next CEO. I take this position seriously and look forward to continuing to help move our association into the future and promote our breed. We have so much to offer the beef industry and I am excited and honored to continue to work with our membership to share what the Chianina breed can do.

See you down the road!