Tri States Grain Conditioning

interest in the Colorado packing plant to Superior Farms, although they continued to operate a sheep feedlot in Brush, Colorado. Larry passed away last year at the age of 93. Rob is Tyson’s father. He fed sheep south of Hawarden and also procured sheep for Iowa Lamb and then for Superior Farms after the company purchased the Hawarden plant in 2009. Rob retired from Superior this past October. Rob’s wife, Cindi, continues her work as a nurse practitioner in Ireton for Hawarden Regional Healthcare. Tyson graduated from Iowa State University with a major in animal science and a minor in entrepreneurial finance. But his journey back to a career in animal science was circuitous. He worked five years in Topeka, Kansas, for IKON Office Solutions selling copiers

Makenzie, Amber, Tyson, Madison and Maverick Rule. Madison showed the Reserve Grand Champion 4-H Market Lamb at the 2019 Iowa State Fair.

PROTECTION IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.

Tri-States Grain Conditioning systems will help you remotely monitor your grain, save on energy costs and improve your overall grain storage.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE CONNECTED TO YOUR GRAIN STORAGE. SIMPLE AND ACCURATE. FREE TECH SUPPORT FOR LIFE.

Tyson and Amber in front of their wall of champions.

Drop The Mic was the Championdrive.com “Man of the Year” in 2017 and 2018. Rule Sheep Co. sold a million dollars of semen from the ram. to major corporate accounts. “Working for IKON was a great learning experience. Sales and sales management taught me how to deal with people and a lot about business operations.” Tyson and his wife, Amber, and their daughters returned to northwest Iowa in 2008. They obtained an FSA firsttime farmer loan to purchase land about halfway between Hawarden and Akron. “The game plan was to get big enough for my dad to be able to have a fulltime employee so he wouldn't have to be doing chores at night.” They built two big hoop barns that fall and had sheep in them by January 2009. Initially, lambs continued to be born at the home place and then brought to the new site. They soon built a lambing barn and then a nursery barn was added in 2012. Today, only specialty groups that require extra care are at Rob’s home site. During 2021, they built a modern office facility.

A FULLY INCLUSIVE BREEDING BUSINESS

The first leg of the business was to raise and sell lambs for 4-H and FFA exhibitors. “We sell animals into 45 states,” he said. “But we wanted to figure out how to be a fully inclusive business. So we looked at artificial insemination, which wasn't really being done with sheep in the United States. It was pretty prevalent in Australia and we hired a woman from Australia in 2009 to be our artificial insemination technician. She came in and we AI’d 400 ewes. That July, 300 of them had babies. Previously, a producer might get 30-50 babies out of a sire; we were able to get 200-plus out of a sire.” The second leg of their business became reproductive services. When the Rule team AI’d their first 400 ewes in 2009, Tyson estimates that their herd may have doubled the total number of ewes being artificially inseminated in the U.S. “We realized it worked and, all of a sudden, it's just blew up to the point where it's closer to 100,000 ewes being AI’d across the United States every year now. It's been a big change to our industry and we were lucky enough to be on the forefront of that.” Traditional methods of livestock artificial insemination are not effective with sheep because of difficulty in preserving the ram's semen and the anatomic complexity of the ewe's cervix. The method Rule Sheep Co. adopted from Australia is laparoscopic artificial insemination where semen is deposited directly into the uterus through an abdominal incision. Rule Sheep Co. artificially inseminated about 16,000 head last year. When their new AI technician – Dalton Pottebaum, an ISU graduate and native of Alton – comes on, they expect to increase the number to as many as 30,000 head. Currently about 6,000 are AI’d locally and the other 10,000 or so are done on producer sites across the country. The company’s services are in such high demand that, from July through September, Tyson is often on the road 85 of the 90 days. (When he flies to clients, the semen tank is his carry-on. TSA just waves him through when he tells them its semen – they want nothing to do with it. If the flight attendant or a fellow