Barn Talk - How To Start A Direct To Consumer Meat Business From Scratch w/Scott Assman

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Welcome to BarnTalk! Welcome to Barn Talk! Badass Bison Addition! We have a great episode today and I'll be honest, I think that even Dad will admit that he doesn’t know a damned thing about today��s subject. So we’re all going to learn together. But before we get into all that,  Pay the fee, share with friends, family, co-workers, etc. Leave a review/rating on Apple/Spotify. Go get some bison folks! Use code “barntalk5” to get 5% OFF your order! https://dakotapurebison.com/ Go Follow Dakota Pure Bison! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dakotapurebison/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dakotapurebison Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We're getting to where we're several generations removed from the farm now. People don't have relationship with their food, and you know where that's trending. People want that relationship with their food, whether they're buying chickens for their backyard or whether they're buying meat from us or watching you guys raise food, especially raised food efficiently. That's a big thing. People want to talk about sustainability. but if it's not financially sustainable, it's not sustainable. So that's one thing that we try to talk about too is, is sustainability on all fronts.

And, you know, you can't have generational farms without financial sustainability and as well as sustainability for the environment. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk, Badass Bison Edition. We have a great episode today, and I'll be completely honest with you guys. I think even Dad doesn't even know anything about this topic.

We've looked into it a little bit, but we have an expert on to show us and teach us all the things that we've got to learn about this subject, and you guys will learn with us. But before we get into all that, pay the fee, guys. Do you get any value from the show? Share it out with your friends, family, coworkers. we're trying to grow this thing, do some good in the world, teach people about ag. And so that's kind of the fee to listen or watch the show. If you guys want to snag some BarnTalk merch, we got that in the link in the description

if you're watching on YouTube or we have it in the show notes if you're listening on Spotify or Apple. Leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. Also, that's another way to pay the fee. Appreciate every single one of you guys for listening. And we have no market update today because we got a great guess. and we're going to get right into the nitty gritty. So, dad, go ahead and work your magic there.

That was a very nice view. That was a very thoughtful introduction. I'm actually eating on a, I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. I'm actually snacking on a bison stick right now. 100% bisoned stick. Look at this. Look at this packaging right here.

Dakota Pure Bison. Just absolutely just astonishing packaging. Look at that. Look at that bison just running on the front of the package. Like America's meat, folks. That box doesn't look like much, but that's about, a hundred emails worth of back and forth,

of back and forth, getting that thing right. I honestly looked at that and thought that it was a bottle of whiskey because it was so pretty. I was like, oh, he brought us whiskey. We're going after Buffalo Tracy.

That might be the next thing. Okay, we're getting the card ahead of the horse. Yes, no market update because everything's just still sky high, and we don't have time to talk about it anyway. We're going to talk about ranching and selling meat directly to consumers today,

which is a subject that's near and dear to our heart. But one of the, maybe the most unique part of this story is the animal itself, the bison. And I did a little bit, because I honestly, I didn't know much. And I hate to admit that because, you know, I like to think that I know something about everything, but I didn't know much about it. As recently as the 1800s, there was almost 60 million or more than 60 million bison roam in the West. And in less than 80 years, there was less than 1,000.

and today there's roughly about 30,000, 35,000 wild bison out west. But the number that really floored me was that there's over 500,000 bison in commercial herds here in the United States. And I think that's pretty much the only place you find them anymore. I don't think there's many anywhere else in the world. Canada, there's a lot in Canada. There's more bison in South Dakota than any other state. Um, South Dakota is number one. Um, and then there's a lot in Canada, but I don't know what the split is between Canada and United States. So, well, we're going to, we're going to dig deep and try to learn something today. So, um, today we well, welcome Scott, uh, ashoking on that beef stick there, buddy. I'm trying to get this. I'm trying to choke it down. I'm trying to balance because I really want another bite, but I know that and I'm almost done. What flavor you got? Uh, these are original like me. an original.

So, geez. Anyway, Scott is from Dakota Pure Bison, and it's a partnership between two families from South Dakota that came together to market high-quality bison meat directly to consumers. Scott, welcome to Barn Talk. Welcome to Barn Talk. Thank you guys for having me. Of course.

We made this work out. I actually had a guy from Ohio message me. He wanted to buy a bison bowl from me. We sell breeding stocks, so I thought, and you, had messaged me about a month before that and say hey come you know if you're ever coming through stop at the pocket i'm like well i'm not going to be coming through southeast i well then i look and sure enough it's right on the way so right before this about 15 minutes ago we dropped off a bull um met at mcadacasey's dropped off a bull and then a nice you know coming two-year-old breed bull and then

now we're here so yeah moral story on that on that is you know what if you want to have somebody on your podcast you shoot the shot because you just never know you just never know If it'll work, and look, here we are. You know, there's a lot of things to get traffic through Casey's in the Midwest. Yes. Bison is probably, what should I say, the purest of the things to get traffic through there. Definitely. There was a lot of people looking at us.

One old dude came up and he's like, hey, I work with a local Pita Board, and I don't like what you guys are doing here. And he's like, I'm just good, you know. Oh, I was going to say, I was like, I would have been so surprised. That would have worried me a little bit. That's pretty good. So first thing, where can people find you? Where can people reach out to you on social media and your website, whatever? We just want people to go follow you guys.

We're on Facebook and Instagram at Dakota Pure Bison, both Facebook and Instagram. And my personal is Scott Osmond on Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is what we post most. We also have a YouTube, but we just haven't got that up and going because a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Yep. It's, we made one video and I was just like, If I'm not going to be fully committed to this,

yeah, we're not going to do it. Instagram's a lot simpler. And even doing that, like right now I'm like, you know, two or three days behind on posting just because we've been so dry and fighting fires.

Got to get the work done still. So, yeah, that's where you can find us. But yeah, we ranch in South Central, South Dakota there on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. I am fourth generation. My boys,

I got two boys, Ted and Cal, they'll be fifth generation. I ranch and farm. with my mom and my dad, Mike and Darla Osman, and then my wife, Kate. Organic farming is our big deal. We've been farming organically since 1997. And then we were traditionally Black Angus, registered Angus, you know, cattle,

been raising Black Angus cattle. And then we sold the registered Angus herd in 2009 and went to Commercial Angus. We were in about 1,600 pairs, beef, black commercial. black commercial angous cow calf pears and then the prices dropped there in 2016 when i was in you know or in 15 they kind of 16 17 they started dropping then i started kind of looking in the bison business and i went and visited some ranch and i was realized there's actually something to this it's not just a fluke you know and and so that we bought our first animals in uh late late 2017 and after that first blizzard of 2018 where we were bedding our beef cattle down and pulling calves

and it was just a disaster you know we got like 20 inches of snow and the buffalo is out running around the hilltop of them like okay there's something to this there's fresh baby buffalo calves running through a foot of snow and my beef calves is to lay down so that's when we went all in we dispersed the rest of the beef cattle and now we're all bisoned around about 850 mother cows and then I'll finish out, finish out all of our, all of our calves. So,

and then we partnered up in, uh, late 2019 with the Heim family. They live about 20 miles north of us. And they were very crucial for us getting into the business because they've been, they've had Bison since 1967. There's some of the original people. Alex,

uh, him, his, is, uh, our partner, Alex and Leonardheim, Alex and his dad Leonard.

His uncle was a, promoter of bison. of bison since the 70s and 80s he got most of the people who were in in bison he got him into the bison business so like sandy limpert that's where we bought the most of our herd from he got uh him started tony he got him started back in the late 80s so they've the hym family's been very instrumental in the bison business and uh yeah so just kind of came full circle and we partnered up in late 2019 that's when we developed our logo the dakota peasant your bison logo and then COVID hit and we're like, okay, we got to go. So we started shipping our ranch

raised bison meat directly to people's doors. We've shipped all, you know, all continuous 48 states, and now we're wholesaling and the meat sticks and everything else. So it's, it's been a wild ride. So you guys are tackling it all fronts with wholesale and direct. So if you guys want to go get some of these beef sticks, you want to get some bison, they got everything you could possibly one out of a bison on the website. Dakotapeerbison.com. Dakotapeerbison. Get some bison.

I have, this is my first taste of it, but Dad, what do you think over there? I think they're pretty good. What I've seen online from, because I've been following you guys for quite a while, and I've seen a lot of your guys' stuff across social media, not even like directly from you guys,

just from people I follow. And people say it's the real, it's the real deal. So go, go get some if you're hungry. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real.

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Or were, was there some? I'd say, like, my dad is a very outside the box thinker. You know, that's why we started farming organically in 1997. He's not afraid of anything. And so we could just see that like the beef deal. I mean, we were, and we didn't go like now that we've raised bison, we would run our beef cattle different. I mean, we were calving in March. Yep. You know, because you always want to have the biggest calves that first sale of January,

all that, you know, all that stuff. We were doing all the things that beef guys do. And, you know, buying expensive bowls, everything else, which is you want to do that, but then you go buy an expensive bowl, then, you know, it gets hurt, everything else. And if, you know, if. you know, if we would cab in May and different things that we'd look at it different, but it was just such a constant grind.

You know, we had two or three hired men that were just, you know, plus us, too, that were just focused on the beef side of things. Right. And, you know, we're just kind of getting tired of the, you know, oh, yeah, hey, everything looks good. And then the day you go to sell a report comes out from the USDA or from somebody on the, you know, the exchange. And, you know, you don't make any money in your calves that year.

We kind of got, we just got tired of that. And especially just the labor. You know, we brought everything in the barn and it just was, just seemed ridiculous. Even why we're doing it, it's just like this just doesn't seem very sustainable. So that's when we started looking into it. And really, we got lucky because the first place he went and visited was like one of the most premier bison ranches in South Dakota. And that's where we got our animals from. We got lucky because he was in a bad drought.

He never sells heifers, but he sold us all of, you know, like a cut of 300 head of his heifers. Then we got to got another pretty good sword out of his yearlings. And that's rare. You know, most guys are getting bison. They're buying 10 head here and 5. You're piecing it together. Yeah, and we got, you know, 500 head in one chunk. So it was a big deal.

And some of the most premier genetics, that is a big thing in the bison is genetics. You know, got like you said, got down to where there's a thousand head. or less. Some people say 2,000. Some people say 500. No one really knows for sure. So it's such a big deal to Genics curve because most people have bison just to have bison. You know, they're not, but, you know, we're doing it to, you know, run an animal efficiently on our grassland efficiently. And that animal, you know, buffalo cows can be producing until they're 20 years old. And a bull, you know, he'll, he'll breed till he's whatever, you know, 10. until like 15 years old. But, but we get rid of our bulls when they turn about seven or eight because they just get so big and mean and hard to deal with. And we actually do, we do some field harvest.

We, I don't like to call them hunts because, you know, they're not, it's, they're not wild, but go out and try hunting one, you know, it's not that they know,

you know. And so, um, and so yeah, we, we do the same, you know, everything's on purpose.

It's not random. We're not just getting buffalo, So, you know, we spent the money on the good genetics, spent the money on the good bulls, and now it's, you know, paying dividends. And we are now able to sell breeding stock. And also with the quality genetics, that's just that much sooner that your animal's ready for production, for meat production. You know, you can, some buffalo, their genetics are poor, they never do get up to market weight. And, you know, ours were having them ready before the 30 months of age.

And it's a big deal. Yeah, what is the market? Yeah, what's the market weight? The market weight, you know, we try to kill our bulls when they're about, you know, 1,100, 1,150, anywhere from 1,100 to 1,200 pounds and the heifers are more like 1,000,000 50. So bulls are obviously better, you know, as far as just, you know, they get fat or quicker and they're ready to go quicker and they grow better. So, but yeah, that's where we, you know, getting into those good genetics right off the bat, it's, you know, it's remarkable what the animals can do, you know, and just, like I said, the cows live to be 20 years old. Do you want to be running a poor cow for 20 years or do you want to be running a good, you can't even calculate that. Like the difference between having a poor genetic animal, and like a poor cow shall lose you money every year. And a good cow will make you money. You know, just you can't even, it's hard to calculate that having a good one versus a bad one for, you know, longevity of the animals. And, you know, you only have so much grass. So you want to run. an animal that is going to

produce. Yes, produce a high-quality calf every year. This is kind of, this may be out of your wheelhouse a little bit, but I'm going to ask you because I'm just sitting here thinking, you know, today, bison's marketed a lot of places, and everybody knows the quality,

well, maybe not everybody knows, but the meat is high-quality meat. Why do you think that it has taken so long for people to figure out that, well, first of all, I'm a little bit surprised that it took, it took basically, we almost made the species go extinct before anybody thought, you know, these, these look awful similar to a cow. I wonder if this meats any good. Like, why did it take so long for people

to embrace the idea of, were they just so aggressive that people just didn't want to handle them? Well, you know, just think how small it is. Like, think, like, think how small it is compared to beef. like we were talking earlier, like, so I think we kill, we should look up that number. Is it 100,000 or 180,000 beef animals a day a day in the United States? Right. Or is it a day or a week? I think it's a day. Anyways, who knows?

You guys look it up. Look it up. There's 500,000 bison in the world. So, like, so we are processing about 50,000 prime animals a year. Right. Way small. Just total animals. It's just so, it's so much smaller.

But going back, originally it's like, yeah, I mean, bison were just a detriment. to Western expansion. They were, I mean, who, you know, how do you deal with them? Well, basically, we killed them off because the Indian. We wanted to get rid of the Indians. Yeah, it's part of it. And also like, hey, I'm going to go put up barbed wire fence. You know, I can't have my buffalo, you know,

I can't have these buffalo just running through it. And they just, people just didn't know. They thought you had to have your court. Well, that's what, that's all they had. They got their quarter. I was just reading about our little town. There was, in the year they opened it up for, oh, what do you call it?

Farm settlement. 95,000. cattle a day. 95,000 cattle day. Yeah, I got you. So every, every last buffalo calf cow bull would be dead in five days. Yeah. So it's just so much smaller.

But, you know, there was like, there was like 15,000 people signed up to get, you know, 1,500 quarters that were available, like in Tripp County or something like that. So just that, so you got your quarter, you know, what do you have Buffalo out there running? Like, I can't even, they can't even afford to put barbed wire on the thing,

let alone, you know, so they're going to have their money. outcals. It's just that, you know, Western mindset and everything else, but we're lucky the people who did take the time to save, you know, save these animals. And, and then, you know, the Bisons had its ups and downs because it is a niche. So, you know, in the 90s, it did similar to what the ostrich deal did. It was people were buying bison just to say they had bison. So the heifer market was insane. The championship bull market was insane. It wasn't backed by the market. It was just backed by nothing. And so that's when like in 99 or 2000, the market just collapsed because they were

selling, you know, selling heifer, selling heifer, everyone was buying heifers. And then, you know, the meat market didn't follow. They weren't marketing that meat. And pretty soon, there's a drought in 2000. And everyone's like, why do I have these bison? Yeah, I can't afford to feed them. Go to sell them. Markets full. You know, the marketers, you know, just, so now that's gotten a lot more stable, where it's very, you know, it's, and it still has its ups and down. Like, we got in, you know, buy high, sell low. You know, we got in on high tide. And, and so it's coming back now some, but it's definitely, it's down from what it was. And, but we were just fortunate, you know, we could sell our beef animals off and trade out for the bison. So, and we had the grass. And that's

another thing with bison is so limiting to the people who can have bison, because you have to have continuous land. You know, you can't just, it's not like beef cow, you're like, load them up and let's go take them to corn stocks

to the winter. They, they, I mean, you just can't, you can't move them around. And you can do more stuff than you think you can, but you just don't want to.

You want them to, go home to get unloading your place and that's home. That's where she wants to stay. That's all she knows. And like, we were fortunate enough to get young animals. And so that's just home to them. You know,

you go buy an old buffalo cow and turn around your place. She might just head home. And they have done that. It doesn't, and it doesn't matter what fence you have. They're just going to be gone. There's not much stopping up for bison running through a fence. And so you got to, you know, that's how we manage them.

It's all, you know, they graze the pasture. We do practice rotational grazing. I went to my, we were always kind of doing rotational grazing, but then I went to an actual class there in 2017, I think, like a rotation. I was like, whoa, you know, because it doesn't make sense your head. It's like more animals on a smaller space or a smaller amount of time. At first, like, that doesn't quite make sense, but the changes I've seen... Yeah, explain that a little bit because there might be people out there that have no idea what that even means.

So, uh, rotational grazing, we don't do super intensive. Um, so like, let's say I'll give, like my home place, uh, most of the pastures are in quarters, you know, which is kind of a small pasture for our area, but it's a, you know, quarter. So I'll have 140 pears, bison pairs in that quarter for about eight days. and then I'll have eight quarters in the rotation. So they'll go through eight, eight, eight days. And, you know, you don't just go turn them out on the whole, you know, 1,500 acres and leave them there all summer.

Yeah. Because they're going to nip that grass and that grass can be trying to grow back. And then they're going to nip it and they're going to hurt that plant. Because, you know, historically, bison came roam through an area. They nipped off and they're gone. They might not be back there for a year or two. And so we're trying to mimic that. And this is all like your course.

cattle, beef, whatever, pork, not pork, sheep, goats, you know, that you want to go into an area, graze it. Some guys say take half, leave half, some guys where they get more rain, like over here. Where you guys get rain. We don't get rain out where we're at. But, you know, though we kind of take half, leave half, move to the next one. And so we'll go through each rotation, you know, about two times, one and a half to two times is what we try to do. But then down in our south, south, I'm starting to section those up.

I just got a big fencing project with the NRCS that I'm just getting done where we took a unit that had four pastures. You know, and each pasture was, you know, about a section or, you know, two or three quarters. And we're dicing that up into eight pastures. And so that'll just allow that rest time so much long because rest time is the key thing. Yep. In our country, you want about 80 days of rest time roughly, and that just allows that plant to recover, because we mostly run on all native, native grasslands. I've never been plowed. Um, up. We do graze cover crops and things like that. Up the home place, we raised a lot of cane and stuff like that. But, um, so yeah, that's kind of what rotational grazing is what we practice and just better for the animals. I can just see the land improving. The last two years it's been dry. So I am a little low on my grass levels right now. We do have to feed in wintertime. because, you know, we are on the reservation, so we have tribal quarters that are mixed in that are called range units. And you have to abide by the BIA grazing rules. So we're only allowed to graze so many animals, which it's good.

It keeps the riff, raff out. So we're not allowed there on the winter months. So we do have to take it because we'll put them on a half section of like an alfalf field. And we'll roll that hay right back out out that was hayed off. We roll that hay right back out there and feed them out there. And just every year that alfowl field gets better. It's pretty cool to see because they're fertilizing it, breaking up the ground. But we're just so dry right now that we're having, usually I have them all turned out to calving pasture because they're just starting to cab.

But it's just too, it's too dry. You know, we got dust blown, we got fires, we got everything else out there right now. It's been terrible. It sounds like you like raising bison more than you liked raising cattle. What are the big, and you said, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of challenges with raising cow versus kind of, the cons over outweigh the pros. was when I'm raising. Yeah, the biggest thing is just like bison are survivors. They want to live.

And calving season, like, that's the best time to go on vacation. Just turn them out in your biggest pasture and leave. That's the biggest difference between beef and bison, I'd say, is they just, you know, their cavanese is through the roof. They, you know, launch out a little 40-pound calf, and he's up in two or three minutes sucking on his mom. And within a day, he can run 20 miles an hour. Wow.

Yeah, it's just insane. You know, all the bad, bad ones died during the Ice Age or the Sabreto Tiber's got them. So they've kind of, they've kind of worked through, you know, they have three times as many hair follicles as beef cattle do. They actually did a university, did a test with yearling beef animals and a bison. And they kept going through the different animals, you know, Angus and Holsteens and Scottish Highlanders. And they had two cold chambers they made. And they could never get the, you know, whatever, the at negative, only the Angus cows, the Angus yearling started going into what sort I'm looking for,

hypothermia. And then the Scottish Highlanders started going to hypothermia and negative 30. Then the Holstein started going on hypothermia and negative 40. They could not get the chamber low enough to make the bison going to hypothermia. That's it. So, yeah, they're just, they're amazing animals. They are smart, a little too smart. Oh, man, they are, they look you right in the eye.

It's very weird, you know, compared to beef animal. They know who pulls in the pasture. They know whether it's me pulling in there. I'm hired man. They act differently. And sometimes it's to their detriment. You know, you want them to go through that gate because there's a reason you want to, if they know you want them to go through that gate, they will not go through it. So you might as well just leave.

When we move them, they'll really only move into the wind. They won't move with the wind. They will not. Like, they will not go a quarter mile. they only move with the wind because that's just natural and you keep your nose in the wind um so yeah there's some the the amount of patience you have to have like you can get your whole crew together and say hey we're going to go get these and then it's like you get there and the wind's wrong it's like oh we can't you know you got to come back a week later and so it's very uh it's very interesting um the learning

curve is insane. And we went overkill on our fence. You know, I do have bison running behind just a five-wire bee fence right now. The biggest thing is just having plenty of grass, plenty of water, making them feel like home, managing animals correctly from the start. It's not for everyone. I can tell you that. As far as fencing them, they just kind of stay because they're okay with it. They decided that they didn't want to, the fence probably isn't going to deter. No, and, you know, we have good tight, six-wire, bribor barbed wire fences, because that just makes you sleep better at night having that. But like, if an animal gets out, usually what it is is two big bulls get to fighting and they blow through the fence. And then they get

out, but then, like, if they get out and you kind of go out there, they kind of know they're not supposed to be out there. Because they're not even comfortable being out there because that's not where home is. So, because home is this pasture, this pasture, this pasture. So like I had some get out. I don't know. They were just, they were being weird. You know, we had a south wind, and they were on the south side of the pasture, and just the fence wasn't as good there as a fence I should have tore out and redid,

but I'll be all right. And so they just blew through, and they just ran about a half mile south, and they all just came right back in, and jumped in, you know, and of course, the neighbors were driving right by and watched it all. So, yeah,

but, you know, we haven't had really knock on what they're probably out right now as we're doing the spot. I haven't had a lot of issues with that because they don't, they don't know what's out there. They don't, it's almost like they just don't want to, Yeah, because it's like, what if there's saber-tooth tigers out there?

You know, we're going to stay here. We know it's good here. This guy feeds us. This guy has always got water for us. And so, and, you know, you don't abuse them. You manage them. Proper animal husbandry. And, yeah, that's a big part of it.

Yeah, they have a different, so compared to cattle, they don't really, I guess, they're not really afraid of much. No, they're not. the instinct to stay with the herd is very strong. So survival is top for them. Like whatever survival is what they're due. And you'll see that like in Yelstone National Park. If there's a weak animal, the herd, they kill that animal, leave him for the wolves.

And it's very much, they're so social. Like, they're such a pecking order. It's a big deal. Like you can't just go start throwing different herds of buffalo together. The herd that you have, what do you got to make your decisions then? you don't want to go start pulling them, especially on older cows, it'll be a disaster. If you take some older cows and throw them on with some other cows, if they don't kill each other, they won't breed, they won't perform.

Because they're just, there's such a social animal that, and there's just that pecking order, you know, it's just like you guys were talking about the podcast, like if there's a weak pen, weak pig in the pen, done. So that's where we sort them, you know, that in the herds that are, you know, we have four herds because that's just how we have to run. four herds and we have our satellite herds young animals that are grazing on you know whatever cover cover crops and old alfow fields and different little chunks that aren't connected um that those herds you know we're not going to go start you know pulling these ones out and docking these ones off

it's just not possible my animals are all mostly still young enough that you can get by with a lot but even this year working them was different than working in the year before because and every every year will get yeah harder to make any changes. When do you, when do you wean the calves? So we, everything gets run through the shoot.

We only run animals through the shoot once a year. So we will run them all through. We get, you know, get them in, get them in and we sort everything right out of the shoot. We have a parasol shoot and it's got a head, you know,

it's got to have a, we call it a crass cage. So they go and they hit, they hit the front of it, then you can catch them. Because otherwise in a regular shoot, you can never catch them, you know.

And so you catch them. And then we have a five-way sort. So it'll be, you know, the bread cows, because we, all as we do is we preg check them, deworm them, and give them their vaccinations. That's all we give them. They just go back out to pasture. The pregnant cows do.

We start the bull calves from the heifer calves. And then the breeding bulls, we sort them off during the wintertime. We don't have to, but it's just easier to because they're a pain. You know, you're trying to get in and they're out. They're trying to rub on the bail beside you and just a pain. Rub on the gate and everything else. So, and then we have our open cows. So if they don't breed, you know, we just, we, you don't want to, you know,

you don't have an animal that's not going to produce kind of running on your ground. So, um, and then later on, we go and size the calves as well for their own herds. So we'll, we'll take off the bottom. The bottom 10% we take them off and they all go together of the four herds, you know, makes a nice, nice little herd. And then we pull the top, you know, a little less than 10% for breed bull prospects. and the heifers, we just run them all out together on grass. And then you don't want to pick your replacement heifers

until they run on grass for a year to see how they turn into females because an awesome-looking female buffalo calf. Don't get me wrong. Picking them, you know, you can pick out the top 10% female. They're going to be good, but it'll change somewhat over time the females as well as they mature into young cows.

So when you finish your, when you finish your calves out, are you finishing them on grass too? No, no. So no, we do finish, we do finish on a free choice grain. Okay. You know, we have a, we just crack corn. We've done some whole corn, non-GMO whole corn, things like that. But then just, you know, big, big pens with grass A and then just free choice corn. They, I mean, they don't eat as near as much as you think they would, just have a free choice, but C. Bison can't overeat.

Oh, right. Yeah, unlike cattle. Yeah, unlike cattle. Yeah, they're awesome. Yep. Yeah, they're easy to fall in love with. You know, you're out there. Yeah, they seem very, like, there's some quality.

Like, I get it. We're saying, you got to have patience because they just won't move if they don't want to move. But all the other stuff you said, it's like, there's some pros to that. Yeah, they get out, but they're like, yeah, I don't like this. I'm coming back. Unless you're not treating them. Yeah, yeah, true, right. Then they're gone.

Yeah. Yeah, when I was a kid, so we never had cattle when I, my dad, his brother raised some cattle back a long time ago. But when I was a kid, we didn't have a cattle. But my neighbors did, our neighbors did. And one of my good friends, we would go and we would bucket feed grain into the trough. And I remember being, I don't know how old I was. And I asked his dad, I'm like, how much corn, how much corn are these cows eating?

He just looked at it and he goes, however many buckets you want to bring them. but you don't want to bring them one too many and you got big problems. So we're going to stop at whatever. And I just thought, you know, with pigs, you don't think about that because a pig is always hungry. You can feed them as much as you want. I don't know anything about pigs. So I had a Braden Ron. I met him when I was at school for STSU for a very short period of time.

He came out and worked me and they raised hogs up by Mancato, Minnesota. Sure. And I just never been around pigs. You know, we were growing up, we was so busy that we never. never did 4-H. It was just, you know, we were in the hayfield. It was just all, you know, that's right. When, you know, my dad was going off on his own because they had a family partnership.

So we were just working, hustling. And never was really around any other animals other than beef and defarming. And then so he came out to work with me. I said, why don't you just bring some pigs out? I've never gone. So he brought four runt pigs out because they are, you know, operations similar to you guys. And that was my first time around pigs. And we just let them free rage.

Oh, gosh. It was just, we kept them on, then spring came, and they started ripping up my mom's lawn. And, yeah, so we had some small bacon out of that deal. That's my hog story anyways. A powered steam shovel. You get them out of their element. It was so funny because we were feeding a lot of cattle then. And you'd have to watch when you go grab them to the salvage pile every morning because it was so cold, they slept in the silage pile.

Oh, sure. I was just waiting to put them in a mixer wagon load every morning. But a couple times I'd go and grab, I don't think they're right there. You go grab them. They squirt out the side of the loader. bucking a cat loader. Throw me one of them bison sticks.

I about said beef. People always say beef. It's ingrained in your mind. Oh, well, I said throw me the package. But here, you can throw me it like,

I'll keep that. Yeah. There you go. 100% I got to get it. I got to get, I got to eat one of these. It's very, it's actually having them be a hundred percent

bison is very rare. Most guys just blend. Mix pork with them or mix beef with them. Just just, yeah, guys, it's the real deal. Ruined. It's the real thing.

Tainted. It's the real deal. These are damn good. What are your flavors on these? We got original terriaki, honey barbecue, and jalapeno. I didn't bring you guys any jalapeno. What's your favorite? I'm an original guy, but honey barbecues is dang good.

Honey barbecues is probably our main cellar. They're damn good. Yeah. Because they're pretty hard to be. Yeah. And then the guy's really like, because the jalapeno one, when you bite it, it tastes like you're biting into a fresh jalapeno. It's weird.

I don't like jalapeno. So, um, I really don't like any vegetables. I don't eat. Because when we started out, we were just shipping frozen meat was all. That's all. We never even really thought about going in the meat stick deal. He made some meat sticks with our prime animals.

And he was like, you guys got to try these. So we tried it. Like, oh, yeah, we need to start making those. So the same processor that you were doing all the other stuff with was like, hey, I can do these sticks. Yeah, so early on, when we got started out, we processed some in the Black Hills. And we just, we knew we had to have super consistency. And everyone was so busy then.

They were just like, yeah, we process your buffalo. Here you go. Here's your meat back and whatever different size boxes and everything else. And so then we had that relationship with our processor, and he does an amazing job. He's like a wizard when it comes to this stuff. So that we just got lucky to have a good relationship with our processor. And he does everything, cuts all our stakes,

always trying to teach us about. how cutouts work and meat and stuff like that because we're not meat guys for ranchers you know that's what we do and he's like oh yeah he will do these T-bones and get it back and it's like why is this t-bone look different than this is well that one's a porterhouse this one's a T-bone and like okay it sounds good and we'll put them on the website you know so yeah and this whole process it's just uh it sounds just like oh yeah just go start selling meat online i was gonna i was just gonna say something because like i'm gonna be honest it's something that i've thought about and you go look on the internet and try to find information about it but it's so

there's not much information about it and i think it is for a reason because it's like you said people don't realize how much actually goes into this well that's what you know the last thing you want to do when you're getting in is like call up your one of your competitors like hey how do you ship your meat out in a box and get people out being thought out so i didn't we started out with a lot of trial and error just started shipping out of the garage um and we had some error um that's for sure, but it's never as bad as you think it is. That's what you'll get a couple bad orders. You're like, oh, my gosh, it's the end of the world. Then you go look at back and it's like less than half a percent, you know, that you have an issue with. So it's, uh, and now where we

switch to a lot more of express and second day and a lot more dry ice in our boxes. And that's the nice thing about the meat sticks is ship them out and they're fine. You know, they don't need to be refrigerated. That's what people like them on. Do you. God, I love those nitrates. Oh, yeah. No, this nitrate free. Oh, is it? Oh, shit. I mean, he's got us at every, he's got us, dad. Absolutely. We're a lifetime customer now. I've never met a nitrate that I didn't like.

Hey, we need a snack to promote, to sponsor the podcast. This might be the one. There you go. We come from along both lines of the family. So my wife's father, when he was in college, he was part of a, he was in a business school. And they, I don't know what the deal was, but they took them through the Oscar Meyer plant. I was just looking at your pure lard bucket over there. I want one of them really bad.

I love that. And there was like 10 kids, 10 people went through there. And it was where they made hot dogs. And they got to the end and it was free hot dogs. And my father-in-law was the only kid out of those 10 that wanted a hot dog. And he ate every hot dog they gave them. He always said, I don't know what. I mean, I don't know.

They look good to be here. They're damn good. That was my aunt says when she was in high school, they went and toured the plant over in Sioux Falls where they make hot dogs. She got done. She said, I don't know if I've ate hot dog since, you know? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But no, yeah, when we started out,

it was just like I said, a lot of trial and error. You know, I called up a couple guys, but they really don't, they don't really want to tell you. And I can understand now why, because it's like so much that goes into it. You almost like, you almost feel like you're, I don't want to, you know, you don't want to, like, I'll say when you, when people ask, you don't want to waste people's time. because it's so much information and it's so much work that most people aren't going to do it.

Chances are their experience is going to be totally different too. Yes. Because it's so much what you got to just figure it out. Yeah, you got to figure it out. That's what we did now. Like we're totally different model than we were at first. So at first we were going to be shipping large boxes of meat out monthly on a monthly subscription basis. Well, Bison, people look at it more of a treat.

I mean, we do have our customers that are on that subscription. and they're getting the burger and they're getting the steaks every month. So you still offer that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's a big deal. I mean, our subscription is that's what we want people to do. But also most people, it's like, hey, I'm going to get a bison steak and have my buddies over, you know, before we watch the UFC fights and I'm going to grill them a bison steak.

And it's, you know, something that they're not going to do all the time because this is a premium product. Premium product. And now it's getting pretty competitive with beef, though. Holy smokes. The beef deal is insane right now. That is. How much that's gone up. but and you know or getting a tomahawk you know everyone wants that 28 ounce tomahawk and we run out of

those in a hurry when we post those online but you know it's so our we started out um in the brink of covid you know we shipped out our we started kate built the website why ted was you know napping on her lap so kate built our first website um i started messing with boxes you know and started out with the totally wrong style of box just because i didn't know any better it's just what you got to do ordered way too many of them. We still got some left. We've, you know, wrapping Christmas presents. Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah. And so she built the first website, which is still an awesome website. I mean, I still got, I like that website. Yeah, I was going to say, your guys' website, it's pretty good. Well, this is it. We got a different one now. So we hired somebody to build it and we were working with, we actually just switched again. We have a new website manager now that we've developed a relationship with one, more of a local guy out of the Sioux Falls area.

Anyways, you're really good to work with. And so, you know, we, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. So we started, it's just, it's everything you're fully engaged in it, just like anything else. You got to have, you know, like agriculture, that's what you do. You know, it's fully ingrained in your life. And just we've, we've changed a lot. Now it's just been, you know, things are working pretty good.

Just hopefully one of these days we start making money. That would be nice. But, you know, just that upfront. cost of getting in and having the inventory. But so we're at the brink of COVID. We go to this warehouse in Rapid City and we had talked to them like six months before and they were just like, no, we don't mess with, you know, they mess with pallets. They don't mess with boxes, you know, because we're shipping out anywhere from three pounds

of meat all the way up to 120. And they're like, yeah, we don't mess with that. And that was like to keep it there to store it. And then they would pack it and fulfill it, ship it for us. Okay. And they didn't, they weren't really sure. And then, well, first of all, they knew we weren't. serious because guys come up to them all the time saying oh yeah we're going to start shipping our ranch

race probably like yeah i'm sure you are you know just like going to try to pitch to a grocery store when we were getting ready to have cal our second boy we went up early because we're you know out the middle of nowhere we were going to have the baby in rapid city which is a three hour drive away so we went up when kate started feeling like she's going to have well it was two weeks before she was you know so i just started going around selling to grocery stores and they just don't they've been let down so many times by small producers that say they, oh yeah, we're going to start doing this. And they just, until you show up there with the product and then you show up the next week with the product and the next week with the product, they won't give you the time of day.

You got to prove it. You got to prove it that you're actually going to show up because they're used to the big distribution companies showing up, dropping off every week, send them a bill. Just simple. You got to make it easy for people. Right. And the same with online. If they order those people, they want that, you know, it's got to be shipped out on Monday. No excuses. That's just the way it is.

And so I don't know where I was going. So, okay, I got you. You went to the distribution place. Oh, yeah, I went to the distribution place. Well, then, so we go back now, and it's in May. COVID and their warehouse is empty. And he's, this, the boss has got four or five guys looking at him, like, needing something to do. So like, yeah, let's do it.

You know, well, so we went up, trained him how to, you know, do it all. And that's when we launched. We shipped our first box out in July of 2020. When you say train them, so you, so the guy, the distribution center, they COVID hit. and they were like, oh, shit, they didn't have a ton of business. No, because, like, just things just stopped moving. And so you had to go up there and say, okay. Well, because they were used to just picking pallets.

Oh, okay. They were forklift guys. They weren't guys to go pick product out of the pros and put it in a box. So we trained them and I shouldn't have been trained them. I didn't. They knew it probably better than me. And they did. We got a really good relationship with them.

Well, then in September of 2021, yeah, just this last fall, I think it was September. all the employees quit on the same day of the warehouse. And then so the owner was, you know, he was so overwhelmed, he forgot to call us and tell us that. So Monday, we're looking at our phone and none of our orders ship out. And it was a big week,

you know, big shipping week. And we're just like, call the next day like, hey, what's going on? And so, and it's three hours away.

And he's like, yeah, everybody quit and all. And so we're just like, but our meat's got to, you know, we got to ship it out. He's like, yeah, I don't, we'll see if I can get.

So me and Alex jumped in a rig and went up, and we did that for five weeks in a row. We shipped out our own product. And then now we have, it's actually been really good because the quality control we have now, you know, there's no, we know exactly what's going on. So we hired, hired a guy. And then he just hired another guy. So on Mondays, they pack and ship out. So we just, we still store all of our stuff there at the warehouse. But you're responsible.

You got the guys to do it. Yes. That's kind of, yeah. Yeah, that's unique. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. And, um, you know, I'd, you know, it's just, we just had to. Right. It wasn't no other option. You didn't expect it. It just came in your lap. Yeah, they had five employees that had been there for like 10 years. They all quit, all quit the same. Wow. So did you have the processor already lined up before you went to the distribution center?

Well, yeah. So that was, so we had, actually the first stuff we, we shipped out, we were just doing with some of our local, uh, butchers. Okay. And, but we weren't, we didn't have that consistency. Yeah. And people want consistency. see, you know, when we first started out, we were selling product not really by the pound. We were more selling it. And we still sell it by the box. That's what we still do. Now everything's portion cut. At first, we didn't have portion cut steaks or anything just because they were busy and they couldn't do it.

You know, they had people lined up around the block that wanted to process animals. So, um, but yeah. So then then that's when we really started, you know, doing more things, more options, the breakfast sausages, the hot dogs, the brots. really opened it up because people want options. You know, we were going to try, when we first started, we had eight different options you could buy, eight different boxes. And it was just, you know, people want options.

So now we have, well, 80 different options, I think, or even maybe more of different, because we still sell by the box. We don't, you know, it gets, but you can pick pretty good. Yeah. So do you sell by the cut of what you want, or is it like five, five pound, 10 pound, 20 pounds?

Yeah, so like you can get whatever, anywhere from five to 40 pounds of, Bison meat, you can get a whole quarter of bison. You can get our steak box, which is like seven ribbyes or seven New York strips. Or I mean, our ribby box is like seven ribies. So you get, or I guess it'd be 14 now. See, originally we had two to a pack too, which people like, people like single packs, you know, so then they can just thaw one or whatever.

And so, yeah, now it's like, you know, 14, 12-ounce ribies, whatever in the ribby box. But then you can also get the steak box, which is, you know, two of each steak. You know, and the more you buy, the cheaper it is. So if you go buy like our stewardship package, which is an eighth of a bison, or if you go buy our pioneer package, which is a quarter of a bison, you're getting the stakes for burger price. Just because the shipping, you know, we can ship, you know, it costs about the same to ship out a 10-pound box of me as it does a 50-pound box meat.

People don't believe that, but it does. I was going to ask you, I've been looking around, and any time I see a negative comment about direct-to-consumer from, customers, they always say shipping. Yeah. Shipping price. Is there anything that you guys do that like to try to combat that and like make it easier for the customer? Because that's the biggest concern I hear. That's what we do all day, every day is we're negotiating with our FedEx. And we do free shipping. So we take the shipping on ourselves. But you know, obviously we have to build that price in.

And so that's why we incentivize people with those prices to buy a bigger box because you can go buy a small box and what you're still i mean obviously it doesn't cost the same but um you know it's just it's better and we're on the phone with fedex a couple times a week trying to get better rates so that we can even because we don't want to raise our prices we need to because like fedex has raised their prices our boxes went up you know like 12% um everybody else's gone up but we don't want to you know we don't want to have to jack up those prices on people um so yeah it's it's constant we're always in negotiations you know trying to get a better rate like hey we're selling this much let's do you know and figuring you know trying to see what we can get by with you know on so that's it's like on

a sunday night monday morning it's you know rich he's going through and he's looking okay these orders we can ship ground because they're connecting states and these orders we go express these days we got to go second so it's all just there's no he looks at a map and then fedex sends out this map which i don't know if it's legit or not they say there'll be red zones and there was a lot more red zones in 2020 than is now because they've adjusted for the influx of, you know, they think like online shipping went up like nine times during COVID. It's just insane. And so there's these places where it didn't matter how much you paid for shipping.

It wasn't going to get there on time, you know. And they started in July of 2020. They won't guarantee anything. So, but we just, since we've really take a systematic, like we have a plan, like it's not just random, our results have been, like, I think this last like six months we've had two issues. And that was because one FedEx building had a chemical plant start on fire next to it. So they couldn't deliver anything.

And the other one was a customer put in the wrong address. And so that's like, Hey, that's pretty minor. Yeah. It's insane how how that's, it's insane how well it's gone. And that just comes with time of doing it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Getting a system down. And then like our, the big thing is packing it tight. Like so like, like before we had to have it typed up on a spreadsheet like hey if this guy orders this it goes in this box because then that guy at the warehouse looks at you know his this look okay well richie

he can look well maybe i can get it in the smaller boxes you're you're battling air you're battling airspace in that box because stuff starts moving around so he packs it so tight like sometimes we ship stuff out and people don't think they get their whole products he's got fact in there so tight you know with you know with ice packs and everything else so he does really good job on that. Are you self-processing 100% of the bison that you produce? In other words, are you marketing all your bison or through Dakota Pyr? Yeah. No, no. So, no, we're not. So, yeah, Dakota Pure for, you know, the number of animals we produce, we're not at those levels yet. Hopefully, you know, eventually we will be. But we, up until recently, we sold animals outside

the market, but we just recently purchased another processing facility and a sales company, that's together a Buffalo sales company and processing companies. So we just purchased them. So now all of our animals are going through either that company or Dakota Pier. Yeah. So you're not. So you'll, you'll just strictly do the direct-to-consumer model.

Well, you still have the wholesale to, yeah. So like that company we just bought is all wholesale. It's no direct-consumer. So it's all the big distribution. Before then, was it just director-consumer before you bought these guys? No, we started wholesaling pretty much as soon.

Like we started wholesale into our local grocery store pretty much as soon as we started. It was more in 2021. We really got after it and started, you know, we bought a couple freezer trucks and got some guys on the road selling and stuff like that. And that's when I was beat up to Black Hills before Cal was getting, you know, I got into all the grocery stores out there in the Black Hills. And then Alex got had a connection with Custer State Park. We got Custer State Park 2021.

We got them again for 2022. And I didn't realize how big of a deal the Custer State Park deal was. like I had hardly been to Custer State Park. I live in South Dakota. I love Mount Rushmore. I go there all the time, but I didn't think Custra State Park was that awesome. It's freaking awesome.

Like if you guys are ever going through there, check it out. I mean, I think it's about second only to Yellowstone. It's just an awesome, one of the best state parks there is. I don't know if I'll ever get there or not because my poor wife, when she was a kid, her parents had a conversion van. Oh, man. And then they got rid of it. You know why?

They got rid of it. because if you're the friend that has a conversion van, that means you drive everywhere. That's what I drove in high school. So her parents one day were like, you know what, we're sick of driving, we're getting rid of this conversion van.

So they bought a freaking lynx. A lynx is like a Chevy Chevette. It's like a tiny. And then that was the summer they decided to take, they decided to go to like Yellowstone through the Dakotas. And my, I think, I mean,

anytime we talk about going on vacation, you can guarantee a conversation is coming up about sitting next to her Aunt Gloria and going to Waldrug. Chain smoking cigarette. Oh, yeah, yeah, guaranteed. And she's like, I'm never going to, I'm never going to Wall Drug. Because when we go out West, I will say whoever got the advertising deal for Wall Drug. Like there's five states away that say, you know. Wall Drug.

Yeah, Wall Drug. And we saw one of my wife's like, we're never going there. So yeah, we actually, I think it was more for us than for anybody else. We actually have two billboards in South Dakota. And I don't think we get any marketing value, but just I think when my dad drives by him, he just really likes looking at them. We have one by wall drug. We have one right by wall drug.

We got a billboard. Honey barbecue is the best flavor. Yeah. And one other thing that I want to say, I hate about, like, beef sticks sometimes is you can't get these things open, worth of crap. You guys, easy peel. Yeah, my dad. My dad, you know, he's a damn German, he still just rip, you know, grab, bites it with his teeth. I'm like, it's easy peel. Yeah. Because I cannot stand when you get on,

get a pack of beef sticks and you're like. Yeah. Yeah, easy peel. Right. It's a big deal. Well, I think of it. What has the, obviously you didn't start out, uh, taking business management 101. No. No. And you have got people involved in transportation, distribution, processing. What has been the hardest part for your family as this thing has grown to try to get, well, try to get your hands and keep your hands around it? Yeah, it's a, that's the thing, like I said, we're ranchers and it's a whole, it's a different

business all the go. You can't even look, it's not, I mean, it's not really connected at all. you're, you know, you're running a, it's a marketing company, it's a distribution company, it's an inventory management company, it's an online marketing company, it's an online, it's, it's, and really when you get at the end of the day, you're in the human business, you're really not even in the bison meat selling business. You're, you're managing your humans. And so that has been a challenge, but the biggest thing is getting a system down and we're working on perfecting that right now because like, you know, on the ranch, like, you know,

We don't have, we're getting better, but you know, you don't have a system. You know, you don't have a, we go through and train everybody, but, you know, people don't have handbooks and we don't have checkoff lists because, you know, it's on the ranch. And, and that's where we have to take that next level up because people want consistency. Our people do. They want consistent. You know, we, we struggled that a little bit with a couple guys that we hired some kind of upper level guys we hired right away. We said, we want you to take this and run with it. and people some people can do that but that's a that's a unicorn that can do that they want structure and uh we didn't even know the structure we wanted we were trying to hire somebody to build a structure

out and you know a gunslinger but you know we just we needed more structure and that's now where we're that's what you know Alex and like they went out on the hills today and they're working on that right now to figure out better distribution um you know just you know all that the distribution without because you can lose you can lose all your profit just on inefficient distribution um and the online we're we're cracking down on that too as far as you know figuring out the the best value for our customers um we work on you know we have meetings you know once once a week once a month on figuring out what box and what prices and if we can switch to this size of box we get a better value and all that stuff. So it's just a constant, uh, constant value. We are, we are looking to,

you know, we would be looking to hire somebody that has, you know, you know, wants to, once to, we're all, we're always looking to hire. Yeah, good people. Good people that are, you know, really want to take, take it and, you know, you know, figure out even make it even better. Um, where obviously that's what we're doing right now as well as running ranches. and raising families and everything else. So, but it's been, like, our customers have been awesome. Like, people have just been great. Like, really, like, overall, like, you think, like,

they're really taking a chance, you know. And now, you know, now it's not so much of a chance. But early on, it was like, you know, you're just buying a box of meat from some dude that's sending it out, you know, and it's a miracle, it goes as well as it does. Like, you should not be able to ship a box of meat out to Florida in the middle of summer and it shows up frozen. So really, I mean, America's a great place that way, like where that's an option.

Like, no, I don't want Wagyu. I want bison delivered to my house frozen. I want it to be there in three days. It's just amazing. It is amazing. Yeah, that's what, yeah, people can say whatever they want about America. But try that and try that in Zimbabwe. It isn't going to work out too good or Russia or anywhere else.

So, but it's all, yeah, it's all just based back to we always. promise our customers are going to get a quality product, you know, satisfaction guaranteed. And they're buying it from us. Like when, when that always blows people's mind, like when they call, so my partner set up Alex, he set up our call center. And this is the call center right now. We're, we're changing it right now to get it to, you know, because now my mother-in-law, she's kind of tracking like shipping and stuff like that. And Richie also tracks shipping and and, you know, customer service, stuff like that. But right now our call centers, and this is in Alex's voice, press one for Scott Osmond.

And then there's just a pause. Press two for Alex Hine. So all the calls go to me. So I'll be out and, you know, whatever fencing and stuff and all. People get a call like, hey, I ordered on Friday and I haven't got my meat. I was like, I don't know. Yeah, we always ship on a Monday. And they're like, you know, a lot of our customers are, you know, from YouTube videos,

people have come out like Zach Johnson and Dusty and them. they're like, well, are you the guy from the video? I'm like, yeah, I'm the guy from the video. He's like, oh, okay. Or like if there's a problem. Yeah, they'll be like, oh, yeah, I didn't get this in my box or whatever. And they're like, wait, are you, are you, are you, you know, one? And I'm like, yeah, it's me.

He's like, oh, I just, I didn't, I didn't know I was actually going to be talking to like an owner. You know, I figured I was being at a call center somewhere. Like, yeah. People love that, though. Oh, yeah. Do you feel like that's the best way to market? Like, what's been the best way to market to people to want to buy a decode Cote of Pier Bison. Has it been the social media? Yeah, the social media because they want to see

what we're doing every day and we got to get better at, you know, I, for the most part, I post every day. I'd say you guys do a pretty damn good job for a bit, because I know for us it's easier because we don't have a business on top of farming, right? I mean, it's a job to make content, but having a business, having a ranch and then trying to document that as well. Yeah, it's not like we have a social media manager. Right. You know, you're just trying to do it all. I'd say you guys do pretty good. Yeah, and it's just been this week is just sucked because it's just been rough fires and just been dry. So I haven't been, usually I post every day, but this week I've been kind of rough on posting.

But that is the biggest deal is like the people want to see what you are doing. You know, and you guys know that better than anybody. The power of, especially the YouTube deal, that is just amazing. Like people watch like when YouTubers come out to our place and shoot a video, they watch that and then they call me and well even like the guy that I sold that Buffalo to he thinks he knows me right and I don't I don't know him and you guys would get that a lot more obviously but um it's just so it's it's that that's great that people have that connection because we're getting to where we're several generations removed from the farm now people don't have relationship with their food and you know where that's trending people want that relationship with their food. whether they're buying chickens for their backyard or whether they're buying meat from us or watching you guys raise food, especially raised food efficiently. You know, that's a big thing.

People want to talk about sustainability. But if it's not financially sustainable, it's not sustainable. So that's one thing that we try to talk about too is sustainability on all fronts. And, you know, you can't have generational farms without financial sustainability. and as well as sustainability for the environment. Well, I'll tell you what. It is amazing. Agriculture in general, I mean, it is.

It's amazing that we've built this system that we're able to feed as many people as we are. And it's only that's 1% of people feed the whole rest of the world, 99%. It is. It's crazy. Yeah, it shouldn't work as good as it does, especially with just, you know, how much. mother nature can be um it's a it's amazing like and and that's where that's a we're we're constantly talking about like we have meetings for dakota peer and we never like people talk about boring meetings i've never had a boring meeting with dakota peer because it's just like what can

we do you know what can we get better at and everything else and we're saying like okay so all these prices are going up and on the open market bison meat really isn't going up so we just have got to get more efficient. You know, a new meat company we bought, I think we have about 25 employees there. And we just have to get more efficient. We just do. They got to, you know, pump out more product, do it more efficiently, less waste. And that's just what the market constantly calls for. So that's what we have to do. And with Dakota Pier, we have to utilize all of the animal, you know, instead of turning those meat sticks, just end up ground, which, you know, we, that's, ground makes up 70% of the carcass. Yep, that's right. Ground steak and ground. And

It's trimmed. Yeah, it's ground. It's 70% is ground. So any way you can use that where people, you know, it's more palatable, whether it's sausage, whatever, because we do sell, that's what we sell more of anything is ground bison. That's our number one seller. I think the meat sticks might outrun it this year just because people are like, wow, these are actually good.

Can you get a subscription on these? Oh, yeah. You can get a subscription subscription on anything. And we're just changing up right now. So, like, our product isn't in these boxes yet, but I'm hoping within the next three weeks it will be. These are just our prototype boxes. And we also have a new label that actually looks good. We made that label in a day.

You know, with no claims on it, no nothing. But people also like the simplicity. That was a big, that's a big deal with our frozen meat. It's just our logo and it says ingredients, bison. People love that. You know, it's simple. And the thing we're not, that's what everyone's like, oh, you know, because like most of the people that market bison,

they just saw five years ago that bison was trending positively. on Google searches or whatever. So they quit selling t-shirts or quit selling exotic cars and they started selling bison. So they're buying bison meat from us wholesale and selling it. Like we don't have some crazy team of people

trying to figure out how to make, you know, our customers, buy more and all this stuff. We're just, we're trying to get people bison meat. We haven't spent any money on Google ads. I know our Facebook or Instagram ads. We haven't done that.

We relied mostly on our influencers. We send a lot of meat out to different people. I've seen that. Yeah. You know what? That's the ticket. Yeah. And I don't know.

It does suck, though, because which I don't use Google anymore, I'm a duck, duck, do guy. But when you, when someone types up, Dakota Pure bison,

three other bison meat companies pop up before. So it is a problem. And it's something we might have to start doing. I don't know. I'd probably be better off spending my money on trying to get a YouTube channel going or something like that. But I just, I don't want to commit to that.

That's what Zach and, you know, Dusty and all those guys, Oh, you got to have a YouTube channel. Like, if I'm not going to go all out on it, I'm not going to do it. Yeah, I was going to say, it'd be hard to sit down with Zach and see his success on YouTube and him say, hey, start this. Yeah.

It gets your wheels turning for sure, I bet. But the beautiful thing about what you're doing is, when you think about your consumer, those are the people that are on Instagram. So people who have limited time. a lot of mothers, a lot of single single person families, you know,

whatever, there are limited times. Those aren't the people that are going to watch a YouTube video. Now, the people that will, that will subscribe and we'll watch that,

they will, they'll buy your meat. But your bread and butter are people that make the meal decisions. And that's where Instagram and TikTok, those quick bits, people love those quick bits. And you're,

you're doing a lot, you're doing a lot right with going that route. And, you know, it's, all social media is not for everybody. You got to kind of find your niche. See, the biggest advantage really is people get it and it's good. Like, it's like, they're like, whoa, this is like, because they're kind of expecting elk, you know, no knocking on elk, but elk isn't, isn't nothing like our bison. You know, that's what they're expecting. They're expecting kind of a, a game, but it's, I mean, a lot of people, it's just, it's a, just a little bit better. I had the beef guys. It'll kill me.

Just a little bit better eating experience than beef is, even like the burger. So you eat the burger and you don't have no aftertaste. You can eat a half pound burger and you feel great. It's weird. I can't explain it. I don't know the science behind it. Like, because it's still 90 lean burger, but you get done eating it. You just don't have that film in your mouth.

And it's, um, it's just very interesting. That's what blows a lot of people's minds. They'll go make like a spaghetti or a casserole or a, something like that and there's no film or anything like that or even those meat sticks you know it's just you don't get that aftertaste and i don't understand what it is i mean i don't know they're they're i don't know it's just something about them but so that makes it a lot easier too because people get it and they they've either had a you know most people's bison eating experience has been their uncle shot one on a hunt in organ that was a 17 year old cow that was so lean and and they like oh yeah

bison's terrible yeah you know like all my buddies are all beef guys, you know, back home and... Dry. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, if I wanted to have a bison burger, I'd just go chew on my boot, you know, first. But I think some of them are coming around now.

They're coming around. Once you get somebody hooked. The America's meat really got them boys. Yeah, I was just going to say... I'll tell you what America's meat is Black Angus, you know, so... I was just going to ask you about that. I still have beef cows, so you guys can't come at me totally. Until you're fully out of that.

So your tagline, yeah, it's America's meat, which I think is freaking. awesome. What made you come up with that? And why do you think it's important? Really? I just kind of was sitting there and we didn't have really tagline. Like our tagline is like whatever, two South Dakota families on a mission to pray, you know, it's too long. I already forgot two South Dakota families on a mission pride, people of every earth bison meat. And then I was just kind of sitting there and I really don't know what. I was just like, we need something short, like two words like, you know, premium bison meat should drive your door. We have that and everything. But then it was just, I really don't know. just like, well, it's America's meat, you know.

And I don't, I still don't know. I think it might be for some people, though too much because it's Dakota, pure bison, and then America's meat. I don't know. I'm going to tell you. I love it. You know why I love it? Because I think American friendly businesses are going to prosper in the next 10 years.

I think, I think being, being on that side of it of pro America, I'm here. I'm for freedom. This is America's meat. me, I think it's, I think, yeah, you're going to piss off the other side, maybe. But you know what? How many people you're going to get there? You know what? I stand with this because.

Well, that was a thing early on that I told the guys, because I'm definitely out of our group. I'm definitely the most, I don't know what you would say. Idealist, I guess. You know, I was lucky to partner up with three of the most aggressive guys I know. My dad and my partner, they're very aggressive, very good businessman. But I was right out of the bad. like we're doing, you know, all of our merch is made in the USA, like, no matter what,

like it's going to be made in the USA. And the reason why we started this, obviously, we want to sell our own ranch raise animals, but it's really to put Americans back to work. You know, that's now that we have the ability, if we have the ability to do that to, you know, keep the FedEx guy going, keep the guy who sells a steel post going, keep the guy who makes the boxes. The boxes are made right there in Wisconsin. I know way too much about my box guys. That's for sure. I'm on the phone with them all the time. So, and just, just the 30,000 foot view, my 30,000 foot view Dakota Pure Bison is putting Americans back to work.

That's what we want to do. And we just hope to continue to grow, I guess. We already got plans on building a new facility, kill and process facility. We're working on that right now on the Block Hills area. You know, it's easy to make all these plans when you don't really know exactly. what you're doing too. So I'm sure we're going to learn a lot here in the next year. Well, I wanted to throw one more thing in there.

Jocko, perfect example of somebody that's America first. He has a boot brand. He has a clothing brand. I can't remember what it's called. Origin. Origin. All American made. That, all American made. And you're right.

I think that's a trend that's going to be going up in the next five to 10 years. Well, and I think that's, that's, it's what we need. Let's be honest. It is what we need. Well, it's ridiculous. It is. And the meat business, we've been in this model for, I don't know, 50, 60 years of consolidation, consolidation, consolidation, whether you're talking about beef, pork, poultry, whatever.

And pretty much generic products that, you know, you can't differentiate. Commodized. Yeah, the steak that comes from one packer versus another. and I think a reaction to that is as people, as we talked about, how people are further and further away from their food, but they want to know, they want the story, they want to know where it came from, and they want to know who's making that product.

And so your story, while it's unique, is becoming less unique, but that market is huge. Because I think most people, if given the choice of, wanting to purchase a product from an individual

versus buying it from a large conglomerate they're going to pick well that's like you guys you guys should already have your own line out I mean because they're like that's just like that guy

that that bought that buffalo from me he bought that buffalo because it was from me you know it's like that's why and people want it they want to know like hey you know this guy this is where i get my stuff from you know and yeah i think it's more about the it's more about the farmer and who you are i mean because we always say what we do is not any different than most of the guys around us that have hog barns and take care of pigs okay but okay you say that now this is another thing in in agriculture and i had a guy sit down and explain this to me like yeah we

just oh yeah this is what we do but i mean is there anything harder to do in amer in a in like as far as business as agriculture. I mean, if you sit down as a business model, I'm one of my dad's buddies, he sat down with a guy a long time ago, a Japanese businessman, he went over the business model of raising his cattle. And he got done,

he's like, well, wait, you're, you're not even guaranteed a profit. No. He said, well,

they could all die. He's like, oh, yeah, they could all die. He's like, why would you be in this business? I just had a guy asked me other day,

we were talking about how we were short on water and stuff out in our area. And, you know, he can't run as many animals. You have this advantage of just, is like, well, why wouldn't you just go somewhere else and raise by? So I was like, well, that's where I live. That's your home.

I'm all in. You know, it's not like we're going to explore another market somewhere. That's the thing that people I don't, they just don't get. There's legacy here. There's family heritage. There's generations before you that put in blood, sweat, and tears. Yeah, so you were saying, you know, like, oh, yeah, we raise, you know, it's like, because that's just what we do.

We put out this product, but it's a big deal. like getting a quality animal prepared and ready for the end consumer, then what the processors do is insane as well. I mean, they're obviously with the other commodities, they're trying to get it more cookie-cuttered out, and they've done that with pork, pork and especially pork and chicken,

and they're working on that and beef, but they're trying to get that cookie-cutter model, and it's amazing how efficient, because there's a big plant that we actually kill quite a few buffalo at, and going to that, it's just amazing what those guys have been able to do, how efficient they can get. And it has its ups and downs.

It does. It's just the way it is, but it's better than the opposite. Oh, yeah, 100%. Well, the way I explain it to people is when I was, so the company that we custom feed hogs for, I used to work for them. And people had no idea how many pigs.

Are you guys pipe stone? No. No. No. So the, my buddies from Minnesota. Yeah. The empire of the empire.

The empire. the empire of Pipestone. I'll tell you, this is two weeks in a row, but we had a vet that worked for us, the company that I used to work for, and his family's heavily involved in Pipestone, some of the founders of Pipestone. And when he was going to Iowa State,

when he started veterinary school, he's in this room, and there's like a hundred kids in there all going to veterinary medicine, and a whole bunch of them are Asian. And they're going through, and everybody's introduced himself. and he gets up and introduces himself and his last name sprunk and he says i'm you know so and so

sprunk and like these two asian students that are sitting behind him as soon as he says that they go oh sprunk much power because they're so known over there you know where they came from and oh we used to give him so much shit about that i'm a very big man in my country yeah that's right but people would ask you know about how many pigs we raised and and how that system worked and i would just tell them i said basically here's what you need to know about raisin pork raisin chicken raisin beef if you woke up tomorrow and you won the biggest lottery in history and you said i'm going to be the biggest pork producer i'm going to be the biggest chicken farmer i'm going to be whatever and you started in and you started building it money was no object you would give up way before you even got

close because it is literally like the frog in the pot of boiling water. And it's never the animals that are the cog in it. It's the people. It's the people 100%. Because there's so many moving parts. And pretty much everybody is that's hiring people and trying to get things to places. You're in the human business. And that's where even in agriculture, we have to do a better of all of us producers of training our employees and having a system. And this is something we're working on right now. And, you know, like we follow, you know, Jocco's leadership model, Jocco Willink, we're not working with them yet.

We're going too soon. But I've been to a lot of Jocco's events and stuff. As far as that leadership and training and, you know, growing up, you know, you guys know, you're 10 years old and, like we're short on guys and they put you in the windrow

and you're just going to figure it out. Well, you know, people don't want that anymore. They don't. It's one thing, you know, obviously if a kid grows on the farm, but one of the best employees I ever had was a kid who,

he was, what it helped, he was very intelligent, but he was an 18 year old kid, graduated high school, never been around agriculture before. And I just took the time and trained him. And I trained, I said, hey, this is a, you know, a $150,000 machine. You're responsible for it. You take care of it. And no one had ever given him responsibility before. And he just thrived. Like he just, he, you know, I showed him with you and he was very, they helped because he was intelligent. You know, that helps a lot. he was like you know 3-9 grade point average and stuff and and and we have to do that and I we have not always been the best on that especially around our place you know running and gunning and you know 9 10 11 12 employees in the summertime um so that's what we're trying to do in agriculture

in general we have to get better at that you know companies that are successful in the in the market they have a plan yeah you know this is what we do and that's um we have to get better at in general and eggs got to get better at. You know, that's why I have people come to me. I was like, well, how don't you just tell those guys what to do? If they don't do any fire, I'm like, no. That's the last thing you can do is just go, hey, go do that. You know, no, you got to, you got to, you got to, you know, work with people and,

and make them be a part of your operation because they are. You got to get them to buy in. It's the biggest misconception, I think, with people when they hear boss. Yes. They think, I'm commanding my employees. They're my bit. and I'm going to make them do whatever I want. It is completely the opposite if you want to be a good business.

You have to work for your employees, essentially. That's where we're lucky. We've, you know, the positive attitude around our place, you know, it's such a big deal right now. Because like when people show up, they're like, you know, they're like, hey, let's get, you know, we're feeling good. Let's round up some bison. Yeah. Well, let's, you know, there's no like starting out the day defeated. Right.

I had some that was younger. it's like a man we don't have that anymore and it's such a big deal. Culture is everything. Yeah, you can just like, there's so many things you can win when people show up and they're like, oh yeah, let's have a good day today. Let's get it done. You know, it's such a big deal. And that's where we have that right now.

I mean, we are looking for more help. I can tell you that I'm short pretty bad right now. So DM them, Scott. DMM, DMM, DMM, DMA, Dakota Pier Bison. Hey, if you want to work some bison, DMM. Yeah, well, we're looking for farmers too. I can tell you about that. So we have two South Africans.

skills. You got to be able to work a hammer. Yeah. We have right now, we have two South Africans that can't get a meeting with a consulate in South Africa. We have, you know, usually we get three or four South Africans. We got a Brazilian guy this year. Got a, a large man from northern Minnesota. He was born with the chains on his hands. There you go. We got a good, we got a good crew. We're looking for for more guys with, you know, experience helps. Yep, absolutely. Even on Dakota Pierce's side, I think, well, we're all just, if you've, if you've, find a good enough person, you got to get a place for them. You know, they'll, they'll sort themselves out.

Could you give farmers and ranchers some advice if they want to go out and start a direct-to-consumer business, what is something that you, what piece of advice would you give them to get them, help them get started, that you wish you would have known? Yeah. I mean, there's probably a number of things. Yeah, there's a lot of things I wish I would have known. I wish I would have known how much money it was actually going to take to get started. Uh-huh.

That's a big deal. What's the biggest cost? Processing fulfillment or? It's all of it, really, but really your inventory. The amount of cost, like. Money that you've got tied up. Money you have tied up that you're going to sell, but just getting caught up and then marketing. I mean, you can get a lot of money tied up in marketing.

You know, so I say, oh, yeah, we just send meat out to, you know, our influence. That's a lot. I mean, it's, you know, and you don't see the return on that right away at all. but it's getting that product and people saying it's a big deal. As far, you just really got to get in it and go kind of all out, really. I mean, if you're going to, there's no half in, half out. Like if you're going to do it, you got to go, it's about like anything else, really. I mean, just be disciplined, have a plan, do the things you say you're going to do,

you know, all that stuff. And make sure your calculator works. That's a big deal. Have a calculator. Make sure you know how to use it. Make sure it works. That's what I'd say. But then just like that,

make sure that you're, if you're promoting it, that you're selling a quality product or, you know, this or that, make sure that's what you're getting out there. And if you're, if you're raising it,

you're the one doing it, you got to have your name on that, got to have your brand on that. And the my biggest probably regret for Dakota Pures that we just didn't start it three years sooner. or five years sooner. Yeah. You know, that is, I mean, that's what,

just like about anything else, you know, it's just like the most, the most, the most, the most expensive land is the land you didn't buy 10 years ago. It's kind of similar. So, that's what I said. Yes. Yeah.

I'd get in, um, and just get your hands dirty. Uh, there is no training course on shipping meat out directly, you know, like I've, now that we're in, you know,

people actually talk to you now. Right. And, you know, that you're actually doing. it and they'll tell you things that they do but we do it we don't do it we do it we do it differently than other guys there are some guys that do it similar how we do it but everybody's different yeah um they know you take like some of the you know some of the big companies they'll they're either going you know no dry you know this is on the frozen side obviously but you know and that's saying none of this matters if

you don't have good relationship with your processor if you don't have the animals if you don't have the capital none of this matters you know so yeah it's a constant it's a constant it's a constant battle to fix the weakest point. How much do you think you need to start this business, if you don't mind me asking? Like what? I hate telling people. As much as you got.

Well, no, you know what? You always said, it's like when you're talking to the processors, you're talking to the distributors, when you call and these kids asked, they're like, hey, how do I get this thing started? And when you tell them, they weed out. So, you know, it scares people at this price, but you know what's going to weed out the guys that say,

oh, yeah, I want to do it, but are you going to actually do it? It just depends on what you're doing. You know, like that's where, you know, people figure out different niches. Like,

you know, like if we were just doing meat sticks, obviously, you know, it wouldn't, it would be like, but that's thing, what's going to be your thing?

You know, like, what is going to be your thing? Frozen meat. Yeah, frozen meat, you're just, it's going to be a lot of inventory,

man. Like, it just is. And like, um, depending on, I'm not, and what we do is not perfect.

Like, people are not asking me for advice, because we're still getting this deal figured out. But it's, it's, if, I don't expect to pay yourself at all for quite a while. And don't expect return on your animals that you, that you start out for quite a while. Once that ball gets rolling, yeah, it'll start flowing,

but just, just don't expect to be cutting yourself out checks for, it's like I'm talking on the animal side. Obviously, there's a lot of different things, but, um, and make sure, and that's the thing, those, nobody else cares, you know, what, what's coming and going, that processor, he needs paid, and you've got to have him, got to get their relationship. If you're going to try to start shipping animals out and doing your own thing,

your relationship with your processor, it's got to be mutually beneficial. Otherwise, they can process for a hundred other dudes that are lined up around the corner. So you've got to help him out when he needs up. You got to, you know, so that's the first thing, is have a good relationship of your processor. and you know guys are shipping directly out of their garages you know that's a lot of people do um we just got fortunate to have our relationship with our warehouse that we do because they got a massive freezer that we can store our stuff in and but they need paid every month they need their 50 per you know 40 dollars per frozen palate for a month and everything else so um just get in and go

hard is what i'd say um uh get to get to sell and if you don't just like you know if you don't have sales, nothing matters. Do you have your process or nothing matters? If you don't have a, have an online website that you're watching like a hawk, it doesn't matter. It all matters. It all matters. Every aspect of the business. I, you know, I obviously don't want to discourage people because, like, that's all I got. When I was talking people, everyone was just like, you do not want to do this. You know, that's what. And when people ask me now, I kind of am the same way, like, you might not want to do how hard it was going to be. Well, I guess that's a good question. If you knew how much, hard it was going to be. Would you still start today? Oh, yeah, probably. There you go. There you go.

I don't know. I've met so many awesome people, just different people. In the Buffalo industry, the people are so awesome. You know, it's a family. It is. The Bison industry is. I mean, it's such a small industry and the people, you know, like we have our annual conferences and stuff, and it's just, it's just always a good time and we have our sales. And, and, but, you know, if you're representing American agriculture, um, you got to put the best out there. And that's what we do. We only use our prime animals that we raise. And, um, you know, that's, that's what we do. We don't, we don't, we don't have issues with quality. You know, we just don't because that's what we, that's what we, that's what we, that's what we, that's what we, it's a, it's a heck of a lot

easier to sell a semi-loaded animals than it is just sell a box of meat. I can tell you that. Oh, yeah. I can totally believe that. It is. We didn't really touch on this much, but talk about the partnership between your family and Himes family. Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah, how'd that come about? Yeah. And what that kind of looks like with both you kind of doing this thing. Yeah. So, I think partnerships can be brutal. You know, they can. That's what I had a, I was talking with a guy and he says, all there's no way I could ever be in a partnership of somebody um but like ours you know like I said when we first got started they're very crucial for you know just advice and helping us get in and they're very like-minded people they're very good people um very aggressive people and it's just

kind of like you know we started posting pretty aggressive or pretty heavily on social media just on our ranch pages you know like antelope creek bison is our ranch which i don't really use that as much. You know, Osolantic cattle, which we were traditionally, that's like our beef cattle and organic farming side of things. So there's a lot of different names here, but we more stick with Dakota Pier Bison now. So we were posting on our ranch and people were just

constantly like, how do we get through bison? I don't even know. I didn't know. That's like most producers, you have no idea of where your product goes. You guys probably know better now, but like in the beef business, you have no idea where those calves end up when you sell them. And so even our bison, I didn't know.

They could be in Costco or they could be in some, you know, obscure chain on the East Coast, you know. And so people are constantly, how do we get it? How do we get it? How do we get it? And so, and, you know, obviously those people say that. Not everyone's going to pay for it, but, you know, they say that. And so we just started talking like, we got to figure something out. And we didn't know if it was going to be wholesale or retail.

But the most, the most obvious one was just shipping out directly people's doors. That's what we, we just saw that that was going to be, that was growing, you know, Butcher box was on the rage right then, everything else on the last steak. They've been at it forever. But it's just like, yeah, that seems simple. You know, why don't we do that? And it's extremely complicated. But the other problem is you can't go talk to distributors either unless you have something.

Right. So it's kind of the chicken or the egg theory big time. You know, a distributor, they just, they won't even, you know, they're, those guys. Yeah, because everything's at scale. They make their money and volume. That's another thing. The, the bigger, the faster you can scale. up the better. Economies of scale are just

a big deal. Well, that's where you've got to have that story if you don't have the economies of scale. So people want locally raised, whatever the word is, they want quality products raised and sold by the people who are raising it.

So that's going to be your advantage. But, oh, so the partnership with Himes, yeah, we knew that we need to do something. So we just formed Dakota Pier bison between us, four guys. and our families and and you know because they have a similar you know ranch ours they you know they have you know about 800 and 900 mother cows like we do and and so yeah we just a good fit yeah it's a

really good fit and uh kind of go back and forth you know we take some animals from our place and take animals from their place so um and we actually owns some animals together you know that we buy from other produce local producers and stuff like that so it's uh yeah it it it works really well and we all just, you know, no one exactly has, we're getting it now, like we're talking about structure, like where there's more structure now. That was one guy who came to work for me. He's like, so we're just like your articles of, what's it called? Incorporation. Yeah, whatever it was. And we're like, we don't have one of those, you know. And he's like, well, whose job is like, well, we all, you know, no one got to. Whatever fires got to be put out. Get after it, you know, and that's, that's,

that's what the job title is. So, yeah, Alex, he handles the more of the process. and, you know, trucking and stuff like that and, um, and pricing and stuff like that. I handle more, you know, obviously me and Kate do all the online sales, handle all that and our local area for wholesaling. And then we all work together, you know, on the bigger accounts and stuff like that. So, um, yeah, we've all just, you know, you all got to be willing to do your fair share and, uh, just get after it. So, and that's very rare to have a partner that you, you can do that with. It's not family. You know, so, um, yeah, there, you know, Alex, he's got wife and he's got a seven year old and a

three year old and like a one year old now. So very, you know, similar families and, and, um, one, you know, we're talking about sustainability. You know, the prices went down. We didn't have home for a lot of our animals. That was another reason why we did is, you know, the, you know, they don't the process where he don't, you know, have to take your animals. Yeah, right. And he can get them for somewhere else, especially if the, you know, the market kind of chokes up. So they were like, okay, you know, if this guy doesn't want to buy our animals, we'll sell them ourselves.

So that's, that's another reason. It was kind of out of necessity. Right. Did it. Because we were just talking about it, you know, kind of romantically. And it's like, oh, yeah, we got animals that we're going to go. Let's go get them in a freezer. Let's jump in.

Yeah. And you can talk about all you want, but until you get your first boxes order and get that first animal cut up and put in the freezer and fill out that cut sheet, you know, that's what you got to go. It's all talk. Yep. So. And like I said, we got a long ways to go. A lot of stuff to figure out.

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Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. I'd say you guys have came, you guys have a damn cool brand and you make some damn good. Oh, yeah. From what I've tried right here. I just want you to know

you've pretty much ruined any guests that shows up here now because Sawyer, as fast as he went through those beef sticks or those bison sticks, it's like, well, he's going to have his hand out, everybody that comes through the door, what do you got? What do you got?

Well, I won't need them because I'll just keep ordering these. I know what I'm saying? I might just be... And then fancy boxes. Yeah. Oh, you can you rip the top off. Oh, I got...

Well, how's... What did you show me the way? You ripped part of it off. Yeah. I ripped the top off. I thought that was the way to do. This is what I designed. Oh,

beautiful. Now, see, now we can retail ready. Good Lord. That's amazing. And the new labels, you're going to look pretty much like this.

That's, and I like the touch of the Facebook Instagram on each individual license. Yeah, I didn't get that on the box. Afterwards, I was like, how am I going to change that,

but the print plates are already. So you get these boxes from your process or not your distributor. He figured, no, no, we get these from a box company. Okay. It's a totally different deal. And they send them to the distributor. No, no, no.

We don't have any, like, we have distributors, but they're just. So how it works is, so, like, it's crazy, you know. But this has to be certified, this box has to be certified by the USDA 2 or inspected. Wow. And these sticks have to be put into this box at a USDA inspected facility. Yep, yep. And if you're going to sell them this way. And so, like I said, this is just some prototypes I had.

I brought from you guys. I had a couple hundred of them. But so what will happen is the boxes will ship from the box company to our processor. He will make these, put them in here. As soon as he gets, you know, a truckload done, we'll either come over and pick it up with our, which these don't have to be refrigerated, so we'll probably just LTL them back. but usually what we do is we wait until we got a you know we have a 22 foot box truck freezer truck pretty nice little trucks probably one of the nicest trucks in our place

because we got you know so we got like seven or eight it's not a truck like the regular yeah it's pretty nice and uh and uh so we'll go over and pick it up because we have our f450s two-wheel drive gassers that's what we beat around with just gas hogs that's what we beat around and and distribute to our grocery stores restaurants with but we have that big freight liner We go over and single axle. We go over, pick it up, pick it up at our processor, take her back to Rapid City, and then it goes out from there.

So distributors that we have right now, which are awesome dudes or local distributors, they're not the big boys. They're just picking up right from the warehouse, and then they go and they go wherever they go, you know. Yeah, wherever they need to go. Hopefully we'll have stuff out here pretty soon. You know, we're starting getting in Minnesota a little bit.

and mostly South Dakota right now. So you do the same thing with like frozen meat too. You have to have that box at the processor. Yeah. But our frozen meat, we have our own boxes, but they're just kind of big box. Oh,

so they don't need to necessarily know. But so like our individual packages. Yeah. Oh, but like it's different because since it's a custom order, we put, you know, there's no like direct contact,

you know, so our guy can put that. into a freezer or cooler is what we use like a styrofoam cooler put it in there and then that can ship out because it's not being sold as like hey i'm gonna grab one pat well they don't have any claims on them yeah you know it's just a box oh just a box gotcha if they have any claims then you have to have inspected yeah you got to have affidavits and everything else so so what's next what's the future well yeah how far do you want to go with this thing i mean just what we're doing I mean, we want to be everywhere.

We do. We want to be a household name when it comes to bison meat. The V name. The Bubba Gump of bison. Yeah. America's meat. America's meat, baby. So yeah, that's what we want to do.

We can keep growing. Obviously, you know, bison is a limited thing, which is good, you know, because not everybody can go and get bison and get started. And it's not for everybody. But, you know, we want to be able to sell all of our home raise animals. and, you know, any other, you know, animals we buy from local producers, you know, and be able to just use up our share of the market. And most of the people that are buying from us are buying bison meat for the first time.

So that's really cool. You know, they're seeing it through different channels. And it's pretty awesome what the feedback we get from our customers, they're just, they're so good. Like, we got some customers that just got them, descriptions and they're just in the game you know they know they know what's up and they're they're uh well i need to definitely order a box because i'm oh yeah i'm definitely intrigued and i've i've seen you guys and i those those spicing sticks i'm telling you guys you got to get a box you got to get a box

they're damn good uh i got i got two more questions for you i wanted to know so like you got this you've had this ranch right for generations do you feel like this business that you guys have build on the side gives your kids the next generation the opportunity to keep on ranching and make it. Do you feel like it's viable for the next generation? Because that's a lot of guys' goals. That's what our goals are. Obviously, I mean, hopefully my kids become, you know, whatever, orthodontist or something.

But, you know, you hope they want to ranch, but, you know, they'll probably become bankers or lawyers. I'm hoping that they're smart like their mom, you know, not like their dad. but no, that's the goal. We want to, you know, we've been on this land, you know, for generations. And that's why that word sustainability, you know, it's a buzzword right now. But we want to be doing this for generations and making the grass better every year, making the animals better, or improving the land and just exposing more people to bison.

And yeah, it's just, you know, that's why we were doing this so that, you know, the more meat we can sell, the more land we can fence, the more bison. We can have and the more ground we can improve, you know, because it does. I mean, when you when you practice the regenerative, you know, grazing practices with our, with our cow herds, it's, it's amazing the improvements can have when you have a plan and you go through with it. And yeah, the more, the more meat you guys buy, the more fence I can put up to make more cross fences. So there you go.

You know, you know, just buy more bison meat, save the world, I guess. Last, my last question, do you enjoy ranching more or running this business? What, like, what inside you makes you feel more fulfilled? I really like ranching. Yeah. I mean, I do. And farming, you know, I, uh, I enjoy that. Or I mean, what I probably enjoy more than all of that is just the, uh, you know,

coming up with a plan and just, you know. You're a builder. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and, and, uh, and, and, and, and, um, and. and, you know, getting humans together to accomplish a goal. That's, I don't think really, it really wouldn't matter what I was doing. I think that's what I like doing is putting people together to accomplish things for a capital gain.

You know, that's what I. And leave and provide somebody with a quality. There's something to be said about just visualizing something, dreaming about something, making it happen and seeing the end result of it. I do have a terrible sickness for wanting more land. Hey, you're not alone. I can kind of do whatever. I do whatever I can. You're not alone.

My wife's got the same sickness, too. It's a dang problem. That is a problem. You put two people in that together. My girlfriend's got the sickness of wanting to get a horse. What do you think about that? Should I get a bison instead? No comment.

I know. I need to get her on your wife's program. We just need more land, honey. I need more land. The best, you know, just tell her to, yeah, I'm not going to say it. Don't even start. I'm not going to say nothing. She might listen to this.

Well, Scott, that's a joke. That's a joke we have around our area because, you know, the FSA, first time farmer loans came out. Oh, yeah. And that was a big deal for us, you know, all of us guys, when we were in high school getting going. And the joke, the joke around town is like, yeah, those FSA loans, first time farmer loans, they, they, part of the terms and part of the agreements is you have to have a,

wife with a good job in town you know so that's uh that's the best thing uh especially for young guys starting out and we joke about that that's real it is trying to make a living in the beef business as a cowcalf operator and in south dakota you know that's what where we're at some of the best grass in the world and that makes it some of the most expensive grass in the world people want to people are coming in and that's where they want to run animals that's where their gains are going to be best parasite load is low and so if that's where you want to go make your living, you know, it's slim. That word sustainable is, yeah, that's very real.

So that's our, that's kind of our joke to, don't, don't blow your FSA note in Vegas and get a good gal with a job in town. You might make it, you know. Hey, that's pretty good to live. That's a good quote to live by. All right, guys. Well, Scott, it's been an absolute pleasure. This was a freaking awesome episode.

Thank you guys for having me. I, I loved this. I thought it was great. I thought it was awesome. Oh, yeah. I also forgot to do the disclosure. Do the disclaimer right way. I'm not responsible for anything I say on this podcast.

I'm not smart. Well done. Hey, that's a good way to end it right there. No, no blood on your hands. But no, seriously, this was, I hope you guys got a lot of value out of this. For anybody that's in farming or wanting to start a direct consumer or anybody that didn't know shit about it, I feel like this added a lot of value to you. So share the show, guys.

Go follow the Cody Peer Bison and pick up some of these these Bison sticks or some frozen meat. I'm telling you, Honey Barbecues is the move. Use code Barn Talk 5 for 5%. There you go. 5% off. I guess I'll text Kate right now

and have her make that code. Yeah, Barn Talk. Use the code Barn Talk. Here we go. First sponsor right here. Yeah. So pay the fee guys. Go follow Dakota Provisin.

We'll see you back here next Friday for another awesome episode. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, of course.