Cattle and Concrete Breed Success | The American Rancher

[Music] coming up we're cattlemen that got into the precast concrete business feed troughs are something that get a lot of use cox concrete's one we we went with for sure it's changed our whole feeding operation we've saved 40 of time feeding now since we've gone this way these are outlast me and i plan on never leaving so i'd stay there forever see how cattle and concrete breed success for one texas family next on the american rancher hello and welcome to the american rancher i'm pam minnick years ago rancher larry cox and his wife paula started a precast concrete company just east of dallas in mount pleasant texas their goal was simply to generate more income for their growing family and in time they discovered a niche market in making concrete feed and water troughs for agriculture now 80 percent of their business is ag related business is booming and the family is still ranching [Music] uh i was born raised on this place my my mother and daddy uh had a had a ranch down about five miles from here and then they came this one came for sale in the 30s and then they bought this ranch and and then they traded two or three hundred acres of land for herd of hereford cows and uh so they always had herefords the whole time we were we were growing up my daddy was one of the first ones that bought some brahmin bulls and started crossbreeding these her from cows back in the early 1960s so henceforth later on in years he kept replacement heifers out of this cross-breeding program that he had and so came up with these f1 cows and they were really really nice calves and he was one of the first ones that was kind of instrumental in our part of texas that got the crossbreeding program started when my daddy got old uh old and decided he wanted to quit well that's when we took the cattle business over and then we were kind of getting a little up on a pet age and paula was 41 i was 46 and so we had a new baby boy and here came our cowboy i absolutely loved riding around looking at cattle with dad and granddad and grandma and we'd all work cows together and i knew from a young age that my passion was was cattle i knew my passion was agriculture and growing up here was was something that i'll forever be grateful for and i say i was born in the beef cattle deal and the agribusiness from day one and have never looked back larry and paula raised three children on the ranch charlotte ryan and john well we knew john would be an engineer from the timeless from the time he was born always taking things apart always taking things apart putting them back together and he was uh so he went ahead and went to texas a m got his mattress in mechanical engineering and now he's working for space ag and then charlotte was uh charlotte came along she was a always a detail-oriented person and whenever she went off and we got our accounting degree and came back well she opened up her office and operated it for a couple of years and decided to work for cox concrete and it's been a blessing we call her the cfo of cox concrete but she has much many more duties than that i joined the company back in 2004 so i've been here a long time and over those years i've done a lot of things i say i've done everything from being rebarred cut wire to doing the financial statements and the tax returns so as the company has grown though my roles have primarily become financial in nature i'm a cpa so that's really where my strengths lie charlotte's son tripp keeps busy on the ranching side the cox family develops hereford seed stock for commercial buyers and they also raise champion show cattle we have quite a bit going on with all these show cattle and then behind the scenes we're growing much more calves to be sold into the show cattle business and beef business like his uncle ryan tripp has a passion for agriculture and his dedication to the family show cattle program is paying off which my recent show which was the biggest show i've been to was in denver colorado that was quite an adventure [Music] when ryan gray away in college well he he came back and uh jumped in it with both feet and they're both they we've turned it over to them a couple of years ago and they're a perfect match graduated from high school and served as texas ffa president in 1314 and took off a complete year of college traveling the state visiting to students about premier leadership personal growth and career success through agricultural education and then went on to texas a m to major in agricultural sciences and minor in ag economics and then i came back to the the concrete business in may of 2018. my passion is production agriculture and i think that's what's so unique about our brand is that we're cattlemen that got into the precast concrete business and are providing a quality product for everyday american ranchers to that supply the most wholesome protein source there is in the world and that's our role and what gets me up every day allows me to pursue my passion in production agriculture yeah we were making construction products which was a septic tanks culvert pipe manhole material for all precast concrete for city sewer systems and so uh there was a manager of a of a retro beef cattle outfit here came to me and asked me if i would make him some concrete feed troughs and i said well huh that's kind of an interesting idea i said yeah i'll make a few for you so he brought me a form and so i poured concrete feed trials for this this outfit for a few weeks and got enough to fit their needs and and he asked me if i wanted to buy this farm so i said yeah well you know why not i'll buy this form so about the farm we poured a few more we had 30 or 40 probably stacked up out there once we got to selling these concrete feed trials on skids well the next ranch over would see these and they would buy them and the next ranch would bomb and so you know after 20 20 years of doing that well i mean word of mouth has been great up next you can't go six inches in that trough without finding reinforcement you can handle all these things with a front end loader and still last over 20 years see how every cox concrete trough is made that's after the break here on the american rancher welcome back to the american rancher ryan cox and his sister charlotte have built upon the foundation of their father's success in making high quality concrete feed and water troughs for the beef cattle industry whenever i joined the company in may of 2018 my primary role was sales and marketing and when i started we had a dealer network of about 23 dealers scattered across the southern united states through hitting the pavement connections from showing cattle college and ffa we've built that dealer network up to about 43 stores scattered across the southern united states with more much more launching in the start of 2022. having ryan join the company has been absolutely wonderful he came right in and kind of started focusing on sales and marketing he loves to meet people and talk with people so that was a really good fit for him since he's been here he's been able to more than double our dealer network and even add a couple of new products that customers were needing and now he is actually spearheading our building expansion and has some more new products in mind as well our primary line of products is agricultural products we manufacture three basic lines of feed troughs of inline bunks or pasture bunks we also manufacture a line of water troughs as well that scale anywhere from 60 gallon water trials up all the way up to nrcs approved 550 gallon water trials as well for our larger operations or someone that just needs the reservoir as well we pride ourselves in making american made products with american-made steel american-made couplings and a domestically made cement as well so when you purchase from us you're purchasing american-made products with american materials all right here in mount pleasant texas right across from our ranch from cattlemen what makes our product very unique and makes us the stoutest and most durable trough on the market is our one-of-a-kind rebar reinforcement in our standard ten foot by three foot leg trough you can see here laying in this form here it's a custom bent custom welded cage goes in each individual trough of 120 feet of number three rebar that you can't go six inches in that trough without finding reinforcement that goes all throughout the trough and ties each individual leg back into the trough which is made for durability not only for rough livestock such as rodeo livestock but also relocation if you've got to load those things up and go to different places across or even if it gets too wet in one location you can handle all these things with a front end loader and still last over 20 years due to our rugged rebar reinforcement design and concrete that we use over 7000 psi mix dad poured the first feed trough around 1985. we stopped using it on the ranch in 2018 due to the design and the quality that product that we make here at cox concrete these are our inline feed bunks designed primarily for the feed yard sector or stocker operations so that producers can line them into end and then run down the fence line and feed the cattle without have to actually entering the pen these have been our most popular product in the last two years and we see a lot of people starting to pick up on these also with cow calf producers with the older generation so that way they don't have to get into the pin with the cattle or enter the pasture and they can feed from the outside especially with the advancement of vertical mixers and bulk silage as we feed these from outside so every morning we strip our forms from the previous day everything is poured upside down so what's happening here is our crew is flipping the forms over and taking the products out and then they're cleaning up the forms any from any residue that is left over from taking the product outside of the form and then they'll flip these forms back over and put them back together they'll put the lubricant back on and put the steel reinforcement back in there to prepare for pouring this afternoon so brandon here is our batch plant operator brandon's father has actually worked for us for 30 years and brandon's now come in on his one-year anniversary here with us at cox concrete what's brandon's main role here is batch plant operators ensure that the right amount of pea gravel and sand and cement goes in the batch plant as well also the consistency of the concrete you'll see him reach in and check it every now and then make sure the slump and the workability of the concrete is right to go into all these forms and make sure we have a quality finished product at the end of the day we'll come in we'll dump the concrete in and at that time they're also still checking the concrete for consistency from where brandon brought it over from the batch plant then you'll see levi tate pick up the vibrator he's the vibrator technician that makes sure that it gets vibrated the right amount because you can vibrate one too much you can also vibrate one too little and get an ugly finished product and then we all come together and trowel it out to make sure it's a finished product for our end user whether that be through a dealer whether it be direct through a rancher uh that way you've got quality products sitting in your pasture that'll last you for years to come so elohim is our shop for him and what he's doing now is he's putting the inlet and the outlet in all of our water troughs all of our water trials are plumbed with a one inch double threaded schedule 80 coupling from the bottom so that way you can hook the water up from underneath prevent from freezing or livestock from having access to where the water comes into the trough there's also a two inch drain plug that's flush with the bottom of the trough so that way you can easily drain all the water out when you need to clean them with business steadily increasing at cox concrete truck driver billy thompson is staying busy today billy and the crew are preparing a load of j bunks for delivery to oklahoma i came to work here march of last year almost a year and a half ryan called me to come to work for him because he needed a driver part-time and i liked the job so much that i just left my truck over here all right the load we're sending out today is a load of 10-foot j bucks our feedlot style bunk going to kurt wilson in ringling oklahoma where he specializes in the stalker operation where he's straightening cattle out before he sends them on to the feed yard kurt's been a long time customer and very proud to have him on board in his operation after the break heck these are outlast me and i plan on never leaving so i'd stay there forever see what long time customers have to say about their cox concrete feed troughs you're watching the american rancher stay with us [Music] welcome back to the american rancher the cox family from mount pleasant texas are ranchers that started a precast concrete company they make feed and water troughs for agriculture and with years of proven durability and use as their guide cox customers keep coming back for more we're really excited about the future of our operation as we add more lines of feed trials to fit more producers needs and also add more sizes of water troughs that fit different applications as well as landscaping opportunities such as large-scale planters so our primary customers are beef cattle producers of all shapes and sizes whether that be the hobby farmer that have 10 or 15 cows all the way up to full-size feed yards that are providing seed stock for cattlemen whether it be bulls replacement females we've also seen a big uptick in stalker operations taking the liking to our in-line feed bunks that straighten the cattle out before they go into the feed yards we primarily ship our products in texas louisiana arkansas and oklahoma however we have shipped as far as florida and california as well well here at 44 farms we develop our bulls on pasture and in order to do that we got to be able to have bunks that we can move around adjust to whatever capacity we have at the time and then certainly whatever feed we're feeding at the time it has to be somewhat flexible these particular bunks that we have right here right now are over 10 years old and there's no telling in that in that 10 years they probably have been moved 20 times anywhere around where we feed they have really worked out well heck these are outlast me and i plan on never leaving so i'd stay there forever heartbrand runs a seed stock operation of about 3 000 mother cows and we sell about 500 bulls per year as well as another 500 females per year we developed those heifers developed those bulls right here on site so when we were building this new division we looked at multiple options and and cox concrete's one we we went with for sure it was a clear choice heart brain is is fairly large operation and feed troughs are something that get a lot of use daily sometimes multiple times a day with the cattle bulls cows and feed trucks so something that has to hold up so the durability of these feed trough was was necessary uh when we were making that choice and and cox was definitely the one that rose to the top got a lot of good use out of them the main thing with these is the back side is is higher than the front side and they don't cattle don't push feet out of the bunks difference for me anyway yeah we've been in the business since i've been old enough to do it i taught animal science for 11 years as an ag teacher at duncanville high school then me and her started uh it was bbs short horns now it's gkb cattle company we've been in this for about 35 years as of right now that's by our adult married life and uh we raise hereford cattle we raise brangus cattle we raise brahma cattle and uh we have a variety of what we do we you most time we serve the commercial bull bars and we do show hereford cattle here at this place at walt's ahachi this is where our hereford operation is and we run a bull feed yard we run our recip cow herds and we do most all the restaurant herefords here at walt zahachi we were trying a lot of feed troughs we've had the plastic in them we've had some with the lighter deal where kathy can move them around and it got to the point where we were trashing them after about six months they were trashed out for us we found out that the cox concrete troughs simply hold up to our herd stars our herd bulls and when we're feeding a big group of cattle and they're easy to move with a front end loader we have been using them probably six seven years and it's worked out great and the customer service has been excellent not only do they have a good product we enjoy working with their staff as well and it's highly organized and the other thing is i'll say about ryan and them and their family they stand behind their product it's changed our whole feeding operation completely different work we saved probably 40 of time feeding now since we've gone this way because we can take our trucks put out the feed and go on the bulls are not moving around where you got to stop and change the trough or those a bull slides a trough underneath your pickup we don't have that problem no more these are set we sit make mounds out on the dirt we drive our trucks up our tractors feed them and we're done and we have not had to replace any of their troughs and we're going on right now six years on a bunch of them meanwhile in ringling oklahoma billy thompson is pulling up with kurt wilson's load of jbunks ryan is close behind to meet up with kurt's business partner chase mansfield to get a first-hand look at the operation and lend a hand in delivery chase how are you sir good good to see you good and where are these bucks going to go straight down this alley right here we'll unload them right over here look good yes sir we appreciate you you bet my partner and the family that owns this place here is the wilsons he is a fourth generation rancher so they've had this place since right around statehood here about two years ago we decided we were going to uh do some renovations expand a little bit and uh we began looking at some companies to replace some of our old bunks that had become worn and broken and we stumbled upon cox concrete they've supplied us with about 300 bunks as well as several loads of water troughs always the same product always consistent as well as quality it's the same product every time the bunks we were using were a much smaller bunk not quite as heavy duty thing we like about the cox concrete bunks is they have a much higher back gives us a wide range of animal to put in there you know anything from a 250 pound calf all the way up to a 1200 pound steer it ensures that they stay in there the calf can't get through and uh holds a lot of feed chase we really appreciate your business with with all the products you've bought from us and it's folks like you all and that we're able to do business on a handshake and that's really what drives us towards our passion providing a quality bunk so that way you'll get y'all's job done that's all the time we have today to learn more about cox concrete's complete line of ag and construction products log onto cocksconcrete.com and to learn more about us visit our website theamericanrancher.com or connect with us on facebook i'm pam minnick for our entire american rancher team thanks for joining us we'll see you next [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Superior Productions

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Id: RTMa0WJDD2k

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021