Introducing your South Central Kansas cattle call!  I am a rural, mixed animal, veterinary practitioner residing in Pratt, KS.  Approximately 65% of my practice income comes directly from the cattle industry.  Our area is a unique area where farming country meets range country which makes this a pretty good area to raise cattle.  My cattle clients range from multi-generation producers to hobby farmers with herd sizes from 4(he raises Dexters) to 1000 plus.  The great thing about our area is that most of the people here are at most only one generation removed from the family farm; I know that that is the exception and generally not the rule in America.  I recently listened to Trent Loos at our county Farm Bureau meeting and felt that I had done a rather poor job at being an Ambassador for Agriculture and I felt challenged to do more.  Interestingly enough got the call to join the Cattle Call almost the very next day!  Where I live it is easy to forget that the general public has no idea what we do.  Check out Trent Loos at www.loostales.com and www.facesofag.com .  Very worth the effort!

My first horse I ever bought along with my kids, 30 years old and still going!

Aside from the veterinary clinic my family and I are very active in our community.  My wife and I have four children ages 8-almost 2, so we are busy with 4H, jr rodeo, school, and raising our kids to share the same passion we have for agriculture and the rural lifestyle.  We also have a small herd of Angus cattle and a very large horse herd! I wouldn’t live anywhere else, the people here are great!  Several years ago when Greensburg KS was basically wiped off the map, there was no shortage of local people to help in anyway needed.  One outside relief team made a comment to me about how they could not understand how everyone got together so quickly to meet the immediate needs.  I told them it was quite simple, we were just trying to be good neighbors and that’s how we do it around here.

The main reason I wanted to join this blog was to do my part to help educate the general public about what we do as well as put a face to all of Agriculture.  They need to know about our lives and how fulfilled we are as well as the challenges and victories we face on a daily basis.  The media paints a very ugly picture of Production Agriculture and I want to do my part to correct the misconceptions that the general public has.  American Agriculture produces the safest, most abundant, and most economical food in the world and I think that we are getting better and more efficient all the time due to the application of scientifically proven methods and our passion for what we do!  So Get Involved!

Picture from local Kids Day on the Farm