06/19/2023
A LOVER OF THE CATTLE BUSINESS, Larry Ogle has done a little bit of it all. He’s long operated a 3000 head preconditioning facility that he uses to straighten his cattle, as well as some customers’ cattle.
Larry Ogle Buys, Sells, Feeds,
Straightens Cattle, Loves It All
By Colleen Schreiber
Republished From 12.09.2021
BOWIE — Seventy-five-year-old Larry Ogle has been in the cattle business all his life. When he graduated from high school, he thought if he could just own 100 cows one day, he’d be a “going son of a buck.”
He’s done that and much more, but he’s quick to point out that none of it is his own doing.
“I’m just lucky, and the good Lord took care of me,” says Ogle.
For the first 40 years of his career, he owned and operated the livestock market in Bowie. He loved it, every aspect of it. He sold it some years back and has since been running more cattle of his own and operating a preconditioning facility that he uses to straighten his cattle, as well as some customers’ cattle.
“I just love watching the cattle grow and do good,” says Ogle.
Born in Jacksboro, his parents moved the family up the road to Bellevue, when he was six, where they owned and operated the local grocery store. In its heyday, Bellevue had 500-some people. Back then, most everyone had a small farm and a pen of milk-fat calves. His father bought those calves and hauled them to the locker plant in Bowie. He’d then take the carcasses to his grocery store, quarter them and sell them to customers in his meat market.
Young Ogle often went with his dad on these buying excursions. Thus, he became immersed in the cattle trading business early in life. Always a worker, he mowed lawns till he was old enough to help cut meat in the family’s meat market. Eventually, he took over the cattle buying.
“My dad used to say if you do it on your own you learn quicker,” says Ogle.
His father fell ill when he was finishing up high school. He didn’t care anything about going to college anyway, as he knew he was going to “mess with cattle” and that’s what he did.
He lost his father when he was 21. By then he’d married. Loneta Denson was a local girl who too was more or less raised in the livestock business. Her grandfather partnered with the elder Ogle trading cows in the country. When her grandfather retired out due to age, her dad partnered up with Ogle’s dad. Thus, the two have known each other essentially all their lives and they’ve been partners in life and in business for the last 54 years. Today, the operation is a family affair with his daughter Julie and son Chris, also partners in the business.
Ogle bought the Bowie sale barn in 1973 and later built a new one. By then, Fort Worth had closed and a lot of the other local auction markets had as well. Ogle had a good area from which to draw customers. There were many years where, in the fall of the year, they’d have 3000 to 4000 head on the yards and would sell long into the night.
What he enjoyed the most was seeing how high he could sell the cattle for and pleasing his customers. He was quick to point out though that he didn’t always please all of them all the time.
They never sold many really big groups. Rarely did a customer have enough to make a pot load. Most were the small farmer feeder types who typically ran 40, 50, 60-some cows.
“The smaller operators are who made our deal good,” says Ogle.
The hard work and long days never bothered him. However, as much as he loved the business, he finally came to the realization that his body was simply worn out.
“I’ve had two shoulders and one knee replaced and I need one knee and a shoulder now,” says Ogle. “Walking on that concrete, pulling that rope, it works on you.”
Those early days of buying cattle and learning by watching cattle sell through his livestock market made Ogle a sought-after buyer. Beginning in 1987, he bought feeder cattle for Cargill.
“It’s not what you know but who you know,” says Ogle.
Cargill's order was for the “best thing that walked,” says Ogle. During their heyday, he was in the market for them almost every day. He’d buy some out of the local livestock markets, but his biggest deals came out of the country.
Knowing the weigh-up, the kind, the condition and what they’ll feed for is what makes a good feeder buyer, says Ogle.
After he sold the sale barn, he also straightened a lot of cattle for Cargill. Now he buys cattle for Friona Industries and Green Plains. He sells a few to some locals as well as a feedyard in Dalhart.
Friona’s order is mostly for a 550-650 weight heifer and most times that heifer is already off the cow, but he also sells them a lot of country cattle straight off their mothers. Every customer’s order is obviously different and while some want the best that walk, others have learned how to make just as much money on the lesser quality by getting them bought right, he says.
Ogle isn’t necessarily biased on any one particular breed except that he stays away from Longhorns and Longhorn crosses.
“There are so many crosses in these blacks, but it’s pretty easy to tell an Angus cross when you see it,” says Ogle. “Whether or not that's the best, the Angus breed has the best program right now.”
He’s there for almost every shipping as it enables him to accurately describe the cattle to the buyers. The Ogles have their own trucks, but they hire out a lot as well, though today it’s nearly impossible to find a trucker he says.
“We try to book cattle two weeks out in order to get a truck.”
While owning the livestock market, Ogle ran cattle of his own. For his cattle, he prefers a calf that’s not carrying much flesh, that has a little age and has good conformation. What he gets bought one week he tries to sell the next week for 60 to 80 days down the road. He typically doesn’t hedge but rather tries to keep sold up to date.
“That way we usually don’t get our head pulled off,” says Ogle.
He built a preconditioning facility after he sold the barn. His plan was to use it strictly for his cattle but then others began to come to him as well.
“You never make anyone happy in a preconditioning yard,” says Ogle. “It costs too much, and I tell them when they send them that they can do it themselves cheaper, but still they come.”
Ogle doesn’t just straighten calves. One customer sells hamburger meat, and he feeds them at the Ogle facility for a while. Another customer has some broke-mouth cows that he puts on feed to hit a hole in December and January when the packer cow market is typically at its best.
Currently, he’s set up to run 3000 head through the facility. He stays full year-round swapping out every 60 to 90 days.
Again, on his personal cattle, most are sourced in a 100-mile radius of Bowie. He buys mostly out of the country and most straight off their mamas.
One of his steadfast rules, his hedge so to speak, which he does his best to stick to is he doesn’t buy cattle in September and October. He also tries not to take any customer cattle in during that time.
“I don't care what we do, what kind of drugs we use, we’re going to lose five to 10 percent of the cattle if we start them before our first hard freeze,” says Ogle. “Before that, we might have a 40-degree night and an 80-degree day. That kind of fluctuation just kills them. After the freeze, we’ll get along pretty well.”
Even the hot July and August days are no comparison to the fluctuating fall temperatures, he says.
Shipping fever in the fall of the year is his biggest issue. Typically, 70 percent of the cattle are treated on arrival. If they’ve had a long haul, say from Florida, Georgia or the like, the cattle are typically mass treated.
His facility is such that he has smaller pens used mostly for when the cattle first arrive, particularly for calves straight off their mothers.
“It takes a pretty good fence to hold them,” he points out. After a couple of weeks, they’re typically moved to one of the larger traps ranging from 60 to 120 acres in size. His customers prefer the bigger traps.
“Cattle will straighten quicker in the traps than they will in the smaller pens,” he says.
The coastal Bermuda traps are overseeded with ryegrass which when timely rains come affords him grazing essentially year-round. Fertilizing the traps is not necessary as the cattle typically provide enough of a fertilizer.
On other coastal pastures he fertilizes normally. This year he bought his fertilizer early. Some would say he’s smart; Ogle says he’s just lucky.
“Somebody is looking after me,” he reiterates.
The cattle are started on a ration of cottonseed, corn, a little ground wheat and a ground bakery product south of Dallas that comes the same every time with about seven percent fat that averages 14 to 15 percent protein. He uses mostly coastal hay, maybe some wheat hay whatever is available for starting calves as well.
He tries to buy all he can of the needed ingredients out of the country, most of which comes out of the Denton, Justin and Greenville area, all near Fort Worth. He doesn’t have enough onsite storage for a year, so he never manages to get enough bought.
Keeping the pens clean is an ongoing process. He stacks it and restacks it the next year and then hauls it off. Some he sells but mostly he gives it away.
He has some shades and intends to add more.
“One guy ran a test on them and said they didn’t help, but I like them,” says Ogle. “The cattle can at least get under there and cool off from the July and August heat.”
As for working cattle, his motto is “easy and slow.” He and Chris have been to two Bud Williams schools and Williams spent considerable time on the operation itself.
“It changed the way we did business,” says Ogle.
Horses for working the cattle were replaced by 4-wheelers some 15 years ago, he figures.
“When I was young and could ride a horse we used horses, but now we can cover so much more ground with 4-wheelers,” says Ogle. “The cattle get used to them after a couple of days.”
As is the case for most everyone, finding good labor is a challenge. When he was operating the livestock market, he had high school kids who worked for him.
“They all knew what to do,” says Ogle. “Now few of them know anything.”
These days just finding someone willing to learn who is willing to put in an honest day’s work is difficult. Now the few that he can even find simply want to draw a paycheck. Others aren’t even interested in that.
“The government is making it too easy for them not to work,” he insists.
Right now, he has two good hands; one has essentially worked for him since he owned the livestock market. In all he has four hands who work at the preconditioning facility, who feed and keep all the fences up. They also do all the farming and maintenance work. Then there are three other hands along with himself, his wife, and daughter, who take care of the preconditioning facility.
“It’s just like a dairy, seven days a week all day long,” says Ogle.
Another of Ogle’s loves is trading cows. Every fall he buys 1000 to 2000 northern cows, breeds them in North Texas to sell as fall calvers at five to seven months bred. He sells out every year.
He typically buys a range of age classes from coming twos to coming fives. He does a lot of the buying, but he also has a guy out of Montana who buys for him and another in South Dakota. It costs those northern operators $400 to $500 to winter a cow so it makes sense to sell some each year, says Ogle.
He runs the cows mostly in north central Montague County and west over into Clay and Archer County. He’s not knocking Montague County because, well, that is where his roots are planted, but he contends that Clay County is probably the stoutest year-round country.
“Highway 59 is kind of the break. in the plainer land,” says Ogle. “The calves that come from east of highway 59 look the same as those west of highway 59, but the calves to the west of 59 will be 40 to 50 pounds heavier.”
Ogle also runs a lot of cattle on wheat pasture as well. He farms about 3000 acres of wheat though he claims not to be a good farmer. He’s never used a grain drill. Instead, since the 1970s he’s just broadcast the seed.
“I’ve always had grazing,” says Ogle. “I don’t know if I’ll have any this year. It’s got to rain.”
He likes to start planting right after the Old Settler’s Reunion in Henrietta, which is on or about the 15th of September.
“It always rains then,” he quips.
It didn’t this year.
“Last year it was dry, but I had grazing by December,” says Ogle. “This year it will be January or February.”
This year he bought some little three weights to go to wheat. They’re in the preconditioning facility weighing 400-450 now.
His policy is if he can’t sell them as feeders, he’ll feed them if he thinks there is money to be made. At one time Ogle owned interest in three feedyards, one in Garden City, Kansas, another at Dimmitt and a long time ago the nearby Clayco Feedyard.
“The feedlot business is good if you don't feed all the cattle yourself and you have customers,” says Ogle. “Nowadays about all that's left are the big corporates.”
He’s quick to note that he’s not going to badmouth them because he buys for a few of those corporate types. He also contends that all feedyards have to have at least some relationship with the packers. Simply put, “You’ve got to so you’re going to.” Then adds, “As my dad in law used to say there are two things that will take care of themselves. One is a mesquite tree and the other is a packer buyer, and I believe he was right,” says Ogle.
He’s heard all the theories about why 2021 has been such a tough year for those in the cattle business. He expects COVID had a lot to do with it, but he also opines that the packers likely could have killed more if they’d wanted to. He had a good many on feed during the wreck and while it wasn’t pleasant, he’d been through wrecks before. He’s thankful to have a good banker, one who has been with him since high school.
He’s never been one to hedge cattle. In fact, he doesn’t much believe in the board as he contends there’s no way to use it as a tool in the way it was meant to be used.
“There are too many funds pushing it one way or the other,” Ogle opines. “They’ll run it up or run it down, and it’s not anywhere close to the true market.”
He stops short of saying the packers need to be broken up, but he’s of the firm opinion that more packers are needed, and they need to be owned by different people.
“We’ve got to have them, but there’s no need for them to be making $700 a head when we’re losing $200 a head,” says Ogle. “The retailers are loving it too. Hamburger got up to $8 a pound at one point.”
The local butcher shops are making a comeback and he predicts that trend will continue. He knows of one opening up the road in Henrietta and another in Nocona, both of which have government backing. He predicts those types will survive.
“You can’t imagine the number of people from Dallas-Fort Worth who go to those kinds of places looking for all-natural or grass-fed, some want grain-fed. They want to know where it came from.”
Ogle has seen plenty in his 50-some year tenure in the cattle business. He says the biggest change has been in the quality of cattle.
“The quality is better all over the world,” he says.
The one change that disheartens him the most is that there are a lot fewer farmer-feeders.
“Used to they'd come to a sale barn and buy one, two, three loads for themselves to run on wheat,” says Ogle. “That doesn't exist anymore. Also, a lot of them fed a few cattle. Now you’ve got to be in with the corporates and it’s hard to get in.”
Also, he sees more and more splitting up or selling off of the big ranches. Additionally, more and more people are moving out of the Metroplex every day. Bowie, which is about an hour from Fort Worth, is growing a little.
“Decatur is just 28 miles down the road and it’s just boomed,” says Ogle. “They’re gradually working their way this way. I guess it's a good thing. It's going to be that way.”
Highway 287 is already clogged with trucks running 24-7.
“When we built our house over the hill there might be six trucks a night. Now it doesn’t matter what time of day or night there are trucks and traffic.”
He expects too that there are those passing by who don’t much like his confined feeding operation. However, doesn’t worry too much about it given he’s grandfathered in.
Ogle doesn’t spend a great deal of time worrying about what’s to come. He figures his son and daughter will keep going right along after he's gone, but he’s not so sure about the next generation. Like his kids, all three of his grandkids grew up working on the operation till they were out of high school.
The most valuable lesson he's learned in his tenure is, “take your time at whatever you're doing.” As for what he’s most thankful for it’s that he’s always had someone looking out for him. That is his biggest blessing Ogle concludes.
