Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

Eugene Schwertner used to call his Saturday morning business, with their horse trailers lined up next to the chute, his “buy Momma a new dress” customers. The entire family would be packed in the pickup and you could see the excitement on their faces as they waited for the check and their trip to town.

The regulars
This particular Saturday morning Norman Johnson was in the office picking up his check for the nine calves he had delivered. Instead of taking them to the auction market, he brought them to Capital Land and Livestock (CLL) at Schwertner, Texas, where he received the going rate from the area auction barns.

With his 160 mama cows spread within 30 miles of CLL, Johnson makes the trip often.

“Two weeks ago I brought in 30 head,” Johnson said. “I bring them here because the people are nice and I know I am going to get my check and it will cash.”

According to Johnson, this check was not going for Momma’s dress. “I’ll use the money for my toys,” Johnson said, his eyes twinkling. Turns out he has a particular tractor in mind.

“Over 50 percent of our business comes from small farms,” Jim Schwertner said. His smaller customers’ herds average 25 head and they leave the bull in year round so calves come to town in small groups. Some come to Capitol on Saturday morning, but most are purchased one head at a time by buyers in six or seven auction barns, six days a week.

On the sales side, although the cattle are sold by the truckload, a large number of Schwertner cattle go to small farms or stocker operations. Schwertner knows that diversity of his clientele is one of the secrets to success.

A one-stop shop
The transition from order buyer to livestock dealer was a major but necessary management decision for Capitol Land and Livestock. With the market crash of 1973-74, the majority of Eugene Schwertner’s customers either had suffered dramatic losses or had gone out of business.

“I had just graduated from college and come back to the family business,” Jim Schwertner said. The family business was in real trouble with the cattle industry in the throes of one of the most serious events in its history. The change from taking orders to buying and selling inventory was done in stages and, although it takes a lot of resources daily, has been a decisive success.

“Dad always said don’t change the plan when it’s working,” Schwertner said. And the plan works.

One of the benefits CLL can offer is attention to detail. “We offer a large number of services to our buyers, including custom processing, branding and ear tagging at a cost that’s probably cheaper than they can do themselves,” Schwertner said.

CLL has recently developed a BVD-PI-testing program at an in-house lab that is part of Gold Standard Labs. As of the end of April, Gold Standard had tested over half a million cattle with 2,229 or .404 percent testing positive in their labs across the country.

“What amazed me was that, of the 7,510 groups of cattle tested, just under 21 percent were PI positive,” Schwertner said. “That means one in five groups of cattle had a persistently infected. That certainly opens your eyes.”

As for PI-positive cattle that come through CLL, that information goes back to the auction barn owner and, hopefully, is passed on to the cattleman who brought the animal to the sale.

CLL has discovered one more way to make changes in the industry … one animal at a time.