Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

Questions abound while driving the last few miles to Starr Feedyards. When the name of the game in the feeding business is location, location, location, this operation north of Rio Grande City, Texas, seems to have a number of logistical issues. Where do feeder cattle come from? Where does the feed come from? How will they get that dry distiller’s grain (DDG) that everyone is going to need to lower their feed costs? Where do they market their cattle? Does their close proximity to the border cause labor problems?

As it turns out, Jack Scoggins and son Jack Jr., have not only overcome those problems, they have turned them into opportunities and are having a great time doing it.

Adapting is key
The Starr family – Jack and his brother – started small, feeding 300 to 2,500 head in the early 1960s and 1970s near Harlingen, Texas, using the milo available from local irrigated and dryland farms. They bought light heifers weighing 350 to 400 pounds, fed them for 120 days and sold them to the multitude of packers across the area.

“We marketed lightweight animals with no marbling,” Jack Scoggins said. “But new slaughter rules and the use of stainless steel made it difficult for smaller plants to compete, so they went out of business. When packers started sending boxed beef out the door, their kill cost went up. We had to go to heavier cattle.”

Meanwhile, with people flocking to the warm climate, Scoggins could see that they needed to move their location. In 1973, Jack Scoggins and family friend Lou Waters made a deal with Lloyd Benson, Sr., to purchase 200 acres north of Rio Grande City.

“We had ample well water, natural gas and a willing seller,” Scoggins laughed. “We had all of our squirrels up one tree.” The new location turned out to be ideal. Today, the feeding operation is still way out in the country while the area they left is teeming with winter Texans, shopping malls and traffic.

And the location?
The answers to my questions came quickly. Most of the yard’s feeder supply is 400- to 550-pound calves from Texas and Mexico. Before recent fuel hikes, they also sourced a number of cattle from eastern Texas.

“We use order buyers on this side of the border,” Jack Jr., said. “In Mexico, we have purveyors who put groups of cattle together. They don’t have a central market down there. I think they just love to trade and barter too much.”

Jack Jr., prefers to get at least five to seven loads at a time, and many times will get as many as 15. That way they can sort the cattle into like groups, usually sorting as many as five ways.

Calves are sorted upon arrival and put into small, 30- to 40-acre traps all over the property, allowing them to settle in for 45 to 50 days. Calves then are moved to the feedyard or larger pastures, 6,000 acres of which belong to the company and 25,000 acres that are leased. The company will have as many as 6,000 to 7,000 head on pasture at one time.

While on pasture, Starr Feedyards cattle graze on buffel, a highly nutritious grass native to Africa that grows in the south Texas-Mexico area. Although very hard to establish, buffel is extremely drought resistant with roots that grow up to six feet deep. The grass goes dormant during drought but comes back after a good rain.

When ready, calves are gathered from the rough country, sometimes mustered by helicopter, and placed in the 22,000-head capacity feedyard. (The day I was there they’d had rain and the pens were a little wet. Jack Jr., commented that moisture in December always lasts a long time, but somehow it didn’t look quite like Kansas did in mid-January.)

Feedyard rations incorporate cotton products, which are readily available and probably make up for the lack of DDG. The amazing thing is that they feed corn from the Midwest that is shipped by rail, delivered to a railhead 85 miles away and trucked by company trucks to the feedyard. How’s that for a challenge with today’s market? The company works hard at producing all of their own roughage, farming 3,800 areas.

Most of Starr Feedyard’s cattle are marketed to Sam Kane. A few go a small processor that takes lightweight animals (800 to 850 pounds) to sell to the Asian market.

Their average employee has been there 12 to 14 years and some were with the Scoggins when they started.

“That is very unique,” Scoggins said of their employee longevity. “We are really lucky to have them and we see that they are well taken care of.”

Jack Jr., said he could not remember when they hired their last new employee but, in the next years, will have to look at how to replace the ones who will retire.

The Scoggins are concerned about immigration and see major changes down the pike now that the issue is in the national spotlight. They don’t feel there is a simple solution. According to Jack Jr., “What people don’t realize is that the income from the U.S. that is sent back to Mexico is their gross national product. Why would they want to change that?”

Can cows and deer coexist?
Jack Scoggins comes to work early every day, including Sunday until church time, and considers himself very blessed to have a place to go. Jack Jr., who always knew he would work with his dad, feels the same way. They make their decisions together and like it that way.

Both Jack and Jack Jr., are strong proponents of keeping an open mind when it comes to business. For them, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. One of their latest successful ventures started when Jack Jr., returned from a meeting declaring, “We need to raise high quality whitetail deer.”

The problem was that deer hunters were wooing landowners, and the local wisdom was that deer and cattle could not co-exist. That meant the Scoggins would lose a lot of the leased land they needed for cattle grazing to hunters willing to pay a great deal of money for the right to hunt.

Jack Jr., decided to take the project on and, would you believe; now they farm for their deer. The first thing Jack Jr., figured out in has latest foray was, “Don’t shoot your best bull.” Deer hunters hunt and shoot the quality bucks and leave the inferior ones to do the breeding for the next generation.

“It took five to six years, but we made our point,” Jack Jr., said. They fenced their property, systematically got rid of the inferior animals and planted food plots for the deer. Fennel and other deer-friendly plants are planted twice a year in 150-acre fenced plots. The deer go under the fence and the cattle stay out.

The family now shares their ranch for three weeks a year with a select number of hunters who pay by the inch for the rack from the deer they bag. One thing they don’t shoot is a trophy buck; those are kept to breed the next generation.

The Scoggins family has proven that location, location, location isn’t always necessary to be successful and, even more important, that you can have a great time figuring that out.