Competition and carcass

Pulling up to the Davis family’s Angus operation I was in awe of all the Oklahoma State memorabilia on the front porch. Being a student at OSU, it made my heart swell and made me like this family from the start.

But let’s be real, after you meet them, you can’t help but like them.

Walking into their home reminded me of my own. There were cookies on the stovetop, paper records stacked on the table and a warm smile on Debbie Davis’s face. In a back room filled with show cattle accomplishments, I met up with Jim Davis and their daughter Jordan Cook and her family: husband Nocona and son Denton.

This family raises show cattle that are also carcass cattle, near Foss, Okla. While they are very “down to business,” they also light up at the opportunity to tell what they do every day.

Jim and Debbie set the stage for the family business philosophy, stressing a desire to raise quality cattle with “carcass and conformation without compromise.”

A foundation experience for them was the Certified Angus Beef ^® (CAB^®) brand’s Value Discovery Project, “back in the late eighties, early nineties,” Jim says. “I was all in for that. I enrolled three head of steers, met a truck in the parking lot of the local co-op at 3 a.m. and loaded these steers up on that truck. My wife asked me if I’d gone crazy, if I’d lost my mind.”

That was their first taste of feeding, and they fed a few at home over the years. Then when corn prices got high about eight years ago, the couple had a conversation about selling for a loss.

Jim remembers telling his wife, “Well, I guess I’ll haul them to the sale barn unless you can find a place to feed them.”

That was when Debbie discovered Buffalo Feeders and Tom Fanning.

“The next day or two, we loaded the little rascals up and away we go,” Jim says.

The calves went 100% Choice and 50% CAB, earning $150/head in premiums.

“I was all excited about that,” Jim says. “But Tom said the thing we should be excited about is those calves fed $150 cheaper than the average.”

That was one turning point for their cow herd.

Another was when Jordan decided to show cattle. Always being a “numbers guy,” Jim went on a mission to produce cattle “pretty enough” for the ring, but right on the numbers to have carcass quality calves.

When I visited, the family reminisced about their show ring endeavors and what they learned, starting with heifer hair spray.

“I thought the more of the stuff you put on them the better it was,” Jim says, of their first year showing in Lawton, Okla. They marched a heifer into the ring only to see “her tail was glued to her leg, so when she walked her tail went with her leg.”

They can laugh now, but then they acted. They took a fitting class and won the whole deal the next year. Their travels took them from Reno and Indianapolis to Louisville and everywhere in between, competing in live animal shows and participating in events like in the CAB Cook-off.

Today, the Davis family focuses on raising bulls, but still save back a few show animals for customers. They rely on today’s available technology, excited to see where things progress from here with the next generation squarely involved.

There will be work, smiles and more stories to tell, Jim says. “We have fun. It’s not easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it.”

-Katie

Katie Alexander is a senior, majoring in agricultural communications at Oklahoma State University. She grew up in the show cattle business in western Oklahoma and credits her lifelong passion for animal agriculture to her parents and grandfather. 

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