Fawna Henke: Beef Advocate, American Cattle Rancher, and the Recipe to Success

Fawna Henke

SPEAKERS

Brandy Von Holten, Fawna Henke, Transcribed by Rhiannon Niemeier

Brandy Von Holten  00:06

today's interview is with Fawna Henke, a new age cattle ranch manager and aspiring daily devotional writer. This is her story about her journey to become a beef advocate and manage 1,600 head of cattle in a large-scale cow calf operation. Fawna is not a stranger to a solid ingrained work ethic. Listen closely for her recipe for success. Fawna’s love of the cattle industry will make you feel pride for ranchers out there working to feed America. I hope you enjoy her interview as much as I did.

Alright guys, welcome back to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten. Today, I have a special treat for you. Her name is Fawna Henke. All right. Yeah. I've been wanting to hinkey it all up. And I'm like, no, no, come on back there, Texas and Arkansas upbringing. And it's not handke, it’s hanky. Alright, so she's 35 years old, she's from Kansas, and she is a manager of a very large cattle operation. Now whenever I say large, I'm not talking about, “Oh, we have 100 cows, not even 200.” Okay, we're talking about a 28,000-acre operation. It's a family farm, and she is managing it. It has 1,600 head of cattle on it. Okay, so we're not talking about having a little farm around. No, we're talking about 1,600 head of cattle. So you're in Kansas, you're 35. And you went to K-State? So, when did you graduate from K-State?

02:05

I graduated from K-State in 2011, I took the long road.

Brandy Von Holten  02:09

Oh my gosh. I was in college for 10 years so I understand. I'm not a doctor of anything. [Brandy: Yeah, me neither. I should be, but I'm not.] So you have a degree in animal science and you have another degree. The second one is in business. Whenever you get that business degree, tell me something that you thought was the most beneficial thing that you learned in college that you're now using with that business degree?

02:42

I guess just kind of the economics and accounting standpoint. How to run a business, and how to make good financial decisions, that kind of thing.

Brandy Von Holten  02:59

Okay, so good financial decisions. Most definitely. I interview a lot of business owners and successful women, and they always know what how much something cost, they look at projected sales, they have to cut expenses. So that's a lot of things that you learned in that business degree, but now I bet it's taken on a whole new understanding with running such a large operation.

03:29

Yeah, definitely helpful.

Brandy Von Holten  03:32

So, you are a beef advocate. That means that you go around and do speeches and talk to people at what, like 4-H? Or what's a place that you've went and done your speeches at.

03:50

I try to have a pretty large online presence, and I try to explain to people where their beef comes from and how we raise our beef, explain things that maybe people don't understand like weaning calves and why that's not necessarily a bad thing. Even though it is a stressful event in a calf’s life. We try to make it the least stressful that we can, and then it's necessary for cow health, calf health, and all that stuff. I do a lot of that. I try to photograph a lot of things and just write a little excerpt about what we do on a daily basis here on the ranch to help people understand where their beef comes from, and what all goes into raising them.

Brandy Von Holten  04:43

 I don't know if you knew this. I used to be a science teacher and I actually taught in Independence, which is right beside Kansas City, so a lot of city kids. They would ask me all sorts of questions. Here's some cattle questions I've been asked before by middle school and high school kids. They thought only the males had horns, so they didn't know that a female could have horns. [Fawna: That's a common one.] Yeah, most definitely. They were always really surprised to know the menstruation cycle, or how long that the they're pregnant for, is like the I think it's the same as a human, correct?

05:31

Yeah. So, gestation for a cow is around 283 days, and that’s nine months.

Brandy Von Holten  05:38

Sometimes I would teach little kids. Like, they would hire me to teach them summer school classes, and I had little bitty kids. They had problems understanding colors, like even of dogs and cats. Like one time, I told them that I had a dog that was half blue healer and half red healer. They asked if she was purple, and I was like, “No, that's not how that works.” They were like, but you said she was half blue and half red? I don't know how to say it in a better way. Then they wanted to know if chocolate milk came from a brown cow. I'm like, no, no, that is not how that works. What is a major misconception, or a question that you've been asked before. where you're like, whoo, and you have to step back and not laugh or something? Is there anything that somebody has ever asked you?

06:44

I think one of the funniest questions that I've ever encountered is, and I try not to laugh at these things. It's just a matter of being so far removed from production agriculture in a majority of society. You have to remember that these people are actually asking these questions because they don't know. We just take that for granted. So, I had someone ask me how longhorns delivered their calves. You know, assuming that they came out with horns on them. It's really hard to not burst out laughing because this is a serious question. Again, it's our job to educate, and I'm glad that people want to ask questions.

Brandy Von Holten  07:41

 I'm getting like this really bad visual going on. Oh, my gosh. Pease let somebody asked me a question like that one of these days. I don't know if I would be able to contain myself. All right let's talk about your daily things that. Are there a lot of females that do the job that you do? Or is it predominantly a job that a male would do?

08:17

That's kind of a hard question to answer, I think there's probably more females than you think. I think that it's getting more and more popular for females to do this kind of work. I think that it's becoming a little more accepted, and that kind of thing. I don't know a ton of them. I know a lot of women who work on ranches and do that kind of thing, and I know that down the road, there's a bunch of sisters that kind of have a really awesome ranch. I think that it's more and more common for women to be involved in agriculture and in management positions.

Brandy Von Holten  08:58

My husband and I have a very, very small cattle operation. The veterinarian that we use, it's a husband and wife, and they also hire other veterinarians to work for them because there's just such a large need around here. Almost every vet that comes out here is a female that's 35 and younger and there's two or three of them. I'm like, where did y'all come from? They're all just as beautiful as can be, and they're all in gumboots in overalls. I don't think we've ever had another male veterinarian since we moved here other than the husband-and-wife operation, but we always get all the girls. Whenever I was growing up, I'm 41 now, but whenever I was growing up, all the vets were men, all older men. I think they got I think there's a huge surge of younger women that are in agriculture.

10:02

I definitely think so too. I think that particular industry has seen a surge of females and I think it's just becoming more and more accepted.

Brandy Von Holten  10:15

Most definitely. Oh my Lord, I am not a bra burner. I love our men. I love blue collar America. My husband does things I don't want to have anything to do with, you know what I mean? I'm not saying like, “Yeahhhhhh, women!” I'm all like, Oh, that's really cool, this is great, you know?

10:37

I'll be honest, there's things that I definitely find myself struggling to do or not able to do. I think men and women are both needed, and there are things where I'm like, “Okay, I can't do this. You have to come do it.”

Brandy Von Holten  10:53

Oh, yeah. My husband is this blue-collar manly man, right? Until there's a snake. I have issues with snakes also, but he can't function. He could not function with snakes. I'm like, David, oh, my God, I really need you to step up in the snake department. And he's like, no. He just cannot do it. Never in my life did I ever think I would have to grow up and be the snake person in my marriage. [Fawna: that's funny.] I hate them. We actually own a wedding venue here that my husband built. In the rules, there are two animals that are not welcome. No snakes. We don't want snakes, and I don't care what they have, but they're not allowed. We also don't allow wolves. So, no wolves and no snakes. It's literally in our contract. [Fawna: Good rule.] You know, we've had to tell people no about the wolves before, and we've had to tell people no about the snakes. And we're like, can we just have normal people, please, like what's going on? We had a couple one time, a whole group of them, that have these small monkeys. They have like little tuxedos, and I basically was almost to the point of like, “Please book with me so I can take a picture with a miniature monkey in a tuxedo.” People just, different strokes for different folks, for sure. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so let's talk about this cattle operation. I can't even imagine all the poop involved with 1,600 head of cattle. I know it's spread out over 28,000 acres, but I'm just like, dang, that's a bunch of cows. So, you don't keep them from birth all the way to the end. You are actually a cow-calf operation. So explain to people what, how long you keep them and where they go from you.

13:12

Okay. On the ranch, we have about 1,600 head of mama cows. Every year that mama cow produces a baby calf. We raise those calves, so they stay with their mamas for about six months, then we wean those calves. I usually keep those calves for 45 to 60 days, it just depends. During that period, we make sure that those animals transition from being with their mother to not being with their mother, they're solidly on feed. There aren't any health issues. So, they've been vaccinated and they're on feed and they're ready to go into the next step in their feeding program. We then sell those calves off the ranch, hopefully fully prepared to go on into a backgrounding situation or stocker unit where they'll go either out on wheat or into a background or feed yard where they'll continue on with their life.

Brandy Von Holten  14:16

Okay, so pause for just a second. You said the word fatgrounder? So fat, is that what you're saying? [Fawna BACK, Back grounder, back grounder.] Okay, B A C K, and then ground. Okay, backgrounder or stocker. So, you have cow-calf, then it goes to backgrounder, then they're going to go from there to a feedlot to finish up. How long are they usually at a feedlot?

14:48

That really depends.

Brandy Von Holten  14:51

 Depends on how large they are, and supply and demand? [Fawna: Yeah.] All right. So, I'm just trying to get this stairstep. You are cow-calf, you're the beginning person for the success of this animal. So, there's cow-calf, then a backgrounder, then they'll go to a feedlot. Then they go to butcher from there. Correct? [Fawna: Correct] Okay, so you are raising America's beef, and you're starting them off.

15:21

Trying to, yes.

Brandy Von Holten  15:23

I don't even want to talk to you about beef because I think we're under 25 head. It's pretty pathetic compared to this operation that you're doing. But, man, we make sure and tell people that our cows live a very stress-free life. They're not some stressed out animal. We have people that swear it makes it taste better because they live a good healthy life. Is there anything that you have about that about hormones, or stress of cattle, or anything to add into that.

16:09

So, one of the things that I firmly believe in as we develop our calves throughout their life, is I really try hard to only introduce one stress event at a time. We precondition our calves, which means that we give them vaccinations to boost their immunity before we actually wean them or pull them off of their mama. The day we pull them off of mama, that's the only event that happens that day. We say we get the ball out of them, so they’ve stopped crying for Mama, then we go in and re-vaccinate them with their boosters. I think that it's important we're only introducing one stress event at a time to that calf, and I think that makes the transition easier. We fence-line wean, which means that moms on one side of the fence, and babies are on the other side of the fence. Although they can't actually nurse their moms and get some milk, they can still stay in there and talk to them. It's just kind of a soft wean, versus a hard wean. We try to just introduce one stress event at a time. We're really big on healthy herds and that kind of thing. Everybody's on a vaccination program and good handling. Slower is faster. Absolutely.

Brandy Von Holten  17:33

Most definitely. So weaning time. Okay, so they are so loud all night long. Okay, so we thought that we gave our herd enough time for them to stop bawling, right, crying and bawling. But we didn't. We were in the middle of our wedding season, like September, October. Every weekend has a wedding. We were like, okay, all the wedding people are gone. Wean the babies. We thought they'd be quiet by the next time we had a wedding. They were not. They were so loud. The people that were getting married were from Kansas City I believe, or St. Louis. They were like, “We love this. This is great. We get to hear cows while we are getting married!” We were like oh, Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. They were like, “This is so authentic!” So we got really lucky with that. I asked you if you did full coverage, which means that there is a bull in there that is servicing the females, or did AI, which is artificial insemination. You usually do about a third of it as AI, then the other third is full coverage. I'm sure with the AI, you prefer that for the timing, because then you know exactly when the babies are due. So that's probably got to be like a big perk of that.

19:16

Right, I'm actually getting ready to calve out 200 head of heifers in the next week. It's great because they are all AI bred, so they're going to calve I would imagine and roughly a 10-to-14-day period. You're obviously going to have some that will slip outside of that, but it's great. We use AI to capture the benefit of some high-power genetics. It’s not like you can go out and buy a bunch of 40, 50, or $60,000 bulls and just keep them around. We utilize AI so that we can capture some pretty powerful, amazing genetics and improve our herd quickly.

Brandy Von Holten  20:00

Okay, for the cows that have full coverage with the bulls, do you know the ratio bulls to cows?

20:14

Yeah. So, because we have so many acres, we run a few more bulls per cow than other people probably do, because some of our pastures are very large. We have to account for some travel. We usually run one bull to 20 cows. A good, mature bull should be able to cover 30 cows very easily, but we just try to take out a little bit of a travel risk.

Brandy Von Holten  20:46

You know your cow calf operation. most definitely. With being a beef advocate, you told me there's a main topic that you like to talk about something about the recipe for success. I'm looking forward to listening to this because I'm going to take some notes.

21:10

When I go and visit with people, one of the main things that I get asked is, how did you get this job? How did you get to be where you are? I have started telling people that it's pretty simple. My recipe for success is, if you want to be successful in anything, if you show up early, you work a little harder than anybody else, you always wear a smile, because people are drawn to people who smile and act like they're having a good time, and you stay late.

Brandy Von Holten  21:49

Okay, so come early, work with a smile. outwork everybody, and then stay late. There's some truth to that. I don't know if you've ever heard of something called fish philosophy. It’s this group of gentlemen, I think they're in Seattle, Washington, and all these businessmen were coming to this fish market every day to watch these guy’s work. Whenever I was a schoolteacher, every year we had to do professional development. A lot of professional development before school would start back. These people were so happy. Here are these white-collar people coming in with suits, just to watch these guys. The main thing that they said was that you need to actually be present. They also said that you need to be happy, like genuinely check. Whatever you're doing at your house, you know, you have an argument or whatever, you have to check that. Then you have to come in full force to what you're doing. There are so many videos of this fish philosophy but hearing your recipe for success really reminded me of that. Now, whenever I go to a restaurant, they sometimes will make casual talk with you, but then they really don't care what your answer is, you know what I'm talking about?

23:21

Right, it's not genuine. Yeah.

Brandy Von Holten  23:23

They'll be like, “Oh, how's your day?” You know, when they ask you that, and then they look down to write something, and then they look away, and then they never look back at you. Because they didn't really care. They were going through the motions. As soon as I have somebody asked me, “Oh, how's your day been?” I'm just like, oh, man, we've been swamped getting ready for blah, blah, and then they interact with me. I can I judge the living heck out of people about that, and I don't mean to, but it got so ingrained into me with that professional development, that now I try to make sure and actually be present in what we're doing, and then be happy, ne nice, have fun. The fact that you said to wear a smile, people can tell if you're smiling when you're talking to them on the phone. Right now I'm smiling and I'm sure people are probably like, yeah, I can hear it in her voice, that she's smiling. I love that you said to smile. Oh, I have teacher brain going on right now. So, let's talk about some things. With 28,000 acres, there's no way that all of that gets to be done horseback, right? [Fawna: Right.] Okay. So not all of it gets to be done horseback, you also are on ATVs. Do you move cattle around in the pins from horseback?

25:03

 I would love to be horseback every day. That's obviously the romantic dream of what ranching and cowboying is. But that's not the not the reality of what we get to do. So, it's always a good day, when we wean calves, I'm on horseback about everyday riding through them, just crawling for sick cattle. We do the doctoring on horseback, and that kind of thing. I move around six sets of cattle, sometimes on horseback. Some of our pastures are 4,000 acres or so, and there's only two of us here. Sometimes we'd hire in cowboys to come help us. But it’s really hard on a horse and not time efficient with just two of us. So we do use ATVs, and then we sort in the pin on horseback and that kind of thing. When I'm loading out trucks, I'm usually on horseback. So obviously, if I can be I want to be, but it's all about what's going to be best for time efficiency and energy cost, for the cattle and for us.

Brandy Von Holten  26:26

Well, I know with our small operation. Well, first of all our cows know my husband, and they're just like, David, David, do you have some feed? We get them moved with feed most of the time. They love him. Most of the time we do everything from our little gators, and then whenever we're introducing them to a new pasture. He's usually on an ATV with grain, and then I'm horseback just to handle stragglers. Most people are thinking, oh my gosh, 28,000 acres. Here's what they envision: some crazy cowboy hat, hair braided on the side, and you have this large like bandana thingy on, your head is turned sideways, and you're staring out across it. That's what they're envisioning basically. Marlboro woman, I'm sure with this interview. And you’re saying no, we have to make sure we're efficient with our time. So, a special perk that, or not a perk, but something very cool about Fawna, is that she's actually right now in the middle of writing a book. What exactly are you wanting to do in your book?

27:52

I enjoy writing little glimpses into ranch life. I love the written word. I think that written words can be beautiful and can sometimes maybe even paint a little better picture than an actual photograph. I love writing little excerpts from my days. I wanted to write a book and it couldn't figure out how to put it all together. One of my friends mentioned to me to go ahead and make a daily devotional. So I am currently working on writing a daily devotional with a ranch twist.

Brandy Von Holten  28:31

We had talked about this the other day, and I talked about how there's a book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, It’s All Small Stuff. I love that you can read one page and get something out of it. And this is kind of what I envision with yours. It's just like, here is a snapshot into something that you're doing. It just takes you away for a little bit because everybody knows that we have no time. It feels like there's no time ever. So, to sit there and read a chapter, I will tell you sometimes that is too big of a task to do. I love that yours are shorter. So here we go. Fawna is actually part of my Big Boss Mare private goal setting group, it's a private group. People have to prove that they're going forward, and if they drop off for a couple of days, and I'm like hello. A lot of times it be a creates like its own snowball and everybody's just kind of chugging along, or if they're not posting pictures, or telling us what they're doing. They're still watching other people and liking and interacting, because you are a reflection of the people that you spend the most time with. A lot of people don't have like highly motivated people in their life. So that's what that group is doing. Fawna has actually been sharing with us in the afternoon. I know that she is trying to stop her sugar cravings a little bit and trying to cut back on pop and has been doing pretty good with that. I mean you're either hit or miss on it, but you're making progress with that. But she's also wrote one of her daily devotionals in there for us and is going to share it.

30:28

A north wind cascades across the bluffs, bringing a damp chill to my face. The little red mustang jogs quickly, tossing her head, straining against my hold on the reins. The water ripples in endless waves on the lake below, seemingly adding to the mares energy. The sun bursts onto the scene, alighting her mane into coppery flames, alive with the breeze. Impatient with the lull, she stomps her stockinged hoof and plays the roller on her bit. I pick up the reins and let her stride out some. Her dramatic snorts keep time with the emphatic fall of each hoofbeat. If I'd just but let her run, she'd finally be content. My soul understands the yearning but, alas, there's pairs to tend. Perhaps another day our unbridled spirits can play...While there are days we yearn to simply "play", we must seek to find the joy in our work. A good hard day's labor brings contentment to our soul. It is pleasing to both us and God. He wants us to be happy. He constantly shows me beauty in quick moments as I go about my daily tasks. Look today, for the beauty in a moment He has to show you. "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live." Ecclesiastes 3:12"So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?" Ecclesiastes 3:22

Brandy Von Holten  32:05

Okay, so whenever she posted that the members in our Big Boss Mare private group were like, sign me up, I'm going to buy it. How do I do this? You know, so we're so excited about it. This writing right here, whenever you were talking about the mare and all she wants to do is run and you're like, “Uh, we got to work.” I felt that because I have a little fiery mare that’s a workhorse, and she just wants to run and run and run. I'm like, no, girl, we have to work right now. I feel this. Then the fact that you you're talking about you have to love what you're doing. So many people focus on the endpoint, instead of the journey. The journey, that's the thing that takes so much time, and you have to be happy in that journey. You can't just reach a final destination and you're happy for this little bitty time of your life. You have to be happy with the journey. It's kind of sad to be like, don't worry about the journey. It's going to take eight months. Let's just think about this something that we're going to finally reach that's going to be five minutes.

33:20

Right, but no time is guaranteed so you may as well enjoy every bit of that along the way.

Brandy Von Holten  33:25

Oh girl, that's a t-shirt. Oh my gosh, I'm going to get that tattooed on my arm or something, you know? Oh my gosh. Well, you know how many people see everything. We have this trail riding facility, I write books, I have this podcast, we have the private group, we do mounted archery. People always say you're so busy, you're so busy, you're not going to have time to do this. I'm like, hold up. I'm not busy. I'm passionate. There is a difference between busy and passionate. I don't view myself as busy. I love what I do. You know like the hustle bustle, figuring out a new event to bring and the organization of it, that’s not busy. To me, busy is like filing paperwork. That's busy to me. Passionate is building something like our Country Tough Trail Versatility, like that organization. It's had a 200% growth in the last two years. This competition series that we've had. Today I worked on updating our rulebook. That wasn't busy to me. I was like, oh, I want this. This is like my child, you know? This writing that you did? I'm so inspired by it because I'm like, you do need to love the day in and day out, the master of the mundane, the little pieces of what you're trying to get done. It's like kids. There is a song that talks about how it's only going to last for a little bit, you know, and then the next part of the song, she's grown up a little bit more, and the next part, she's grown up even more. And, you know, you have to really focus on today, we're only going to get this day one time. Then tomorrow, this day doesn't exist, it'll never exist again. So, you really need to take some joy in the present, not in the future, and you can't dwell on the past. You can’t change it. All we can really be guaranteed is the present. I love what you're saying, because that's what it means to me. You know, everybody's going to hear it differently. Do you have any idea how many devotionals you'd want to put in there?

36:09

 I'm shooting for 90 days. I think that’s a nice start for me. I don't think that I quite have the time to commit to the 365 day devotional that you would normally buy. But I think 90 days is a great start, and we'll see what happens.

Brandy Von Holten  36:30

Okay. So Fawna, what are your big goals? What are your big goals that you want to end up doing?

36:47

Well, I have my own entity that I run, I dreamed about it for many, many, many years. It's finally come to fruition. So, I own myself a ranch called The Diamond Crossbar Ranch. I guess I can kind of call it a ranch, we’re not on our new land yet, but I own quite a few cattle. Fortunately, my job allows me to run my cows within this ranch. I guess my catchphrases, I kind of plan on running this empire for these people until I can finally build my own. The great thing is they're really supportive of helping me to increase my herd and helping me to run them here until I can start to buy some ground. I would love to have a fairly large cow-calf operation of my own. I would like to be able to do an internship program where I could have women, again, not being sexist against men, they will be welcome too, but helping young people to really come in and learn about the industry and learn the management skills that they would need to either then go on to manage a large facility for someone, or to get started on their own.

Brandy Von Holten  38:17

Right, because people are going to always need to eat. There is always going to need to be large beef productions like what you're running right here. Beef is super healthy. So, you're wanting to have your own large beef operation, your cow-calf operation. Now, you also said you wanted to do an internship, and you're you told me also that you want to go back and get your PhD.

38:45

At some point, when I am not quite as busy as I am now, I would like to go ahead and get my doctorate.   I would love to, I would love to teach at college. I think that my education and experience would probably fall rather well into that

Brandy Von Holten  39:08

 I would love to take a class that was taught by you, especially with all the hands-on experience that you have with running such a large operation, you would have such a great viewpoint. Then you also have the education behind you to really help mold the next generation into feeding people. I would take a class from you for sure. If people are wanting to get into something like you do, or somebody or women want to get into the cattle industry, do you have any advice for anybody?

39:51

I think that you should not sell yourself short. I think one of the things that I find, and I'm going to be a little age discriminant here, that's unfortunate. I find that some younger people, not all, not all, definitely. I had an intern here last summer. She was fantastic. She was a hard, hard, hard worker. I think that some people find that work is beneath them. I cannot tell you how many chutes were washed out how many, you know, long hours of just cleaning this and cleaning that. You have to start at the bottom, I used to ride pins at a feedlot. Then I started working with some smaller cattle operations, then I worked for a friend who bred cattle, then I got into this operation. I'm going to tell you, just two days ago, I was suited up and actually power washing trailers out. So don't think that any job is beneath you. Learn to do all the small things. If you do those with the light, again, that's wearing a smile and working hard and doing the best. Anything, any tasks that you are called to do, that will get you further. People will notice that you are passionate about it enough to do anything. That will get you the big thing.

Brandy Von Holten  41:20

 I can just I can hear that in your voice, work harder. We have so many people that whenever they come to our trial riding facility, or if they're looking for a job, do you know how many people are like, I can exercise your horses? I'm like well, we have 50 barrels of garbage from the weekend. We have six toilets that have to be clean. Plus, there's three more in the wedding barn. That's nine toilets. Do you know that on a regular weekend, that's not even a big weekend that just the female side of the bathroom from a Friday to a Sunday, uses 17 rolls of toilet paper?  I don't have to know numbers. And then here's how we clean the shower house. Here's how I clean the bathrooms. Here's how I do all this. I had an intern one time say why don't you just hire a janitor. I'm like, what? And they said, “I have a college degree.” I'm like, I've got three, and this is how I want the toilets cleaned. A lot of times they think a college degree moves you up above somebody, and it doesn't. You better be ready to put in some work. I can tell you whenever we have employees, that immediately within the first hour of being around them, I put them into one of two categories. One category is going to be somebody that can think for themselves, they're going to stop and pick up a piece of trash that's on the ground, or they're like, “Hey, can you help me do this over here, I saw that this was broke.” Somebody that can think for themselves. Then we have the other employee, we literally have to tell them everything to do. If we don't tell them to do it, then it doesn't get done. Now we have room for both types of employees. But one of them is going to get paid more. One of them we're going to give better jobs to. I mean, I had an employee one time that was sitting in the office. I'm trying to check people in, and then the coffee pot was empty. The employee was sitting there, and somebody is asking about coffee. I was like you need to get up and help them with the coffee because I am checking people in. You see what I'm saying, you have to tell them everything. Then you got to go back and check on them, which is okay, they're just going to be at the bottom of the totem pole.

44:04

Then there are the other ones that are self-starters, they are going to get so much further.

Brandy Von Holten  44:12

They can make a million mistakes as long as they tell me they did it. They can even make the same mistake twice or a couple of times, as long as they're still forward motion going. Then complete honesty and hard work. Hard work all day every day. What about if somebody had a little bit of acreage and they wanted to buy their first calves? Do you know how they should go about that; do you have any advice? There are a lot of people that want to have their own beef.

45:00

I think that people should probably buy what we consider running age cattle. A heifer that has not had her first calf yet. The first calf from a heifer takes a lot more work. She doesn't know what she's doing. It's a first time Mother, no first-time mother knows what they're doing. So, you have to keep a little better eye out since you have a little more calving difficulty in first time heifers, regardless of how you breed them for calving ease and things like that. There are some of them that are just clueless. They will just drop them and walk away and you're like, “Hey, Betsy, get back here and raise your kid.” It just it takes a lot more work. The ones after they've had their first calf, four year old’s, five year old’s, six year old’s, that's a lot better deal. That's going to be a lot more manageable for someone who's just starting.

Brandy Von Holten  46:11

I'm just thinking about some of our best mama cows. We had one, we named her Heavy D. Heavy D was so fat. She had already given birth to her calf, and we didn't know who the calf belonged to. We're like, it can't be Heavy D, look how big she is. No, it was her calf. She was just that fat. Her belly wasn't that far from the ground. I swear she had two lazy eyes, and they were never looking in the right spot. But boy, she was such a good mama. Her calves always turned out great. But we were like, Oh, girl, you're not pretty but by God, your babies are. We swore that she was still pregnant. No, just fat. So anything in general that you have. I mean, we've talked a lot about cattle. I know you and I have a lot of familiar friends or similar friends. We'll just go ahead and give a little shout out to Andrea Capponeto. You ride one of her saddles. Correct?

47:21

I am. Yeah.

Brandy Von Holten  47:24

You are so lucky. I want one of her saddles. I mean, it's like riding on a piece of artwork. Oh,

47:32

Yeah. It's a showstopper.

Brandy Von Holten  47:34

Yeah, most definitely shout out to Andrea. Andrea had talked about, talking to Fawna one time, not about the podcast, but it was just meeting you in general. And she's like, she'll rope a bull and like, pull it around, that girl knows what she's doing. I'm like, wow, for Andrea to give you like those bigger props because Andrea is a wonderful horse woman herself and a great rider. For her to be like, Fawna is all that I mean, it made me really listen, to be like, Fawna? I don't know anybody named Fawna. I think that's why I found you on Facebook or something was because of a conversation with Andrea about how amazing you are. [Fawna: Well, that's awesome.] Well, I love our conversation if people would like to get in touch with you, or if they want to book you to come and talk about being a beef advocate, or if they wanted to ask you how do they get in touch with you?

48:34

They can find me on Facebook. I have my Facebook page. It's under my name. It's got my middle initial. So it's Fawna K. Henke, then I'm also on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram too.

Brandy Von Holten  48:49

Okay, so good. Oh, Facebook, and good ole Instagram. Alright, well thank you for being part of the Big Boss Mare podcast, and we appreciate everything that you brought to this podcast. All right, thank you, Fawna.

49:04

Thanks, Brandy.