Alberta Beef Magazine - BeefNews.com

Blairs take the road less traveled by Bonnie Warnyca
March, 2010

"When everyone else is traveling the highway - take the grid." That was the advice that Sidney Alexander Blair passed on to his grandsons Kevin and Darren Blair. And that's the philosophy that continues to drive the business model for Blair's Crop & Livestock Solutions and Blairs.Ag Cattle Co.

When cousins Kevin and Darren returned home from university in the late 1980s to join the family fertilizer business, Blair's consisted of a small retail crop supply centre with eight employees and a commercial Simmental herd. Today, 22 years later, the cousins have grown the company to five full service crop input and livestock nutrition locations, plus a research and a trucking division. The employee payroll includes some 65 employees including the ones involved in the Blair.Ag Cattle Co., created in 2006.

When you peel back the layers of this company there's a unique and interesting dynamic to the whole "family-based" ideology. It's one thing to call employees extended family, but in Blair's case, it takes on a whole new meaning. "Some businesses shy away from hiring family members, but that's not the way I think," says co-owner and CEO Kevin Blair. "We have a lot of family within the family. For instance, brothers Kelly and Chris Schmidt work for us in two locations on the crop protection side and Kelly and Chris are members of our cattle advancement team. We have a father and son team who handle the logistics in our warehouse. We have two couples that manage another two of our retail locations and one of those couples is Darren's sister and her husband. Our cousin Tom works out of our Watrous location, and Darren's brother Craig along with brothers Curtis and Barton McCullough, manage the McLean location."

The cattle were the missing link
Both Darren and Kevin grew up in purebred Simmental operations and in later years, Kevin and wife Noreen, built on to her family's herd of Maine-Anjou cattle. When the cousins/partners looked at their business model, they could clearly see that the cattle were the missing link. "My first love has always been the cattle business," admits Kevin Blair. "We've spent a great deal of time developing the livestock nutritional side of our business and adding the cattle made perfect sense."

Blairs.Ag Cattle Company began in 2006
Once the decision was made to go into the cattle business - the next decision was based on their overall business model and that is, "Where can we make a difference?" They felt that the depth in the Angus cattle offered the most potential. "We wanted to again, approach the cattle business from a different angle," suggests Blair. "We already had some employees that are not only passionate but very knowledgeable about the cattle business and it made sense to put together the Genetic Advancement Team (GAT) and take this business to a whole other level. GAT members include Craig Blair, Kelly Schmidt, Kevin Blair, Darren Blair, Chris Schmidt and Patty Smith. Everyone brings something unique to the table. We probably only all meet face-to-face a couple of times a year but we use technology to communicate by phone, Emails and conference calls."

Within the past three years, the cousins have put together a pretty impressive Black and Red Angus cow base. "We understand that to make a difference takes time and it takes money," shares a thoughtful Blair. "We were prepared to commit both. When we went looking for superior females we relied on our knowledge of the purebred, commercial and feedlot industries. We wanted females with lots of width in the chest floor, big in both the fore rib and off the top, loose made, good-footed "tanky" cows. By that I mean I don't care if they are 1300 lbs or 1800 lb cows, they have to be the right type with lots of shape in the rib and fore rib."

"Feedlot guys tell me that loose-hided cattle perform better in the feedlot, so they must be loose-hided. Growing up with exotic cattle, I prefer a round muscled-animal and I think there's an opportunity to bring those kinds of cattle into the industry. We want to raise Angus females that carry all the traditional Angus traits but with more shape to their muscle and spring to their rib. There is a tendency in the purebred business to follow the "winners" and the gene pool has become fairly limited. We want to offer new outcross genetics."

The Blairs now have 300 purebred black and red Angus cows. The main Angus cow herd is managed by Chad and Carissa Haaland at Hanley, while the majority of the commercial females for their aggressive embryo transplant program are managed by Levi and Carmen Jackson of Jackson Cattle Company.

The main cow herd calves on grass and any bull calves born before March 1st are sold as yearlings and anything born after March 1st is held over and sold as two-year olds in their annual bull sale. This year, 60 bulls will be on offering at the Jackson farm Wednesday, April 7th.

In true Blair fashion, the cattle program is complex and involves approximately 250 recip cows for embryo transplant. They've added a black/red carrier program and are expanding the red gene pool by crossing reds and blacks. They use Merial Canada Inc.'s Igenity Profile program to help to identify individual animals with the highest probability of passing on superior economically-linked traits.

"This is a long process," explains Blair. "You take a black animal and breed it red to get a black calf. Then you cull that group of calves and take the black/red carrier and breed them again which results in half the calves being black and half red. It takes four generations to get from a black animal to a red-hided animal with black in its genetics. The Angus breed is fortunate to have the red and black genetics to play off of each other which allows us to develop a wider base of "outcross" genetics."

The Blairs have learned some lessons over the past couple of years when selecting the right recip cows. "We've made some mistakes," admits Blair. "We now recognize how important a recip cow is. We've used good purebred cows and we've used run of the mill commercial cows. We're now focusing on introducing higher value cows into our recip program."

There are no borders
"There should be no borders in the cattle business," says Blair. "When we went looking to put together our cow herd we didn't care what part of North America or what province they came out of. Our customer base knows no boundaries either. We sell into every province and many American states. Through our embryo transplant partnership with Roger Davis, we've sold a pile of embryos into Australia, Columbia and Mexico. We sold our pick of 2010 embryo calves in Denver in January for $10,000 to a person we didn't even know. So that tells us our branding is beginning to take hold."

Branding isn't for the faint of heart
The Blairs pay close attention to how they present their business whether through their ever evolving website, printed materials or daily customer conversations. "Branding our product is so important and yet it is so difficult to measure," suggests Blair. "We believe that there is so much opportunity in the cattle business yet it may not be totally clear at the moment because of all the many challenges of the past few years. Yet most of our customers are making decisions for next year and beyond. Where there is a problem, there is always a solution. Some producers work off farm, change genetics or add swath or bale grazing to reduce costs. Even though we began our purebred business smack in the middle of tough economic times, we've been able to expand and find high value markets. In order to do that, you must be a contrarian."

Blair's Fertilizer Ltd. was established in Lanigan in 1948 by brothers Sandy and Lindsay Blair. In the 1970s, the business was sold to Sandy's sons Dale and Ron Blair who operated the business until the late 1990s before transferring ownership to Dale's son Darren and Ron's son Kevin. There are a number of Blair kids now in university or heading soon to post secondary education. The door is open for all to return and join the family business.

Industry Question

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