SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, I'm Molly. And I'm Jamie. We're the owners of Hired Hand Software. And this is season six of our From the Pasture podcast. For more than 15 years, we've been helping breeders promote their pedigree livestock with our easy-to-use, animal management-driven website software. Each week, we bring you stories from the pasture, breeding philosophies, ranch traditions, cattle knowledge, and conversation with folks using Hired Hand to power their livestock marketing. So settle in for today's episode of From the Pasture with Hired Hand. Today I'm sitting down with Hunter and Jordan Bolti from Flying Bee Longhorns out of Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. The ranch is right on the path of the Great Western Cattle Trail, which is a pretty cool piece of history to build a Longhorn program on. Hunter and Jordan are building a boutique operation focused on color, size, and superior horn growth, and they're also running a variety of businesses, ranching with family, and figuring out how to do it all at the same time. We're going to talk today about what it takes to start a longhorn program from scratch, what it's like balancing cattle with other businesses, and why this breed keeps pulling people in. Hunter and Jordan, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So give us a quick overview of who each of you are and how flying longhorns came to be in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

Uh well, I'm Jordan. I'm Hunter. We uh both separately run our own businesses, and um we have two little girls. One's, you know, pretty new and the other one's about two. Um so that's that keeps us pretty busy, but you know, we wanted to do more. And so we uh a friend talked us into a long horn three years ago, and here we are.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Yeah. So we didn't even know anything about them. He was like, Hey, do you want to buy this? We're like, okay, how much?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah. Did you have any livestock at the time, or was the ranch set up for livestock?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, yeah, the ranch has always been there.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

But it's all it's had black Angus on it.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

So his grandpa has lived in Lone Wolf forever and had a farm growing up.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Yeah, it's it's a centennial farm. Yeah. So it's been in the family forever.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

A hundred years or so.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

It's just never had longhorns on it until now.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Has it seen any other breeds besides the black Angus and the Longhorns in those hundred years?

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Some people have horses, but it's it's mostly black Angus country.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

And your dad Craig is involved in the operation too, right? Um what's that like building something together with family and how does he fit into Flying B?

SPEAKER_03 2:48

It's uh it's nice. You know, he I think he gets excited about the longhorns. He, you know, before all the shows, he has his list of ones that he wants to buy, and and we have our list, and when we compare notes. And he's always been a kind of a country guy anyways. He grew up on the farm. I think this was just something that he knew he would enjoy because he'd get the family down there to the farm and we'd all have fun with the So are you all pretty far off when you pick out the cattle and have to come together, or do you have similar tastes?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Um yeah, there's a no.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

There are some cows that gets purchased when I go to the bathroom and stuff like that. So um, but for the most part, we I think we've all decided where we're going finally and what what we're looking for as a whole.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

So it's it's taken us a while, but you know, that first show that we did, the legacy, what, two years ago, we all had, you know, we we got advice from someone else on what to look for. So we kind of just looked for those, a bid on those, and then ended up with a really good herd after we bought them.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

So it's a nice down market. We bought in at a good time, let's say.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

So your ranch sits right on the path of the Great Western Cattle Trail. Um, and when I was doing research preparing for today, I learned that over seven million longhorns were driven through that exact stretch of Oklahoma between 1874 and 1893. Uh, did you know that history or did your grandfather know that history when he picked the property?

SPEAKER_03 4:34

I believe um I believe he's always known, and there is a monument that's probably 10 miles away from us that actually has, you know, Great Western Trail. We I don't think we knew that Longhorns were ran down that trail, but obviously the new cattle were, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:53

One of those discoveries once you're in it, you dive deep, and it's like, oh well, here we go.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

That's why the land's so flat.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah. Is the monument you're talking about is that in Dodge City?

SPEAKER_03 5:07

There's there's a monument. Um, there's a little stone monument down the road from us, and it just marks like where the trail came through.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

It's kind of like a Route 40 Route 66 to the US. Like this is part of the historic Route 66, and there's one like everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

So 50 miles or so monument.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Well, besides flat, uh, for someone that hasn't been there, describe the land at Flying Bee, uh, you know, and what southwest Oklahoma has in store.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Um, the wind is usually about 40 to 50 miles an hour about every day. I'll do and windy. Um, it's dusty. Uh there's not a whole lot of trees.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

There's a lot of snakes.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

A lot of snakes. Um it's just um you can see like 40 miles. I mean, you can see in all different directions, just a long ways. There is the quartz mountain, they're to the south of us, and you can see them. Um I don't know, it's just not something it's like when you drive through Kansas and it's just flat and all you see is farms. That's that's what it is.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

The the dust that gets blown up makes an excellent sunset though, because it gets very colorful because it's got a bunch of particles to go through. So I bet it's funny. Not to make it sound so terrible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

I mean, it's what you can imagine. You know, you you like a you go outside and the first thing you smell is cows, you know, and cowpoo and diesel, and I it's just you can't get that in the city, so it's nice, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

For some people.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

So how does that land work out for raising Texas Longhorns then?

SPEAKER_03 6:53

It's actually um really good because down there everything's in a square. You got uh if you buy a quarter, you know, you're you're buying 160 acres, which you know, in Texas and everywhere else, you know, it might be split in uh eighty acres or ninety acres, but you're getting a whole quarter. And so, you know, you're able to do crop on eighty uh eighty acres of it, and then you have pasture on the other eighty acres. So you plant wheat and then you run the cattle on the wheat, and then after you get the cows off the wheat, then they have pasture grass.

SPEAKER_04 7:28

They still have grass to eat, and so I think I think that helps with cattle tremendously on there. They they get all the protein out of wheat while it's you know little and it's growing, and then you switch them off and they still have grass to eat.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Yeah, plus you get free fertilizer on the wheat, so that makes it nice.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

So do you have some fellow longhorn breeders around you, or is it prime are you primarily some of the only ones surrounded by commercial?

SPEAKER_03 7:54

Uh Kevin Bryant is north of us about an hour.

SPEAKER_04 7:58

Yeah, he's pretty close. And and I'm sure there are more. We've just been busy having babies and not going on weekend trips to visit people, you know.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

So uh Bob Lemus's ranch is about three hours.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

Three hours. Yeah, we're about three hours from Ardmore. Yeah. But I'm sure there are I've heard of a few around us. Just we haven't ventured out very far.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

There's people that own longhorns, but they net they're not associated with the TLBA.

SPEAKER_04 8:28

Yeah, they're just they just have 'em for fun.

unknown 8:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:32

For little one or two of them.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

What about your water situation? Are you working with like ponds, creeks, wells? What's that look like?

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Um, there's an aquifer that goes through there, a big one. Um we do have some wells drilled, uh, but we have ponds and uh county water and uh yeah, I mean the rain is definitely a difficult thing, but it you know, the the ponds have enough silt in the bottom that they've ponds usually last throughout the summer.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

I mean, we we had a pretty dry winter, so we'll see, but usually they're good.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

We're not super worried about water. It's just more from the crops.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So on your website, you describe flying bee as a boutique operation. Uh what does that mean to you and how does it shape the decisions that you're making about your hurt?

SPEAKER_04 9:26

I think the the term boutique that we were uh using is like, you know, you're going shopping and you go to Walmart, and every Walmart in the nation has the same shirt for sale. And you know, you go to somebody's little operation, and you know, on the strip of down to Fredericksburg, it's a little boutique of you that's they make three of those shirts, you know, and they're they're gonna be something that you've never seen before. And, you know, it could be expensive, you know, you could be a designer boutique, you could be just a nice little niche market. And so I think that's what my thought was when we said it's a little boutique is you know, we we want a limited herd and we want them all to be noteworthy and stand out, and you know, we we're not mass-producing long horns here. We're we're looking for quality and uniqueness.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

I mean we got to visit uh Randy Murray's ranch, and like just in his like one little area, it was like you got there and you're like, wow, like look at that one, and then look at that. So it's just like all his good ones were in the same field. So that's kind of what we're looking at doing is you know, when people come see our ranch, you know, it's looking out, I'm looking out on, you know, it's they're not like blend in, and yeah, you know, they all stick out in some way.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Tell me a little bit more in depth about your herd today. How many head are you running? What are you breeding for? Who are some of your favorites?

SPEAKER_04 10:56

We're we're sitting at about 55. You know, give or take, ones being sold, and you know, I we I would like to cap it at 50 just because I think that's way more manageable with everything going on uh in our life. So But we're about 55. Um we've we've got some pretty some some ones that I have color-coded in my Excel spreadsheet as red, as we're not not ever gonna sell. And um coincidentally enough, we got several of them at that very first legacy sale that you know I said was a perfect time of enjoying because the market was down. Uh, we got them for a pretty good deal, and one of them's BR Denial. Um, and she's just crazy beautiful. And she's now had a calf, uh, a bull calf out of Kid Rock that we um will be the legacy spotlight bull next year. Um we we also have country song checks, who is gonna be the face of Bull Alley for 2026 as well. Um he's he's in red, he's he's probably never going away. Um we we've got voodoo doll, um, who is a MC Hang and Tough daughter that's out of Jess Dragon Iron, and she's huge and colorful, and um that's kind of the ones we've picked, the ones that are just big and colorful. Um and we've tried to say, here's a big, big one out of every line. So we've got Native Maiden, um, who's you know, out of the native dreams and out of that Hoosier Longhorns giant giant breeds going on up there.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Um so we Yeah, and then we my mom's favorite cow, the only one that she's ever bought is uh um tough martina. And so that's that's the longest one we had right now.

SPEAKER_04 12:48

Just just hit 101 eighth inch back in November, so that's our first 100-inch cow. Um, but yeah, that's that's mom's purchase to the to the bird.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

So mom's contributed contribution.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

But no, we've we're we're pretty excited about several of them. Um we have the very first daughter of Country Song Checks that was sold at an auction that's a uh Jaguar Laura baby, and her and piranha have just recently got a confirmed bri breeding, and we're pretty excited about that baby coming out and seeing how beautiful and crazy those horns get get.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

She is my favorite because she lets me pet her.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

She loves her dad, that's for sure. So you mentioned you're gonna have the next legacy spotlight bull, and you mentioned um bull alley's kind what did you call that one? Um his name is Country Song Chicks. But but he's the bull alley. Uh did you say the face of bull alley? Okay. So with those with those two, I mean that's two pretty high, like high attention grabbing situations within your first few years of being in it. Tell me a little bit just about how those came to be and kind of your confidence behind those bulls that are in those positions.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

I think I think to make a name for yourself, kind of have to take risks. You know, I don't know, I don't think either one of these is a risk, but you know, it definitely uh opens some people's eyes on who we are. You know, that we've we've strategically bought, you know, females that were really good and they had really good calves, and now, you know, one of them's gonna be the legacy spotlight bull.

SPEAKER_04 14:31

You know, we're we got a lot of uh he's he's growing faster than Cool Han Loop.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

So uh he he's one, it's it's not a chance, it's a we're getting his name out, you know, before before it's too late. And country song. Um he's out of, you know, he's an NC hanging tough that was born two days after Cool Han and one day before Irish Luck. And so it's just it's his turn. You know, it's he's bigger than both of them, and he's colorful, and you know, cool hand might be bogger tip to tip, but country song just measured 105 total horns. So he's got, you know, in all reality, he's he's growing crazy and he's got some twists, so he's uh we're he he's he's making his babies color up like crazy too. So he's he's worth the nod. And so we're we're just getting him out there. It's you you invest in them and you gotta you gotta get it back. So he's he's worth the investment. And we think Perona is gonna be, you know, but like I said, he's outgrowing Cool Hand Loop at you know at the at the same age. So we we think he's gonna be pretty special as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Well, marketing is obviously a really important piece of the puzzle. Did you have anyone when you were getting started that you know kind of bent your ear about you know giving you advice and how important marketing was? Or like you mentioned, you know, you got some advice on maybe what female lines to start with and everything.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

Yeah, so I um when we first started, I'm trying to find who had um MC Hang and Tough. So I went online and I saw a Randy Murray. I'm like, okay, I gotta give this guy a call and see what he knows. Ended up talking to him for three hours about just the rabbit hole of Longhorns. And he pretty much told us, you know, go after some two to three year olds and have already had a calf. You know, if they're 60 at two, they're gonna be pretty good when they're older. You know, he kind of just told us kind of baseline what to look for. And then after that first show in The Legacy, I mean we kind of just You're all in. We kind of just we we got to see it, you know, in the show, and then from there on we kind of figured it out on what to look for, you know, and what deals to not go after and what deals to go after.

SPEAKER_04 17:41

And I think the not go after is never gonna go away because you do get caught up uh caught up in the sale sometime, but we're we're getting better at it.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

So besides Randy's, uh did you say you went to Randy's ranch or you called him?

SPEAKER_03 17:58

We we've we called we I talked to him, we probably talked for like 24 hours before we even met in in person. But you know, he was just so eager to just tell us all about it. We both talked to him on the phone over and over and over about you know which cows to look for and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

And then we finally met him and you know, it was nice to put a face with a name and yeah, he's he's been so helpful. He even gave us a cow that was born on the same day as our first daughter, so that and named her, you know, after her. And that's that's a nod to the incredible community, right? That somebody will do that and haven't even met you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Yeah, and um, I would say Bob Limit has kind of helped us out too. Yeah, he he definitely knows the breed and has a lot of experience. And that's where we bought uh Country Song from was him.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

He's been a huge help in our and and how we feed our our cows. So let letting me know I'm not doing a good job. And we fixed it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Tell me a little bit about that. So what like what was a red flag for him and and how did you fix it? And tell me what you learned about that.

SPEAKER_04 19:10

Well country we took country song to the 2024 horn showcase, and he was a little thin, and he he let me know exactly how thin he was, and we took him home, and now he's 2,000 pounds, so we he is uh yeah, he's up to standard.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

I'm like 1250 to 1800 pounds on one year in a year, so we're we're back on track, and and he was right.

SPEAKER_04 19:37

We and that's part of the learning curve, right? We have black Angus and they go out and they eat grass, and that's all we do. You know, the long corns, you we we were like, you have to feed them. Like what they know, so you have to feed them substantially. They don't just grass. So like No, I think that was that that's that was a big learning curve as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

So So I feel like the topic of feed and supplements and that is sometimes very protected by programs, um, because everyone, you know, obviously wants to nourish that horn growth as much as they can and maintain the confirmation. Is there any is there any tips or tricks you all have learned there that you're willing to share with the listeners in terms of what to feed or when to feed it?

SPEAKER_04 20:17

I don't think we have any secret sauce or anything. I think the wheat is super helpful um in getting them through the winter without losing a ton of weight.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Um I think I think my grandpa goes and feeds them twice a day.

SPEAKER_04 20:34

Yeah, I think grandpa.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Yeah, you know, we for uh 10 or 15 years he didn't have cattle or anything. It gives him something to do and he just goes out there and it's a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Yeah, and most of them are so gentle that you get to pet them and hand feed them and stuff, so they're they're just like jack puppy dogs.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

So for someone who's either brand new to Longhorns or maybe they're thinking about just buying their first few head, what advice would you give them or what do you wish someone would have told you?

SPEAKER_04 21:03

I think the the quality over quantity is is uh it's kind of something that we we need to we are now shifting our focus to. Uh it's great to have a hundred longhorns, but if you only sell four of them a year because the other ones are, you know, not worth m more than they would be at the meat market, then what's the point? So I think that's that's kind of what we've had to learn is oh a three in one might be a great deal until you look and none of them are worth anything by themselves. Not not to say there aren't good three in ones, we just sold one.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

But just you know, it's if if the price tag is high, there's there's probably a reason the price tag is high.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

And maybe just you know, uh don't expect anybody to come in for a while.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah, or maybe everyone's gonna be able to just know it's gonna go out.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

It's gonna keep going out.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

We're supposed to be bringing people into the breed with these podcasts, not discouraging. How important do you think it is to visit other ranches or maybe attend sales or you know, do your research in that way prior to starting your herd?

SPEAKER_04 22:28

Well, we we kind of jumped in some like he said, one of his buddies called and said, Hey, I'm at Legends back in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three and uh said there's this cow for sale. I know you guys are Yeah, I got some black Angus. Do you want want one? And I mean I wasn't even involved in that one. Him and his dad did that and bought bought her and back It took us a year, I think, to buy another one. A full year almost to buy well, I guess six months. Yeah, six months. Yeah, six months to buy another one. But you know I I didn't I didn't get it at first. And then then we I started researching everything and then we Well you fell under the rabbit. Here we are. Yeah. But um I think I think going to the sales and going to the futurities are like super important just to get I hate the word indoctrinated, but into the community. If you know you you go hang out with everybody after and you know you go to dinners and you meet them, you meet their kids, you you get invested. Like I said earlier, we we haven't been to a ton of people's ranches just because we've been I've been pregnant and on house arrest for a large portion of our time in the industry so far. But um it's something that we look forward to doing.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

So yeah, I think we've been invited to about everybody's ranch.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Yeah, we just gotta go. But uh the sales are so much fun and the futurities are so much fun, even even though you don't win. That's not fun.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

But I guess I guess seeing how the the sales are not like a just a cattle auction, you know. You go, you get a bid number, and you bid and it's like three days of alcohol and socializing and you know like dinner dinner and dancing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

I mean the you know the Glen Dinnings, right? They they put on a giant show out there and it's it's an abandonment. That's a that's a party, not a cattle sale, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

So it's let's talk a little bit about how you all are balancing your longhorns with all of your businesses. Um so you're you're really busy if you want to tell us a little bit about your your specific businesses and then maybe talk um some about how you split the ranch work uh with everything else that's going on.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

Yeah, we've we've got quite a lot going on. Yeah. Um I'm um running a fiber consulting and construction company that um we're opening up another location today, actually. So um, but um he's got a few a few other things to go on.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

Yeah, I have a Jimmy's egg breakfast restaurant. Um I run a family office. Um you know, me and my dad, we have uh airplanes that we leave stuff from the state flight school. We've got some cabins down river cabins, we got all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

And and then there's the farm, the the actually the food-producing farm. And then we got and then the black angus.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

And we got the crop producing farms. We got you know, as of May 1st, uh this year we're over 4,000 acres.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

So adds to the good good farmhands are pretty nice. Uh uh retired parents are helpful, but really, like like he said earlier, what's helped our Longhorn herd a lot is grandpa going out and and checking on them, feeding on them. I mean, he he caught one that was, you know, feet first last week or something, and went and pulled it and hung it and you know, made sure it was good to go all by himself without anybody asking or anything. So if he hadn't been there, that would have been a little bit of a problem. So really just the family support. I mean, even down to my parents back home, you know, watching the kids while we can go to an event without them or so, you know.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

So Yeah, we we try to uh you know, not lately, but we've tried to go to the farm at least once a month or once every other month and just check on them and play with them and take pictures and so it it it's not super balanced, but I mean we we are there enough that and we we have people watching, so yeah, it's it's nice.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

I know you mentioned earlier that you're still working on recouping your your original investment, but I would imagine with both of your entrepreneurial spirits, you you probably do treat your longhorn herd like running a business. So tell our listeners a little bit about maybe what that looks like differently from those who might be running it as more of a hobby.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

Yeah, well, I mean, we're we're still working that one out on, you know, we we need it to make money or at least break even, right? And I think a big no-no in the money game is futurities, right? Because, you know, you gotta win to even, but but those are those are the fun parts, right? So we're we're kind of weighing, okay. Did the futurities now fall into a separate business and it's not really a business, that's just the fun part. Um you know, this this year is our first year of selling anything. So um, and and like I said, we're we're still establishing our herd. So we're we're now in that phase of we bought these two years ago and we realize that's not the direction we want to go. We're we're just gonna we're we're clearing them out, and we're next year we'll start with the meat of what we're intending with the with our brand and our you know our breed behind our breeding name behind it.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Um I don't see it being a business because you're just trading cows with people. You know, you're you may sell one that that brings you a hundred grand, great, but then you just bought four others for 25,000. So I guess the biggest help is that we have over 200 head of black Vangus, and so they kind of fund the longhorns along with everything else.

SPEAKER_04 28:48

I think one thing that you've got to flip over in your mind is the ones that aren't gonna make the sales need to need to kind of go to the market themselves, and that's that's where you get your kind of your money back.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Um, unless you bought it for ten dollars it's not worth ten, right?

SPEAKER_04 29:05

Yeah, your your cow's not gonna go to the sale and make that while we've got we can recoup it because we just had ten babies that are gonna go, we're gonna take them to the market and get eighteen hundred dollars for 'em. And so that at least pays for food for the year, you know, for for the for the show ones.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

So and you get mate for a year, so it's you're not providing.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

I want to touch on something you mentioned about the fraturities. So would you also consider them in addition to just being fun, like you said, and you know, maybe a different pot that you're funding it from? Um, do you think they're also important for marketing in terms of kind of showing off what you are proud of in breeding on your ranch?

SPEAKER_03 29:49

Yeah, I think I think, you know, last year was our first charity down to the futurities. And although we wanted to win, you know, we there's there's kind of a two different um roads you could go down is you can buy cows that you want to sell for a lot of money, and you can buy a futurity cows that you know may not sell for a lot of money, but may do really well in the futurities. And I think our boutique uh ranch is more on the sales side. So it is, it's just marketing on what we have. You know, we know that a lot of our cows may not do well in the futurities, but we're still gonna go and show them off. And yeah, you know, if if we're gonna, especially if we're gonna sell one, you know, in the same year, we want to show it off as much as possible. That way people will start looking at it.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Well, with all the with all the businesses that you're operating, are there any lessons or traits that maybe carry over from the businesses to the Longhorn herd or vice versa? Maybe any lessons you've learned in longhorns that have proved valuable in your other businesses?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Oh, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

Um, I think I think I have a whole lot that come from my side into the Longhorns, other than sometimes I mean, yeah you have to do it yourself to make any money. You know, you can't pay someone all the time to do stuff and the hardest stuff you're gonna have to do anyway, because you know, you don't totally I mean, are are you gonna trust somebody to do you know all your invoicing and make sure they get all your money out of each and every you know location you hit? I mean, my answer is no, I still do all of that, but you know, say same thing with the cows, and I kind of don't trust anybody to work on without me being there to make sure we've got correct, you know, RFID tag numbers, correct DNA numbers, sample numbers, you know. So I'm I think that's a little bit of control me, you know, is that that's part of that they have to deal with is, you know, I'm I'm gonna do it right, so I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

So I think longhorns are way easier than employees too. They are that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

They only talk back really when they're like about to have a baby. So at least ours.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

So Which do you feel like has taught you more patience? Starting and operating businesses or starting to raise longhorns?

SPEAKER_04 32:57

Employees' businesses, yeah. So uh like I said, we've I I guess we've been lucky. We've only had a couple longhorns we bought that we've that are unpleasant to deal with, um, and they don't stay for a very long time. Um they they haven't stayed for very long time. So um employees, you kinda have to have them, and you gotta just deal with it, you know, when they uh you need you need 50 workers and you can't just say, okay, you're gonna go to the sale bar and you gotta just deal with it. Um I think businesses have taught me more patience, but I get to go relax with the long horns at least.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

So I think having two kids under two is taught us more patience than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

There you go. That's that's probably very true.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Where do you feel like the kids uh will have a role? Are you hoping they get involved with both the longhorns and the businesses?

SPEAKER_04 33:55

Oh, our our first daughter, uh Hunter, is just obsessed. She would she goes, she pets all of them, she tries to feed them. Um I I got the cutest photo from this past weekend of her holding a cube out and one's like this far away, about to, you know, about to eat it. And she's she's obsessed already. She but I mean she's obsessed with all animals, but yeah, she she uh hopefully is gonna be super involved and you know, hopefully the other one does as well.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

But you know, it's it's fun when you go to the sale and we bring a little bucket with cubes for her, and she just goes down the row and just starts to tries to hand feed them all cubes. So she she really enjoys it. And we hope our next daughter will too, but I'm sure she will.

SPEAKER_04 34:46

She's gonna get forced into it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Well, I can tell you growing up, my sister and I showed longhorns and we were forced into it to start with, but after that it was the it was the best thing. I'm so thankful to my parents that they were willing to spend their weekends and you know, money and and all the things letting us do that because it it turns out to be pretty special. So let's talk a little bit about your hired hand website. Um, so you've had Flying Bee Longhorns for a while now. Uh if you can think back to when you first started it, which I think might have been around the time that you purchased your first few, uh, what what made you decide it was time to get a site up?

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Well, um, you know, you see everybody that has has their website and they were all advertising it. And it's really when you look at it, we we did look at it in that standpoint as this is a investment. And if we're gonna ever, if we will ever make any money, it can't happen without, like you said, marketing our our herd. And you know, you can't really do that without a a website. And everyone I looked at had a hired hand one and really looking into it, the integration of the pedigrees that you can just click back and forth from website to website, and um really how easy it is to operate on the back end. We just figured we we had to have it in the industry, basically.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

So are you the one that's tasked with uh updating it all the time in addition to audio requirement?

SPEAKER_04 36:16

I am and I've I I've got my spreadsheets and I've got the I'm I'm the one in charge of the horns database, you know, for the TLBA and the one on the hired hand, uh the website lady, I'm the I'm the paperwork lady, and uh so what's your favorite back-end feature?

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Like what do you find saves you the most time or that you enjoy doing the most?

SPEAKER_04 36:41

I mean, all of it's pretty easy. Um I mean, adding new cows is is super easy. Um especially because kind of everyone we bought has already been on our website, so you just click and click and say that's a damn, that's a si you know, sire and the end. It's it's just all pretty super helpful and the the linking of the pro uh progeny automatically is super helpful as well. So uh tri I I just started, you know, like I said, we just started selling. So transferring them has you know, I I just started doing that and that's been super easy as well.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

So who's the first cow that you sold off the website that you can remember like specifically happened because of the website or they came through, you know, the buyer came to you through the website?

SPEAKER_04 37:33

I don't think we've done it yet. I've had a lot of questions about partnerships on Piranha. Um, you know, I'll post something or whatever, and and it'll update his measurement and I'll get a hey, you know, do you want a partnership? And that I mean, I'm have said no, but um so I we haven't had any come yet, but we've had offers. So I've just been a little choosy. So they've been on the ones that we want to keep.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

So if each of you could only pick one, who would your favorite animal on the website be?

SPEAKER_03 38:18

I picked um BR den uh denial. That was my um the one I picked from the legacy the first time you got on.

SPEAKER_04 38:28

I've got two that I'm gonna have a pretty hard time choosing between. I like uh Voodoo doll, who's that just drag an iron daughter, and then I've got Native Maiden, who's uh Native Dreams, and they're both big and they're both very long, and they're both very friendly. You can park in the middle of an open field and they'll both just jump on the trailer and go with you wherever you want. So but uh that causes some issues too. So but the hand fed. Because they're so ginormous as well. But I I don't know, I can't choose between the two. They're my babies. You can't ask me to pick a favorite.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

So I like oh and G-type is my baby, so she's but V Nile is hostile, minus two.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Well we'll we'll give you each two, I suppose that's okay. So if money were no issue, if location were no itch issue, what is a longhorn out there on someone else's website that you would just jump at the opportunity to add to your herd?

SPEAKER_04 39:36

I like I know I know we have one of her daughters, but I really uh like Jaguar Laura a lot uh you know uh New Age at Randy's. Jam and Jenny's also out there. Just drag and iron is is a good one.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Uh at least uh uh one of the sellers have out of Texaco. Texaco Ferriel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:02

We're we're trying to treat country song a whole lot like the sailors are treating Texaco and and protect protect his babies pretty pretty good, but we nice to get a get one on him.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

We don't really have any um big favorites, we just want colorful and big and beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah. Picked up on something you said just there that maybe f there's maybe some of our listeners that don't understand that. When you say you want to protect him and kind of limit that, what what does that mean to like those of us that maybe haven't had that caliber of bull before?

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Um, so there I there's really in my mind two two routes you can go with a bull. And one is to say, uh which we'll probably take with piranha and what they've taken with cool hand and mcey hanging tough for forever and say, look at this bull, he's crazy. Let's sell so many straws, let's just fly them out everywhere, you know, just everybody let everybody come on them and have babies, you know. The year we joined, if there were less than 10 MC Hangin' Tough heifers at a sale, it was crazy. You know, there's so many of them for sale constantly. And so what the sellers have done with Texaco and saying he's ours, he's only breeding two ours, or one or two that we say that you can breed them to, and you know, we're not gonna sell it his babies unless they're the best they're gonna be worth 25 grand or more, uh, and protect his name to say, uh, you know, so far country song has only had one baby ever sold, and she was $24,000. So um protecting him for me is saying he's ours, we're not gonna partner on him, and he's what's coming to the market is gonna be the best of the best, and we're controlling his output, you know. Whereas you can throw the market full of straws and people can throw it on whenever they want. We're picking who his babies are gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Yeah, there's a thousand twenty-gauge babies out there, but you know, there might be three country song babies a year. We only want the country song ones to be good that are out there.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Do you all spend a lot of time on other folks' hired hand websites? Do you have any favorites or one you find yourself refreshing to see if they have new calves on the ground?

SPEAKER_04 42:35

Um I kind of I I just kind of flop back and forth. I mean, there's always the the Glen Dennings you look through and you know, New Age and and you look through Buxton's because he's got, you know, all those futurity cows running through constantly. And um it's it's a little hard to pick whose websites to go through because you know, there's in my my in my experience, I don't update the website every two days, you know. So it's uh I don't go visit just one person over and over again constantly because you know, what are you gonna see that you didn't see two weeks ago?

SPEAKER_00 43:17

So I I I only mention this because I feel like some some of our customers don't know about it. But did you know that there's a page on our our website on hiredhandsoftware.com where you can see the past 24 hours of any new photo, new measurement, new animal that was added to any of our customer sites. So you can literally go stock and just see like what new animals have been added. Next time you're up for one of those 2 a.m. feedings, you'll have to uh you'll have to start scrolling through.

SPEAKER_04 43:48

Well, that will be tonight.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

So yeah, a lot of I think I think folks guard if they do know about it, they guard it pretty closely because they like don't want other folks to know about it. That's how they're finding those uh that's how it's happening, huh? Well, where do you all see flying bee longhorns in let's say the next two, five, ten years?

SPEAKER_04 44:11

Hopefully still at about fifty. I don't I don't want to get uh unmanageable. When we met Randy, he had 1200 or something, and I was just like, that's crazy to think of how you're gonna name and keep track of twelve hundred cows and what their registered you know POVA number are and stuff. I see hopefully a lot more of our cows that we bred we actually bred and we chose who with who with our brand on them on on other people's ranches, I think, is what what I'd like to see is um you know uh I think we're gonna um you know, we're gonna sell some this year, next year, and kinda get down to our our base herd, and then after that, you know, we'll start producing and um you know, your your fifty cows goes to a hundred if they all have a baby you know in the same year, so that's you know, hopefully hopefully no more than fifty.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

But I don't know. If she goes to the bathroom any more times during a sale, it might become sixty or seven.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

Yeah. I think the the aspect of that is we've got a coal and we've got a coal hard, and that's sometimes hard if they're if they're friendly.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

That's hard about longhorns because they each have their own personality. You eat they each have their own reason. You kind of feel, you know, friends with them.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

It's really sad to get to the field and you're like, okay, which one's going today? And it's just whichever one's nice enough to get in a trailer. And that's like sad, you know?

SPEAKER_03 46:05

So so I think for our ranch, our farm, um, I think our max acreage is gonna be about five thousand. And we are starting to look more for pasture land to kind of be able to move the black Angus around. That way we can make more room for the longhorns. You know, because you know, with right now we got what three or four bulls that we're looking at, and so they're all gonna need their own field. And then, you know, once they get their own field, you know, then we can have enough room that's kind of tight with the black anus taking over. Um I think that's more futuristic, more doable for us is just getting separate fields.

SPEAKER_04 46:53

Maybe they have their own little location all in general and everything else goes away.

SPEAKER_03 46:58

Move them to different fields and separate them. I mean that's that's kind of what we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Is there anything I haven't asked you all about that you want to make sure our listeners know about your program today?

SPEAKER_04 47:14

So I think um just my my main highlights were, you know, we've we've got some heifer plus semen that's coming to Horn Showcase for Country Song Checks. That's gonna be the faceable alley, and then we've also got some Heiferplus coming for um Pirana, who's gonna be the legacy spotlight bull for 2027, and just make sure that we're giving those guys a shout out and and that expect uh Country Song's next baby to be sold as well at Horn Showcase. So we'll see see how that one goes. As and I said the first one and the only one is sold for 24,000. So we'll hope it's it's up there too.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Tell everyone where they can find you, your website address, your social media so they can go learn more about you.

SPEAKER_04 48:09

Yeah, yeah, we're on Facebook at Flynn Be Longhorns, um, or you know, Jordan Bolty or Hunter Bolti. Um we're our website is Fine Beehorns, uh, no long in it. Um just because that one was taken. But um yeah, we we don't have an Instagram or anything, but um we do have Facebook and we have our website and um we'll we'll be posting.

SPEAKER_03 48:32

Or just come see us.

SPEAKER_04 48:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

So I was just gonna ask, open to visitors as well. We are open to visitors.

SPEAKER_03 48:38

Yeah, when we obviously when we can be there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

And you'll take care of all the snakes, they don't have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

It was one time it was they were under she just went out there to take pictures of them and there was a snake under her.

SPEAKER_04 48:52

It's really nice to bend down to get a nice good photo of your of your cow and then have a rattlesnake slither through your legs.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

It was a water snake.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

It was not you know, as much as I complain about Iowa, that's one thing I'm so thankful we don't have. We have snow and wind and all the things, but not not mean snakes. The most I've seen is a carter snake. Well, there are no good snakes. Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for interviewing us.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Yep.