Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is catching up with Tyler Norvell in this episode of Beef Buzz, talking about Cattlemen’s Congress and a preview of the upcoming Cattlemen’s Conference: Blueprint for the Future.
Norvell is the board chairman for Cattlemen’s Congress and talked about the success of the show’s fourth year. The 2025 Cattlemen’s Congress will be held January 4th-16th in Oklahoma City.
“It has been really good feedback,” Norvell said. “The breeds continue to tell us that nobody has customer service like Cattlemen’s Congress, and we want to continue that because they are our customers.”
Novell said numbers for the fourth year are on par with the previous year, and the next steps are looking into what to improve for the fifth year. Many breeds have selected Cattlemen’s Congress as their national show location, Novell added, as the feedback suggests many will continue to do so.
“Everything we hear from the breeds is positive, and we have got some cool new things we are going to start, and we are excited about that, hopefully, to draw in more commercial cattlemen,” Norvell said.
One new addition to the show Norvell mentioned is a commercial pen sale.
“We have several great sale managers along with Bray Haven helping to put that together,” Norvell said. “We are in the early stages, but you will be hearing a lot about that in the coming months.”
Coming up, Cattlemen’s Conference is set to take place on May 22nd and 23rd in Stillwater, Oklahoma at Oklahoma State University’s Totusek Arena. To register, click here. This second Cattlemen’s Conference is once again being organized by Cattlemen’s Congress, OSU Agriculture and the Noble Research Institute.
“This year, we are really focusing more on genomics, gene editing, consumers, and what we need to do,” Norvell said. “I would make the argument that it is great for purebred seedstock operators and focuses on them, but it also focuses on the commercial cattlemen. There is really not going to be any panels about the show ring. It is going to be about the industry, which it should be.”
Wednesday evening, the conference will feature a gene editing discussion with Dr. Alison Van Enennaam at the University of California-Davis. Enannaam is the leading authority in the world when it comes to gene editing.
“Thursday morning, we are going to focus on panels all around her speech so we can be more of a sniper-focus instead of a shotgun focus this year,” Norvell said.
To see the full schedule of speakers for both days of Cattlemen’s Conference, CLICK HERE.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.