Straight A Farms offers customers farm-to-plate beef
STOCKTON, MO. – As young people, Trevor and Kaylee Ankrom assumed everyone knew where their beef came from and enjoyed farm-raised beef like they did. It wasn’t until they got older that they realized most people only knew that their food came from the grocery store.
“I can never remember a time when we went to the grocery store to buy meat,” Trevor said. “There is a difference.”
Last year, they began to change that misconception with a USDA-inspected farm-to-table beef operation from Straight A Farms near Stockton, Mo.
“I kept saying it enough that my husband finally let me do it,” Kaylee said of the beef sales. “He said it was a long time to hold cattle, and it was money just sitting there. I kept telling him, ‘I think it will work.’ I said it enough times, and he gave in. One of the reasons I wanted to get into beef sales was because I didn’t realize how fortunate we were when we grew up with beef in the freezer.
“As an adult, my friends would go to the store and complain about beef prices and not knowing where that beef came from.”
The couple runs a 90-head, mostly Angus-influenced herd on 390 owned and rented acres. All the beef sold under the Straight A Farms label is born and raised on the Ankrom farm.
“The packers are the ones who make the money, and it’s nice to provide this to the consumers so they know exactly where it came from; that’s important to a lot of people,” Trevor, who is full-time on the farm, said. “There is nothing wrong with commercially raised beef, but one pound of hamburger from the grocery store can have up to 100 different animals. There is a customer base for people who want to know exactly where their beef came from and that it is home-raised.”
Through their beef sales, Trevor and Kaylee have the opportunity to answer questions about beef.
“We have people who ask us about grass-finished beef,” Trevor said. “I’m sure it’s a personal preference, and there are people who can do it right, but for Missouri, a calf finished on fescue isn’t doable, and the meat reflects that. With a grain-finished beef, you will have the nice, white marbling.”
“I like to take those opportunities and explain to people what grain-finished vs grass-finished beef is,” Kaylee, a family nurse practitioner, added. “I also like to share stories on my social media or the farm page about what we’re doing on the farm and everyday life. The things I grew up around and didn’t think twice about, people say they love seeing it or found it interesting.”
Most Straight A Farms beef sales are for packaged cuts and bundles.
“Most people don’t have a freezer for a full or half beef,” Kaylee said. “That’s why I’ve tried to focus on curated boxes to give them a little of everything and not fill their freezer.”
When they started the beef program, Kaylee said she was ready to ship beef around the country but soon learned there was a high demand closer to home.
“When we did those first eight, I got really scared because the freezers were really full,” Kaylee said with a laugh. “We have been out of stock since April, and we still have people wanting to know when we will have more.”
Steers from Straight A Farm are pasture-raised and grain-finished. Trevor said calves for the beef program go onto feed at about 6 to 7 months of age, which is around weaning, and offered unlimited pasture and hay, as well as grain and haylage for eight months or longer.
“They are not dry-lotted; they always have a pasture option,” Trevor said of his steers, adding that they process steers at about 1,300 to 1,400 pounds.
Due to high cattle prices, Trevor said they are selling more calves at the livestock auction and scaling back their beef program a bit this year. Typically, replacement heifers are retained from their herd, but a lack of rain and higher prices at the yards make it more profitable to sell than to hold.
“It’s hard to hold back calves at a high price,” he explained, adding that three steers are ready for purchase, and more can be put into the program if needed.
Calves sold through a livestock market are also weaned at 6 to 7 months and then held for 45 to 60 days before going to the sale.
Quality beef starts with a healthy herd, so the Ankroms follow a vaccination protocol for their cows and calves.
“The calves will always have two rounds of weaning shots, and when they are born, they will get blackleg and tetanus,” Trevor explained.
Straight A Farms produces all forages for its herd, and thanks to a rotational grazing system, they can typically stockpile some forages.
“Over the last three years, it’s been pretty brutal, and our herd size has dwindled,” Trevor said, referring to ongoing drought conditions. “With rotational grazing, I have had a lot of good luck stockpiling fescue and strip grazing into the end of January. We also feed a lot of baleage, which stretches out the amount of feed we are able to give.”
Trevor said baleage primarily consists of Sudan, Pearl millet, rye, and crimson clover. In addition to the cattle operation, Straight A Farms also has a custom hay and wrapping business.
The Ankrom herd is spring and fall calving. Fall calving begins Oct. 1. Spring calving gets underway on Feb. 15 and both are in a 90-day window.
Farm life is filled with ups and downs and lots of hard work, but the Ankroms would have it no other way.
“I just find it incredibly rewarding,” Trevor said. “To have a tangential product and see it grow and see the product shipped off, you can appreciate it. There are a lot of hurdles, but that’s what makes it rewarding.”
Kaylee agrees.
“We plant the seeds or our forages to grow, cut it, bale it, feed it to the cattle, and later having a beautiful steak brings it full circle,” Kaylee said. “We are working to grow our herd, and then the beef business will follow.”
