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Kansas Horse Council Presents Scholarships With Career Inspiration From Leading Trainer

By
Frank Buchman
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Grilled Wagyu burgers kicked off the Kansas Horse Council Scholarship presentations featuring a diverse program.
At the Sedalia Community Church north of Manhattan, Andrew Coates discussed his career as a leading cutting horse trainer before ten scholarships were given to young people looking toward careers with horses.
Appropriate to review the Booth Creek Wagyu Ranch which supplied the banquet burgers.
Located north of Manhattan near Olsburg, our ranch was originally developed for world-class whitetail deer hunting, according to Andrew Coates, the ranch manager.
Despite what most people think about the state’s geography, Booth Creek ranch is anything but flat. “It features deep, wooded creek draws, surrounded by rolling hills of lush tallgrass prairie, making it the perfect place to raise our special herd,” Coates informs on the ranch website.
The business began in 2020 when Dave Dreiling attended his first Wagyu auction. He started studying the Wagyu industry in America and saw opportunities to improve it through efficiency, education, and a more practical business approach.
There are three aspects of the business that separate Booth Creek from many other Wagyu producers.
The first was the Wagyu processing facility which now ships products nationwide. Another aspect of the business is keeping everything local. The ranch, processing facility, and distribution center are all located within 20 miles of each other.
Final piece of the puzzle was finding the right people who share the vision. In 2021, Andrew Coates came on board to oversee ranch operations.
He grew up on a Wagyu ranch in Australia and has been a cornerstone of the industry’s growth in America. His family moved from California to Kansas and are now partners in the business.
Starting with online sales in 2021, the business reached new heights later that year with a brick-and-mortar location in Manhattan.
This store offers free samples of freshly seared Wagyu steak, which gives guests the opportunity to taste the difference for themselves and learn what makes Wagyu a culinary treasure, according to Coates.
“We’re here to elevate America’s standard of quality beef,” Coates indicated.
Raised on a cattle ranch in Queensland, Australia, Andrew Coates began his horse training career working for some of the best cutting horse trainers in Australia.
In 1995, he made the move to the United States. His National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) professional career began when National Football League Hall of Famer Joe Montana hired Coates to train for his cutting horse program. In 2003, Coates began accepting outside clients.
Since that time, Coates has earned 20 major aged event champion and reserve champion titles along with taking horses to finalist positions in more than 50 major events, including the NCHA Futurity and Super Stakes.
His lifetime NCHA earnings are now more than $1 million. He and his wife, Nicole, and their two children continue horse involvement along with the cattle business.
“The biggest mistake I’ve made is getting too focused on horse training and losing sight of being a good horseman.,” Coates admitted.
“The biggest myth in cutting is that it’s easy. It may be simple, but it is not easy,” he emphasized.
Coates most memorable moment in cutting was the first time he made the Futurity ­Finals on Sues Barn Cat.
“Try to train every horse to the best of its ability but be aware of its limitations,” Coates said.
His favorite quote and what he considers the best advice came from his employer Joe Montana. “If you’re afraid to lose you can never be a winner.”
Coates’ biggest showring achievements include NCHA major aged event finalist five times, multiple Pacific Coast championships, 2018 Cascades Derby champion, 2017 El Rancho Futurity champion, 2017 Idaho Futurity champion, 2005 Pacific Coast Gelding Stakes champion, and 2005 Breeders Invitational five- and six-year-old champion.
Coates considers the top three horses he’s trained to include Sues Barn Cat, Im Catman, and Lizzys Got Style.
Recipients of scholarships from the Kansas Horse Council (KHC) as presented by executive director Justine Staten with assistance from KHA member Joyce Troyer include:
Chelsi Brown, Logan, daughter of Steve and Tara Brown, majoring in horse production and management at Colby Community College.
Caitlyn Champagne, Lawrence, daughter of Chris and Carolyn Champagne, majoring in kinesiology, Spanish, and physiology at Kansas State University.
Courtney Clinesmith, Cimarron, daughter of Bill and Stephanie Clinesmith, majoring in agricultural economics business at Kansas State University.
Cash Fuesz, Eureka, son of Cory and Heather Fuesz, majoring in organizational leadership at Weatherford College.
Rileigh Holcomb, Ford, daughter of Cody Holcomb and Jessica Stout, majoring in horse production and management at Colby Community College.
Chancy Johnson, White City, daughter of Chad and Janon Johnson, majoring in agribusiness and marketing at Kansas State University.
Kelli Kychik, Topeka, daughter of Corey and Michelle Kychik, majoring in nursing at Kansas State University.
Alyssa Leslie, Inman, daughter of Garrett Leslie and Toni Woodson, majoring in veterinary medicine at Kansas State University.
Kirsten Miessler, Seward, daughter of Ron and Heather Miessler, majoring in elementary education at Wichita State University.
Alexis Studebaker, Harveyville, daughter of David and Jamie Studebaker, majoring in agriculture and communications at Kansas State University.
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CUTLINES

Present to receive their Kansas Horse Council Scholarships were Alexis Studebaker, Harveyville; Alyssa Leslie, Inman; and Chancy Johnson, White City.

Pratt Cowboy Suffers Steer Roping Career Ending Injury

By
Frank Buchman
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Rocky Patterson, a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) world champion steer roper in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2016, said he will likely retire after suffering an injury during the M.M. Fisher Junior Memorial Steer Roping on March 10, 2024, in Andrews, Texas.
The 58-year-old steer roper from Pratt, Kansas, tore his ACL in his right knee in the fourth round when getting off his horse. Patterson underwent surgery to repair the injury and will miss the remainder of the season.
“I heard it pop and I knew it was gone,” Patterson said. “I knew it was serious before I hit the ground.”
Patterson, currently 16th in the PRCA Standings with $12,445, plans to continue riding but will likely retire from competitive rodeo after the seven-month recovery time.
“I’ll still ride but this will probably be about the end of it, you know for me in steer roping,” he said. “I’m getting pretty old and it’s hard to compete with those 25- to 30-year-olds whenever you’re almost 60 anyway, before you have something like that happen.”
Patterson is one of the best steer ropers in PRCA history, qualifying for the National Finals Steer Roping 28 times (1994-95, 1997-20221, 2023). Only ProRodeo Hall of Famer Guy Allen has more steer roping qualifications at 33.
Patterson also has won three National Finals Steer Roping average titles in 1999, 2001, and 2023, tied for third on the all-time list.
The Oklahoma Panhandle State University, Goodwell, graduate, earned the PRCA Resistol Steer Roping Rookie of the Year title in 1992.
“To be really honest I don’t like the thought of it,” Patterson said of retirement. “You know it was coming someday and Father Time is undefeated.”
Rocky Patterson is the father of Cole Patterson, who won PRCA Steer Roping World Championships in 2021 and 2023.
Cole Patterson is presently atop the world standings with $42,152.
Rocky Patterson plans to stay involved in the sport, while following the career of his 28-year-old son.
“I like to watch steer roping in general, but I like to watch him make a good run,” he said.
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Civil tables

By
John Marshall
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1
john marshal

Civic clubs often meet at meal time for their business, and for most of them it’s to help others who could use a lift, especially the young ‒ help them over life’s early rugged landscapes, inspire them to be better people.

During meetings members make time for table conversation – chit-chat about their lives ‒ usually family, their outings, adventures, achievements.

The talk is rarely about politics: Washington is now a fruitless place and Topeka its unkempt cousin, and why get into that? Local events are another matter. A glimpse about town and county is reassuring, a direct relationship to shared purpose and steady gain. Local business seems well enough and without the festering bias that sours our capitals. Labels won’t stick for the ambulance medic, the pool lifeguard, the chip seal crew.

Club members are an agreeable mix. At the hint of politics, the table may hear a point, agreed or not. Smiles and shrugs are exchanged, they move on, opinions notched or tabled for further review. Their chief mission, unalloyed, is to improve circumstances for others who can use help.

*

One wonders why it can’t be this way in Topeka or Washington. Perhaps it could, if those at our Capitols spent more time outside their own circle and at a shared table. They might reach across that “aisle” they once recalled so wistfully, and invite an adversary to have a meal, talk things over.

The era’s vaunted “social media,” fused into today’s heated political cultures, has consigned users to conflicting niches, capsules that feed their own concerns and exclude others’. The greater missions, matching public interests and needs, are often lost or buried.

In other times, Republicans and Democrats ‒ conservative, moderate, liberal ‒ could often be found together at tables in Topeka or Washington talking all matter of whatnot, including serious politics. In Washington, Nancy Kassebaum and Ted Kennedy were congenial third floor neighbors in the Russell Senate Office Building. In Topeka at the end of a long Statehouse day, Senate President Bud Burke (Republican) and House Speaker Marvin Barkis (Democrat) often could be seen descending the north stairway together, chatting amiably as they headed out the door. There was never a rule then that adversaries could not be civil, or understanding, or even friendly. That was decades ago.

*

If Jerry Moran were spotted dining privately with Chuck Schumer, the leading Senate Democrat, the storm in Washington would be as though Moran were a police chief caught breaking bread with a fugitive axe murderer.

We no longer even hear the old odd claim that legislators sometimes “work out” together in the members’ gym or on a tennis court. Huffing and puffing on a treadmill or lunging after a forehand volley is not the manner of shared recess. It may be good for exchanging grunts, but it’s hardly relaxed conversation.

More vexing is the taboo on social intercourse in the halls of state and federal government. Tribal chieftains and party purists have put under suspicion any association with rivals. Some liken it to criminal behavior. This does nothing to advance an exchange of ideas. It does everything to create little confederacies, states of pro-stridence and anti-compromise. There is little room for interplay, almost no room for agreement.

It’s hardly fertile ground for good government. Rivals who meet to share their views and exchange ideas have breached no sacred covenant. Such behavior is not criminal, it’s healthy.

And like the shared table at a civic club, it’s good for the republic.

Turtle Tales

By
Milo Yield
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0
Thayne Cozart
Milo Yield

Conversations among us oldsters at the morning Geezer Gang Gabfest recently included discussion about turtles. The recent rains prompted Flint Hills snapping turtles to begin migrating from one water source to another. Several got their migration cut short by getting run over on the local roads.

Shortly after that turtle discussion, I saw a land terrapin — specifically a Plains Painted Box Turtle — on the road. That specific terrapin is a small land-based turtle that used to be abundant, but it’s numbers have gone down in recent years.

At any rate, all the turtle talk got me to reminiscing about my encounters with turtles when I wuz growing up in southeast Kansas, close to Moran, Bronson, and Uniontown.

I recall that one year there wuz a super-abundance of Painted Box Turtles. They were everywhere. So, one of my best friends and classmates, ol’ Brosen Burgh, and I decided to see how many turtles we could collect. In no time at all, we found at least 50 of the little reptiles. We built a “turtle corral” out of used lumber to contain them.

But, then we had to decide what to do with our “turtle herd.” The obvious action wuz to have turtle races. So, for an hour or so, we each selected what we hoped would be a “fast” turtle, released our selections in the middle of a string circle “race track,” and yelled and beat on the ground to see whose turtle would cross the string boundary first.

However, we soon tired of that contest, so we dreamed up a contest to determine turtle strength. Brosen remembered that his father had a set of cylindrical metal gram weights that were used to weight small things on a balance beam scale. I can’t recall the exact weights, but the metal cylinders went incrementally from small to large.

So, Brosen got the gram weight set and found a tiny pulley, too. We attached the pulley to the clothes line and ran a string through it that went down to the ground on both sides. Next, we selected a turtle for hoped-for strength and drilled a painless tiny hole in the rear rim of its shell. Then we tied one end of the string to the turtle and the other end to a gram weight. It wuz sort of like a horse pulling contest only we were using turtles.

Naturally, we bet on our entries and the winning turtle wuz the one that could hoist the heaviest gram weight the highest into the air.

Looking back on that activity today, I doubt that such a contest has ever been duplicated. It just goes to show that back in those days, rural kids used their imaginations to entertain themselves, not electronic devices.

***

I’ve got other childhood turtle memories. Another friend, ol’ K. D. Kidd, and I used to find huge old snapping turtles resting on the bottoms of the shallow limestone creeks in the area. In the early spring, when the water wuz still very cold, the snappers were lethargic and slow.

So, K. D. and I would wade into the water, grab the big snappers by the tail, and toss them out on land. We never once got bitten, but the snappers sure didn’t appreciate us.

Then during the summer doldrums we would ride our horses to the Marmaton River. We would find a high bank where we could see snapping turtles basking in the water on on logs. We used the snappers to practice our marksmanship with our 22-caliber rifles. In those days, we gave nary a thought to turtle conservation. Snappers were predators that would eat our fish from our stringers if they had a chance … they needed to be eliminated.

***

Another recent geezer discussion wuz comparing thoughts on burial and cremation — appropriate topic at our ages. But, one guy had the best story. He said he had a hunting buddy who mandated that his ashes be mixed with lead shot in shotgun shells and his friends were to use the shells when hunting pheasants.

The guy telling the story said that the deceased’s friends did indeed use the ashes-loaded shells as he wished. But, when a wag asked him if he ate the pheasants he killed with the shells, he said, “No. I’m not a cannibal!”

***

Here’s a true kids story. My 4-year-old great-grandson stopped by for a short visit last weekend. He loves to eat fresh veggies from my garden. So, as I watched him, he collected a big leaf of spinach, covered it with a big leaf of leaf lettuce, wrapped the leaves around two pods of green peas and announced he wuz eating a “green taco.”

***

I’ve got another travel horror story about flying on American Airlines (AA). A friend and his wife in Wichita booked a flight to Europe for a Mediterranean cruise. To make their horror story short, AA failed to get them to New York on time. They missed that flight. Then the next day when they got to London, AA had no tickets for them to fly to Rome. They had to overnight in a crappy hotel. Then, AA failed to get them to Rome on time and they missed their Rome tour. After their successful cruise, AA failed to get them back in Dallas on time. They ended up in Houston. And, at the end of their trip, AA had lost their luggage.

***

When you’ve lived as long as I have — 81 years — that’s sufficient time to see that a truism of life is that “what goes around, eventually comes around again.” That truism works for agriculture, as well as life in general.

For starters, here’s such a truism. When I wuz a wet behind the ears kid, crop rotations, cover crops, green manure crops, and rotational grazing was near-universally practiced by diversified farmers. Keeping a “living soil” and “sustainability” were the goals.

Gradually, those practices went out of favor and monocultures, chemical fertilizers and various pesticides came into vogue. Today, gradually the so-called experts are advising — and ag producers are following the advice — that there is modern value in the old time farming practices. It’s good to see.

***

Words of wisdom for the week: “Pharmaceutical companies are researching and working hard to eliminate diseases — and to put themselves out of business.” Have a good ‘un.

Day 2, Kansas Wheat Harvest Report

By
Guest Columnist
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0
Kansas Wheat

This is day 2 of the Kansas Wheat Harvest Reports, brought to you by the Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, Kansas Grain and Feed Association and the Kansas Cooperative Council.

 

Rain is an ironic concern for this year’s wheat crop, but producers are asking Mother Nature to hold off just a bit so they can get a quickly ripening crop out of the field and into the bin before weed pressure sets in.

 

Harvest is a family affair near Garden Plain in Sedgwick County, where Martin Kerschen is harvesting alongside his son Justin — the sixth generation on the farm. Since starting harvest on Wednesday, June 5, they are seeing yields from 50 to 70 bushels per acre on fields planted to SY Monument. Proteins range from 12 to 13 percent. Rains from the weekend took a slight toll on test weights, but Martin Kerschen is extremely pleased with how this year’s crop is turning out — especially compared to last year.

 

“I enjoy years like this,” he said. “You try the best you can, and we’re happy with yields and how our wheat looks this year. There’s a big smile on my face.”

 

While still variable across some fields, the wheat crop is also looking much better in Dickinson County, where fourth-generation producer Bryant Olson farms near Gypsum with his father Gary, brother Trenton and uncle David. The family started cutting on Friday, June 7, in hopes of getting as much cut as possible ahead of last weekend’s storms.

 

While still good quality, test weights did fall after the rain — from 62 pounds per bushel to 60 pounds per bushel. Protein is ranging from 12 percent to above 13 percent. High quality is essential as 10 percent of the Olsons’ wheat acres are grown for their certified seed operation.

 

The operation planted several varieties, including LCS Atomic AX, LSC Helix AX, KS Mako, KS Providence, KS Larry and Bob Dole. Two more weeks and harvest should be wrapped up for this family.

 

“Wheat harvest will be early enough that we won’t have to worry about weed pressure,” Olson said. “Hopefully it doesn’t rain too much before we get it all up, and we will be sitting a lot better than last year.”

 

Sumner County missed the recent rains and Tim Turek, who farms near South Haven, is praying rain stays out of the forecast so farmers do not have to worry dealing with pigweeds or crabgrass until harvest is over. Then, he welcomes the moisture to benefit his cattle and fall crops.

 

Turek started cutting at least a week earlier compared to a normal year and avoiding the rain delays meant he kept cutting over the weekend. He’s seeing field yields anywhere from 40 bushels per acre to above 70 bushels per acre. Test weights are hitting 62 pounds per bushel thus far, with proteins averaging between 10 and 12 percent. He has been especially pleased with the varieties AP Prolific, AP18 AX, AP24 AX and Bob Dole.

 

“There is no comparison to last year,” Turek said, “Honestly, I can’t believe the recovery we’ve had with the whirlwind weather this year. You have to attribute it to the progress of the genetics over the past several years because when I was a kid, wheat wouldn’t have survived what this wheat has been through.”

 

Turek hauls quite a bit of his wheat to the Scoular Grain elevator in Wellington, where grain merchandiser Doug Zeller is seeing both excellent yield and proteins across the board.

 

Zeller reported they started taking in wheat about two weeks ago and plans on receiving grain for at least 10 more days. Test weights are averaging 62 to 63 pounds per bushel and proteins are staying steady at 11 to 12.5 percent.

 

“This year is much better than expected on both spectrums,” he said. “With higher yields, we typically see lower protein and test weights. This year that isn’t the case.”

 

With heat indices estimated to reach 100 degrees by Thursday, harvest is likely to continue progressing quickly across the lower two-thirds of the state.

 

The 2024 Harvest Reports are brought to you by the Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, Kansas Grain and Feed Association and the Kansas Cooperative Council. To follow along with harvest updates, use #wheatharvest24 on social media. Tag us at @kansaswheat on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to share your harvest story and photos.

 

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Written by Julia Debes for Kansas Wheat

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