offers more volatile conditions than a lot of other places because i don't know very many spots on the planet that go from you know negative 35 degree wind chill in the winter time to 110 plus degrees in the summertime and expect cattle to perform well in all of those conditions you know

which China leads to having the right animals that fit the right environments and you know the proper genetics and you know all of the all of those decisions that are being made downstream of the feed yard by your seed stock producers and your your commercial cow calf operators on selecting those cows that that fit the environment and then you know we are just the beneficiary of all of the great decisions that all of those producers made prior to those animals arriving to our feed yard.

Our job is then to take those animals and to get the optimum outcome for each animal there not not the pen but the individual animal and so what we're trying to strive for is individual animal management and the marketing and hitting that individual animals end point which then leads us to the dna testing and sorting program that we use which helps us basically take a peek under the hide and to see what exactly those animals are capable of.

And then too many times in the past, we didn't allow the animals to get to their optimum end point.

We sold them when we thought they were ready, but that whole dynamic has shifted over the, especially the last four to five years and the genetics and the ability of those animals to gain and convert efficiently at much bigger weights is just, it's just been proven out over and over and over.

And so what we're trying to do with our DNA testing and our sorting program is to get the right animals in the right group that are going to be able to optimize the feed and the time and the energy that we're putting into them to uh may maximize the the margin that's available based on the marketing program that those cattle are going under

Can you talk about why it's important to put those animals together when it comes to where that energy goes?

There's a couple of things that...

[laughs]

I mean, it was a disaster, but here's the thing.

Turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, interesting learning opportunities.

What we find is that everything you do in life is a learning opportunity, and I think as you go through your career, you, you wanna have what we call in Southern a major.

My major was finance.

You know, I was CFO of the international company, CFO of Georgia Power, CFO of Mississippi Power, CFO of Southern.

But I was also all these other things, strategy, CIO, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.