“Lone Creek has been around for about 15 years,” says Procurement Manager,Thad Robertson.“It came from our owners’ desire to have a high-quality, healthy product. They were able to purchase a company that had the highest conglomeration of the ItalianHeritage Piedmontese breed, which originated tens of thousands of years ago in the Alps in northern Italy. It’s the only cattle breed in the world that produces both tender and lean beef, which is a product of their genetics.” LEADING THE CATTLE INDUSTRY There are two sides to Lone Creek’s operations: the cattle side and the meat side. Robertson manages the cattle side, which leases high quality, full-blood, Piedmontese breeding bulls to qualified producers and ranchers, who, in return, contract to sell back to the company any calves produced from those matings. It’s a system that benefits both parties. “Ranchers have a market for their calves before cows are bred,” Robertson explains.“ Lone Creek has built our own supply chain through those breeding activities. As soon as a bull steps on the trailer to breed, I’m projecting that progeny to harvest. It takes five years from developing the bull, to breeding the cows, to raising the calf, to getting it where somebody can enjoy it. “The bulls that Lone Creek lease’s have to be twocopy, full-blooded, Piedmontese bulls,” Robertson continues. (Two-copy, or homozygous, means an animal has inherited the same alleles of a gene from each of its parents.) “The very specific gene that belongs to the Piedmontese breed is the C313Y gene, a naturally-occurring mutation. If you breed a two-copy bull with any commercial cow, that bull is always going to pass along one copy of that gene. And it has been found that one copy of the C313Y gene is enough to impact the quality of the beef both in tenderness and leanness.” LOOKING FOR PROGRESSIVE PARTNERS Ranches that are chosen to participate in Lone Creek’s breeding program go through a strict vetting process and must adhere to vaccination and weaning guidelines set by the company. “This is a very progressive beef company and we’re looking for ranchers who are currently doing business a little bit differently, or want to, and are willing to look at a breed like the Piedmontese, which is not widely known,” Robertson relates. “So, we go in and we help them develop their business: the breeding activity, the time of year that they’re breeding, what they’re feeding their animals. We look at all of these different aspects of their business to determine the best outcome for their success.” 99 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 10 LONE CREEK CATTLE
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