We had seven open two and three-year-old heifers that were Certified Tenet®. The three-year-olds had raised one calf. We sent them to a feedlot in northwest Kansas that a PCC® Cooperative Producer (CP) manages. The heifers fed for $0.83 per pound, which is way less than the industry average. Tim Goodnight, the manager of our Certified Tenet® Beef company took two of the heifers to use for taste testing. He has already compared six Tenet® animals to non-Tenet animals. The remaining animals were harvested by Mike Calicrate’s crew in St. Francis, Kansas, two weeks ago. (Waaay back in the day, Mike and I rode bulls together.)
Mike has two stores and a processing plant in Colorado Springs that go under the name Ranch Foods Direct. He wanted to process our animals yesterday, so Tim Goodnight and I made plans to be there. Monday night, Mike invited Tim and I over to his house to do some taste testing. Mike brought three strip steaks home from his processing plant. One was from one of our Tenet® animals. One was from a non-Tenet Angus and one was from an Angus/Wagyu crossbred animal.
As expected, the Tenet® steak provided the best cutting and eating experience. The Wagyu-cross steak had more marbling than the other two steaks, but provided the worst eating experience. As we have been saying for the past year, you cannot fix the toughness problem with marbling. Yesterday, Mike took Tim and me to his processing plant. We sampled a sirloin steak and the vein end of a strip loin steak from all five animals. We were duly impressed! Although these cuts are not known for their tenderness, I would not be afraid to test any of these Tenet® steaks against anyone’s non-Tenet ribeye steak.
Pictured above are my long-time friends Mike Callicrate on the left and Tim Goodnight on the right. They smiled for the picture – but they were more than ready to start slicing into the steaks in front of them. We have some exciting plans for the use of these five Certified Tenet® animals. I will tell you more about our plans in a future PCC Update.