Affiliate Highlight: Fergus County Livestock Association
The Fergus County Livestock Association is striving diligently to accomplish its purpose to “provide a local, organized body to aid the individual livestock producer and to promote knowledge and information to the industry as a whole.” Both the quality and quantity of the information sources we have made available to our membership has improved as we have formed alliances and partnerships within our community.
One of the best examples of our collaborative efforts was the Montana Winter Fair Farm Forum held in January. We sourced a $5,000 speaker through Scott Hughes from our sister affiliate Judith Basin Stock Growers. The speaker was approved by the forum committee and it was agreed that they would help us to promote and advertise the event statewide. Next, we sought and received major corporate sponsorships from Torgerson’s and Northwest Farm Credit Services.
With these financial commitments in place, and some money from Fergus County Livestock Association and the Judith Basin Stock Growers, we were successfully able to pursue co-sponsorships from the Montana Grain Growers Association, the Montana Farm Bureau Federation, the Montana Stockgrowers Association, and the Montana State University Extension, all of whom helped us promote this event statewide.
Last fall we partnered with Zoetis to bring in a 50 K presentation, and with Western Sustainability Exchange and Torgerson’s to bring in a low stress livestock handling seminar. We found that while some of our membership attends the seminars regularly, we are able to engage a broader portion of our membership by bringing in different topics.
During September of last year, we put a considerable effort toward both welcoming and participating in the National Red Angus Association convention. The programs and activities that they had available to commercial cow calf producers was yet another value-added opportunity for our membership.
Some examples of activities that we sponsor and provide resources to on our own include providing ice cream to the grade school kids that attend the annual ag day in May, and supplying and cooking the beef portion of the meal for the local Chamber of Commerce ag tour which occurs in October of each year. These annual activities are part of what keeps our organization present in the local media and top of mind with community leaders, community organizations, and community businesses.
All of this activity and publicity contributes to the success of our annual banquet, which last year saw $1600 in gift certificates being donated, as well as many hundreds of dollars’ worth of merchandise in door prizes. During the banquet, in addition to entertainment by cowboy poet Jeff Bolstad, we held a director slave auction, which raised $2000 and funded three scholarships, one for $1000 and two at $500 each. The consistency of this level of support and generosity has contributed to the growth of our organization, which is currently 189 members in this, our 60th year as an organization.
In January, four of our directors went to Helena for MSGA’s AMP program. Thank you to MSGA for having us and we think this will be a great way to keep local groups connected.
Our Board of Directors includes President Todd Olsen, Vice President Kirk Donsbach, Treasurer Thad Moseman, Ryan Green, Eric Wickens, Bret Smith, Scott Jenni, Dennis Descheemaeker, and Cory Merrill. The board is supported by secretary Joe Eckhardt and office administrator Linda Jones.