November 2025 Newsletter
- Claire Christensen
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
It’s the month of Thanksgiving, and we want to take a moment to express our gratitude to all our customers for your business. It is because of you that Spencer Ag has been fortunate enough to grow and expand into the company it is today. We started our small feed store with 18 people, and now have grown to 31 employees who keep us going!
In honor of our history, we have digitized all our past newsletters so you too can reminisce on the great changes that have been made throughout Spencer Ag’s history.
 Service Matters.
Quarterly, Spencer Ag Center hosts an internal sales meeting to further educate and train our staff to provide better service to our customers. This past month, we had a robust training in products and certifications.
This included the following guest speakers and topics:
Tracie Egger with Elanco hosted a training for our team.
We learned about Merck’s Cattle Products, implant usage, and the latest research from Joel Olsen.
Allflex is releasing an improved feedlot tag with a smaller puncture hole to improve tag retention. This tag has a similar look to the button–less Z-tags we carry.
Jay Moore and Lori Henning shared Healthy Farms by Bioverse’s Product Portfolio. This includes their pit and lagoon treatment line in addition to their Dr. Connie’s, which is intended for more homesteading purposes such as: lawn & garden, composting, & septic, animal health, and ponds.Â
We currently carry several Bioverse products.
Dr.Connie’s Septic System Plus - tablets for septic support
Agrasphere & Agraslats– biodegradable pit manure treatments to reduce crusting, foaming, and odor.
Activator Plus—designed to reduce sludge buildup, crusting, flies, and odor.
Compost Plus– helps start and maintain composting activity for manure, bedding, and animal carcasses
Retain-N –Cuts fertilizer loss by reducing nitrogen loss, improving crop yield potential.Â
Our field marketer, Harvey Williams, led PQA/TQA trainings as well as covered topics he learned about during the 2025 Allen Leman conference.
Please reach out for more information if you would like to complete your PQA/TQA certification.
Harvey sharing his findings from Leman
 Reflecting on life in agriculture through an artistic perspective
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Did you know that in the 1800s, wealthy British landowners would commission artists to paint portraits of their best livestock?
They would often dramatize the angles and depth, creating wildly disproportionate animals. These paintings were considered a symbol of wealth and status at the time, documenting beloved breeding stock and champions.
“Livestock portraiture depicting prize animals (cattle, oxen, pigs, and sheep) began to appear in the mid-eighteenth century. We derive much historical value from these commissioned paintings through their collective recording of the process of English livestock improvement. It was a period in which livestock was being altered from medieval to modern purposes (Trow-Smith, 1957).
Reflecting on these photos, it is a great reminder of the changes that occur over the span of years based on genetic selection, varying feed protocols, animal medicine, and animal health practices. To this day, we continue to document agriculture’s advancements and trends through photo documentation.
These days, we aren’t commissioning paintings, but we do keep record of our Champions on Purple Pursuit and our Wall of Champions in the office. These feature local showman and families who chose to feed Spencer Ag Center to their herd! Feel free to send us your photos for a chance to be memorialized!
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Annual Fall Checklist for Beef Operations
Preg check your cows!
 This will help you to identify open and short bred cows, so you can make management decisions regarding culling. Keeping open animals can decrease profit potential by costing feed inputs without any returns in the form of a calf crop.
Anticipate adverse weather.
 Prepare for the worst, hope for the best! Have a backup plan for harsh weather so you can practice good husbandry and tend to your livestock properly. Provide feed, water, and shelter. Reports from Montana rancher found that feeding heavier on the front side of a winter storm helps keep cattle in good condition through the storm, so you don’t have added struggles. Additionally, the stress of a storm could abort the cow if not properly maintained.
 Take Inventory of forage on hand and calculate needs for the winter.
 Don’t overlook grazing residual crops! The forage you worked hard to grow over the summer is all you have for the winter! Take the time to complete a forage analysis to ensure nutritional requirements are met. You may have to add additional supplements to your diet to get optimal nutrient levels. Poor conditioning can lead to calf abortions and death.
Care for herd bulls.
 Don’t let your off-duty bull be forgotten. Make sure they get vaccinated and dewormed as well. Keeping bulls bedded down and in good body condition is important. Management through winter can affect how they perform in the approaching breeding season.
Care for replacement heifers.
 Be sure not to feed these guys too hot! Monitor their body condition and weight, as you want their frames to grow. Be sure to get the proper vaccinations and deworming completed.
Calfhood—If you plan on selling or transporting to a state that requires it to be completed.
Scourboz– Heifers require 2 rounds of vaccines.
Update vaccinations.
 Reach out to our office to schedule a vet appointment to process your herd with Dr. Grace and our team. Additionally, working on a disease control program, such as the Green and Gold Tag Programs, is a great way to add value via health verification.
Formulate a plan for marketing cull cows.
 With today’s market, Cattle are selling at a high, so maximize your profits. Older, big udder, poor-mannered, and skinny cows should be evaluated critically when deciding to cull. (Cost vs. Feed Consumed.)
Complete parasite control.
Later fall deworming is recommended as it is the time when animals are either moved off pasture or the first freeze has happened. This frost kills all eggs remaining in the pasture, killing a life cycle, which can further help you gain control of your deworming population within your herd. Deworming options available are either oral drenching (Safeguard, Synathetic), pour-ons (Cydectin, Vetrimec), or injectable (Ivermectin, Dectomax, & Valcore ). Spencer Ag Center carries all the options listed above. Contact your field marketer to develop a parasite rotational program that will benefit you!
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Purple Pursuit's Pop-Up Shop
Looking for a way to rep the show feed brand?
From November 1st to November 13th, we will have an online shop where you can order hats and branded show gear. This custom garb will be shipped mid-December, just in time for Christmas!!