28 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN April/May 2024 “At one time, the U.S. was supplying about 50 percent of the total beef imports into the United Kingdom,” Hough recalls. “A lot of that beef would have come from Omaha.” The Birth of the Cattle Feeding Industry One of the unique aspects of the Omaha Stockyards is its role in the development of the U.S. cattle feeding industry. While Chicago’s early days saw Texas range cattle shipped in from Kansas railheads, Omaha provided a ready market for farmers to sell their finished steers and heifers. The city was located in the heart of some of the most productive farmland in the country. The abundance of grain in eastern Nebraska and Iowa resulted in farmers constructing small feedlots and feeding their excess corn to cattle rather than selling it to nearby elevators. Once finished, many of these cattle were shipped by men like Gerlach on straight trucks, where they were harvested and processed easily and efficiently, and their well-marbled beef shipped to consumers around the world. The beef they produced became the standard of quality for an industry that was slowly evolving from dependence on grass-fed range cattle to corn-fed, higher-quality animals. This, in turn, helped shift consumer preferences into higher quality products and helped drive demand for Angus, Shorthorns and Herefords, breeds that arrived in America at about the same time as the formation of the stockyards. These breeds eventually replaced Texas Longhorns as mainstays on the range. The stockyards also were interconnected places, and market information traveled across the country, first on telegraph lines and later by telephones, newspapers and radio. Much of agricultural media as we know it today traces its roots to stockyards in Omaha, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City and even Los Angeles. Drovers Journal was founded in 1873 as the Chicago Daily Drovers Journal and then later as the Kansas City Drovers Telegram. The publishers capitalized on trains to distribute the paper, and each day it was printed then shipped on railcars to eager readers across the country. Western Livestock Journal, now based in Denver, was founded in Los Angeles. The Record Stockman was headquartered in the Livestock Exchange Building in Denver. Nebraska families once gathered around their radios at lunchtime to hear the markets news. “Back in those days, the market reports always came on at noon, you know, and they would occasionally report who had sold this for that,” remembers Bernice Gerlach. “We always had the radio on and one time all the kids got excited. They heard their dad’s name on the radio and that he had topped the market. That was quite a moment for us.” BOOMTOWN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26 CONTINUED ON PAGE 30 An aerial view of the Union Stockyards and the Livestock Exchange Building in South Omaha in 1949. Information Connections Many of the media and price discovery platforms that cattle raisers enjoy today trace their roots to stockyards like Omaha’s Union Stockyards. As major hubs for livestock trading, stockyards needed efficient communication systems to relay market information quickly. In the early days, the telegraph played a crucial role in transmitting real-time data on livestock prices, transactions and market conditions between different stockyards and financial centers. The stockyards were also heavily dependent on railways, not just for transporting livestock but also information. This reliance led to advancements in railway communication technologies, including telegraph systems for coordinating train schedules, tracking shipments and ensuring timely deliveries. Early livestock newspapers like Chicago Daily Drovers Journal and then the Kansas City Drovers Telegram were published in the stockyards and distributed to farmers and ranchers by trains departing the yards for cattle country. The demand for up-to-date market information led to the establishment of market reporting services. These services used telegraph and later telephone networks to disseminate livestock prices, market trends and other relevant information to participants in the livestock trade across different regions. “My grandfather, H.E. Green, of Greeley, Colo., would bring me to the Livestock Exchange Building in Denver, and he would watch the market because the big board was in the lobby of the building,” says writer/ publisher Dan Green. “Here, a guy would post the prices with chalk as they came over the teletype. Back then, the trendsetting market was in Chicago, and if the market there moved 1 or 2 percent, it would immediately set off shockwaves in other markets.” Indeed, the stockyards were information hubs, and the necessity to efficiently distribute market reports, news and updates contributed to the development of information distribution networks. This, in turn, had a broader impact on communication technologies beyond the stockyards and eventually influenced the development of Nebraska-based companies like DV Auction of Norfolk, and DTN, which saw its early days of development in Omaha.
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