| Cattlemen’ s Tour |
Cattle
contribute to Colquitt County’ s ag diversity
words & photography by Adelia Ladson
When Mr. Harry Thompson, former vice president of the Georgia Cattlemen’ s Association Region 14, invited me on the Cattlemen’ s Tour, I knew nothing about the cattle farms, here, in Colquitt County.
This is a group of hardworking folks that, to me, don’ t seem to get a lot of attention on Georgia’ s agricultural main stage. People who aren’ t in the agricultural community or industry, like me, tend to think of the fruits and vegetables, cotton and peanuts grown here. Maybe, these products just get more attention than cattle.
On looking at the latest list of Georgia’ s Top Ten Commodities, which I found in the“ Ag Snapshot 2024” publication on UGA’ s Extension website, beef was ranked sixth in the top commodities and Colquitt County was among the top producers in the livestock category.
So, I hopped on the tour bus at the Ag Complex, with a group of approximately 40 members of the Cattlemen’ s Association, and we headed out into the county. We toured four farms, which were Windy Pond Farm, Powell Cattle Farm, Baker Cattle Farm and Fenco Farms. A representative or owner at each of the farms spoke about their operation and the types of cattle they were raising.
The cattle at Fenco Farms, which is headquartered out of Floral City, Florida.
The first farm we went to was Windy Pond Farm where the owner of the farm, Tony Lasseter, met us and told us a little bit about his operation.
He said, right off the bat,“ The pure breed business is a real tough business to be in.”
He said that what they’ ve been doing the last four or five years was taking purebred Angus cows and purebred Hereford cows and crossbreeding them to make Black Baldy cows, which are also called Black Whiteface.
“ And somewhere along the way, we’ ll make some purebred Herefords and some purebred Angus,” he added.
38 MoultrieScene JUNE 2025