June 2024
2024 Farm Family Salute 27
Brent’ s instruction includes the whole process.
“ There is a whole lot more involved to it – like having good animal health, your vaccination, your protocol, your nutrition, and more – to have a successful program,” he noted.“ It’ s not just the science of doing it, it’ s an all-encompassing deal, and if you let one part of the equation slip it drags the whole the whole thing down.”
Brent grew up around cattle, horses and poultry houses. His wife Tracy also grew up around cattle and horses.
“ We both spent countless hours in the hayfield and caring for livestock,” Brent said.“ We don’ t really remember not being involved in agriculture.”
The Coopers work to improve herd genetics through science and technology which, in turn, can help make the world more sustainable and profitable.
“ We sell bovine semen for Genex and STgenetics,” Brent said.“ With STgenetics, they are able to sort the actual sperm cells so you can breed your cows to where you could have all female calves or all male calves, which is a pretty cool deal. We also do custom Artificial Insemination breeding projects and deliver liquid nitrogen to our customers to keep semen tanks cold.”
In addition to their work in genetics, they use wastewater from area food production plants for fertilizer.
“ This allows us to grow more grass and also use a waste product to add back to the environment without having to do an expensive process,” Brent said.
Brent and Tracy’ s two children are grown, but they still play vital roles in the Cooper Cattle operation. Jonathan, 32, is a veterinarian and owns a vet clinic in Fort Smith.
“ He takes care of all of those needs and helps with our animal health and does a lot of the embryo transfer duties, too,” Brent said.
Jonathan’ s younger sister, Mackenzie, 28, is a lawyer in Fort Smith.
“ So we have our vet team and our legal team so we have those two big areas covered,” Brent proudly said.
Jonathan’ s wife is Mary and their daughter, Jocelyn, is three years old. Mackenzie’ s husband is Harrison Sears and they have a six-month-old son, Reggie.
“ Farming and ranching has changed dramatically over the past decades,” Brent said.“ I would say the first thing is technology. We’ re using artificial insemination and embryo transfer and that stuff wasn’ t around 50 years ago. We spray our pastures and we have GPS on our tractors now to where we plug in what field we want to spray and it tells us where to drive. It’ s great because it has made us a lot more efficient. That’ s the really big difference from operations in the past. We are working smarter and more efficiently.”
In addition to the classes run by Cooper Ranch, Brent is generous with his time and knowledge.
“ I do actually speak at a lot of 4H groups and FFA groups and college classes,” Brent said.“ The biggest thing
Congratulations Brent & Tracey Cooper family
2024 Sebastian County Farm Family of the Year
Thanks for choosing Farmers Coop
VAN BUREN 2105 Industrial Park Rd. Van Buren, AR 72956 479-474-8051 FORT SMITH 201 South 10th Street Fort Smith, AR 72901 479-783-8959
FARM SUPPLY HEADQUARTERS
OZARK 1100 Marts Drive Ozark, AR 72949 479-667-3825 GREENWOOD 1235 W Center St. Greenwood, AR 72936 479-996-4335
SUBIACO Highway 22 Subiaco, AR 72865 479-934-4207 BRANCH 8 Highway 41 North Branch, AR 72928 479-965-2237
WALDRON 1942 South Main Waldron, AR 72958 479-637-5641 MENA 318 HWY 71 S Mena, Ar 71953 479-394-3373