The Bull in the Conference Room
Our county fair held a lending seminar in a livestock barn, and a Simmental bull took a seat in the front row and stayed.
I have been to many financial seminars in my time, in hotel ballrooms and banks and one memorable meeting in a converted laundry. But I had never been to one in a barn until our county fair's Ranch Finance Day, which was held in the show arena because the community center had a leak. They set up folding chairs in rows on the sawdust. They put a lectern at one end, and a projector on an overturned feed trough, and everyone brought a thermos.
I was the guest speaker, because of my banking background. I had a presentation titled Understanding Your Operating Loan. It had nineteen slides, and I had practiced it in front of the mirror. I stood at the lectern at nine sharp, looked out over a hundred ranchers in folding chairs, and began. I noticed that the front row had one extra attendee. He was enormous, red, and bored, and had been led in from the holding pens by a boy who had gone to find a bucket.
The bull was a Simmental named Duke, a prize animal of about two thousand pounds, who had been tied to the rail at the end of the front row and left to wait for the beef show. He took his seat, in a manner of speaking, with real composure. He faced the screen. He did not look away once. When I got to the slide on debt service coverage, he exhaled loudly, which got the biggest laugh of the morning. When I got to the slide on collateral, he turned his head, and I felt for a moment that I was being audited by cattle.
It was the best-attended seminar I have ever given, and the best-behaved audience. At the end, there was applause, and Duke stood up, shook his head, and nearly took the front row with him. The county agent said afterward that it was the first time anyone had stayed to the end of the finance talk. I attribute this to the bull. For the actual details of the session, there is a long list of programs on the FSA site, and I recommend them to anyone who has missed the talk. I am told that farm.FM wrote up the seminar under the heading Lender Outperformed by Livestock, which I consider fair.
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