Q: How did your operation get started and where are you located?

“Grandpa started handing the ropes over to me in 2012,” said Wesley Benton of his grandpa Jewel Spurlock. “He let me start making a lot of the calls. That’s what led me to what I do today.” Benton now balances managing  a New Holland equipment dealership, with running 100 head of Charolais and 75 head of Angus/Red Angus cross cattle in the Ozark Mountain foothills of Central Arkansas. His wife Ashton, their parents, and their daughters Ellie and Averie, all pitch in to keep the plates spinning.

Benton credits much of his success to his grandpa, who passed in 2019. “My grandpa let me run things and provided the financial support for me to get established,” he said. “I’m 37. Not many my age have that kind of opportunity. He taught me that hard work is how you get to where you want to go.”

Q: When and how do you market cattle from your ranch each year?

Spurlock Farms sells 20 to 30 registered bulls private treaty annually, while commercial steer and heifer calves sell at Joplin Regional Stockyards near Carthage, MO or Arkansas Cattle Auction in Searcy, AR.

During COVID, Spurlock Farms also started processing and selling USDA inspected beef. “It gives me a chance to see how my cattle grade,” Benton said. “And more and more people are asking for it. It’s crazy the demand once they have tasted farm-raised beef.”

Q: What is a unique way you serve your customers?

“I’m a hands-on person,” Benton said. “If people ask about our bulls, the first thing I ask them is ‘When can you come to the farm?’ I want to be able to show them how I’m raising them.”

“My grandpa was a bargain buyer at registered sales,” Benton said. “He was more of a cattle trader. He would buy whatever he thought was worth the money. He’d bring it home, and if somebody wanted it worse than he did, he would sell it. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, I want to be a breeder. I want people to say: ‘You need to go see Spurlock’s cattle.’  ‘They’re good, functional cattle.’ ‘I bought a bull from them and he worked really good.’ ‘I bought some females and they are some of the best cows I’ve owned.’ That’s what I want to show. We’re trying to always advance.”

Mentor and fellow Charolais breeder Greg Hudspeth helps Benton know if he’s hitting the mark. “Greg comes down once or twice a year to look at cows,” he said. “And he always says, ‘Man, they’re better than they were last year. Best you’ve ever raised.’ That’s what I’m striving to do.”

Q: What management strategies have provided the greatest benefit to your operation and why?

“Advancing the herd” is not a catch phrase for Benton. He means business. And he’s willing to get the training, take the risks, and implement whatever works. “In 2012, we started traveling to about every cow sale within six hours of home,” Benton said. “I was watching how everybody was picking things out and I started asking questions.”

Tom Murray with Big Branch Breeders Service helped him get started with AI, then Benton invested in a semen tank and learned the skill himself. Later, Benton joined a bull syndication purchase with semen interest in the package, along with females that quickly elevated Spurlock Farms genetics. “My grandpa bought the bargains,” Benton said. “Instead of 10 bargains, I’d buy two of the top picks. They are going to be donor cows and raise bulls.”

Benton assesses all aspects of the farm and works closely with his University of Arkansas Extension county agent Brian Haller. “I pretty much told him to let my farm be your experiment farm,” Benton said. “If I can fit it into my budget, I’ll try to do it.”

“I started stockpiling my 40-acre Bermuda hay field. We cut hay off it late July and gave it a shot of nitrogen the first week of August. When we got the first frost, I kicked cows on it with an electric fence. I would give 30 cows 5 acres, and keep working them back, sectioning it off with rotational grazing. I got my dry cows almost to mid-January without feeding a bale of hay,” Benton said.

Q: If your ranch could be known for one thing, what would you want it to be and why?

“I want to be known as a good cattleman,” Benton said. “Someone who has animal husbandry under control, knows how to handle cattle, and knows good cattle when he sees them.”

Q: What new innovations or opportunities are you looking to pursue for your operation in the next 1-3 years?

The business plan is to weed down the commercial herd, settle some expenses, and go strictly purebred. Benton dreams of the day when he can not only go buy a $50,000 bull, but be producing and selling his own.

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