Andrea Flemming

Technology Removes Stress and Adds Confidence 

For Andrea Flemming, the cattle business is a family affair. 
 
After graduating from South Dakota State University, the fifth-generation cattle producer joined her parents, Sterling and Denise Severtson, brother, Kris, and later husband Nathan, in expanding the family’s operation to 200 cows and 400-head in their feedlot. They’ve grown, adding a confinement cow/calf group to the traditional pasture-based operation at Severtson Farms near Kenneth, Minnesota. 
 
They retain their home-raised calves through the entire backgrounding and finishing process alongside some purchased animals. 
 

Technology sometimes brings reluctance 

Before Andrea came home to the family operation, Sterling had been using laminated sheets to monitor and adjust feed intakes, but no tracking was done on a per-head basis.  

“My dad, the typical farmer, was extremely reluctant to make changes or add new technology,” Andrea says. “He did the feeding alone, so he had all the math in his head. With changing markets, he was always stressed out.” 

After college, Andrea had a chance to work with Performance Livestock Analytics (PLA) and trained on their Performance Beef tracking software.  

“I felt the industry was falling behind compared to dairy and crops, so I kept bringing PLA’s software up to my dad. He finally bit the bullet, and it has eliminated so much stress. Now he won't go without it.”  

Andrea explains how easy it is to work with the PLA team. 

“Problems are rare, but if we ever call, we always get a quick answer. They keep us informed of what's happening or coming up,” she says.  

Equipment communication adds animal health benefits 

Beyond clarifying their inventory and feeding management, Performance Beef helps track every expense on every animal processed, re-implanted or treated.  

During their expansion, the Severtsons bought a new chute and weigh scale to improve equipment communication and better track treatments with Performance Beef’s animal health features. By disconnecting the feed wagon scale and using Bluetooth to connect to the chute weigh bars and load cells, the program identifies calves by their ultrahigh frequency ear tags, and automatically enters their weights and handling costs in the system.   

“I thought it might be confusing and add extra time, but it went so smoothly,” Andrea says. “We learned rates of gain and were able to track vaccinations, implants and treatments individually, providing valuable insights.”