Episode 26: Journey into Agriculture with Dr. Kendall Samuelson

On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, we are joined by Dr. Kendall Samuelson, Associate Professor of Animal Science at West Texas A&M University. Dr. Samuelson is involved in the latest research with feedlot cattle, teaching, advising graduate students, and serving as an industry leader. Kendall was presented with the Young Scholar Award at the 2017 Western Section Animal Science meeting, the Dean’s Award of Leadership Excellence by New Mexico State University in 2016, as well as, the Outstanding Graduate Assist in 2015. Dr. Samuelson has too many awards and honors to list here, but we thought it would be great to hear about her background, as she doesn’t have an upbringing in agriculture. We hope her story helps to inspire folks who don’t have an origin in agriculture to overcome any perceived short comings because they didn’t grow up on a farm. Even folks who come to agriculture later in life can make a difference and pursue a rewarding career.

Episode Resources

Automated Transcript

Colt Knight: 00:16

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And today, I am joined by my good friend, doctor Kendall Samuelson, associate professor of animal science at West Texas A&M University. Kendall, it’s great to have you with us.

Kendall Samuelson: 00:37

Thanks, Colt. Glad to be here.

Colt Knight: 00:39

I’ve known Kendall since about 2012, I believe. We went to graduate school together, and, she has had a really cool journey into agriculture, and I thought it would be good if we could share with our listeners kinda your background and how you got into agriculture. And but to begin with, what is it that you do now?

Kendall Samuelson: 01:02

Yeah. So currently, I’m an associate professor of animal science at West Texas A&M University, which is located in Canyon, Texas, just near Amarillo, kind of in the heart of cattle feeding country. Also, a very thriving dairy industry happening there now. And so in my current role, I kind of do do a little bit of everything, teaching, research, and we do not have a formal extension appointment. So, we refer to those types of activities as service, but would be doing all three of those things there at WT.

Kendall Samuelson: 01:42

On the teaching side, get to do a lot of different things, which is really fun. My focus is primarily in ruminant nutrition with an emphasis more on feedlot cattle. And so I’m kind of responsible for teaching a lot of our undergraduate, feed type of classes. So I teach feeds and feeding, which is a a really great opportunity to get to teach diet formulation and about different ingredients that we use. And then I also teach a feedlot management course as well for undergraduates and a number of graduate classes really specifically geared towards ruminant nutrition and digestive physiology and things like that.

Kendall Samuelson: 02:27

So that’s that’s really fun. In addition to that, I do a lot of research, which is really, I think, a very exciting part of my job to be able to to be involved in the industry and kind of be on the the forefront, if you will, of up and coming research. And so our facility focuses primarily on kind of 2 things. The first would be cattle health. So we do a lot of work with young, what we call high risk cattle that are likely to get bovine respiratory disease.

Kendall Samuelson: 03:05

And how do we manage those cattle and feed those cattle to try to really just help them be, you know, better performing in the feedlot for their health to be better, and then also just, you know, for them to have better animal well-being. And then we also do a lot of work with finishing cattle. So these would be, heavier cattle that are gonna go out to harvest and and go through the packing plan and looking at kind of some of the effects of what we do in the feedlot and how that impacts carcass quality and and overall performance and efficiency during that finishing phase. So, really fun. Get to do do a lot, and, we we have a great time there in in, Canyon and get to do a lot of fun fun stuff.

Colt Knight: 03:53

So, Kendall, you don’t actually come from an ag background. You have a unique perspective on the industry because you actually grew up in what? Urban or suburban California along the coastline?

Kendall Samuelson: 04:06

Yeah. So this is always a an interesting story. When I tell people I don’t come from ag, they’re usually pretty surprised, which I guess, I mean, that that means I’ve done a good job, right, in integrating myself into the industry that people don’t know. I’m kind of, somewhat a newbie to this, although I don’t know if I can I can call myself that anymore since I’ve I’ve been doing it for so long? But kind of a unique story, I think.

Kendall Samuelson: 04:32

And it fits with a lot of what we’re seeing in the universities now. I mean, we have more and more students that are coming into the university, at least in our program, that have very little experience in in agriculture. They just decided that that was the place where they wanna be, and that’s kind of my story as well. So I’m originally from California, grew up in kind of the suburbs of San Francisco, which is essentially, in many ways, as far away from the ag industry as you can get. And, growing up, I don’t know.

Kendall Samuelson: 05:07

I always had an interest in livestock. We didn’t have a lot of youth opportunities. So I think that lack of exposure, it just kinda drove me more to want to have that experience and want to be involved in the agriculture agricultural industry. So, originally, when I started out, you know, most people, if they don’t have a lot of background in this, they start out and they say, well, I’m gonna be a veterinarian because that’s what I can do. Right?

Kendall Samuelson: 05:38

If I’m if I’m gonna go into the livestock industry. And there’s just so many more opportunities than that that I didn’t even realize at the time. But that’s kind of where I started. And so I went to an undergraduate program, started in animal science there, and decided I wanted to go the production route. And, man, that first class day, I’m I’m sitting in my class, and I’m an intro to animal science.

Kendall Samuelson: 06:06

And they’re the professor was asking all these questions, and and I was looking around, and kids around me were answering them. Like, they knew the and I was like, man, I don’t I’m really behind. I don’t know much about this. I I gotta I gotta figure this out. And so I remember this is kind of the nerd in me coming out now, but I went and I went to the library and got a bunch of livestock production books and just started going through those and realized I needed to get some hands on experience.

Kendall Samuelson: 06:34

So, we had an option that you could go and work at the animal facilities for course credits. And so I decided that that’s what I needed to do to just kinda get on par with where everyone else was, at least somewhat, and get some experience. And so I started out at the sheep unit, and I just fell in love with it. I loved the work of it. And, you know, I’d never had the opportunity to do that before.

Kendall Samuelson: 06:57

And getting to go to work and do something and feel like you did something at the end of the day and you could really put your hands on it. Like, that was just something that was so new to me, and I I was captivated and and working with the animals, and and I loved it. At that time, you know, I didn’t really know that I wanted to go more into the kind of the production side. I was still kind of on this pre vet thing. And I spent some time working with vets in the area, and we that is where I really learned that I could not fit into a clinical practice model because we were just doing some things that I was I was like, yeah.

Kendall Samuelson: 07:31

I can’t I can’t see myself doing this long term, but we were in a class. And in my nutrition class, we did, like, this little digestibility project where we had goats, and we were feeding them, and we were collecting the manure. And I just it was like a light bulb went off. I thought it was the the coolest thing. I just I was like, this is what I need to do.

Kendall Samuelson: 07:54

And so, from there, decided, hey. Maybe I wanna go the graduate school route instead of the vet school route and really was very interested in nutrition. Didn’t really know about nutrition, what I wanted to do. I just like nutrition. And so decided I needed to experience something a little bit different.

Kendall Samuelson: 08:13

And if I wanted to get a different view of agriculture, I probably needed to move to do that. And so I moved to Texas. Never had been to Texas before. I never never visited, never had seen seen it. And, I moved to West Texas right in the middle of a very prominent drought, which was very stark contrast to what I had been experiencing in California.

Colt Knight: 08:38

And that was the worst drought in the last 75 years.

Kendall Samuelson: 08:41

Oh, gosh. Yeah. It was

Colt Knight: 08:43

Fires were raging across the state of Texas.

Kendall Samuelson: 08:46

It was nuts. And, like, lakes were drying up, and there was no you know, people couldn’t feed their horses and stuff. It was it was tough. And, you know, at that time, we we always have drowned California, but I was used to having a lot of water around. I mean, we flood irrigate there.

Kendall Samuelson: 09:04

That explains how much water we have or at least had at one time. And I I moved there to San Angelo, which is actually where I met Cole, and I was like, man, there’s nothing here. It’s dry.

Colt Knight: 09:17

That drought was so bad. They actually made the farmers turn off their irrigation.

Kendall Samuelson: 09:22

Yeah. It was it was really interesting. And I’d seen things I’d never seen. Like, they had an angora goats, and I’d never seen a ramblet before. We only had, like, blackface sheep and well, not that we only did, but that’s predominantly what I’d what I had been exposed to.

Kendall Samuelson: 09:37

And so it was really different. It was a good experience. Started out in a range management program, and that’s that’s where I met Cole. We had the same the same master’s adviser, and, I had a little bit different approach. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.

Kendall Samuelson: 09:54

I thought range nutrition sounded good, and we were doing a lot of invasive species type research at that time. We’re doing a lot of research on trying to get animals to consume things that they wouldn’t normally consume. And so for me, that for others, that was, like, really exciting. For me, that just involved a lot of picking plans. And I think I realized, hey.

Kendall Samuelson: 10:18

You know, this is this is really interesting, but I don’t know if I wanna do this for a career long term. And so decided to kind of switch it up. And I thought maybe I wanted to pursue more of like the feeding, you know, the confined feeding approach. And so switched gears and my master’s, we actually worked in feedlot sheep. And so that was really cool.

Kendall Samuelson: 10:41

Good opportunity to kind of get different experiences being that I was in more of a range nutrition group, but I was doing research that was a little bit different. And so I think, I mean, when I talk to young people, which is a big part of what I do now, I tell them, like, every experience that you have, right, can can be beneficial. Like, maybe you didn’t realize that you love this, but it was still a good thing for you because it kinda brought you to this next step. And I’ve had that experience a lot in my life where I was just open to trying new things, and I learned either, like, hey, I totally love this or, woah, this is not something I want to do, which isn’t necessarily bad. Right?

Kendall Samuelson: 11:25

It just helps you kind of like fine tune what you want the next thing to be. And so I had a really good experience at Angelo State, but decided I wanted to I really wanted to get into feedlot cattle. Involved in it and it’s it’s very specific, and there’s a lot going on. It’s a very dynamic industry, and I wanted to learn more about that. So I went on.

Kendall Samuelson: 11:57

I did my PhD at New Mexico State, had the opportunity there to work at our research feedlot, pretty much full time. The the research feedlot is about 8 hours away from the campus. And so when you’re there doing research, you’re you’re managing it. You’re really immersed, and that’s kind of the experience I was looking for. I wanted to to really be there, boots on the ground every day to to actually learn about, you know, the day to day management.

Kendall Samuelson: 12:24

And I was able to do that and, had a great experience in there. Decided relatively late that I actually wanted to go to academia. I kind of fought that idea for for a little bit for whatever reason. Wanted to go in the industry for a long time, get a get a industry job, but I just I love research. I love working with people and and my graduate students and kinda realize that skill set a little bit later and decided I wanted to to be a faculty member, and that kinda led me to where I am now at WT.

Kendall Samuelson: 12:59

Been there now for about I think I’m in my 7th year. So getting close to to to mid career now, maybe.

Colt Knight: 13:10

Mid career. You you won’t say that when you get another 10 years in, I don’t think.

Kendall Samuelson: 13:16

Yeah. Probably not.

Colt Knight: 13:20

But your experience is kind of what I see a lot here at the University of Maine with our our newest animal science students and pre veterinary students coming in. We have a lot of students that are coming from other New England states, you know, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware. In a lot of cases, they’re coming here because the tuition is cheaper, and they wanna get away from the city life and maybe experience something more rural. And they wanted to work with animals, and they think, what are your career path if you wanna work with animals? And and most people, the first thought that they have is veterinarian.

Colt Knight: 14:06

And then when they come to college and they take their pre veterinary degree and they start taking the classes and everything, we expose them to livestock, agriculture, other sectors of the industry. And a lot of them decide that, you know, I really wanna work with livestock, but maybe I don’t wanna be a veterinarian. Maybe I wanna take a different path. And I think that’s a good thing, you know, that they are able to have different options, and they get exposed to a whole new world that they may have never seen before if they hadn’t left the city. And and we need more people in agriculture.

Colt Knight: 14:45

I mean, the number of family farms and things have shrunk down, I think, below 2% of the population now. So someone has to be there to feed the world, especially since population is expected to be 9,000,000,000 by 2050. So we’ve got a lot of students to educate so that we can keep expanding the efficiencies and increase production so that we can feed that many people.

Kendall Samuelson: 15:12

Yeah. It’s pretty amazing to see some of these people coming in and kind of that light bulb turning on. I I think it’s different. When I was younger, I always felt like I had this concern that there was, like, this barrier to entry. Right?

Kendall Samuelson: 15:29

Like, I since I hadn’t grown up doing this, like, people were gonna know. Right? People were gonna know I didn’t grow up doing this. And I maybe I wasn’t meant to be here. And I don’t know.

Kendall Samuelson: 15:39

I don’t know that that really existed. Right? Certainly, like, I don’t feel that way now. I wonder if that’s kind of gone away a little bit because I see these young students in my classes without the experience that are just like they’re going for it and they’re they’re hungry for that information. We have a an undergraduate student, great undergraduate student.

Kendall Samuelson: 16:03

Her name is Emmy. So, hi, Emmy, if you’re you ever listen to this. But she started out. She didn’t have any feedlot experience, and she came to us. And her her goal was, hey.

Kendall Samuelson: 16:17

One day, I wanna have my own feedlot or I wanna manage a feedlot. And she started working at the research feedlot for free. She was like, hey. I don’t even I just wanna learn. Can I come out there and learn and get my hands on some animals and help you guys out?

Kendall Samuelson: 16:33

And, we’re like, sure. Yeah. Let’s go for it. So she did. First thing first position that we had that came available that we could hire, we did.

Kendall Samuelson: 16:42

She’s actually doing a feedlot internship right now this summer, but she’s just she’s been amazing. And so it’s really cool to have students like that that that really wanna be a part of it, you know, and they’re just they’re they’re hungry for that knowledge and to be able to expose them to that. And particularly for me, because there were there were people that did that for me, right, that got me to where I wanted to be in the industry and allowed me to have those experiences. So I think it’s really important to kind of be open and try to help those people that are young because we do. We need new people to be here to develop, not even new farms, but just in in industry, right, in allied industry to develop new things, new technologies.

Kendall Samuelson: 17:25

It’s gonna be the young people that do that. And it’s harder and harder, I think, to get people to stay in ag. And so we need those new people coming in. And it doesn’t have to be they grew up on a, you know, 4th generation farm, although it is great to have those people as well. But I think we’re gonna start to see more people entering in the industry that that don’t have that background.

Colt Knight: 17:48

You know, I would say through about the 19 nineties, most of our animal science or ag majors, like, were coming from a farming background. Like, their dad was a farmer, and they’re coming to school to learn to be work in the farming industry or the ag industry. And then in the 2000, we started slowly seeing a shift. And we saw a shift in, you know, where students were entering and career paths, but we also saw a shift in the demographics too. Right?

Colt Knight: 18:22

So, like, when I was an undergraduate, it was a pretty equal mix of male and female, students in the animal science and pre veterinary world. Prior to me, it was almost completely male dominated. I remember, I had a girlfriend at the time in at the University of Kentucky, and her mother was the first one to go through the animal science program in Kentucky. And she had to fight to be accepted into that because they would not put a female applicant’s animal science paperwork through. They would just move it over to education.

Colt Knight: 19:01

And so she was the first one to break into the animal science world there. And then now it’s almost completely flipped. Like, when I have my introduction to animal science class, it’s 80 or 90% female and and very few males taking.

Kendall Samuelson: 19:20

Yeah. I’ve I’ve noticed that as well. I would say our program I don’t know the exact numbers, but our program demographics are probably similar to what you described. It’s it’s definitely majority female that we see in our ag classes, which, yeah, for me as a woman in the industry, I mean, that’s really exciting. That means, you know, we we don’t have barriers to entry that these women feel like this is a career that I can’t enter into.

Kendall Samuelson: 19:47

You know, I can I have opportunity here? And so that’s really exciting. And I think that’s a great opportunity for me too to be a mentor to these young women coming in and show them like, hey, you can do this. And even me going through, you know, I I’ve seen a shift as well. There was always other women that were in school with me at that time.

Kendall Samuelson: 20:15

But, you know, in the career field, I guess, kind of going through, I didn’t have as many female mentors at that time to be like, yeah, this is the you know, I could be this person. Right? Like, there were a lot of those kind of on the male side, but there weren’t as many on the female side. And I feel like that’s changed. Like, when I go to meetings now or whether it’s a scientific meeting or an industry meeting, there’s so many more women that are just killing it.

Kendall Samuelson: 20:46

Right? Like, out in the industry being successful, doing a great job. And so that’s really exciting to see. And I think it really gives a lot of, kind of hope and excitement to these to these young girls that are coming into the programs thinking, like, what do I wanna do next? Right?

Kendall Samuelson: 21:04

Because it it it kinda provides this sense of, like, here’s what I can do or almost like there’s there’s, you know, the sky is the limit in terms of the career field that I could go into, which is really, really cool to see.

Colt Knight: 21:19

And so now that you’re a mentor to students coming in and the industry and whatnot, How many, undergraduate students and and graduate students do you teach a year?

Kendall Samuelson: 21:32

Yeah. So, typically, my feeds and feeding course, I teach that every semester. And typically, we have about 50 students per semester in that course. So I’m teaching about a 100 a year in that class. And then my feedlot management will have, 35 to 40.

Kendall Samuelson: 21:49

So I’m teaching, you know, 150-ish undergraduate students a year. Graduate students in my courses would be we’re a little bit smaller program in animal science, so it would be, you know, 10, 20 graduate students, which would be both masters and PhD level students in animal science. Those would be the the students that I have in my courses. Right? And then as graduate faculty, in addition to to the structured classes, we all have our own graduate students.

Kendall Samuelson: 22:22

These are students that are are there to do research and learn and get a degree, and they they select an adviser that is in their area of interest. And the adviser kinda, like, is the captain of the ship a little bit. I wouldn’t even say that, though. Really, the students, the the the captain of the their own ship or the students, the bus driver, maybe I’m just like the bus that gets them there right on the way. And so, they’ve they’ve got to put in the work, but they need someone there to kind of see them through, right, and help them help them grow both intellectually and professionally.

Kendall Samuelson: 22:58

Professional development is a huge component of graduate school. And so I get the opportunity to do that work with people in my lab group. So right now, I have, 3 graduate students, about to be 4 this fall, working with a couple undergraduates as well. We have some great undergraduate research programs in place that are really fun to be a part of. And then we have a really great collaborative team at WT.

Kendall Samuelson: 23:23

So I get to be involved with a lot of other colleagues, grad students as well. But that’s a really fun part of the job to just get to work with with these young students that are just starting out, but even all the way through and kind of get them really excited and help them kind of on that self discovery of like, what do I want to do with my life and where do I want to go next and see them get to have that industry experience and, learn things on the feedlot and learn things in the classroom and learn things about research. That’s that’s really a fun part of of being a faculty member.

Colt Knight: 24:01

That’s really exciting to hear that that you have so many students and so many folks are gonna be entering that that field. Beef cattle is a passion of mine. As you know, that’s what I did my PhD in is with cow calf nutrition in a range setting. And I still work with a lot of beef cattle stuff to this day. And one of the reasons that doctor Samuelson is with us here in Maine is she has helped do some video production on creating diets, feed analysis, and sampling.

Colt Knight: 24:39

So be sure to look for those videos. We’ll post a link in the podcast so that you can you can watch those videos. But could you give us kind of a brief overview of of what they can expect from those videos, doctor Samuelson?

Kendall Samuelson: 24:53

I sure can. So we’ve put together some resources on feed sampling, how to best take a sample, why analysis and sampling is important. All those are important components of a feeding program, whether you’re running a full feeding program or you’re trying to understand stocking density or you just want to know what you have in your pasture or you want to know, should I buy this feed or that feed? Right. You need to be able to understand what’s in those ingredients and diets and make sure that you’re maximizing your your expenses.

Kendall Samuelson: 25:32

Like, what whatever you’re paying for that, you wanna be getting the best return. You wanna make sure that that’s the right fit for what you need. So we put together some resources on that, how to take samples, how to evaluate, analysis reports that are coming from the lab, and then a little bit of discussion about more some basic diet formulation and how can I kind of build a mix of things to put together to meet my animal’s nutrient requirements? So hopefully hopefully, the listeners find those useful.

Colt Knight: 26:06

So Kendall and I have known each other for a long time. We’ve been really good friends the whole time. I was actually roommates with her and her husband while she was doing her PhD, and I was doing my postdoc at New Mexico State. And I like to take every opportunity I can to tease her and give her a hard time.

Kendall Samuelson: 26:26

That’s not a lie.

Colt Knight: 26:28

So I I thought I’d give her the opportunity to get some revenge here if she had any stories she wanted to to share.

Kendall Samuelson: 26:36

Oh, gosh. That’s that’s

Colt Knight: 26:40

Not to put you on

Kendall Samuelson: 26:40

the spot, but That’s a good question. I don’t know. You know, funny enough, I actually can’t think of Colt really doing anything, that embarrassing. It’s usually me that was doing the embarrassing things or getting things, thrown at me. I do have some we have lots of good memories.

Kendall Samuelson: 27:00

I guess my funniest story that I remember about Colt was when he was living with us in New Mexico. And Dr. Knight, for those of you that don’t know, Dr. Knight’s from West Virginia, so we like to give him a little bit of grief for that. And sometimes in those parts of the world, you may, you know, eat some some different things that other people in other parts of the world may not eat. And I’m from California, so that’s probably even more so for me than most other people. But Colt had an interest in squirrels that he described to me and, had eaten squirrels before, and that was not something that I’d ever experienced.

Colt Knight: 27:46

Fried squirrel with squirrel gravy and biscuits is one of the finest meals a person can eat.

Kendall Samuelson: 27:53

So we Las Cruces is a very unique place because everything is kind of desert, and there’s no there’s not there’s not as many rules as, you know, maybe some other place. There’s a lot of public land, and there’s a lot. Yeah. So there may have been an opportunity where Cole ended up with a squirrel and brought it home. And it happened to be graduation weekend and all of my family was there visiting and Gold walks in with a squirrel in a ziplock bag.

Kendall Samuelson: 28:25

And my family didn’t really know what to think of that. And I’m pretty sure you grilled up for dinner that night. But, yeah, that’s that’s one of my fun stories about you and teaching us all kinds of things about rabbits, and you shouldn’t eat rabbits these times of the year versus that was something I’d never been exposed to prior

Colt Knight: 28:49

to that. Well, Kendall, it was great to have you on the podcast. I’m really curious. You’ve gotten to tour around Maine, this week. We went to Acadia and Downeast Maine and and maybe through some more rural parts of Maine.

Colt Knight: 29:05

What was what has been your favorite part so far about visiting Maine?

Kendall Samuelson: 29:09

I think definitely seeing the ocean. You know, being from the other coast, from the West Coast, it’s really cool to get to kind of experience both of those. And so that was really neat. That was a good experience to see. I sometimes get you know, I’m up in the Panhandle, so we don’t we don’t have much water around, unfortunately.

Kendall Samuelson: 29:31

I grew up 20 minutes from the beach my whole life. So sometimes that can be a little bit of a struggle to go that long without seeing water. And so it’s it’s nice. It made me a little bit homesick, but, kind of brings some memories back from from, being on Half Moon Bay and and near the coast where I grew up. So that was that was really fun.

Colt Knight: 29:51

Well, it was great to have you, Dr. Samuelson Thanks for coming on the Maine Farmcast. , and we hope everyone will listen in.

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