LPCA reopens this week

“Everyone who raises livestock knows the drill. You are faced with a bummer calf or kid or lamb. It’s been rejected or weak, and you start bottle feeding it. Why? Because where there’s life, there’s hope. It’s just what we do when we are responsible for a new life,” said Sue Lani Madsen, treasurer for the Livestock Producers Cooperative Association that owns the meat processing plant located in the Odessa Industrial Park.

Madsen said she thought of this kind of attitude when Margie Hall, director of the Lincoln County Economic Development Council, complimented the LPCA Board on hanging in there and giving it another try, not walking away when walking would be the easy thing to do after the group lost the cash-flow footrace in February.

A new business had been created on a business model that no one else had pulled off in a generation, and it was struggling. Board members had been bottle feeding it, nudging it along, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t by trial and error. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

After a rigorous review of the demand for services and the support for the plant (reportedly over 140 phone calls were made to customers for input and commitment), the Odessa CPoW-LPCA plant is expected to reopen on the following schedule:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture was at the plant March 27 for the startup inspection.

Kill days are being held Tuesdays and Wednesdays only until demand levels out consistently. Shane Nelson will be working on contract on the kill floor.

First livestock will be received on March 30 for kill days on March 31 and April 1.

No cattle will be scheduled the first week but will be scheduled starting April 7 or 8.

The processing crew will start up on April 13 after the first carcasses have had two weeks of hang time. The group is also still processing hogs, sheep and goats in addition to cattle.

More information is available on the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LPCA.Odessa, since it is the easiest communication medium to update quickly. The price sheet is still being worked on. Anyone wanting to talk about scheduling or marketing before April 13 is asked to call Rich Hutchins at 509-322-4004. Kelsey Hauge Scrupps has been hired as the new office manager, and can be reached at 982-0115.