Lane Bass Goes Above and Beyond as Contractor
posted on Thursday, August 18, 2016
“I could not ask for a better farm manager,” said finishing supervisor Dave Schwartz about Lane Bass, a contractor who manages seven finishing farms in the Shell Rock and Sinclair area. “He is always organized, has a well-trained team, has every detail in order and is one of the hardest workers we have.”
And, Lane also happens be a full-time Deputy Sheriff for Butler county, working to keep residents safe by responding to emergency calls and patrolling the area in the evenings and into the early morning.
“I am not quite sure how he does it,” said Dave. “A lot of people are counting on him—his family, his team, the communities and families throughout the county, and of course so do we. He does a tremendous job for us, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“This is really my dream job,” said Lane. “I enjoy this work and the people, and am thankful to have a really good team. We work hard to be ready ahead of time and we never quit until the job is done.”
Lane takes a “divide and conquer” approach to the daily tasks, assigning one of his men to check in on a newly weaned group, a second is assigned to separate barn to unload and sort pigs and the third starts covering the daily chores. By 10:00 a.m., Lane is rested from the night shift and joins his team to help them finish up all of the barn chores. Once pens are walked, feeder and water adjustments made and sorting, treatments, cleaning and barn maintenance is done, Lane shifts over to feed and supply ordering and coordinating all of the activities that go with managing seven farms.
“What impresses me the most about Lane and his team is their attention to detail,” said Kate Wedel, DVM. “Recently he got a tough group of pigs. He took it as a challenge and got aggressive on pulling and treating pigs that needed to be in a special pen and receive some extra care. They set out gruel pans to help get them eating and spent a lot of extra time helping those pigs along. Lane is very good at visually identifying pigs that need extra care and he’s also trained his team well.”
Lane’s focus on preparation and detail has not only led to good production results at his farms, but also good performance on his production well-being, safety and biosecurity audits. “Lane consistently lands in 93% to 97% range for audit scores, he always does the right thing for the animals, follows the protocols and takes good care of the barns,” said Dave.
“We spend a lot of time and effort on pigs while they are small so they have a good chance later on,” said Lane. “It’s something we’re all working harder on out in finishing because it works, and it’s how we’ll make our billion pounds.”
And speaking of the billion pound goal, Lane and his team will care for and send 47,400 pigs to market this year—roughly 13,272,000 pounds of pork. That’s enough pork to feed every resident of Butler county 2,650 times.#billionpounds
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