Cattlemen shop for equipment, buildings at expo trade show

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Along with cattle sales, junior activities and shows, the Illinois Beef Expo included a trade show where numerous companies provided information to cattlemen at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

“I’ve been coming to the expo since it started,” said Dan Friedman, owner of Freedom Distributing Inc. in Belle Plaine, Iowa. “We sell pretty much anything to do with livestock, and we have a dealer network that we sell our equipment through all over Illinois.”

Friedman, who grew up on a farm, started working for a company after high school.

“The salesman got sick so I went to Texas and worked the show,” he recalled. “It was the best show they ever had, so they kept me on the road ever since.”

In 1991, Friedman started his own company, which now covers six states.

“About 40 years ago, I brought the first hoop buildings from Canada to the U.S.,” he said. “There’s probably nobody who has sold more fabric buildings in the U.S. than I have.”

Over the years, Friedman has worked with several different building manufacturers and now he sells Norseman Structures.

“These buildings have a 40-year warranty on the steel,” Friedman said.

“The fabric buildings are a really good alternative for livestock buildings because they have good air flow,” he said. “Poly does not conduct heat or cold so it makes your building warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.”

The buildings are quite durable.

“I have over 12,000 buildings in Iowa and Illinois, and when the derecho came through, we had two buildings that lost covers and three or four buildings with some damage,” Friedman said.

“We lost over 15,000 steel buildings,” he said. “That tells you how well a hoop building can withstand wind because it is round so the winds shoot right over it.”

The hoop buildings can be built from 20- to 160-feet wide.

“We build a lot of cattle barns that are 72 feet wide by 240 feet long or 50 feet wide by 240 feet long,” Friedman said. “We also build cold storage and hay barns.”

Other livestock products offered by Friedman Distributing include Cobett energy-free waterers, gates, Easy Way oilers, For-Most chutes and Hay Manager feeders.

“We also sell a whole line of fencing that is continuous galvanized fence,” Friedman said.

Mobile Livestock Shelters

Ken Wright, owner of Rolling Hill Manufacturing, talked to cattlemen at the expo about his mobile livestock shelters.

“This is my second year at the expo and we custom fabricate our shelters with various options like a head gate or a tack room where you can warm up a calf,” he said.

“We have a creep gate that we weld into the shelter and you can fill the grain hopper from the backside,” said Wright, who started the company in 2014. “We were the first ones to build these doors that work as a windbreak when you open them.”

The livestock shelters are built with high-strength steel made in the United States.

“It is the same steel that is used to make farm equipment so that is why we are able to offer a 40-year structural warranty,” the company owner said. “It will flex as you move the shelter across the ground and that’s because of the quality of the steel and the welds.”

All the certified welders at the company are family guys.

“We specifically say you must be family oriented to work in our facility because they know how to work good together,” Wright said.

“We have all different sizes of shelters that go as far as 14-feet wide and 40-feet long,” he said.

The back of the shelters has vents that open and shut.

“So, if you get a 20-mph wind on the front side, they open automatically,” Wright said. “If you get a 40-mph wind on the backside, they will automatically close up, so that keeps the shelter dry.”

With the vents open, that relieves pressure in the shelter.

“The shelter will handle an 85-mph derecho because the vents keep them from rolling,” Wright said. “When the livestock are in there during the summer, with the open vents, you can feel the breeze moving through.”

The company offers chicken structures that are varmint-proof and the newest product is tiny houses.

“They have a steel frame, roof and floor so if there is a tornado, these houses are going to hold up,” he said. “If a tree hits it, it won’t crush like wood.”