On a typical Saturday morning, most college students enjoy sleeping in, but not Greg Keller and Andrew Malleck.
The two Benedictine students wake up bright and early on Saturday mornings to get to work at the Atchison County Auction working with cattle and doing every day ranch hand work.
Every Saturday, Keller and Malleck arrive to work at 8 a.m. to prepare for their day at the Atchison County Auction, held regularly at the Sale Barn, located on Main Street and Woodlong Drive in Atchison.
A typical workday for Keller and Malleck is from 8 a.m. till 11 a.m., when sellers bring their livestock to the barn for auction.
“Greg and I’s job is as cattle come through the ring, and out the backside pen, we are told a number,” Malleck said. “Our job is to make sure that the cattle get sorted into the right pen so the buyer picks up the right cattle after the sale.”
The next Atchison County Auction will be Saturday, Apr. 10.
Anything from hogs to goats and cattle will be sold at the auction. Horses also will be up for sale, which happens only twice a year.
Besides doing their work in the backside pen, Keller and Malleck are just everyday ranch hands who do anything that needs to be done at the barn.
Malleck summed up their job in one sentence: “Unload cattle, sort them, and load the cattle back up.”
The two don’t only engage in this lifestyle during the school year; both Keller and Malleck work at their homes or at camps doing similar jobs.
Keller is a sophomore psychology major from Maramec, Okla., and refers to himself as a “country boy.”
When Keller starts his day, it depends on the season how early he has to wake up.
When he goes to his job in Atchison, he wakes up at 6 a.m.; during Christmas break, he wakes up at 7 a.m.; and during the summer his hours fluctuate.
Every morning he wakes up and does his chores, and hunts, fishes and works construction.
“I wake up at seven or so, go out and feed the steers, run the trap lines and on the way back feed the pigs, run more of the trap line, feed some of the cows and do whatever needs to be done during the day, such as moving hay,” Keller said. “In the evening I go deer and rabbit hunting.”
A trap line is a row of traps set out around their 300 acres of property to trap different animals that he has to check daily on his family farm.
Keller enjoys living out in the country and all the activities he can do.
He said his least favorite part about living in the country is building fences and cutting down cedar trees.
There are a lot of cedar trees in Oklahoma, especially around his property.
His ranch is a side job that his father works at night after leaving his full-time job. His dad sells bulls and pigs and runs cows on the side.
“I don’t know what I would be like living in the city, but I try to be a hard worker. I work with my dad, who taught me to work really hard,” Keller said. “The jobs I have worked have all been outside, and I have learned that the harder I work, the more I get paid. It all works out well.”
At BC, life is a little bit different than living on a ranch.
“Being at Benedictine…I don’t really live the same life at all. I would if I had the same job, but I don’t really apply my discipline at school,” Keller said. “I am just an everyday college student who wears boots and Wranglers and drives a truck.”
While at school, Keller and his friends do a lot of public hunting around the Benedictine Bottoms and Atchison State Lake for rabbits, squirrels and turkeys.
This summer Keller plans to travel to Alaska to work as a fisherman, with the hopes of earning a substantial amount of money.
Unlike Keller, Malleck—who can be spotted in his coveralls, boots and cowboy hat—did not grow up on a ranch.
Malleck got into agriculture following high school, when he worked at Philmont in northeast New Mexico.
The camp is the largest Boy Scouts of America-owned acreage in the world. They see about 25,000 youth every the summer, Malleck said.
At Philmont, he was a wrangler and his job was to take care of about 300 horses.
He took eight scouts and two adults on weeklong horseback rides covering 50 miles.
“My interest in agriculture started when I was younger. My uncle managed a ranch, so I would go out and help him,” Malleck said.
But it wasn’t until the summer of 2009 and this school year that his interest in agriculture began overlapping into his part-time jobs in the beef and cattle industry at the Sale Barn.
Beside the job that Malleck works with Keller, he also has a few other jobs.
In addition to learning to rope on Thursday nights at an indoor riding arena two miles south of Atchison, he works at Handke Farms.
Malleck works eight or nine hours every Tuesday at the Handke feedlot, located 20 miles west of Atchison.
“Before I started working there, I didn’t know much about how a feedlot was run. Now I can doctor a sick calf and know what type of treatment they need,” Malleck said.
As a ranch hand he takes care of the calves, moves hay, feeds cattle, moves them to different pens, and loads and unloads them.
When cattle come in, his main job is to take care of them. When he is finished with that, he performs general duties necessary at the feed lot.
“My main job at the feedlot is to process cattle. When they first come into the feedlot, I help run them through the squeeze shoot, implant them, vaccinate them, de-worm them, and then tag them,” Malleck said.
Malleck enjoys his job because it is good pay for hard work and he learns a lot.
“I like it more than flipping burgers at McDonald’s. For me it is an industry I would like to get into and continue after college. It is not just a job to get me through college,” Malleck said.
Malleck is majoring in business, which he said gives him a wider range of options in the field of agriculture that a major in animal science would not.
The difference between Keller and Malleck is that Keller defines himself as a country boy and Malleck defines himself as a cowboy.
“Cowboys work with livestock or around their property on the back of a horse. A country boy is one that lives in the country, lives the life and enjoys it. They do not necessarily ride horses or push cattle,” Keller said.
