Bob Foote loved cattle. He knew how to find a good one, but more importantly, he knew a bad one. He loved negotiation and was the best at it.
Foote began his marriage to the love of his life, Gail, as well as his cattle business journey, in 1975. He worked early on, and throughout his time, to perfect his craft and his passion — the cattle business. Countless cattle-deal negotiations helped Foote become comfortable with taking on significant risk.
“Dad grew up loving cattle and really enjoyed working with the dairy cattle on the dairy farm,” explains his oldest son, Scott. “He also realized that he wanted to explore his love for the cattle industry, and so Dad made the leap to jump into the cattle industry and start Foote Cattle Co. in 1985.”
He loved the game of business and negotiation. These traits proved to work well together and became the foundation for his business career.
“What he tried to team up was his love for cattle and also his love for dealmaking,” Scott recalls. “He was really a dealmaker at heart.”
In 1985, when the couple founded Foote Cattle Co., it encompassed farming, order buying and cattle feeding. Hoxie Feedyard became a part of Foote Cattle Co. in 1997 with an initial capacity of 10,000 head. Today, Foote Cattle Co. has grown to a multi-location family-owned cattle operation with a 285,000-head feeding capacity as well as land, farming, ranching, banking and other investments across Kansas and Nebraska.
Foote passed away in 2022, but his legacy lives on through his three sons – Scott, Brad and Greg.
Foote’s impact on the cattle feeding industry was celebrated Feb. 4 when he was inducted posthumously into the 2026 Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame during CattleCon in Nashville, Tenn.
Evolution of Foote Cattle
He started his cattle career trading dairy and beef cows and calves out of the back of a 2-ton truck with stock racks. As his business matured, Foote transitioned from cattle trading to cattle buying. He began buying country cattle and attending local auctions. He developed a customer base selling cattle to feeders in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.
“He had a great eye for cattle,” Brad says. “He understood value … there might be days he didn’t buy a single hoof at a sale, and there’d be times he might buy three-quarters of them … he understood the value and he understood the market.”
In 1989 at the Kansas City Stockyards, Foote bought three loads of steers. He had developed a friendship with Wayne Tilly in the seats at the auction. After that purchase, Tilly asked him what he planned to do with those steers. Tilly convinced Bob they should partner on the set and send them to the feedyard and feed them. This was the beginning of a great partnership.
After a few years, they were feeding so many that they decided they should consider buying their own feedlot together. After a search that took a couple of years, they bought the Hoxie Feedyard in 1997.
Another key purchase was the ranch near Manhattan in 2003. Their late daughter, Coleen, loved the rolling hills and green grass on the ranch, and passed shortly after the purchase. Foote’s family says he loved buying a good farm and making it better; they bought several farms and ranches through the years.
Foote worked with his sons to grow the business. Buying Imperial Beef in 2007, followed by Lane County Feeders, Pioneer Feedyard and then Decatur County Beef. In 2019, the family purchased a bank. The Foote family has always stayed aggressive and bullish in business.
His family says he always loved corn planting, good equipment, hard-working truck drivers and driving through any of the feedyards to look at a good pen of fat cattle, simultaneously judging the feeder cattle buyer.
Above all, his family stresses, faith was the most important thing in his life and became the foundation for his teachings to his kids, then to his grandkids.
“He truly worked to do business with faith in his mind and held the strong belief that his God-given talent was doing business,” they say. “He knew that it was his duty as a good, Catholic man to fully use the talents that God gave him to the best of his ability each and every day.”
A Family Man and Businessman
Foote had an aggressive business nature as well as an unassuming soft side that people who truly knew him had the opportunity to connect with. He conducted business, and his life, in his own way. He used the talents given to him by God to the best of his ability.
His family says he was most proud of his Catholic faith, his family and the Foote Cattle brand. Foote was respected by everyone who knew him and is quoted by many for the motto he lived by, “GET IT!”
Kansas Rep. Tracey Mann recognized Foote on the House floor following his passing.
“Our state has lost a tremendous Kansan,” Mann says. “Bob Foote passed away on March 25. He was a man of many talents and leaves behind a strong legacy in the Foote Cattle Co. for future generations of his family. I am hard-pressed to think of any ag producer who had such an impact on Kansas agriculture.”
For Gail, his impact is measured not just in cattle or acres, but in joy, faith and love.
“My life with Bob was never boring, ever … that laugh, that smile, his joy of life and everything he did, he did deeply and with passion,” she says. “God has given us more gifts and blessings than there are stars in the sky. All this would never have been possible without God, without our three sons… It’s a miracle.”
Through his work, his family and his faith, Foote created a legacy that continues to shape the cattle industry and the lives of those who knew him.
