It's a bountiful life: Ringing up ranch supplies
January/February 2024 California Bountiful magazine
Store owner prioritizes quality and customer service
Interview by Linda DuBois
Photos by Fred Greaves
When residents of Solano County and surrounding areas need supplies such as livestock bedding, horse-riding gloves, hog feed or even baby chicks, they stop by Higby’s Country Feed, a family-owned and -operated farm and ranch supply store in Dixon.
Roland Higby bought his grandparents’ property and started the store in 1984 with about $3,000 in inventory in a tiny shack—his grandparents’ former laundry room. By the late 1980s, Higby had built two storage barns and added employees.
In 1992, Higby hired Scott Hulbert, a college student who needed a part-time job. Hulbert “fell in love” with his work at the store, but other career ambitions drew him away about a year after graduation. Higby talked him into returning in 2003, with an agreement for Hulbert to eventually purchase the business. Shortly after Higby built the current 7,200-square-foot store in 2008, Hulbert began buying into the business. He purchased the remainder in 2019 when Higby retired.
The store now has 15 full-time employees, including Hulbert and his wife, Nicole, and a couple of part-timers.
What are some examples of things you sell at your store?
As we’ve grown over the years, we’ve adjusted our inventory based on what our customers were asking for. So, we still sell a lot of hay, feed and shavings (for animal bedding), but we’ve broadened into a lot more. We have a lot of fencing for livestock and horses and we’re also a destination for fencing contractors or homeowners just trying to fix their fence. We have vaccines and insect repellants for cattle and sheep. We have a full line of dog and cat food and pet supplies and all kinds of things to take care of horses, like supplements, wound-care supplies and halters. We have clothes for riding horses: britches, tops, socks and gloves. We do a pretty good business selling toy horses and tractors and figurines of different animals for kids.
Who are your customers and where are they from?
Ranchers are a big part of our business, but we have a large number of horse owners. We sell to the UC Davis Equestrian Center. In fact, there are like 15 departments at UC Davis that we sell to. We also sell to the Sacramento Zoo and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. We sell mostly to Solano and Yolo counties, but we draw from Sacramento, the Bay Area and Napa. We have a couple of delivery trucks and we regularly deliver to places like Walnut Creek, Martinez and Thornton.
What’s kept people coming to the store year after year?
We feel that anybody can sell what we sell and so we try to offer really good customer service. We have knowledgeable employees from all different backgrounds. So, not one of us knows everything, but if you put us all together, we can get most questions answered. We try to do a good job of purchasing, so we can be competitively priced and offer quality products. We have a lot of years of experience in picking out hay and our customers appreciate knowing they’ll get really good-quality hay. I actually go out and look at almost all the hay that comes into this store and if there are any problems with it, I won’t accept it.
Do you ever get customers having some type of problem but don’t know what they need to fix it?
We get that all the time. Every day we get people who have questions about problems with their animals. Our staff can answer most questions or we know where to go get the answers. We have good relationships with our veterinarians around here, and we offer to get the customers in contact with the vets. We have a lot of resources because we’ve been doing this for a long time.
What have been some of the biggest challenges to running the store?
It’s mostly getting really good employees because I feel like that’s what makes us, that’s what separates us from other stores like us. Our culture here is pretty strong towards customer service and so we know pretty quickly whether somebody can fit in with our culture and if they do, they do a really good job. And if they don’t, we can weed them out pretty fast. During COVID, the big challenge was getting products and dealing with price increases, making sure we’re not getting gouged or that we’re not gouging the customers. We had put in a new computer system right at the beginning of COVID, and it really helped us stay on top of pricing issues.
What do you find most rewarding about running the store?
I’ve always loved being able to help the customers and solve their problems. That’s what I liked the first week I started here and I still enjoy it. It’s just rewarding because our customers aren’t just customers. A lot of them are friends and we know most of them by name. So, it’s fun to come to work and talk to people and help them out. I think the employees who have stuck around are like that, too.
What community causes do you support?
We’re part of the Chamber of Commerce and different organizations and we donate raffle prizes and things to tons of groups. One of our employees is really good at putting together dog baskets and horse baskets for prizes. We’re big supporters of 4-H and FFA. Raising livestock and selling them at the county fair is something I did growing up and my kids and most who work here, too. We sell the feed and supplies for those animals at a discount and then the kids send us buyers’ letters, and then we go and purchase animals. We buy animals at the Dixon May Fair, the Yolo County Fair, the Yolo County Spring Show and the Solano County Fair. We’ve also bought animals at the Napa fair and the Sacramento County Fair. A lot of the animals that we purchase we have processed and we distribute the meat to all the employees to get them through the winter.
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