Mike Rowe features AgTrust director on TV, podcast
AgTrust Farm Credit board member Stacey Schumacher is a fixer.
She founded a nonprofit that provides low-cost spaying and neutering, microchipping and preventive medical care for dogs and cats at eight clinics around Dallas-Fort Worth. Of the 68,000 animals Texas Coalition for Animal Protection (TCAP) sterilizes each year, up to 15,000 are feral cats it fixes for free, humanely reducing their numbers.
Schumacher’s passion for improving animal welfare and ending euthanasia in animal shelters caught the attention of the TV series “Dirty Jobs.”
In an episode that aired in December, host Mike Rowe finds out what it takes to sterilize dozens of untamable cats in a day. He practices how to sedate, shave and tip the ears of a stuffed animal before moving on to the real deal.
“This will appear very easy until you have a tiger in a trap over there,” Schumacher tells him.
Talking Farm Credit
The day was so memorable — especially assisting a vet with a simple procedure that got complicated in a hurry — that Rowe talked about it on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in December.
He also invited Schumacher to be his guest on his podcast, “The Way I Heard It.” He says the Jan. 3, 2023, podcast episode was one of the most fun conversations he’s ever had.
“The real reason I wanted her on here is just because she’s an awesome person,” Rowe says in the introduction. “She wrote a letter to me 14 years ago that I never got, and through a strange set of circumstances, our paths finally crossed in a strip mall in one of the TCAP facilities that she runs.”
Back then, Schumacher asked “Dirty Jobs” to feature Scott Schumacher, now her husband, a fourth-generation farmer and rancher in Cooke County, Texas.
Together they have a crop and cattle operation, selling some of their Angus beef directly to consumers, and Stacey breeds registered Texas longhorns. They also operate a commercial fertilizer application company.
Schumacher and Rowe spend part of the podcast talking about what it takes to get started in the capital-intensive agriculture industry.
Farm Credit, she says, “is extremely important for people who think, ‘You know, I’d really like to feed the world. I’d really like to have a noble profession that really contributes to the world.’
“There are ways through the Farm Credit System of finding financing, especially young, beginner and small. They have a program specifically designed for young people or people just starting out.”
Making a difference
Schumacher also talks about her respect for animals at the ranch and in the clinic.
After fostering shelter animals as a child, she went on to start a spay and neuter clinic in her hometown of Sulphur Springs. She started TCAP in Denton in 2002 because, she says, it feels good to do good.
Organizations like TCAP, which has prevented more than 2 million litters of kittens and puppies, are a big reason euthanasia rates have dropped significantly at U.S. shelters.
“It really feels good to be a member of the community and be someone that doesn’t just complain,” she says in the podcast. “You’re that person who really is working to be a part of a fix.”
Listen to the podcast here.