Our cattle operation consists of purebred Red Angus and commercial females.
We use Red Angus bulls exclusively for a variety of reasons:

1. Improved heat tolerance over black hided animals
2. Tighter gene pool versus most other breeds yielding more consistent breeding results
3. Moderate frame size with the carcass qualities of the Angus breed
4. Outstanding maternal qualities
5. Progressive national association, Red Angus Association of America, which was the first to mandate Total Herd Reporting and implement economically relevant EPD’s.

Our cattle philosophy focuses on breeding and raising efficient cattle that will work in low input purebred or commercial cattle applications. What does that mean? Cows are herbivores and were meant to eat forages, not grains. The advent of inexpensive commercial fertilizes and increasing productivity of our corn growing farmers enabled the livestock industry to migrate toward finishing cattle in feedlots. Feedlots confined the cattle in small dry lots near the primary corn growing regions in the mid-west and fed them high volumes of grains and grain by-products to accelerate their growth. Most livestock genetics moved in the direction of larger framed animals that would finish acceptably in a confinement feedlot setting but no longer thrive in the pasture environment without additional inputs beyond grass.

While the feedlot approach is very often the most cost effective means of producing beef, our philosophy deviates from this “conventional” approach. Our goal is to breed cattle that not only survive but actually flourish on our forages which are predominantly fescue based! Occasionally when forage quality drops below a minimum quality we will supplement our cattle with commodity feeds, primarily soybean hull pellets. This is seldom needed, even in drought conditions. We want to test our cattle to determine which individuals rise to the top in our most difficult years with no pampering!

The following are our expectations for our cows and replacement heifers:

• Perform in a livestock environment that is as tough or tougher than our customers environment
• Have a calf unassisted each year that weans at 50% of her body weight while breeding back quickly to remain in a 60 day calving season with the balance of the herd and have a body condition score of 5 at the time of weaning
• Possess adequate volume and capacity, flesh easily, be structurally sound to insure longevity and possess a clam disposition
• Be moderate in size with a mature frame size of 3 - 5
• Adapt to the environment, shedding quickly in the spring and accommodating endophyte infected fescue grass.

It is very hard to produce cattle with a balance of performance, fertility and carcass qualities. It’s hard to be average!