Our cows spend about half their time on crop aftermath, including corn stalks, volunteer wheat, triticale, alfalfa and orchard grass regrowth.  When these feed sources run out or are covered with snow, we feed purchased bluegrass straw, pea straw and our lowest quality orchard grass and alfalfa hay.  During the summer, the cows graze our limited amount of dry pasture, which includes cheat grass, bunch grass, quack grass, and reed canary grass as well as irrigated pasture which includes orchard grass, fescue, ryegrass, festulolium, and clover.  The irrigated pasture is cross fenced and intensively grazed on a rotating basis.  Cows survive on an all forage diet with no concentrates.  They receive a salt mineral mix and occasionally a protein supplement as needed.  Calves never receive any creep feed, just milk, grass and hay.

I purchased my first handful of registered angus females in 2002 from Davey Angus in Lind.  Over the next few years I added some more cows from consignment and dispersal sales, getting up to about 30 registered cows.  I maintained a strict culling regimen for disposition and reproductive performance, and found that the Davey cows were the ones that worked the best for me.  In 2007 I found an opportunity to expand as the Daveys were ready to cut back on their workload and offered me the opportunity to buy females out of the heart of their cowherd and replacement heifers.  I added more than 60 females to my registered herd.

Our operation now consists of about 100 registered angus and 60 commercial angus and angus cross cows.  We farm and/or graze over 1000 acres total, including alfalfa and orchard grass hay, as well as some wheat and corn.  The cows we bought from Daveys calved mostly in December and January.  My herd had previously been calving from mid January to mid March.  I decided to move up as many as possible and evolve to a split calving season.  All females that calved by January 15 that year had the opportunity to breed for a November or December calf, with a few sired by clean-up bulls born in early January.  Those that calved after January 15 stayed in the spring herd and were bred to calve in February and March.  Currently, to stay in the fall herd, cows get 1 AI service (or receive and embryo) and get 1 cycle with a clean-up bull.  We maintain two calving seasons with most of our registered females calving in November for several reasons.  This allows more efficient utilization of our various year-round feed resources, enables our labor and facilities to better handle the workload, and most importantly, I want to provide bulls to commercial producers with as much value as I can offer.  A November born long yearling can be developed without a lot of grain and can be in good condition ready for service at 17-18 months old at April/May turnout time. 


AI sire selection
-     Calving ease
-     Optimum growth curve - heavy weaning weights with
       continued post weaning growth but a moderate  
       mature frame size
-     Proven dam/cow family with performance and
       phenotype
-     Disposition, fertility, structural soundness
-     Positive carcass traits with more emphasis on RE

Replacement heifer selection
-    Calving ease with adequate performance
-    Generally eye-pleasing feminine phenotype with
      emphasis on hip structure, soundness of feet and legs,
      muscling and rib shape
-    Disposition
-    Dam/cow family history of performance, udder quality
-    Ultrasound

Cow culling criteria
-    Disposition
-    Poor udder
-    Unsound feet/legs
-    Failure to breed in a short season
-    Lack of calf performance relative to cow size